LITMIR.BIZ

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      Colour flamed the pretty heart-shaped face, a pained crease forming in her brow. ‘I quit the company two months ago.’

      His heart thumped to hear that surprisingly sultry voice again.

      Sophie had the sweet looks of an innocent but a voice that evoked thoughts of dark red satin sheets and dim lighting.

      She had quit the company...?

      He had hardly looked at the stage during the performance.

      ‘Then what the hell are you doing here?’

      But he knew. The pressing weight in his already tightly crushed chest told him the answer. He did not want to listen to it.

      Her throat moved.

      He’d kissed that throat...

      ‘I need to talk to you.’

      ‘Now is the worst time to speak to me.’ And she was the last person he wished to see or speak to. Not now, when he could feel the fabric of his life dissolving around him.

      He stepped past her and nodded a dismissal. ‘Excuse me.’

      He’d taken no more than two paces when she said, ‘It’s important.’

      His heart began to thrum wildly, every nerve ending standing on edge. Memories of their brief interlude surfaced in a wave, memories he’d not allowed himself to think of since showing her out of his home.

      Pinching the bridge of his nose, he half turned to her and inhaled deeply.

      ‘No,’ he told her harshly. ‘This is not a conversation we are going to have now. Go home.’

      ‘But—’

      ‘I said no.’

      The vehemence in Javier’s gravelly tone made Sophie recoil.

      She watched him stride down the long corridor, clenching her jaw so tightly it stopped the threatening tears from splashing over her cheeks.

      She had shed enough tears these past two months.

      She staggered on shaking legs to the nearest chair and sank down into it.

      Covering her mouth, she forced deep breaths into her choking airway and drew on all the ballet training that had been instilled in her since early childhood to stop her frame collapsing.

      A glamorous couple strolled past her, hand in hand, the woman giving Sophie a sideways glance.

      She tried to give the smile that normally came automatically whenever she met another person’s eye but could barely move her cheek muscles.

      She had once thought herself in love with Javier. Fool!

      The stories about him being a cold-hearted bastard had all proven themselves to be true.

      That she had ignored them, convinced that his was a soul in torment and that his reputation was not formed from a heart set in stone, was her own fault.

      Sophie had taken one look at Javier when he’d paid a visit to the ballet company almost a year ago and felt her heart move and all the breath leave her body in a rush.

      It had been a visceral reaction unlike anything she had experienced before.

      Unlike the sculpted men of the ballet world, Javier was a bone crusher of a man, enormously tall and broad with a presence that made everyone look twice. He wasn’t handsome in the traditional sense, his nose too wide and with a bend to it, his light brown eyes too hooded and with a permanent look of suspicion etched in them to ever be considered a pin-up, but he had a magnetism that turned those flaws into something mesmerising. He had mesmerised her in more ways than one. Always attuned to others’ emotions, the pain she had sensed in Javier had reached deep into her.

      She had spent months longing for a glimpse of him. The times she did—and they were rare times, his involvement with the day-to-day running of the ballet company minimal—her heart would soar. She had known it was a crush that would go nowhere. Javier Casillas was the co-owner of her ballet company, a property magnate with a net worth she could scarcely comprehend, an arrogant, aloof figure who conjured fear and admiration in equal measure. He would never look twice at her.

      But he did look twice at Freya.

      Freya was her oldest and closest friend, the reason for Sophie being in Madrid dancing for the company that had made Freya a star. Freya was beautiful. Freya was a dancer with the world at her pointe shoes, a dancer who stole the heart of everyone who watched her perform.

      Sophie had never shared her feelings for Javier with Freya. It had been too personal and unlikely to share with anyone.

      Javier’s marriage proposal and Freya’s acceptance of it had devastated her.

      For months she had sat on her despondency, determined to support her oldest friend even if she did have grave misgivings about their forthcoming loveless marriage that had nothing to do with her own breaking heart. She even gamely agreed to be their bridesmaid.

      Then, the week before they were due to exchange their vows, Freya had run off with Benjamin Guillem, leaving Javier for dust. A media frenzy had ensued.

      Sophie had been trying to do a good deed when she’d gone to Javier’s home. She’d been packing Freya’s stuff for her from the flat they shared and had come across a copy of Freya and Javier’s prenuptial agreement and a file of other pertinent legal documents. Freya didn’t want them, so, not knowing what else to do, Sophie had decided the best thing would be to let Javier decide. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t want the documents to reach the public domain.

      The day after Freya and Benjamin married, Sophie had braced herself and set off for Javier’s home.

      His house was a secluded villa that more resembled a palace than a home. She’d had to speak into a camera before the electric gates had slowly opened and admitted her into his domain.

      She remembered walking the long driveway, sick to her stomach with pain for him. He might not have loved Freya but he must be shattered that she had left him for his oldest friend and in such a public fashion too.

      The whole world knew about it and had put the blame squarely on Javier’s shoulders without knowing even a basic fact—even she didn’t know a fact about it, Freya’s only communication being the one asking her to pack her belongings together—and was seeming to revel in portraying him as a monster in disguise. Sophie’s heart had twisted to hear the vile rumours about him.

      Expecting a member of his household staff to open the front door for her, she had been surprised to find it opened by Javier himself.

      What followed had been even more unexpected.

      That was when she’d understood his ruthless reputation had been based on truth.

      If he’d even given her a single thought since, he would have known she’d left his ballet company, left Madrid and returned to England. In the vain hope he would seek her out she had left her forwarding address on the company files. He could have found her without any effort if he had wanted to.

      He hadn’t even noticed her absence from the stage that night.

      She’d used those two months of silence to come to terms with the reality of her situation and get herself in an emotional place where she could face Javier again.

      She would seek him out again tomorrow; seek him every single day until he was willing to have the conversation they so desperately needed to have.

      Only when she was certain she could get back to her feet without her legs crumpling did she stand up, inhaling deeply.

      Concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, Sophie headed back the way she had come. The theatre’s wide corridors were almost deserted now.

      When she reached the top of the ornate red-carpeted stairs that led down into the foyer, her heart skipped to see Javier striding up to her, his long legs taking the steps two at a time.

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