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his arrogance.

      ‘I’m glad we made love,’ she told him truthfully. ‘I...’

      ‘Don’t go there, Soph.’ He fell onto his back and gazed upwards because this was what he didn’t want. Any sort of half-hearted, limp excuses and explanations for the choices she had made seven years ago. She’d already told him enough. He knew enough. He wasn’t interested in hearing any more.

      ‘Don’t go where?’

      ‘This isn’t the point where we pick up sharing our life histories.’ He gathered her into him, his arm draped loosely around her. He could touch her nipple with his fingers and he liked that. He liked the way the little bud stiffened in response to the gentle pressure of his fingers rolling it. And he liked what that did to his body, the way it made him feel as though he could keep going indefinitely, his body resting between bouts of lovemaking only long enough to build back up the vigour to carry on.

      After sex, no matter how good the sex had been, his instinct had always been to get out of bed as fast as he could and have a shower, his mind already racing ahead to work and business, deals that had to be done.

      He’d never been one for hanging around between the sheets, chewing the fat and talking about a future that wasn’t going to happen.

      But he wanted to hang around between the sheets now.

      Minus the chat.

      He’d managed, just, to relegate her loser ex-husband to a box somewhere in his head that he could safely ignore. The last thing he wanted was for her to begin recapping her past, forcing him to confront the unpalatable truth that, whether she had come to him a virgin or not, she had still ditched him for someone else and probably still loved that someone else, even though the man in question had failed to deliver.

      ‘No,’ she agreed quickly. ‘I was simply going to say that it’s probably a good idea if you head back now. Unfortunately...’ she gave a derisive laugh ‘...the guest bedrooms aren’t exactly made up for visiting crowds. No crisp white sheets and fluffy towels, I’m afraid.’

      She began to slip her legs over the side of the bed and he tugged her back against him.

      He wasn’t ready for her to leave just yet. He hadn’t quite got his fill of her. Surprising, all things considered, but nevertheless true. And he didn’t want to give her time to think things over. He wanted her warm, ripe and soft like she was now; yielding.

      ‘I’m not sure I can face the horror story of a long drive back to London,’ he murmured, curving his big body against hers and pushing his thigh between her legs.

      ‘There are hotels,’ Sophie told him as her heart gave a silly little leap in her chest.

      She didn’t want him to go. It was exhausting pretending that she didn’t care one way or another.

      ‘This may be the back of beyond for you,’ she carried on, ‘compared to London, but we still have our fair share of excellent hotels. All come complete with mod cons like clean sheets, windows that open and no lingering smell of mustiness from being shut up for too long.’

      Javier burst out laughing. He’d forgotten how funny she could be and that was something that hadn’t been apparent over the past few weeks.

      Probably over the past few years, he thought, sobering up.

      ‘Bit of a trek going to a hotel,’ he murmured. ‘That would entail me getting up, getting dressed...and who’s to say that they aren’t all full?’

      ‘What are you saying?’

      ‘I could always save myself the hassle and spend the night here,’ he told her.

      ‘Some of the bedrooms... Well, I guess I could make up the one at the end of the corridor. It’s shocking to think how fast things have gone downhill here...’ She sighed. ‘It’s as if the whole place was glued together with sticking plaster and then, one day, someone tugged some of the plaster off and everything else just came down with it. Like a house of cards being toppled. I can’t imagine the stress my dad had been living under for ages. It’s as well he’s not alive to see the way the house has gone downhill. And it’s a blessing that Mum is down in Cornwall. She honestly doesn’t know the half of what’s been going on here.’ She pulled back and looked at him gravely. ‘Sorry. I forgot you don’t like conversing between the sheets.’

      ‘That’s not what I said,’ Javier felt constrained to mutter. But she had hit the nail on the head. It was all tied in with his driving need to focus on the essentials—work and financial security. For the first time, he found himself projecting to places beyond those confines, the sort of places most people seemed ridiculously keen to occupy, places which he had shunned as irrelevant. ‘How can your mother not know what’s been happening here?’ he found himself asking. ‘How often do you go down to Cornwall to visit her? She surely must return here on occasion?’

      ‘Are you really interested? Because you don’t have to ask a load of questions just because you happen to be staying on here for a few more hours.’

      ‘So you’re going to put me up?’

      Sophie shrugged. ‘It’s no bother for me.’

      ‘Good, because I’d quite like to have a look around the house in the morning—see how bad it is in the unforgiving light of day.’

      ‘Why?’ She propped herself up on one elbow and stared down at him.

      ‘Curiosity. You were explaining the mystery of how it is that your mother doesn’t know the situation here.’

      ‘Would you like something to eat? To drink?’

      ‘I’m fine here.’

      But, even to her, chatting like this in bed felt weirdly intimate and she could understand why he avoided doing it. It would be easy to find herself being seduced into all sorts of cosy, inappropriate feelings, into thinking this was more than it actually was.

      ‘Well, I’m starved,’ she declared briskly, disentangling herself from him and scrambling for the door so that she could head to the bathroom for a shower.

      Caught on the back foot, Javier frowned as he watched her hastily departing figure.

      Since when did women turn down invitations from him to stay in bed—talking?

      Actually, since when had he made a habit of issuing invitations to women to stay in bed, talking?

      He levered himself out and strolled to the bathroom which was a couple of doors along. He was surprised that the bedrooms weren’t all en suite and then surmised that the house predated such luxuries and, somewhere along the line, it had become too costly to have them installed.

      He pushed open the door to the succulent sight of her bending over the bath to test the water.

      Her hair was swept over one shoulder, the tips almost touching the water in the bath. She had one hand on the mixer tap, the other gripping the side of the cast-iron claw-foot bath. He could see the low hang of one breast swinging as she adjusted the temperature of the water, and he moved to stand behind her, grinning as she gave a little squeak when he straddled her from behind, cupping both breasts with his hands.

      ‘Couldn’t resist,’ he murmured into her hair as she straightened and leant into him so that her back was pressed against his torso.

      He massaged her breasts and bent to nibble and kiss the slender column of her neck. With a sigh of contentment, Sophie closed her eyes and covered his hands with hers.

      ‘What are you doing?’ she asked thickly.

      ‘Is there any doubt?’

      ‘I was just going to have a bath...then maybe get something for us to eat.’

      ‘I have all I want to eat right here, right now...’

      Sophie moaned softly at the provocative image that hoarsely spoken statement planted in her head.

      They

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