‘And, in a way, you probably have no idea how much worse it makes it for me.’ She swung her head away. Her prissy, formal clothes felt like a straitjacket and her tidy bun nestled at the nape of her neck was sticky and restricting.
Without thinking, she released it and sifted restless fingers through the length of her tumbling hair.
And Javier watched. His mouth went dry. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders and down her back, a vibrant wash of colour that took his breath away. He had to look away but he knew that he was breathing fast, imagining her naked, projecting how her body would feel were he to run his hands along its shapely contours.
‘You’re right. Oliver has always been protected,’ she told him bluntly. He might very well be the first person she was telling this to. It was a truth she had always kept to herself because to have voiced it would have felt like a little betrayal. ‘He only found out about...everything when Dad’s illness was finally revealed, and even then we didn’t tell him that the company was on its last legs. In fact, he returned to California and only came back after the...the accident when... Well, he came back for Dad’s funeral, and of course Roger’s, and by then he had to be told.
‘But his heart isn’t in getting the company up and running. His heart isn’t in the house either. Mum’s now living in Cornwall and, as far as Ollie is concerned, he would sell the family home to the highest bidder if there was anyone around who was in the slightest bit interested. He doesn’t give a hoot if it all falls down in a pile of rubble just so long as we got some money for the rubble. So, no, he wouldn’t be at all happy to leave Paris to house-sit.’
She took a deep, shaky breath. ‘The house hasn’t been maintained for years. It always looked good on the outside, not that I ever really looked, but it turned out that there were problems with the roof and subsidence that had never been sorted. There’s no money left in the pot to sort that stuff out, so I keep my eyes peeled for anything that might need urgent attention. The worse the house is, the less money we’ll get, if we ever manage to sell at all. I can’t afford for a leak to spring in the cellar and start mounting the stairs to the hallway.’ She sighed and rubbed her eyes.
‘Why did you let him get away with it?’ It was more of a flat, semi-incredulous statement than a question and Sophie knew exactly who he was talking about even though no name had been mentioned.
‘I don’t want to talk about that. It’s in the past and there’s no point stressing about the stuff you can’t change. I just have to deal with the here and now...’
‘Oliver,’ Javier ploughed on, ‘might be indifferent and clueless when it comes to business, but you clearly have the capacity to get involved, so why didn’t you? You knew what was happening.’
‘Mum wasn’t in good health. Hadn’t been for ages. And then Dad’s behaviour started getting weird...erratic... Suddenly everything seemed to be happening at the same time. We found out just how ill he was and then, hard on the heels of that, the full repercussions of...of Roger’s gambling and all the bad investments began coming to light. There was no one at the helm. All the good people were leaving. Lots had already left, although I didn’t know that at the time, because I’d never been involved in the family business. It was...chaos.’
Even in the midst of this tale of abject woe, Javier couldn’t help but notice that there was no condemnation of her scoundrel husband. Loyalties, he thought with a sour taste, were not divided.
‘So I’ll get a house-sitter,’ he repeated and she shook her head. He had already infiltrated her life enough. She wasn’t sure she could cope with more.
‘I’ll come here,’ she conceded, ‘and go home at the weekends.’ She breathed in deeply. ‘And thank you for the use of an apartment. You have to let me know... I don’t have a great deal of disposable income, as you can imagine, but please let me know how much rent I will owe you.’
Javier sat back and looked at her from under sinfully long lashes, a lazy, speculative look that felt like a caress.
‘Don’t even think of paying me rent,’ he told her silkily. ‘It’s on the house...for old times’ sake. Trust me, Sophie, I want you...’ he paused fractionally ‘...there at the helm while changes are taking place, and what I want, I usually get...whatever the cost.’
SOPHIE LOOKED AROUND her and realised guiltily that, after two weeks’ living in the apartment Javier had kindly loaned her, refusing to countenance a penny in payment, she was strangely happy.
The apartment was to die for. She still found herself admiring the décor, as she was doing right now, having just returned from the office and kicked off her stupid pumps so that she could walk barefoot on the cool, wooden floor.
She had expected minimalist with lots of off-putting glossy white surfaces, like the inside of a high-tech lab. Images of aggressive black leather and chrome everywhere had sprung to mind when she had been handed the key to the apartment by his personal assistant, who had accompanied her so that the workings of the various gadgets could be explained.
She had assumed that she would be overwhelmed by an ostentatious show of wealth, would be obliged to gasp appropriately at furnishings she didn’t really like and would feel like an intruder in a foreign land.
The Javier of today was not the teasing, warm, sexy, funny guy she had once known. The today Javier was tough, rich beyond most people’s wildest dreams, ruthless and cutting edge in his hand-tailored suits and Italian shoes. And that would be reflected in any apartment he owned.
She’d been surprised—shocked, even—when she was shown the apartment.
‘It’s had a makeover,’ the personal assistant had said in a vaguely puzzled voice, but obviously far too well-trained to comment further. ‘So this is the first time I’m seeing the new version...’
Sophie hadn’t quizzed her on what it had been like previously. Tired and in need of updating, she had assumed. He’d probably bought a bunch of apartments without even seeing them, the way you do when you have tons of money, and then paid someone handsomely to turn them into the sort of triple-A, gold-plated investments that would rent for a small fortune and double in value if he ever decided to sell.
Whoever had done the interior design had done a great job.
She padded towards the kitchen, which was cool, in shades of pale grey with vintage off-white tiles on the floor and granite counters that matched the floor.
Everything was open-plan. She strolled into the living room with a cup of tea and sank into the cosy sofa, idly flicking on the television to watch the early-evening news.
It was Friday and the work clothes had been dumped in the clothes hamper. Javier had told her that it was fine to dress casually but she had ignored him.
Keep it professional; keep it businesslike... she had decided.
Jeans and tee shirts would blur the lines between them...at least for her...
Not, in all events, that it made a scrap of difference how she dressed, because, after the first day, he had done a disappearing act, only occasionally emailing her or phoning her for updates. A couple of times he had visited the branch when she had been out seeing customers, trying to drum up business, and she could only think that he had timed his arrivals cleverly to avoid bumping into her.
He didn’t give a passing thought to her, whilst she, on the other hand, couldn’t stop thinking about him.
She didn’t think that she had ever really stopped thinking about him. He’d been in her head, like the ghost of a refrain from a song that wouldn’t go away.
And now she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Worse than that, she spent every day at the office anticipating his unexpected arrival