LITMIR.BIZ

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LAY IN Javier’s huge bed fighting to keep her eyes open. She must have lain there for an hour waiting for him, thrills of different shades racing through her: terror, excitement, nausea, until eventually they all melded into one that tasted of disappointment.

      When she had climbed into the bed, she had thought he would soon follow. They’d finished their first meal together with him telling her to go up and make use of the bathroom before he joined her. She’d thought he was being considerate and giving her a little privacy. She didn’t need to tell him she’d never brushed her teeth around a man before or taken a shower near one. He would know.

      She sighed.

      It was only her first day there. She had to remember that. Javier had huge adjustments to make, fundamental ones that, she suspected, went far deeper than her own.

      Building a bond would not happen overnight. It would take time. He was not a man who trusted easily and he was having to cope with a heck of a lot; the humiliation of Freya leaving him for Benjamin, Sophie being pregnant with his child, marrying her and now the destruction of his relationship with his twin.

      She wished she had known about that. It would have made her think twice about asking about Luis.

      She sighed again, the sigh turning into a wide yawn. Her eyes were getting really heavy. Much longer and she’d be asleep.

      Pregnancy had brought about many changes in her: weight gain, the sudden appearance of breasts, the softening of muscles that had always been hard, but the tiredness had been the biggest challenge. Usually she had bagfuls of energy. In the early weeks she’d found herself nodding off so frequently she’d done an Internet search asking if narcolepsy was a pregnancy side effect. The tiredness had got better in recent weeks but she wasn’t back to her normal energy levels yet. She’d had a full and busy day, physically and emotionally, and now her body craved nothing but sleep.

      Five more minutes.

      She would try to stay awake for five more minutes...

      * * *

      Javier stood at his bedroom doorway and breathed deeply.

      The air felt different. The only illumination, which came from the dim bedside light on Sophie’s side, the side he usually slept, felt softer.

      Treading onto the carpet, he felt the thick ply beneath his bare feet in a way he’d never felt it before.

      How could the bedroom he’d slept in for five years feel so different?

      There was no movement from the mound burrowed under his bedsheets.

      She’d fallen asleep, just as he’d hoped.

      To be sure, he went to her side and peered down. If she was awake he would ask her to move over to the other side.

      The sheets swaddled her, her pretty face peeking out, locks of blonde hair spread in different directions over the pillow.

      She breathed deeply, the serene sleep of an innocent, oblivious to him staring so intently at her, unaware of his hand hovering closer...

      He shoved his hand into his pocket, turned on his heel and, his heart thundering, went into the bathroom, locking the door behind him.

      He’d been seconds from stroking her face.

      The hour he’d spent pounding his punching bag and running on his treadmill had done nothing to dent his awareness of her.

      Her mere presence at the dining table had dragged what should have been a relatively simple email exchange with his lawyer over the entire meal, Sophie snatching his attention even when she wasn’t pulling him into conversation.

      He’d felt the blood pumping through his veins in a way he had never felt it before, still there, racing through him, alive, with every beat of his heart.

      His awareness of the waif-like ballerina was becoming torturous.

      Dios, awareness of a beautiful woman was one thing, a healthy thing, but this was something else entirely, as if something with its own heartbeat had infected his blood.

      The thought of climbing into bed with Sophie with all this awareness simmering in him had been unthinkable.

      He cursed under his breath.

      When they made love, he needed to approach it as he always did, from a place of detachment, make it the mechanical exercise sex had always been for him.

      ‘Detached’ was not a word to describe how he felt with Sophie under his roof.

      Sex with her had not been a mechanical exercise.

      It had been mind-blowing. He had carried the feelings it had brought about in him for weeks after, even when he’d refused to allow Sophie herself into his thoughts.

      It was only because she’d caught him at such a low point, he reasoned grimly as he brushed his teeth. It had been the perfect storm. An empty house. A beautiful woman with a sympathetic ear and compassionate eyes. What man wouldn’t have reacted in such a manner in that situation and with a woman who had melted at his first touch?

      Those feelings had gone eventually, and the feeling of new life in his blood would disappear eventually too.

      What else could he do to speed up the detachment? He’d worked out, taken a cold shower in the basement changing room he’d had installed next to his gym, and it had done nothing.

      He stripped off his clothes with the exception of his boxers. He always slept nude but tonight that would not be an option, not until he’d got a grip of all these...feelings.

      He cursed again.

      Feelings were dangerous. Especially for him.

      * * *

      Sophie opened her eyes.

      Something had woken her.

      Then she heard faint sound coming from the bathroom and her heart began to pound.

      Javier was in there.

      He had finally deigned to join her.

      Yawning, she groped for her phone to check the time, blinked and looked again.

      She’d been alone in this bed for two hours.

      In her heart she knew he’d intentionally waited all this time. He wanted her to be asleep.

      For the first time it occurred to her that the reason Javier didn’t want to share a bed with her was nothing to do with his craving for solitude but because he simply did not fancy her. She’d been nothing but a convenient, willing release for him with huge unintended consequences.

      The bathroom door opened. She squeezed her eyes back shut and held her breath.

      She sensed rather than heard him tread to the bed.

      There was only the slightest of dips as he climbed into it, then settled himself down with his back to her, keeping a distance that could only be breached deliberately. A moment later the room plunged into darkness.

      How long she waited for him to do or say something she could not guess. Time lost its meaning in the dark.

      There was no movement from him as the time dragged on. No sound either. Nothing. It was like lying beside an empty vessel.

      While she had tried hard to stop herself assuming anything about what the night would bring, she’d been unable to stop herself making the fatal assumption that he would hold her in his arms and, at the very least, touch her stomach holding their growing child within its secure confines.

      ‘Goodnight, Javier,’ she whispered in the darkness.

      There was no answer.

      * * *

      The following five days passed in a flash. It was a passage Sophie would remember as being a time of blurring nothing.

      She spent the days themselves wandering around Javier’s

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