Had he only had this level of control within his grasp when he’d met Sophie all those years ago, he might not have fallen for her, but there was no point in crying over spilt milk. The past could not be altered.
Which wasn’t to say that there couldn’t be retribution...
He sensed her even before he was aware of the hesitant knock on the door.
He had given his secretary the afternoon off. He’d been in meetings all afternoon, had returned to his offices only an hour previously, and something in him wanted to see Sophie without the presence of his secretary around.
He had brought Eva back with him from New York. A widow in her sixties, originally from the UK anyway with all her family living here, she had been only too glad to accompany him back to London. She could be trusted not to gossip, but even so...
Seeing Sophie after all this time felt curiously intimate.
Which was something of a joke because intimacy implied some level of romance, of two people actually wanting to be in one another’s company...
Hardly the case here.
Although, if truth be told, he was almost looking forward to seeing the woman again, whilst she...
He settled back in his leather chair and mused that he was probably the last person in the world she wanted to see.
But needs must...
‘Enter.’
The deep, controlled tenor of that familiar voice chilled Sophie to the bone. She took a deep breath and nervously turned the handle before pushing open the door to the splendid office which, in her peripheral vision, was as dauntingly sophisticated as she had mentally predicted.
She had hoped that the years might have wrought changes in him, maybe even that her memory might have played tricks on her. She had prayed that he was no longer the hard-edged, proud, dangerous guy she had once known but, instead, a mellow man with room in his heart for forgiveness.
She’d been an idiot.
He was as dangerous as she remembered. More so. She stared and kept on staring at the familiar yet unfamiliar angles of his sinfully beautiful face. He’d always been incredibly good-looking, staggeringly exotic with finely chiselled features and lazy dark eyes with the longest eyelashes she had ever seen on a guy.
He was as sinfully good-looking as he had been then, but now there was a cool self-possession about him that spoke of the tough road he had walked to get to the very top. His dark, dark eyes were watchful and inscrutable as she finally dragged her mesmerised gaze away from him and made her way forward with the grace and suppleness of a broken puppet.
And then, when she reached the chair in front of his desk, it dawned on her that she hadn’t been invited to sit down, so she remained hovering with one hand on the back of the chair, waiting in tense, electric silence...
‘Why don’t you sit down, Sophie?’
He looked at her, enjoying the hectic colour in her cheeks, enjoying the fact that she was standing on shaky legs in front of him, in the role of supplicant.
And he was enjoying a hell of a lot more than that, he freely admitted to himself...
She was even more beautiful than the image he had stored in his mind carefully, as he had discovered, wrapped in tissue paper, waiting for the day when the tissue paper would be removed.
He couldn’t see how long or short her hair was but it was still the vibrant tangle of colour it had been when he had first met her. Chestnut interweaved with copper with strands of strawberry blonde threaded through in a colourful display of natural highlights.
And she hadn’t put on an ounce over the years. Indeed, she looked slimmer than ever. Gaunt, even, with smudges of strain showing under her violet eyes.
Financial stress would do that to a person, he thought, especially a person who had been brought up to expect the finest things in life.
But for all that she was as beautiful as he remembered, with that elusive quality of hesitancy that had first attracted him to her. She looked like a model, leggy, rangy and startlingly pretty, but she lacked the hard edges of someone with model looks and that was a powerful source of attraction. She had always seemed to be ever so slightly puzzled when guys spun round to stare at her.
Complete act, he now realised. Just one of the many things about her that had roped him in, one of the many things that had been fake.
‘So...’ he drawled, relaxing back in his chair. ‘Where to begin? Such a long time since we last saw one another...’
Sophie was fast realising that there was going to be no loan. He had requested an audience with her because he could, because he had known that she would be unable to refuse. He had asked to see her so that he could send her away with a flea in her ear over how he thought he had been treated by her the last time they had been together.
She was sitting here in front of him simply because revenge was a dish best served cold.
She cleared her throat, back ramrod-straight, hands clutching the bag on her lap, a leftover designer relic back from the good old days when money, apparently, had been no object.
‘My brother informs me that you might be amenable to providing us with a loan.’ She didn’t want to go down memory lane and, since this was a business meeting, why not cut to the chase? He wasn’t going to lend them the money anyway, so what was the point of prolonging the agony?
Though there was some rebellious part of her that was compelled to steal glances at the man who had once held her heart captive in his hand.
He was still so beautiful. A wave of memories washed over her and she seemed to see, in front of her, the guy who could make her laugh, who could make her tingle all over whenever he rested his eyes on her; the guy who had lusted after her and had pursued her with the sort of intent and passion she had never experienced in her life before.
She blinked; the image was gone and she was back in the present, cringing as he continued to assess her with utterly cool detachment.
‘Tut-tut-tut, Sophie. Don’t tell me that you seriously expected to walk into my office and find yourself presented with a loan arrangement all ready and waiting for you to sign, before disappearing back to...remind where it is...the wilds of Yorkshire?’ He shook his head with rueful incredulity, as though chastising her for being a complete moron. ‘I think we should at least relax and chat a bit before we begin discussing...money...’
Sophie wondered whether this meant that he would actually agree to lend them the money they so desperately needed.
‘I would offer you coffee or tea, but my secretary has gone for the day. I can, of course...’ He levered himself out of the chair and Sophie noted the length and muscularity of his body.
He had been lean and menacing years ago, with the sort of physical strength that can only be thinly hidden behind clothes. He was just as menacing now, more so because he now wielded power, and a great deal of it.
She watched as he made his way over to a bar, which she now noticed at the far side of his office, in a separate, airy room which overlooked the streets below on two sides.
It was an obscenely luxurious office suite. All that was missing was a bed.
Heat stung her cheeks and she licked her lips nervously. For all she knew, he was married with a couple of kids, even though he didn’t look it. He certainly would have a woman tucked away somewhere.
‘Have a drink with me, Sophie...’
‘I’d rather not.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because...’ Her voice trailed off and she noted that he had ignored her completely and was now strolling towards her with a glass of wine in