LITMIR.BIZ

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little kumquat is wholly dependent on me. As it grows, it will learn the sound of my voice. If you are by my side it will learn your voice too and when it’s born it will recognise both of us. It is innocent of everything and needs us both, so I beg you, please, do not use our child as a weapon to threaten me with. I won’t sign that contract because I disagree profoundly with the reasons behind it and I disagree with every one of the clauses you have in it. If we are going to marry then it should be a real marriage.’

      Not the cold business arrangement he had made with Freya. That was a marriage Sophie could never tolerate for either herself or her child.

      Javier wrenched his hand from her hold, his movement so sudden that Sophie stepped back in shock, straight into the coffee table. She would have toppled backwards onto it if his reflexes hadn’t kicked in and the hand he had just snatched from her hadn’t flown forward to grip onto her elbow and pull her to him.

      She gazed into the eyes holding her with such loathing, greatly aware of the heavy thuds of her heart and the melting of her insides as his tangy scent crept into her senses.

      His chest rose and fell at speed, his tanned throat moving, his lips pulling together, nostrils flaring.

      For the wildest moment Sophie felt a compulsion to take the one step forward needed to become flush with him.

      How could she still react to him like this? He had made love to her, then escorted her out of his home moments later as if she were the carrier of a disease. He had made no effort to contact her when he knew there was a danger he had impregnated her. He’d cared so little that he hadn’t noticed that she wasn’t on the stage at the theatre opening, had not cared to discover she had left his ballet company.

      She should not react like this to him but she would not lie that a part of her wasn’t glad she still felt this desire for him. If she was going to get her way and forge a proper marriage with him then they needed a glue to keep them together other than their child.

      Javier did not scare her. He probably should. He was a ruthless, coldly arrogant, wildly rich control freak. He’d threatened her with the removal of their child.

      But he was human. She had experienced his human side, glimpsed the pain in his eyes and knew in her heart that his own heart wasn’t so far gone in the dark that his humanity could not be reached.

      She would never love him, not now she knew the depths of his cruelty, but, whether they married or not, their unborn child meant they would always be in the other’s life.

      Javier stared into pale blue eyes with a thousand emotions churning through him. Where had this woman with her calm, compassionate logic that could neuter his arguments come from?

      And why the hell was his body straining towards her...?

      Disgusted with himself, he released his hold on her elbow, got to his feet and strode away from her.

      ‘I do not want a real marriage,’ he told her as he paced. ‘What you are asking for is impossible. I like my solitude.’

      ‘We both need to make sacrifices. Speaking on a personal level, you are the last man I would wish to commit my life to but this is not about you or me, this is about our child, who deserves the best life can give. It deserves to be raised with a mother and father who are united. If you’re worried that I’m after your money then I am happy to sign an agreement that protects your wealth if we divorce.’

      He pounced on her words. ‘You are already thinking that far ahead!’

      He’d known she couldn’t be as self-sacrificing as she was making herself out to be, her words all a script designed to make him feel like a bastard for wanting to protect her from the dangers he posed.

      Dios, how could she be so naïve? There was a reason he had reached the age of thirty-five without a single long-term relationship to his name. For a woman proving herself to be far more intuitive than he had credited, she should surely be able to see it.

      ‘If we both enter marriage with open minds we can make it work for our child, I truly believe that,’ she replied, following him with her eyes. ‘But I am not stupid. The odds are against us and we should work together to protect our child against every eventuality. I will be glad to sign a contract that states that should we divorce the only thing I get from you is a home of my own here in Madrid so we can share custody of our child. I don’t want a war with you, Javier, and I absolutely do not want our child to be a casualty of it either. I would have thought you of all people could appreciate that.’

      For a moment he stopped pacing to stare at her, stunned.

      No one—no one—ever alluded to his parents, not to his face.

      His parents’ marriage had been fodder for the press long before his mother’s death. His father, Yuri Abramova, had been a ballet dancer from Moscow from the days of the USSR and had defected to New York in the seventies. Clara had been a Spanish prima ballerina, much younger than her famous husband, whose own fame had soared with her talent until she had eclipsed him in all ways. Their marriage had been volatile and filled with infidelities and jealousy on both sides. Lovers had popped up like cockroaches to sell their stories to an eager press who had known stories of the most famous marriage in the ballet world always sold out its print run.

      In the midst of all this toxicity had been two boys who had both suffered but who had got through it by sticking together and protecting the other.

      If someone had told the young Javier that his twin, his only confidant, would one day betray him for a woman he would have laughed in their face.

      But now their brotherhood was dead, as dead as the mother Javier had worshipped but who had always preferred Luis and as dead as the father who had worshipped Javier and hated Luis.

      His entire past was gone. The grandparents who had raised him and Luis after their mother’s death and father’s incarceration had died within a year of each other a decade ago. Louise Guillem, his mother’s closest friend, who had been like an aunt to them, had died seven years ago. Benjamin, Louise’s son and Javier and Luis’s oldest playmate, was alive and kicking but effectively dead to him.

      They were all gone and yet...

      Inside this woman who stared unblinkingly back at him, life grew. A child. His child.

      An unexpected stab of guilt plunged into his guts.

      Sophie was right. Their child was innocent, just as he and Luis had been innocent. His child deserved more than to be used as a weapon before it had grown bigger than his thumb.

      Staring hard at the mother of his child, he could see in her eyes that already she loved it enough to fight for its best interests in any way she could. As a child he would have given anything to have been on the receiving end of that kind of love from his own mother.

      Was that how Sophie had found the nerve to allude to his childhood and not flinch? How else could she look at him and not recoil in fear at the man who stood before her?

      But she hadn’t been scared when she had turned up at his door with the same documents he’d had remade early that morning in her name...

      Coldly perfect Freya had never displayed any overt fear for him either, but that had been understandable because coldly perfect Freya had never shown any emotions other than on the stage when she came alive in her dance.

      Why wasn’t Sophie scared of him?

      He dragged his fingers down his face and contemplated her some more before nodding slowly. ‘Bueno. I do not know what your expectations of a real marriage are...’

      ‘One that doesn’t give the husband a licence to take a mistress for a start,’ she interjected drily.

      He gaped at this unexpected glimpse of humour. ‘You expect fidelity?’

      He’d had the clause put in that he could take a mistress if he chose as a black-and-white warning that he was committing to a marriage only on paper. Freya hadn’t blinked an eye at it.

      ‘My

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