He’d accepted that she’d been in his head more than he’d ever imagined possible. A Pandora’s box had been opened with her brother’s unexpected appearance at his office. Javier had recognised the opportunity he had been given to put an end to her nagging presence, which, he now realised, had been embedded in him like a virus he’d never managed to shake off.
He would have her and he had the means to do so at his disposal.
She needed money. He had vast sums of it. She would take what was offered because she would have no choice. His terms and conditions would be met with acquiescence because, as he had learned over the years, money talked.
He had slept with some of the world’s most desirable women. It had followed that whatever she had that had held him captive all those years ago, she would lose it when he saw her in the flesh once again. How could she compete with some of the women who had clamoured to sleep with him?
He’d been wrong.
And that was unbelievably frustrating because he was beginning to realise that he wanted a lot more from her than her body for a night or two.
No, he needed a lot more from her than her body for a night or two.
He wanted and needed answers and his curiosity to pry beneath the surface enraged him because he had thought himself above that particular sentiment when it came to her.
Nor, he was discovering, did he want to take what he knew she would have no choice but to give him in the manner of a marauding plunderer.
He didn’t want her reluctance.
He wanted her to come to him and in the end, he reasoned now, if revenge was what he was after, then wouldn’t that be the ultimate revenge? To have her want him, to take her and then to walk away?
The logical part of his brain knew that to want revenge was to succumb to a certain type of weakness, and yet the pull was so immensely strong that he could no more fight it than he could have climbed Mount Everest in bare feet.
And he was enjoying this.
His palate had become jaded and that was something he had recognised a while back, when he had made his first few million and the world had begun to spread itself out at his feet.
He had reached a place in life where he could have whatever he wanted and sometimes having everything at your fingertips removed the glory of the chase. Not just women, but deals, mergers, money...the lot.
She wasn’t at his fingertips.
In fact, she was simmering with resentment that she had been put in the unfortunate position of having to come to him, cap in hand, to ask for his help.
He was a part of her past that she would rather have swept under the carpet and left there. He was even forced to swallow the unsavoury truth that he was probably a part of her past she bitterly regretted ever having gone anywhere near in the first place.
But she’d wanted him.
That much he felt he knew. She might have played with him as a distraction from the main event happening in her life somewhere else, or maybe just to show off in front of her friends that she had netted the biggest fish in the sea—which Javier had known, without a trace of vanity, he was.
But perhaps she hadn’t actually banked on the flare of physical attraction that had erupted between them. She had held out against him and he had seen that as shyness, youthful nerves at taking the plunge... He’d been charmed by it. He’d also been wrong about it, as it turned out. She’d held out against him because there had been someone else in her life.
But she’d still fancied him like hell.
She’d trembled when he’d traced his finger across her collarbone and her eyes had darkened when their lips had touched. He hadn’t imagined those reactions. She might have successfully fought that attraction in the end and scurried back to her comfort zone, but, for a brief window, he’d taken her out of that comfort zone...
Did she imagine that she was now immune to that physical attraction because time had passed?
He played with the thought of her opening up to him like a flower and this time giving him what he had wanted all those years ago. What he wanted now.
He wondered what she would feel when she found herself discarded.
He wondered whether he would really care or whether the mere fact that he had had her would be sufficient.
He hadn’t felt this alive in a long time and it was bloody great.
‘I was surprised when your brother showed up on my doorstep, so to speak, in search of help.’
‘I hope you know that I never asked him to come to see you.’
‘I can well imagine, Sophie. It must cut to the quick having to beg favours from a man who wasn’t good enough for you seven years ago.’
‘That’s not how it was.’
Javier held up one hand. ‘But, as it happens, to see you evicted and in the poorhouse would not play well on my conscience.’
‘That’s a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?’
‘You’d be surprised how thin the dividing line is between the poor and the rich and how fast places can be swapped. One minute you’re on top of the world, the ruler of everything around you, and the next minute you’re lying on the scrap heap, wondering what went wrong. Or I could put it another way—one minute you’re flying upwards, knocking back all those less fortunate cluttering your path, and the next minute you’re spiralling downwards and the people you’ve knocked back are on their way up, having the last laugh.’
‘I bet your parents are really sad at the person you’ve become, Javier.’
Javier flushed darkly, outraged at her remark, and even more outraged by the disappointed expression on her lovely face.
Of course, in those heady days of thinking she was his, he had let her into his world, haltingly confided in her in a way he had never done with any woman either before or since. He had told her about his background, about his parents’ determination to make sure he left that life behind. He had painted an unadorned picture of life as he had known it, had been amused at the vast differences between them, had seen those differences as a good thing, rather than an unsurmountable barrier, as she had. If she’d even thought about it at all.
‘I know you’ve become richer than your wildest dreams.’ She smiled ruefully at him. ‘And you always had very, very wild dreams...’
The conversation seemed to have broken its leash and was racing away in a direction Javier didn’t like. He frowned heavily at her.
‘And now here we are.’
‘You once told me that all your parents wanted was for you to be happy, to make something of your life, to settle down and have a big family.’
Javier decided that he needed another drink after all. He stood up abruptly, which seemed to do the trick, because she started, blinked and looked up at him as if suddenly remembering that she wasn’t here for a trip down memory lane. Indeed, that a trip down memory lane was the very last thing she had wanted.
He’d forgotten that habit of hers.
He was barely aware of placing his order for another bottle of wine at the bar and ordering some bar snacks because they were now both drinking on fairly empty stomachs. He hadn’t a clue what bar snacks he ordered, leaving it to the guy serving him to provide whatever was on the menu.
She was filling up his head. He could feel her eyes on him even as he stood here at the bar with his back to her.
Whatever memories he’d had of her, whatever memories he’d kidded himself he’d got rid of and had buried, he was now finding in a very shallow grave.
She’d