For starters, there had been that kiss.
She’d felt the way his mouth had explored hers, hungry and greedy and wanting more.
And then, working in the same space, she’d lodged somewhere in the back of her head those accidental brushes when he had leant over her, caging her in in front of her computer so that he could explain some detail on the screen.
She’d committed to memory the way she had occasionally surprised his lazy dark eyes resting on her just a fraction longer than necessary.
And sometimes...didn’t he stand just a little too close? Close enough for her to feel the heat from his body? To smell his clean, masculine scent?
Didn’t all of that add up to something?
She didn’t know whether he was even aware of the dangerous current running between them just beneath the surface. If he was, then it was obvious that he had no intention of doing anything about it.
And then, one day, he would no longer be around.
Right now, he was making sure that his investment paid off. He had sunk money into a bailout, and he wasn’t going to see that money flushed down the drain, so he was taking an active part in progressing the company.
But soon enough the company would be on firmer ground and he would be able to retreat and hand over the running of it to other people, herself included.
He would resume his hectic life running his own empire.
And she, likewise, would return to Yorkshire to take up full-time residence in the family home, which she would be able to renovate at least enough to make it a viable selling proposition.
They would part company.
And she would be left with this strange, empty feeling for the rest of her life.
She felt guilty enough about the way they had broken up. On top of that, he would remain the benchmark against which no other man would ever stand a chance of competing for ever.
She should have slept with him.
She knew that now. She should have slept with him instead of holding on to all those girlish fantasies about saving herself for when that time came and she knew that they would be a permanent item, for when she was convinced that their relationship was made to stand the test of time.
If she’d slept with him, he would never have achieved the impossible status of being the only guy capable of turning her on. If she’d slept with him, she might not feel so guilty about the way everything had crashed and burned.
Was it selfish now to think that, if she righted that oversight, she might be free to get on with her life? Things were being sorted financially but what was the good of that if, emotionally, she remained in some kind of dreadful, self-inflicted limbo?
She wasn’t the selfish sort. She had never thought of herself as the kind of pushy, independent type who took what she wanted from a man to satisfy her own needs.
The opposite!
But she knew, with a certain amount of desperation, that if she didn’t take what she wanted now she would create all sorts of problems for herself down the line.
She wondered whether she could talk to her mother about it and immediately dismissed that thought because, as far as Evelyn Griffin-Watt was concerned, Javier was a youthful blip who had been cut out of her life a long time ago, leaving no nasty scars behind.
Besides, her mother was leading an uncomplicated and contented life in Cornwall; was it really fair to bring back unpleasant memories by resurrecting a long, involved conversation about the past?
‘Okay.’
‘Come again?’
‘I’ll do it.’
Javier smiled slowly. In truth, the whole modelling idea had sprung to mind only the day before, and he had anticipated defeat, but here she was...agreeing after a pretty half-hearted battle. At least, half-hearted for her.
‘Brilliant decision!’
‘I was railroaded into it.’
‘Strong word. I prefer persuaded. Now, I have a few ideas...’
* * *
Sophie peeped through a crack in the curtains and looked down into the courtyard which had been tarted up for the day into a vision of genteel respectability.
The shoot had been arranged in the space of a week, during which time Sophie had spoken to various media types and also to various stylists. She imagined that they were being paid a phenomenal amount for the day because they had all bent over backwards to pay attention to what she had said.
Which hadn’t been very much because she had no idea what questions to ask other than the obvious one: How long is it all going to take?
Javier hadn’t been at any of those meetings, choosing instead to delegate to one of the people in his PR department, but that hadn’t bothered Sophie.
In a way, she’d been glad, because she had a plan and the element of surprise was a big part of the plan.
Except, the day had now arrived and the courtyard was buzzing with cameramen, the make-up crew, the director, producer and all the other people whose roles were, quite frankly, bewildering. And where was Javier? Nowhere to be seen.
It was today or it was not at all.
She dropped the curtain and turned to the full-length mirror which the stylist had installed in the bedroom because the small one on the dressing table ‘just won’t do, darling!’
The brief which she had agreed on with Javier would have her standing next to a gleaming articulated lorry bearing the company logo, in dungarees, a checked shirt and a jaunty cowboy hat on her head.
Sophie had decided to take it up a notch and the reflection staring back at her had dumped the dungarees in favour of a pair of shorts with a frayed hem. The checked shirt remained the same, but it was tied under her breasts so that her flat stomach was exposed, and there was no jaunty cowboy hat on her head. Instead, she had slung it on her back so that her hair was wild and loose.
Javier had vaguely aimed for something wholesome and appealing, a throwback to the good old days of home-baked bread and jam, which was some of the cargo transported in the lorries. He’d suggested that it would be a nice contrast to the new face of the business, which was streamlined and fully up to spec on the technological front, which it hadn’t been before. Something along the lines of the home-baked bread getting from A to B before it had time to cool from the oven and Sophie’s image was going to sell the absolute truth of that.
She had taken it up a notch from wholesome to wholesome and sexy.
It had been her brainwave when she had sat there, numbly recognising that she would never, ever get over him if she didn’t sleep with him, if she didn’t seduce him into bed. He’d been in her head for years and she couldn’t think of another way to make sure that he was knocked off the position he occupied there.
She’d never seduced anyone in her life before. Just thinking about doing something like that was terrifying, but when it came to her emotions, she had to be proactive. As proactive as she had been dealing with the mess she’d been left to clear up in the company.
She wasn’t a simpering teenager any more, seeing the future through rose-tinted specs and believing in happy-ever-after endings.
She was an adult, jaded by experience, who would be left nursing regret for the rest of her life if she didn’t give this a shot. And so what if she failed? What if he looked at her get-up and burst out laughing? So, she might have a moment’s humiliation, but that would be worth the lifetime she would have had thinking about an opportunity that had passed her by, an opportunity to claim what she knew could have been hers all those years ago.
The time had come