All in all, there were loads of girls her age who would have given their right arm to be where she was now!
And if she happened to be spending a Friday night in, with plans to curl up with her tablet in her flannel pyjamas and bedroom socks, then it was simply because it was just so cold!
When spring came, she would be out there, jumping right into that dating scene, as she had promised herself she would do before she had left England.
For the moment, she was perfectly happy just chilling.
And expecting no one to come calling because, although she had been out a few times with some of the other employees in the small arm of the company in Paris, she had not thus far met anyone who might just drop by on a Friday evening to see what she was up to.
That would come in time.
Probably in spring.
So when the doorbell went, she didn’t budge. She just assumed it was someone selling something and she wasn’t interested.
She gritted her teeth as the buzzer kept sounding and eventually abandoned all pretence of Zen calm as she stormed to the door and pulled it open, ready to give her uninvited caller a piece of her mind.
Javier had kept his finger on the buzzer. She was in. She had a basement apartment and he could see lights on behind the drawn curtains. He wondered whether she knew that basement apartments were at the highest risk of being burgled.
Since leaving Spain, he hadn’t once questioned his decision to spring this visit on her, but now that he was here, now that he could hear the soft pad of footsteps, he felt his stomach clench with an uncustomary attack of nerves.
He straightened as she opened the door and for a few seconds something bewildering seemed to happen to him: he lost the ability to think.
‘You’re here...’ he said inanely. Her long hair was swept over one narrow shoulder and she was wearing thick flannel bottoms and a long-sleeved thermal vest. And no bra. ‘Do you always just open your door to strangers?’ he continued gruffly, barely knowing where this unimaginative line of conversation was coming from.
‘Javier!’ Temporarily deprived of speech, Sophie could just blink at him, owl-like.
She’d pretended that she’d moved on. She was in Paris, she was enjoying her job, meeting new people...
How could she not have moved on? Hadn’t that been the whole point of Paris?
But seeing him here, lounging against the door frame in a pair of faded black jeans and a black jumper, with his coat slung over his shoulder...
She was still in the same place she’d been when she’d watched him stroll out of her flat without a backwards glance.
How dared he just show up like this and scupper all her chances of moving on?
‘What are you doing here? And how the heck did you find out where I live!’
‘Computers are wonderful things. You’d be shocked at the amount of information they can divulge. Especially considering you work for a company I part-own...’ Javier planted himself solidly in front of her. He hadn’t given much thought to what sort of welcome he was likely to receive but a hostile one hadn’t really crossed his mind.
Since when were women hostile towards him?
But since when was she just any woman?
She never had been and she never would be and, just like that, he suddenly felt sick. Sick and vulnerable in a way he had never felt before. Every signpost that had ever guided him, every tenet he had ever held dear, disappeared and he was left groping in the dark, feeling his way towards a realisation that had always been there at the back of his mind.
‘Go away. I don’t want to see you.’
Javier placed his hand on the door, preventing her from shutting it in his face. ‘I’ve come...’
‘For what?’ Sophie mocked.
‘I...’
Sophie opened her mouth and shut it because she didn’t know what was going on. He looked unsettled. Confused. Unsure. Since when had Javier ever looked unsure?
‘Are you all right?’ she asked waspishly, relenting just enough to let him slip inside the apartment, but then shutting the door and leaning against it with her hands behind her back.
‘No,’ Javier said abruptly, looking away and then staring at her.
‘What are you saying?’ Sophie blanched. ‘Are you...? Are you ill...?’ Fear and panic gripped her in equal measure.
‘Can we go sit somewhere?’
‘Tell me what’s wrong!’ She was at his side in seconds, her small hand on his forearm, her eyes pleading for reassurance that he was okay because, whatever he was, he wasn’t himself and that was scaring her half to death.
And if he saw that, she didn’t care.
‘I’ve missed you.’ The words slipped out before Javier could stop them in their tracks. He had put everything on the line and he felt sick. He wondered why he hadn’t thought to down a bottle of whisky before embarking on this trip.
‘You’ve missed me?’ Sophie squeaked.
‘You asked what was wrong with me,’ Javier threw at her accusingly.
‘Is missing me wrong?’ Something inside her burst and she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. She had to tell herself that no mention had been made of love, and if he was missing her, then chances were that he was missing her body. Which was something else entirely.
She walked on wooden legs into the sitting room, where she had been watching telly on her tablet, and watched as he sat down, briefly glancing around him before settling those dark, dark eyes on her.
‘Missing...’ he sat down, arms loosely resting on his thighs, his body leaning towards hers ‘...isn’t something I’ve ever done.’
‘Then it’s a good thing,’
‘I couldn’t focus,’ he admitted heavily. Now that he had started down this road, he had no alternative but to continue, although she hadn’t chucked him out and that was a good thing. ‘I couldn’t sleep. You got into my head and I couldn’t get you out of it.’
Sophie’s heart was singing. She didn’t want to speak. What if she broke the spell?
‘I wanted you, you know...’ He looked at her gravely. ‘I don’t think I ever really stopped wanting you, and when your brother showed up at my office, I figured I’d been handed the perfect way of putting that want to bed for good. Literally. I was going to just...go down the simple “exchange for favours” road. Cash for a little fun between the sheets, but then I decided that I wanted more than that... I didn’t want a reluctant lover motivated for the wrong reasons.’
‘You’re assuming I would have given you your fun between the sheets because I needed money!’ But she couldn’t fire
