go to my bank and draw out the kind of money I would need to make good the damage. So, of course I’m going to be upset.’
‘Sit down.’
‘No. I’m going. You can get in touch with me on the number on the card! I’m going to have to talk this through with Julie. I don’t know what she’s going to say. She’s put in most of her savings to try and get this business of ours going, as have I, so I’m going to have to find the money to pay her back too and make sure she doesn’t have to pay for my mistake.’ Her voice was wobbling and she stared off into the distance in an attempt to stop herself from crying.
Matias squashed all feelings of guilt. Why should he feel guilty? He was staring at a woman whose father had destroyed his family. In that scenario, guilt didn’t exist. After all, all was fair in love and war, wasn’t it?
‘You could do that,’ he murmured, ‘or you could sit back down and listen to the proposition I have for you.’
‘GO EASY ON THE GIRL,’ Art had urged his friend the previous day. ‘Because Carney’s her father, doesn’t mean that she has been cut from the same cloth.’
Matias hadn’t argued the point with his friend, but he had privately held the view that the apple never fell far from the tree and an innocent smile and fluttering eyelashes, which he was guessing had been the stunt the woman had pulled on Art, didn’t mean she had a pure soul.
Now, however, he was questioning the judgement call he had made before he had even met her. He was seldom, if ever, wrong when it came to summing people up, but in this instance his friend might have had a point. Matias wasn’t going to concede that the woman spent all her spare time helping the poor and unfortunate or that she was the sort who wouldn’t have recognised an uncharitable thought if it did a salsa in front of her. What he did recognise was that he would be better served in his quest for revenge by getting to know her.
She was an unexpected piece of a puzzle he had thought was already complete and he would have to check her out.
He had waited years for retribution. Waiting a couple of weeks longer wasn’t going to kill him and it might put him in an even stronger position than he already was.
He looked at her anxious face and smiled slowly. ‘There’s no need to look so worried,’ he soothed. ‘I’m not a man who beats about the bush, Miss...it is Miss, isn’t it?’
Sophie nodded and automatically touched her ring-free finger. Once upon a time, she had had a boyfriend. Once upon a time, she had had dreams of marriage and kids and a happy-ever-after life, but reality had had something different to say about that.
‘Boyfriend?’ Matias hadn’t missed that unconscious gesture. No ring on her finger. Had there been one? Once? Was she divorced? She looked far too young, but who knew? It wasn’t his business but it paid to know your quarry.
Sophie sat on her hands. ‘I don’t see what that has to do with...your car, Mr... Rivers...’
‘Rivero.’ Matias frowned because it wasn’t often that anyone forgot his name. In fact, never. ‘And in point of fact, it has. You owe me money but if you’re telling the truth, then it would seem that you have little to no hope of repaying me.’
‘Why wouldn’t I be telling the truth?’
Matias debated whether he should point out that her father would surely not be keen to see his child slaving in front of a hot oven cooking food for other people, so how likely was it that catering was her full-time occupation? Or maybe she was the sort who rebelled against their parents by pretending to reject money and everything it stood for? When you came from money and had comfort and security as a blanket to fall back on, it was easy to play at enjoying poverty. From what he knew of the man, keeping up appearances ran to a full-time occupation and surely his offspring would have been dragged into that little game too?
However, he had no intention of laying any of his cards on any tables any time soon. At any rate, it would be a matter of seconds to check her story and he was pretty sure she was telling the truth. Her car, for one thing, did not suggest someone with an enviable bank balance and the oversight with the insurance added to the impression.
He shrugged. ‘Maybe you imagine that pleading poverty will touch some kind of chord in me.’
‘That never crossed my mind,’ Sophie said honestly. ‘I can’t think that anyone would be mad enough to try and appeal to your better nature.’
‘Come again?’ Momentarily distracted, Matias stared at her with outright incredulity.
The woman was here on the back foot, staring bankruptcy in the face if he decided to go after her, and yet she had the cheek to criticise him? He almost couldn’t believe his ears.
Sophie didn’t back down. She loathed arguments and avoided confrontation like the plague, but she was honest and forthright and could be as stubborn as a mule. She had had to be because she had had to take up where her mother had left off when it came to breathing in deep and pursuing what she felt James Carney owed her.
Right now, she had no idea where Matias was going with some of his remarks. He had mentioned a solution to the problem staring her in the face, but she couldn’t help noticing that he hadn’t actually said what that solution might be.
If he was stringing her along only to pull the rug from under her feet, then she wasn’t going to sit back and allow him to bully her in the process.
‘If you had a better nature,’ she pointed out, ‘then you would try and understand what it’s like for me. You probably don’t have a clue about what it’s like to struggle, because if you did then you would be able to put yourself in my shoes, and if you did that you might try and find a solution to the problem instead. If you give me a chance, then I will pay you back, but first you have to give me a chance.’
‘Is this your idea of buttering me up?’ Matias said coldly. ‘Because if it is, then you’re heading in the wrong direction. Let’s not forget that you’re here with a begging bowl.’ He would come back to her father and exactly how hard he’d made Matias’s family struggle in due course.
Sophie’s soft mouth tightened. She had a lot of experience when it came to begging bowls and she had learned the hard way that buckling under threat never got anyone anywhere.
‘You said that you had a proposition for me,’ she reminded him, clinging to that lifebelt and already willing to snatch at it whatever the cost. Perhaps if she had had only herself to think about, she might have backed off, but there were more people at stake here than just her.
Matias was already pleased that he had decided to go with the flow and exploit the opportunity presented to him. Soft and yielding she might look, but it had quickly become apparent that she was anything but.
He felt the kick of an unexpected challenge. So much of his life was predictable. He had reached the pinnacle of his success and he was still in his early thirties. People kowtowed to him, sought his advice, hung onto his every word, did their utmost to please him. Bearing in mind that financial security and the power that came with it had been his ambition for as long as he could remember, he was now disappointed to acknowledge that there was something missing from his life, something that not even the glowing fires of revenge had been able to fulfil.
