Her earnings might be poor in comparison to the hours she put in but she was grateful for any work that she could combine with caring for Lydia.
‘But I know which one of you is the prettiest,’ Matt declared with a meaningful look in Sophie’s direction.
As Sophie strapped Lydia into the high chair she contrived to evade his admiring gaze and wondered why Mother Nature was always encouraging the wrong men to chase her. She liked Matt. She had tried, she really had tried to find him attractive because he was hardworking, honest and decent. He was everything her irresponsible father had not been and a solid gold choice for a sensible woman. As always she wished that she were less fanciful and more prudent.
‘Right now, I should think Sophie’s more concerned about what this solicitor might have to say to her,’ Norah, a thin woman with short grey hair, told her son brusquely. ‘I can’t understand why Belinda even bothered to make a will when she had nothing to leave.’
‘She had Lydia,’ Sophie pointed out to the older woman. ‘Belinda had the will drawn up after Pablo died. I think it must’ve been her way of making a new start and showing her independence.’
‘Yes, your sister was very keen on her independence,’ Norah Moore said with a sniff. ‘And not so fond of being tied down to a kiddie once Lydia was born.’
‘It was hard for her.’ Sophie lifted a slight shoulder in a noncommittal shrug because it hurt that she could not actively defend Belinda’s rash behaviour during the last months of her life. At least, not to a woman who had repeatedly helped her out with the task of caring for Belinda’s daughter. But then that was what she most liked about the Moores, she reminded herself. They spoke as they found and there was nothing false about them.
‘It was even harder for you,’ Norah told her squarely. ‘I felt very sorry for Belinda when she first came here. She’d had a tough time. But when she took up with that new boyfriend of hers and landed you with Lydia, I lost patience with her silliness.’
‘I loved being landed with Lydia,’ Sophie declared staunchly.
‘Sometimes what you love may not be what’s good for you,’ the older woman retorted crisply.
But at a time when Sophie’s heart still ached from the cruelly sudden death of her sister, her baby niece was her only real comfort. Although Sophie and Belinda had had different fathers and had not met until Belinda had sought Sophie out. Sophie had grown very fond of her older sister. Belinda had, after all, shown Sophie the first family affection that the younger woman had ever known.
Yet the stark difference between their respective backgrounds might more easily have ensured that the two sisters remained lifelong strangers. While Belinda had grown up in a lovely country house with her own pony and every childhood extra her parents could afford, Sophie had been born illegitimate and raised in a council flat by a father who was always broke. Sophie was the result of their mother, Isabel’s extramarital affair. After her infatuation had subsided, Isabel had won her estranged husband back by leaving Sophie behind with her lover. Sophie’s feckless father had brought her up with the help of a succession of girlfriends. She had learned when she was very young that her wants and wishes were rarely of interest to the self-seeking adults who surrounded her.
At first meeting, Sophie had been in awe of her beautiful, sophisticated sister. Five years older, Belinda had been educated at a fancy boarding-school and she had talked with a cut glass accent that put Sophie in mind of the royal family. Her warm and affectionate nature had however soon won Sophie’s trust and love. Perhaps more slowly and rather more painfully, Sophie had come to appreciate that Belinda was not very clever and was extremely vulnerable to falling for handsome men who talked big and impressed her. But wild horses would have not have dredged that unhappy truth from Sophie, who was loyal to a fault.
Leaving her niece in Norah Moore’s capable care, Sophie climbed into Matt’s pick-up. He gave her a lift into Sheerness and, stopping right outside the solicitor’s office, he offered to wait for her.
As always in a hurry to escape Matt’s hopeful air of expectation, Sophie had already jumped out onto the pavement. ‘There’s no need,’ she said breezily. ‘I’ll catch the bus.’
Matt behaved as if she hadn’t spoken and told her where he would be parked.
A young car driver waiting at the lights buzzed down his window to call, ‘Hiya, sexy!’
Sophie flung him a pained glance from eyes as deep and rich and green as old-fashioned bottle glass. ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’
He looked startled by the comeback. Sophie pondered the decided embarrassment of still looking like a sixteen-year-old when she was almost twenty-three years old. She blamed her youthful appearance on her lack of height and skinny build. She kept her hair long because, although she would not have admitted it to a living soul, she was always terrified that her slender curves might lead to her being mistaken for a boy.
As she entered the legal firm’s smart office she tugged uneasily at the hem of her denim skirt, which rejoiced in floral cotton frills. The skirt was well out of fashion and she had worn it only because she thought it looked more formal than the jeans that filled her limited wardrobe. All her clothes came from charity shops and none were of the designer cast-off variety. Without complaint, she hovered while the receptionist chatted to a colleague and answered a call before finally deigning to take note of her arrival.
In the waiting room, Sophie took up a restive position by the window. She watched a limousine force its passage along the street outside and cause traffic chaos. The long silver vehicle came to a halt and a uniformed chauffeur emerged. Impervious to the car horns that protested the obstruction that the limo was creating, he opened a rear door for his passenger to alight.
As the passenger sprang out and straightened to an imposing height the breath caught in Sophie’s throat. Her green eyes widened with disbelief. It couldn’t be, it simply couldn’t be Pablo’s autocratic big brother, Antonio Rocha! She shrank back to the side of the window but continued to stare. It was Antonio all right. He had the impact of a tidal wave on her self-command.
There he was: the male who had made mincemeat of her every prejudice, overpowered her defences and reduced her to a level of eyelash-fluttering, giggly compliance. She suppressed a quiver of shame at that recollection. For nearly three years since that awful day, Sophie had told herself that Antonio could not possibly have been half as devastatingly attractive as she had believed him to be. And now here he was in the flesh to destroy even that comforting lie with his smooth aristocratic façade that set her teeth on edge and his altogether more disturbing quality of raw sexuality.
His gleaming black hair was cut fashionably short. His lean, classic features were stamped with a bold masculinity that attracted female admiration wherever he went. He was a work of art, Sophie acknowledged grudgingly. Not only did he look like some mythical Greek god, he was also built like one with broad shoulders, a narrow waist and long, powerful legs. Dressed in a trendy dark designer suit, he looked achingly handsome. Only when he strode into the same legal practice did she break free of her paralysis and sincerely doubt the evidence of her own eyes.
Why would Antonio Rocha be over in England? What was he doing on the Isle of Sheppey where the titled rich were scarcer than hens’ teeth? Surely he could only be in Sheerness on this particular day to keep the same appointment that she had been asked to attend? No other reason could rationally explain such a coincidence.
Sophie hurried over to the door that led back into the reception area where an alarming amount of activity had broken out. The once laconic receptionist was standing to attention with a megawatt
