He indicated the sofas arranged in a square around a coffee table. ‘Take a seat.’
She obeyed his command by sitting gracefully and crossing her legs.
He wished she hadn’t. Until that moment he had refused to pay any attention to her attire but now his eyes focussed on the athletic but decidedly feminine figure clad in fashionably ripped jeans and an oversized thin sweater that fell off the shoulder. She’d left her long blonde hair loose.
A member of his staff entered the room carrying the refreshments he’d ordered and he was glad of the diversion.
He waited until the drinks and pastries had been laid out before seating himself opposite Sophie and pouring himself a coffee. ‘Help yourself.’
Again, she obeyed. Soon she had a palmier on a plate on her lap and was sipping a glass of fresh orange juice.
He allowed himself a slight breath of relief. So far she was displaying all the signs of obedience. Things would be much easier if she were to fall in with his plans without questioning them. He knew little about Sophie but the impression he’d formed before he’d stupidly made love to her had been of a shy woman who had little in the way of spine or gumption.
He’d climbed out of his bed that morning knowing he needed to learn something concrete about the woman he was going to marry, so he had woken the ballet company’s human resources manager, ordering her to email Sophie’s employment file to him. It had been a quick but illuminating read. Sophie had been educated at the same ballet school as Freya, worked for a provincial English ballet company upon her graduation, then followed Freya to Madrid. She’d had no starring roles in any ballet production of note and was described in the file as warm but shy.
It had been illuminating in that it had confirmed his prior thoughts about her.
She was probably so relieved he’d agreed to marry her that she would now agree to anything to keep him onside.
Perfect.
He downed his black coffee and poured another, then waited until she had bitten a delicate amount of pastry before saying, ‘Those documents on the table are for you to read through. They’re the prenuptial agreement you’ll need to sign before we can marry.’
Her eyes remained on his face as she chewed slowly. When she swallowed, a flicker of pink tongue popped to the side of her mouth to lick a stray crumb.
Javier inhaled deeply and forced his attention back to the documents she now leaned forward to pick up, only to be confronted by a glimpse of cleavage as her sweater dipped.
He clenched his hands into fists and commanded his loins to stay neutral.
Sophie was only a woman. There was nothing special about her, nothing that should make his loins twitch and his veins heat. He would not allow the memories of their one time together to trick his body.
She leaned back and casually flicked through the documents he’d woken his lawyer at six a.m. to produce, right after he’d called the human resources manager.
After a few minutes of silence she put the file back on the coffee table and stared at him. ‘This is the same contract you signed with Freya.’
‘With a few modifications.’ Namely the section on children being in the future at a time of his wife’s choosing. That was an issue now taken out of both their hands. ‘Everything about how our marriage is to proceed is laid out in black and white. There will be no ambiguity and no need for us to argue about any issues at any point in the future because they are all set out in this. You will see that you are also generously provided for.’ He would treat her fairly and well. She would be his wife and the mother of his child and he would respect her for both those roles.
Something undefinable sparked in her eyes. ‘Your provisions are generous but the rest of it... I’m not signing this.’
He fixed her with the stare that had been known to make an entire conference room of business people freeze. ‘If you want me to marry you, you will.’
She shook her head slowly. ‘No.’
No. A simple one-syllable word rarely uttered in his earshot and even more rarely directly at him.
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his thighs. ‘Then let me explain it like this. If you won’t sign the contract I will not marry you and I will take custody of our child. If you want to be a mother to it then you will sign. Otherwise you can leave right now and stop wasting my time.’
SOPHIE STARED INTO the light brown eyes fixed on hers with such hooded cruelty and experienced an unexpected wave of compassion for him.
She didn’t want to feel anything for Javier, but right then, how could she not, even when she knew it was her compassion towards him that had got them to this point?
This was a man who had lived through the worst thing a child could live through: the murder of his mother at the hands of his father. Judged and feared by the world, was it any wonder he hit back at it by encasing his heart in steel? She had felt his pain from the first moment she had set eyes on him and fallen under his spell.
He folded his arms across his chest, his stare menacing. ‘Well?’
Her heart thundering painfully beneath her ribs, Sophie got to her feet.
Not giving herself time to reflect on what she was doing, she walked around the coffee table and stood before him. Javier was such a tall man and she so short that they were the same height with him seated.
She put her hand to his and locked her fingers around his wrist, feeling him jolt with surprise at her forwardness. His surprise was to her advantage, enabling her to pull his arm free from across his chest and place his hand on her belly.
She tried not to shiver as the heat of his hand permeated through the fabric of her sweater and sent shocks of sensation travelling through her bloodstream.
She had to ignore it.
She should wish she had ignored it two months ago but that would mean wishing her unborn child away and she would never do that.
He tried to pull his hand away but she refused to let go, holding it tightly to her abdomen, grateful for the first time for the physical strength all the ballet training she had endured through her life had given her.
‘I know you can’t feel it yet but, under your hand, our child is growing inside me,’ she said quietly. ‘It is over an inch long and has eyes and ears and a mouth. Its fingernails are beginning to grow and it can already bend its arms and legs. You can’t feel it but I can. My body’s changing because of this little kumquat, and our little kumquat is wholly dependent on me. As it grows, it will learn the sound of my voice. If you are by my side it will learn your voice too and when it’s born it will recognise both of us. It is innocent of everything and needs us both, so I beg you, please, do not use our child as a weapon to threaten me with. I won’t sign that contract because I disagree profoundly with the reasons behind it and I disagree with every one of the clauses you have in it. If we are going to marry then it should be a real marriage.’
Not the cold business arrangement he had made with Freya. That was a marriage Sophie could never tolerate for either herself or her child.
Javier wrenched his hand from her hold, his movement so sudden that Sophie stepped back in shock, straight into the coffee table. She would have toppled backwards onto it if his reflexes hadn’t kicked in and the hand he had just snatched from her hadn’t flown forward to grip onto her elbow and pull her to him.
She gazed into the eyes holding her with such loathing, greatly aware of the heavy thuds of her heart and the melting of her insides as his