kind of a person did that?
The answer stared back at him. His wife. The only person in the world who he suspected was capable of such self-sacrifice.
Before he could question her further his phone buzzed. Catching the time on it, Javier blinked and hauled himself to his feet. ‘I have to go. We’ll finish this conversation when I get home.’
Downing the last of his coffee, he contemplated Sophie one last time.
It suddenly came to him that he wouldn’t see her for another five days.
‘Call me if you need anything.’
She nodded but the easy smile that was usually never far from her lips didn’t appear.
Was she angry at him for giving his opinion on her career?
He didn’t have time to worry about that now. He had a flight slot to fill.
Taking hold of his briefcase, he walked to the dining-room door.
‘Have a safe trip,’ she called to his retreating back. ‘Please call or message to let me know you’ve got there safely.’
He took one last look at her.
‘I will,’ he promised.
Now she did smile but nowhere near enough for it to reach her sad eyes.
As his driver steered them out of the electric gates, Javier put his head back and closed his eyes with a sigh.
Leaving his home had never felt like a wrench before.
* * *
Whoever had coined the term ‘retail therapy’ could not know how right they had been.
Sophie had prevented herself bursting into tears at Javier’s leaving by a thread.
He wouldn’t have wanted to see her cry. It would probably have repelled him.
She didn’t understand why his leaving left her feeling so heavy and wretched. They were hardly in the throes of a traditional honeymoon period. They hadn’t even had a honeymoon!
An hour after he’d left, his PA had turned up at the villa with a credit card for her.
By what magic or trickery Javier had made it happen so quickly she could not begin to guess but it had lifted the weight off her considerably and brought a genuine smile to her face.
He’d thought of her. He’d flexed his muscles for her and made the impossible happen. For her.
The minute Michael, his driver, had got back from the airport she’d coerced him into taking her shopping.
She had an unlimited credit card, a nursery to fill and prepare, and a new dressing room of clothes for herself to get. Javier’s observation that her clothes were getting tight had been correct. Only four months pregnant, she wasn’t yet large enough for maternity wear but clothing she could breathe in easily would be welcome.
So she’d hit the shopping district she remembered exploring once with Freya, when neither of them had had the funds to do more than window-shop: Salamanca.
From there she had shopped until her feet ached, stopping only for a light lunch in a pretty little café along the Calle de Serrano.
Now she sat in the back of Javier’s car, imagining the furniture she would have in their child’s nursery, exhausted but happier than she had felt in months.
Javier had gone away but he had left with them in as good a state as they could be. Their marriage wasn’t perfect but for the first time she really felt they were making headway.
He’d told her to treat his house as her home.
The car stopped for the electric gates to open and welcome them home.
Resting her head to the window, she noticed a tiny black bundle on the kerb.
She squinted her eyes to peer closer.
The tiny bundle made the tiniest of movements.
‘Stop!’ Sophie screeched before Michael could start the car again.
Unclipping her seat belt, she opened the passenger door, jumped out and hurried to see what she hoped with all her heart she was wrong about.
She wasn’t wrong. The tiny black bundle was a puppy.
She crouched down next to it and put a tentative hand to its neck.
It opened its eyes and whimpered.
That was when she saw the blood and burst into tears.
JAVIER CLIMBED THE stairs and followed the scent of fresh paint to the room next to his.
He stepped inside it and stared around in wonder, his heart fit to burst.
‘What do you think?’
He turned to find Sophie behind him, dressed in a black jersey dress that fell to her knees and covered the belly and breasts that both seemed to have grown in his absence. It would not be long, he guessed, before she would be obviously pregnant.
She looked more beautiful than ever. His bursting heart managed to expand some more.
For the longest time neither of them spoke.
Five days away from her...
He had never thought time could drag so much.
He’d expected to be relieved to have a bed to himself again.
He had not expected to find the nights so empty without her.
‘You did this?’ he asked.
The walls had been painted the palest yellow and covered with a hand-painted mural of white clouds and colourful smiling teddy bears.
She smiled, a wide, sweet grin that pierced straight into his chest. ‘I hired a local artist to do it. I discovered her at a plaza near Calle de Serrano and offered her an obscene amount of your cash for her to drop all her other commissions and do it immediately.’ Then the smile dimmed a little. ‘I was hoping to warn you before you saw the room.’
‘Warn me that you’ve turned the room next to ours into a nursery rather than the room on the east wing that I said should be used?’
She nodded and rubbed her belly. ‘Even if we do agree on getting a nanny, I know there is no way I’d be able to sleep if I thought my baby was crying in a room too far away for me to hear.’
He’d thought of that too, in his time away.
He wanted Sophie to accept him for how he
