heart had contracted into a shell, hers had expanded to embrace anyone who needed it.
But she was tough too. Her heart was as soft as a sweetened sponge but her spine was made of steel.
He did not doubt that she would take that abandoned dog and walk away from him if he refused to let it stay.
‘No,’ he repeated. ‘I understand. The dog can stay. You can give it the love it needs.’
I can give you the love you need too, if only you would let me.
The thought popped into her head before Sophie could take it back but this time she did not push it away.
She rubbed the soft ears of the sweet, loving thing in her arms and wished she could hold Javier in the same way.
There was no point denying her feelings towards him any more. She loved him. She’d always loved him.
The heart was incapable of listening to reason and her heart had attached itself to Javier the first time she’d set eyes on him.
Whether he was capable of returning her love, she didn’t know and told herself it didn’t matter. His eyes had shone to see their child’s nursery. He was developing feelings for their unborn child, she was sure of it. He’d agreed that Frodo could stay, so there was something akin to compassion inside him.
But Javier was far more damaged than the affectionate puppy in her arms.
* * *
Javier was reading the story he’d had emailed from a reporter who worked for an English newspaper when the landline on his office desk rang.
He pressed the button. He’d told his PA not to put any calls through unless it was his wife.
‘I have Dante Moncada on line one,’ she told him. ‘He says it’s important.’
He sighed. Dante Moncada was a Sicilian technology magnate who’d inherited a one-hundred-acre plot of land in a prime location off Florence that he had no use for and wanted to sell. Javier and Luis had been in talks about buying it from him. Nothing had been signed. It had been very early days in the talks when Javier and Luis had gone their separate ways.
Javier had held off doing anything about the deal while the lawyers set about severing the Casillas brothers’ business, an issue that almost two months on was dragging interminably. Luis had communicated via their lawyers that he wanted to meet. Javier had refused. He never wanted to set eyes on his brother again.
His anger at Luis’s treachery had not lessened in the slightest but he wanted a clean break for them.
He might despise the man he had loved and protected his entire life but he would not do anything to gain an advantage in the severance. The lawyers would ensure everything was split equally. That had been his firm belief until Dante had called him the week before to inform him that Luis had made a private offer for the land and asking if Javier would like to counter it.
His brother’s latest display of treachery had speared him but he had hardened himself.
If his brother could be so disloyal as to hitch himself to the bitch who had worked to destroy him then Javier should not be surprised that Luis was going behind his back to steal business by targeting the clients they had cultivated together.
Two could play that game. And Javier would win.
‘Yes,’ he had informed the Sicilian. ‘I would like to counter it. How much has he offered?’
Dante had given him the figure. Javier had increased it. He’d been waiting for a response ever since.
‘Put him through,’ he said now.
‘Javier!’ came the thickly accented voice.
‘Dante. What can I do for you? Have you called to say you will accept my offer?’
‘I’m coming to Madrid tomorrow for a few days of business. I’ve bought an apartment in your city, so I’m going to throw a party to celebrate. Come. We can discuss business then.’
His heart sank. Dante’s parties were as legendary as his party-loving brother’s.
He estimated this was Dante’s tenth property purchase. The man would not be happy until he had property in every city in Europe.
‘Will Luis be there?’ he asked, stalling while he tried to think of an excuse.
Javier loathed parties. He despised watching people lose their inhibitions through alcohol, becoming worse versions of themselves. It was why he never drank. His father had been volatile enough without the alcohol he had come to depend on. He would never risk doing the same. He’d attended his brother’s parties only so he could keep an eye on him and stop him doing stupid things, like swimming drunk.
He would not go to any function his brother attended.
‘He’s not answering my calls, so...’
The unspoken implication did not go over his head. If Luis was incommunicado then the land was Javier’s for the taking.
‘What’s the address?’
Dante gave it to him, then finished by saying, ‘Bring your wife. Everyone’s dying to meet her.’
He would rather swim with sharks with a gashed knee pouring blood than take Sophie to that Lothario’s party.
Giving a non-committal grunt, he ended the call and rubbed his temples.
He had a headache forming.
He put a call through to his PA for a coffee and painkillers, then turned his attention back to the computer screen.
Right then he had more important things to think about.
It had taken him weeks to find the information he’d sought. He could have passed the job on to one of his employees to oversee on his behalf but this was something he’d needed to find himself.
The reporter he’d paid to trawl through the archives of an English paper from Devon had finally come up trumps.
Before him was a copy of a report dated over twenty-four years ago, published before the Internet had been the go-to place for news reports.
Sophie’s story had been front-page news. The news report gave all the details she’d skimmed over and omitted.
She’d omitted to mention, for example, that she’d been so severely dehydrated the doctors hadn’t thought she would survive the night.
When she’d been found, she’d been swaddled in a pink blanket and left in an old box that had once contained crisps.
She hadn’t been left on the church’s steps where she would be easily found, she’d been left in the shrubbery.
It had been a miracle that she’d been found.
And she prayed for the woman who’d abandoned her and hoped she was alive and well?
Javier
