Chloe had betrayed them as greatly as her brother had; had aided and abetted his plot to steal Freya and was, unquestionably, the cause of all the tension that had hung between Javier and Luis since Luis’s return from the Caribbean.
A darkness rarely seen on his brother’s face suddenly appeared, and before Javier had time to blink, Luis had grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. ‘If you ever speak about Chloe in that way again then you and I are finished. Do you hear me? Finished.’
‘If you’re still defending her to me then I would say we’re already finished, brother.’ He spat the last word directly into Luis’s face.
Javier knew in his bones that something had happened between Luis and Chloe. Luis had always had a roving eye for the ladies but never had Javier had cause to suspect a shift in his brother’s loyalty from it.
If Luis wanted to be with that bitch after what she had done to him then Luis could get the hell out of his life. Loyalty counted for everything and if Luis had lost sight of that then he was no brother to him.
Eyeball to eyeball, they glowered at each other, the venom seeping between them thick enough to taste.
Then Luis released his hold and stepped back.
Javier stared at the man he had shared a womb with, had shared a bedroom with, had fought with, had protected, had been protected by, had grieved with, the other side of the coin that was the Casillas twins, and watched him take backwards strides until he turned his back on him.
Breathing heavily, his hands clenched into fists, his hardening heart thumping, Javier watched Luis collide with a petite blonde woman in his haste to get away from him.
In all their thirty-five years neither of them had ever turned their back on the other.
It would be the first and last time Luis walked away from him.
In the periphery of his vision he saw the woman his treacherous brother had bumped into come towards him, but with his gaze on Luis’s retreating back, it was only when she stood a few feet from him that her features came into focus.
Javier stared at the face he had last seen two months before when he had shown her to the door of his house.
Big pale blue eyes stared back, apprehension shining out of them.
The rage inside him ratcheted up another notch. Any higher and there was real danger he would combust.
This was a face he had never wanted to see close-up again.
‘You should be at the aftershow party,’ he snapped.
Sophie Johnson was part of Compania de Ballet de Casillas’s corps de ballet and had a contractual obligation to attend the aftershow party.
Colour flamed the pretty heart-shaped face, a pained crease forming in her brow. ‘I quit the company two months ago.’
His heart thumped to hear that surprisingly sultry voice again.
Sophie had the sweet looks of an innocent but a voice that evoked thoughts of dark red satin sheets and dim lighting.
She had quit the company...?
He had hardly looked at the stage during the performance.
‘Then what the hell are you doing here?’
But he knew. The pressing weight in his already tightly crushed chest told him the answer. He did not want to listen to it.
Her throat moved.
He’d kissed that throat...
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Now is the worst time to speak to me.’ And she was the last person he wished to see or speak to. Not now, when he could feel the fabric of his life dissolving around him.
He stepped past her and nodded a dismissal. ‘Excuse me.’
He’d taken no more than two paces when she said, ‘It’s important.’
His heart began to thrum wildly, every nerve ending standing on edge. Memories of their brief interlude surfaced in a wave, memories he’d not allowed himself to think of since showing her out of his home.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he half turned to her and inhaled deeply.
‘No,’ he told her harshly. ‘This is not a conversation we are going to have now. Go home.’
‘But—’
‘I said no.’
The vehemence in Javier’s gravelly tone made Sophie recoil.
She watched him stride down the long corridor, clenching her jaw so tightly it stopped the threatening tears from splashing over her cheeks.
She had shed enough tears these past two months.
She staggered on shaking legs to the nearest chair and sank down into it.
Covering her mouth, she forced deep breaths into her choking airway and drew on all the ballet training that had been instilled in her since early childhood to stop her frame collapsing.
A glamorous couple strolled past her, hand in hand, the woman giving Sophie a sideways glance.
She tried to give the smile that normally came automatically whenever she met another person’s eye but could barely move her cheek muscles.
She had once thought herself in love with Javier. Fool!
The stories about him being a cold-hearted bastard had all proven themselves to be true.
That she had ignored them, convinced that his was a soul in torment and that his reputation was not formed from a heart set in stone, was her own fault.
Sophie had taken one look at Javier when he’d paid a visit to the ballet company almost a year ago and felt her heart move and all the breath leave her body in a rush.
It had been a visceral reaction unlike anything she had experienced before.
Unlike the sculpted men of the ballet world, Javier was a bone crusher of a man, enormously tall and broad with a presence that made everyone look twice. He wasn’t handsome in the traditional sense, his nose too wide and with a bend to it, his light brown eyes too hooded and with a permanent look of suspicion etched in them to ever be considered a pin-up, but he had a magnetism that turned those flaws into something mesmerising. He had mesmerised her in more ways than one. Always attuned to others’ emotions, the pain she had sensed in Javier had reached deep into her.
She had spent months longing for a glimpse of him. The times she did—and they were rare times, his involvement with the day-to-day running of the ballet company minimal—her heart would soar. She had known it was a crush that would go nowhere. Javier Casillas was the co-owner of her ballet company, a property magnate with a net worth she could scarcely comprehend, an arrogant, aloof figure who conjured fear and admiration in equal measure. He would never look twice at her.
But he did look twice at Freya.
Freya was her oldest and closest friend, the reason for Sophie being in Madrid dancing for the company that had made Freya a star. Freya was beautiful. Freya was a dancer with the world at her pointe shoes, a dancer who stole the heart of everyone who watched her perform.
Sophie had never shared her feelings for Javier with Freya. It had been too personal and unlikely to share with anyone.
Javier’s marriage proposal and Freya’s acceptance of it had devastated her.
For months she had sat on her despondency, determined to support her oldest friend even if she did have grave misgivings about their forthcoming loveless marriage that had nothing to do with her own breaking heart. She even gamely agreed to be their bridesmaid.
Then, the week before they were due to exchange their vows, Freya had run off with Benjamin Guillem, leaving Javier for dust. A media frenzy had ensued.