there was.’
‘No mistake. My staff put you in the room I designated for your use.’
‘Oh, I do apologise for the confusion. I didn’t mean your staff had made a mistake in where they put me. I meant you had made a mistake.’ Then, dropping her eyes from his gaze, she rolled the stocking up over her knee and to her thigh, then patted the lacy top of it to keep it in place. ‘I’ve never worn hold-ups before,’ she added conversationally. ‘I normally wear tights but they’ve started getting a little tight around my belly and I’m not ready for maternity wear yet. I hope they don’t fall down.’
Her nonchalance, her nerve, were astounding.
Javier gritted his teeth even tighter and cursed himself for allowing his eyes to take in the milky-white thigh now encased in black lace.
Sexy lingerie had never done anything for him and he could not believe his blood was pumping harder to see it on her.
But, Dios, she was sitting on his antique ottoman, her cherubic looks and hair reminiscent of an angel, her blood-red dress, modestly cut though it was, reminiscent of a vampire. His grinding teeth were taken with the compulsion to sink into the milky flesh still exposed over the top of the lacy hold-ups...
He clenched his hands into fists.
This stopped right now. Whatever game Sophie was playing ended here. She had tempted him once, dressed only as a waif, had driven him to a place he had never gone before and which he had regretted the moment it was over.
Healthy desire was good. Sex was good. Choosing the right person to have sex with was what made it good, a person you desired on a physical level, who made your loins tighten but with whom your heart kept its normal beat. A woman you could walk away from and never have to think about or consider again. A woman with whom wearing a condom was at the forefront of your mind, not a cursed afterthought when it was all over.
‘This is my bedroom,’ he said tightly. ‘My private space. You have been given your own bedroom for your own private space.’
‘Your house is big enough for us to both host individual parties without disturbing the other, so I would say there’s plenty of space to escape to if we get on each other’s nerves.’
‘Do not be flippant,’ he snarled.
Sophie got to her feet and smoothed the red dress she had donned because it was her only decent dress that still fitted properly with her growing breasts, praying he didn’t notice the tremors in her hands and that he couldn’t see the beats of her frantically beating heart.
Why did he have to walk in when she’d been putting the hold-ups on? Julio had told her Javier was expected home at seven p.m. but he had arrived back half an hour early. She’d wanted to be ready for him, be sitting on the light grey sofa that backed along the far wall, fully dressed.
She still didn’t know how she’d found the nerve to move her stuff over to his bedroom. She had sat alone for almost an hour mulling over her options on how best to proceed. Should she stay in her designated room at the furthest point from his and hope that at some point in the future she would be allowed to join him in it? Or should she fight from the start for the marriage she wanted and which he had promised to try for?
The latter had won and now she had to brazen it out.
Standing as tall as her five-foot-nothing frame would allow, she stared up at his towering six-foot-plus form. ‘I know you and Freya were only going to share a bed one night a week but that is not something I can contemplate. That is not a marriage.’
She remembered feeling sick to read that contract when it had been designed with Freya in mind, the flash of jealousy that had wracked Sophie to imagine her best friend in the arms of the man she had developed such strong feelings for. To see it replicated in her own contract had filled her with despair.
‘I am aware you work long hours and travel a lot for your business, so the evenings are often going to be the only times we share together,’ she continued. ‘How can we form any kind of bond if we’re in separate wings of your house?’
‘If it’s sex you require then I can accommodate that without you moving into my personal space.’ His eyes flashed dangerously as he finally crossed the threshold of the huge, luxurious bedroom and kicked the door shut behind him. Walking towards her in slow, long strides, like a big cat stalking towards its prey, he put his hands to the buckle of his belt. ‘If it is relief you are after then take your dress off and I will satisfy it for you.’
‘Sex is a part of it,’ she answered, refusing to be intimidated by this power play instinct told her was designed to frighten her, ‘but I’m talking about intimacy.’
He stopped a foot away from her, his face contorted. ‘I do not do intimacy.’
‘But that’s what a real marriage entails. If you won’t share a bedroom with me then it proves you’re not willing to try like you promised you would and, if that is the case, I might as well have our baby in England, where I will get the support I need—’
‘You dare threaten me?’ he cut through her, his incredulity obvious.
‘I would never threaten you,’ she said, horrified he would think her capable of such a thing.
‘You just threatened to return to England with our baby.’
‘Only until it’s born.’ She sat back on the ottoman and threaded her fingers through her hair as she tried to explain her thoughts without getting so emotional that the tears started falling.
Javier was so ice-like that it felt as if she were trying to get through to a sculpture.
‘I haven’t made this move for my sake but for our child’s. If I was thinking only of my own interests I would have stayed in England and had my parents’ support throughout the pregnancy. I don’t expect miracles, but if you won’t share a bed with me when that’s the most basic part of a marriage then what’s the point? I made it very clear that I want a real marriage and this for me is it. Sharing a bed. Getting to know each other, and getting to a point that when our child is born we’re comfortable together and united. That’s my red line. I need you to prove your commitment. Either we share a bed or we forget about marriage because it will be far more damaging for our child to be born in an unhappy home than be born to two separate but content homes. Our child can still have your name because I know that’s important for you. I’ll be happy to live in Madrid after the birth so we can share custody. You can still be a father even if you won’t be a husband.’
Javier listened to Sophie speak knowing she’d outmanoeuvred him again with her damned reasonableness.
She was giving him a way out of their marriage and if he had any sense he would take it.
‘Do you know what my experience of a real marriage is?’ he asked harshly, sitting on the edge of the bed so she was only a blur in the corner of his eye. ‘My parents.’
He heard her suck an intake of breath. ‘I know that to call your childhood hard would be an understatement but I don’t want our baby to suffer for it. I’m not asking you to commit emotionally to me, Javier. I am asking you to commit emotionally to our child.’
He thought of the scan she’d emailed to him the week before. He’d stared at it for so long
