eyes had narrowed on her flushed face. ‘Does the prospect of that frighten you, Sophie?’
‘Not in the slightest,’ she had returned quickly. ‘I would just be surprised if you managed to take time off from being the ruler of all you surveyed to help out an ailing firm. I mean, don’t you have minions who move in when you take over sick companies?’
‘I think I might give the minions a rest on this particular occasion,’ he had murmured softly.
‘Why?’ Sophie had heard the thread of desperation in her voice. She couldn’t be within five feet of him without her body reliving the way he had once made it feel, playing stupid games with her mind.
‘This is a slightly more personal venture for me, Sophie,’ he had told her, leaning across the boardroom table where both of them had remained after the legal team had exited. ‘Maybe I want to see that the job is done to the highest possible standard given our...past acquaintanceship.’
Sophie hadn’t known whether to thank him or quiz him, so she had remained silent, her eyes helplessly drifting down to his sensual mouth before sliding away as heat had consumed her.
With a little sigh, she grabbed her handbag as she heard the taxi circle the gravelled forecourt, and then she was on her way, half hoping that Javier wouldn’t be there waiting at the office when she finally arrived, half hoping that he might be, and hating herself for that weakness.
She had no idea what to expect to find. The last time she had visited this particular office had been two years previously, when she and Oliver had been trying to decide which of the offices to shut. She remembered it as spacious enough but, without any money having been spent on it at all, it had already been showing telltale signs of wear and tear. That said, it had been the biggest and the least run-down, so they’d been able to amalgamate the diminishing files and folders there from the other offices.
Not for the first time, as she was ferried from north to south, she thought about how clueless she had been about the groundbreaking changes that had been happening right under her nose.
Ollie, at least, had had the excuse of being abroad, because he had left on his sports scholarship two years before she had gone to Cambridge. He’d been a fresh-faced teenager wrapped up in his own life, with no vision of anything happening outside it.
But she had still been living at home, in her final years at school. Why hadn’t she asked more probing questions when her mother’s health had begun to fail? The doctor had talked about stress, and now Sophie marvelled that she hadn’t dug deeper to find out what the stress had been all about, because on the surface her mother could not have been living a less stressed-out life.
And neither had she questioned the frequency with which Roger’s name had cropped up in conversations or the number of times he’d been invited along to the house for various parties. She had been amused at his enthusiasm and had eventually drifted into going out with him; she had never suspected the amount of encouragement he had got from her parents.
All told, she had allowed herself to be wrapped up in cotton wool. So when that cotton wool had been cruelly yanked off, she had been far more shell-shocked than she might otherwise have been.
Everything had hit her at once. She had been bombarded from all sides and, in the middle of this, had had to wise up quickly to the trauma of discovering just how ill her father was and the lengths he had gone to to protect them all from knowing.
She should have been there helping out long before the bomb had detonated, splintering shrapnel through their lives.
If she had been, then perhaps the company could have taken a different direction. And, if it had taken a different direction, then she wouldn’t be here now, at the mercy of a guy who could still send her senses reeling, whatever her head was telling her.
Once in London, Sophie took a black cab to the premises of the office in Notting Hill.
Oliver had told her that things were coming along brilliantly but he had undersold just how much had been done in the space of a few days. It wasn’t just about the paint job on the outside or the impressive potted plants or the newly painted black door with its gold lettering announcing the name of the company.
Standing back, Sophie’s mouth fell open as she took in the smart exterior. Then the door opened and she was staring at a casually dressed Javier, who, in return, stared back at her as he continued to lounge indolently against the door frame. Arms folded, he was already projecting the signs of ownership so that, as she took a few tentative steps towards him, she felt herself to be the visitor.
‘Wow.’ She hovered, waiting for him to step back, which he did after a couple of seconds, taking his time to unfold his gloriously elegant body and then stand aside so that she had to brush past him, immediately turning around and establishing a safe physical distance between them. ‘It’s completely changed on the outside.’
‘There’s no point having an office that repels potential clients,’ Javier said drily.
Yet again, she was in work attire. The sort of clothes that drained her natural beauty.
‘Why have you shown up wearing a suit?’ he asked, strolling past her and expecting her to follow, which she duly did. ‘And where is your bag? You do realise that you will be relocating to London for the foreseeable future?’
‘I’ve been giving that some thought...’
Javier stopped and turned to look at her. ‘Forget it.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Remember the terms and conditions? One of them is that you relocate down here so that you can oversee the running of the London arm of the business.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘No buts, Sophie.’ His voice was cool and unyielding. He hooked his fingers on the waistband of his black jeans, which sat low on his lean hips, and held her stare. ‘You don’t get to dip in and out of this. You’re on the letterhead, along with your brother, and of course myself. Don’t think that you’re going to reap the rewards without doing any of the hard graft. I intend to oversee proceedings initially but I need to be assured that you and your brother won’t run the company back into the ground the second my back’s turned. Don’t forget, this isn’t a charity gesture of goodwill on my part. I’m not parting with cash if I don’t think that there will be a decent return on my investment.’
Sophie thought that she’d been right. It was all about the money for him. Yes, there was a personal connection, but the animosity of their break-up wasn’t paramount in his decision to help them. What mattered was that he was being handed a potentially very profitable business with an age-old reputation at a very cheap price because she and Oliver were desperate.
She imagined that, once the company was sorted, its reputation would not only be repaired but would ensure gold-plated business and a return of all the customers they had sadly lost over the years.
Right now, Oliver had an interest in a third of the company, but he would quickly lose interest and, she foresaw, would cash in his shares, take the money and head back to California, where he could continue his sporting career in a teaching capacity.
In due course, Javier would have invested in a very worthwhile project at a very good price.
And their past history did not figure in the calculations. In fact, she wondered
