The Revenge Collection 2018. Кейт Хьюит
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bra. ‘Do you always just open your door to strangers?’ he continued gruffly, barely knowing where this unimaginative line of conversation was coming from.
‘Javier!’ Temporarily deprived of speech, Sophie could just blink at him, owl-like.
She’d pretended that she’d moved on. She was in Paris, she was enjoying her job, meeting new people...
How could she not have moved on? Hadn’t that been the whole point of Paris?
But seeing him here, lounging against the door frame in a pair of faded black jeans and a black jumper, with his coat slung over his shoulder...
She was still in the same place she’d been when she’d watched him stroll out of her flat without a backwards glance.
How dared he just show up like this and scupper all her chances of moving on?
‘What are you doing here? And how the heck did you find out where I live!’
‘Computers are wonderful things. You’d be shocked at the amount of information they can divulge. Especially considering you work for a company I part-own...’ Javier planted himself solidly in front of her. He hadn’t given much thought to what sort of welcome he was likely to receive but a hostile one hadn’t really crossed his mind.
Since when were women hostile towards him?
But since when was she just any woman?
She never had been and she never would be and, just like that, he suddenly felt sick. Sick and vulnerable in a way he had never felt before. Every signpost that had ever guided him, every tenet he had ever held dear, disappeared and he was left groping in the dark, feeling his way towards a realisation that had always been there at the back of his mind.
‘Go away. I don’t want to see you.’
Javier placed his hand on the door, preventing her from shutting it in his face. ‘I’ve come...’
‘For what?’ Sophie mocked.
‘I...’
Sophie opened her mouth and shut it because she didn’t know what was going on. He looked unsettled. Confused. Unsure. Since when had Javier ever looked unsure?
‘Are you all right?’ she asked waspishly, relenting just enough to let him slip inside the apartment, but then shutting the door and leaning against it with her hands behind her back.
‘No,’ Javier said abruptly, looking away and then staring at her.
‘What are you saying?’ Sophie blanched. ‘Are you...? Are you ill...?’ Fear and panic gripped her in equal measure.
‘Can we go sit somewhere?’
‘Tell me what’s wrong!’ She was at his side in seconds, her small hand on his forearm, her eyes pleading for reassurance that he was okay because, whatever he was, he wasn’t himself and that was scaring her half to death.
And if he saw that, she didn’t care.
‘I’ve missed you.’ The words slipped out before Javier could stop them in their tracks. He had put everything on the line and he felt sick. He wondered why he hadn’t thought to down a bottle of whisky before embarking on this trip.
‘You’ve missed me?’ Sophie squeaked.
‘You asked what was wrong with me,’ Javier threw at her accusingly.
‘Is missing me wrong?’ Something inside her burst and she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. She had to tell herself that no mention had been made of love, and if he was missing her, then chances were that he was missing her body. Which was something else entirely.
She walked on wooden legs into the sitting room, where she had been watching telly on her tablet, and watched as he sat down, briefly glancing around him before settling those dark, dark eyes on her.
‘Missing...’ he sat down, arms loosely resting on his thighs, his body leaning towards hers ‘...isn’t something I’ve ever done.’
‘Then it’s a good thing,’
‘I couldn’t focus,’ he admitted heavily. Now that he had started down this road, he had no alternative but to continue, although she hadn’t chucked him out and that was a good thing. ‘I couldn’t sleep. You got into my head and I couldn’t get you out of it.’
Sophie’s heart was singing. She didn’t want to speak. What if she broke the spell?
‘I wanted you, you know...’ He looked at her gravely. ‘I don’t think I ever really stopped wanting you, and when your brother showed up at my office, I figured I’d been handed the perfect way of putting that want to bed for good. Literally. I was going to just...go down the simple “exchange for favours” road. Cash for a little fun between the sheets, but then I decided that I wanted more than that... I didn’t want a reluctant lover motivated for the wrong reasons.’
‘You’re assuming I would have given you your fun between the sheets because I needed money!’ But she couldn’t fire herself up to anger because her heart was still singing. She itched to touch him but first she wanted to talk.
‘I’m arrogant.’ He shot her a crooked smile. ‘As you’ve told me a million times. I thought that it would be a one-night stand, simple as that, and then when you told me that you were a virgin...that the ex was gay...’
‘Um, about that...’
‘Sleeping with you that first time was...mind-blowing.’
‘Er...’
‘And it wasn’t just because I’d never slept with a virgin before. It was because that person was you...’
‘I should tell you something.’ Sophie took a deep breath and looked him squarely in the eyes. So what if he hadn’t said anything about love? He had opened up and she could tell from the way he was groping with his words that this was a first for him. A big deal. Her turn. It would be a bigger deal, but so be it.
‘He wasn’t gay. Roger wasn’t gay. The opposite. He was one hundred percent straight as an arrow.’
Javier stared at her, for once in his life lost for words. ‘You said...’
‘No, Javier, you said.’ She sighed wearily and sifted her fingers through her hair. ‘It’s such a long story and I’m sorry if I just let you think that Roger...’
Javier just continued staring, his agile brain trying and failing to make connections. ‘Tell me from the beginning,’ he said slowly.
‘And you won’t interrupt?’
‘I promise nothing.’
Sophie half-smiled because why would this proud, stubborn, utterly adorable man ever take orders from anyone, even if it happened to be a very simple order?
‘Okay...’ Javier half-smiled back and a warm feeling spread through her ‘I as good as half promise.’
‘I’d been sort of going out with Roger by the time I went to university,’ Sophie began, staring back into the past and not flinching away from it as she always did. ‘I honestly don’t know why except he’d been around for ever and it was something I just drifted into. It was cosy. We mixed in the same circles, had the same friends. His mother died when he was little and he and his father spent a good deal of time at our place. When his father died, he became more or less a fixture. He was crazy about me...’ she said that without a trace of vanity ‘...and I think both my parents just assumed that we would end up getting married. Then I left home to go to university and everything just imploded.’
‘Tell me,’ Javier urged, leaning forward.
‘Roger didn’t want me to go to university. He was three years older and hadn’t gone. He’d done an apprenticeship and gone straight into work at a local company. His parents had been very well off and he’d inherited everything as an only child, so there