LITMIR.BIZ

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the eighteenth floor.

      ‘Usually someone would escort you up,’ the blonde woman told her with a trace of curiosity and malicious envy in her voice. ‘I suppose you must know Mr Vasquez...?’

      ‘Sort of,’ Sophie mumbled as the elevator doors pinged open and she stepped into a wonder of glass that reflected her neat, pristine, sensible image back at her in a mosaic of tiny, refracted detail.

      And then, thankfully, the doors smoothly and quietly shut and she was whizzing upwards, heart in her mouth, feeling as though she was about to step into the lion’s den...

      * * *

      She was on her way up.

      Javier had never been prone to nerves, but he would now confess to a certain tightening in his chest at the prospect of seeing her in a matter of minutes.

      Of course he had known, from the second her brother had entered his offices with a begging bowl in his hand, that he would see Sophie once again.

      As surely as night followed day, when it came to money, pride was the first thing to be sacrificed.

      And they needed money. Badly. In fact, far more badly than Oliver had intimated. As soon as he had left, Javier had called up the company records for the family firm and discovered that it was in the process of free fall. Give it six months and it would crash-land and splinter into a thousand fragments.

      He smiled slowly and pushed his chair back. He linked his fingers loosely together and toyed with the pleasurable thought of how he would play this meeting.

      He knew what he wanted, naturally.

      That had come as a bit of a surprise because he had truly thought that he had put that unfortunate slice of his past behind him, but apparently he hadn’t.

      Because the very second Oliver had opened his mouth to launch into his plaintive, begging speech, Javier had known what he wanted and how he would get it.

      He wanted her.

      She was the only unfinished business in his life and he hadn’t realised how much that had preyed on his mind until now, until the opportunity to finish that business had been presented to him on a silver platter.

      He’d never slept with her.

      She’d strung him along for a bit of fun, maybe because she’d liked having those tittering, upper-class friends of hers oohing and aahing with envy because she’d managed to attract the attention of the good-looking bad boy.

      Didn’t they say that about rich, spoilt girls—that they were always drawn to a bit of rough because it gave them an illicit thrill?

      Naturally, they would never marry the bit of rough. That would be unthinkable!

      Javier’s lips thinned as he recalled the narrative of their brief relationship.

      He remembered the way she had played with him, teasing him with a beguiling mixture of innocence and guileless, sensual temptation. She had let him touch but he hadn’t been able to relish the full meal. He’d been confined to starters when he had wanted to devour all courses, including dessert.

      He’d reached the point of wanting to ask her to marry him. He’d been offered the New York posting and he’d wanted her by his side. He’d hinted, saying a bit, dancing around the subject, but strangely for him had been too awkward to put all his cards on the table. Yet she must have suspected that a marriage proposal was on the cards.

      Just thinking about it now, his insane stupidity, made him clench his teeth together with barely suppressed anger.

      She was the only woman who had got to him and the only one who had escaped him.

      He forced himself to relax, to breathe slowly, to release the cold bitterness that had very quickly risen to the surface now that he knew that he would be seeing her in a matter of minutes.

      The woman who had...yes...hurt him.

      The woman who had used him as a bit of fun, making sure that she didn’t get involved, saving herself for one of those posh, upper-class idiots who formed part of her tight little circle.

      He was immune to being hurt now because he was older and more experienced. His life was rigidly controlled. He knew what he wanted and he got what he wanted, and what he wanted was the sort of financial security that would be immune to the winds of change. It was all that mattered and the only thing that mattered.

      Women were a necessary outlet and he enjoyed them but they didn’t interrupt the focus of his unwavering ambition. They were like satellites bobbing around the main planet.

      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

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