there was no way of knowing. Sophie had been right that her birth mother would never be found.
That was something else he’d dug into these past few weeks. The police investigation had been extremely thorough, he’d had to admit. They had left no stone unturned.
Everyone had been of the opinion that it had been a young teenage girl who’d been terrified to discover she was pregnant.
Why Javier had been so determined to delve into that period of Sophie’s life when, by her own admittance, she had always accepted it as a fact of her life, he did not know, but it had been like a compulsion in him, a need to learn everything about her, to dig deep into her psyche and discover how someone who’d been left to die on her first day of life could contain such a beautiful, pure heart.
How could she live with him and his cold, vengeful heart without being repulsed?
How could she bear for him to even touch her?
‘WHAT ARE YOU READING?’
Sophie, sitting cross-legged on the bed with a pillow and laptop on her lap, looked up and smiled to see Javier in the doorway. She’d been so engrossed she hadn’t heard him get back from work.
‘I’m looking at veterinary nurse courses for after the baby’s born,’ she said, turning the laptop around to show him. ‘I’m trying to work out if it’s feasible.’
He strolled over to perch next to her. ‘To train as a vet nurse?’
She nodded. The days she spent with Frodo had reignited her love of animals and her old dream of working with them.
His brow furrowed. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘I thought you were supportive of me working. All that talk about nannies—’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ he cut in. ‘I meant why would you want to be a vet nurse?’
‘Do you think it would be too much?’ she asked anxiously. ‘From what I’ve read, I’ll be able to do most of the studying from home—’
‘No,’ he interrupted again with rising exasperation. ‘Why train to be a vet nurse when you’ve always wanted to be a vet?’
‘It takes years to train to be a vet. Besides, I haven’t got the qualifications.’
‘Then get them.’
She blinked a number of times. The educational options that had been available at her ballet school had not included those that gave an entry into veterinary school. She would have to go back to basics. ‘Just like that?’
‘Why not?’
‘Javier, it will take me years to get the necessary qualifications if I can get them...’
‘Why would you not get them? You’re not stupid. If you can be a professional ballerina when your heart wasn’t in it then there is no reason whatsoever that you can’t achieve the qualifications needed to train as a vet.’
‘But then I’ll have to spend years studying at university. I have to think of our child and—’
‘Stop making excuses,’ he snapped. He pulled the laptop off her and deleted the link she’d been reading before closing the lid. ‘You’ve always wanted to be a vet, so stop making excuses and for once in your life start putting yourself first. If it takes ten years for you to do it then so what? It took Luis and me almost that long to start earning serious money from Casillas Ventures but we never entertained the idea of giving up and you shouldn’t either. This is your dream, carina, so grab it.’
She stared at him, her heart blooming at his logic and defence of her dreams.
‘Wouldn’t it bother you?’ she asked eventually.
‘Should it matter if it did?’ he countered.
‘You’re my husband. Of course your opinion and feelings matter.’
‘More than your own? Is that not what you did before? Put your dreams to one side because you thought more of your parents’ feelings than your own?’
‘It wasn’t exactly like that,’ she murmured, embarrassed.
He raised a disbelieving brow.
‘Okay, maybe it was a little,’ she conceded. ‘They loved watching me dance. It meant so much to them, so what else could I have done? They gave me so much. They gave me a home and a family. They gave me love.’
‘Did you think if you went against their wishes they would withdraw that love?’ he asked with an astuteness that stunned her.
Javier displayed such indifference to her that it was a shock to realise he actually paid attention to everything she said. And everything she didn’t.
She sighed and pulled at her hair. ‘I don’t know. I remember worrying about that when I was little and fully comprehended what being adopted meant. They chose to bring me into their lives, so there was always that dread that they could then choose to give me back.’ She’d forgotten that long-ago irrational fear, an unintended consequence of her parents’ complete honesty about her beginnings. ‘I think...it was this pregnancy that showed me their love for me was truly unconditional.’
‘How?’
She shrugged ruefully. ‘I was afraid to tell them. They’re very spiritual. They believe greatly in marriage coming before children and I was afraid they would think less of me.’
‘Did you think they would reject you?’
‘Not on a rational level but it was there in the back of my mind, yes. I hadn’t even realised how scared I was to tell them until they practically squashed me with their hugs.’
‘Are they the reason you were a virgin when we conceived our baby?’
It was the first time this had been acknowledged out loud between them.
Sophie met his steady gaze and gave a tiny nod.
He extended a hand as if to reach for her belly, then changed his mind before he could touch it and got to his feet. He rolled his neck. ‘It is time you thought of your own needs rather than always thinking of others. Our child will be much happier for having a fulfilled mother than one who settled for second best. If you want to be a vet then be a vet. Better to try and fail than never have the guts to try in the—’ He cut himself off, now looking at the floor-length navy-blue dress hanging on the dressing-room door. ‘Have you been shopping?’
Disconcerted by the sudden change of subject, she took a moment to remember.
‘I popped out this afternoon. I meant to put it away but got distracted with all the vet nurse stuff.’
She moved the pillow off her lap and scrambled off the bed to get the dress.
Frodo,
