Ruthless Revenge: Passionate Possession: A Virgin for Vasquez / A Marriage Fit for a Sinner / Mistress of His Revenge

The attraction, for him, would have dimmed and finally been snuffed out.

The road she’d taken had been tough and miserable and, as things had turned out, the wrong one. But it would be silly to think that she would have been any happier if she’d followed Javier and held the hand he’d extended.

‘We can go round the houses discussing what’s fair and what’s unfair,’ he said in a hard voice. ‘But that won’t get us anywhere. I’m prepared to sink money in, but I get a cut of the cake and you abide by my rules.’

‘Your rules?’ She looked at him in bewilderment.

‘Did you really think I’d write a cheque and then keep my fingers crossed that you might know what to do with the money?’ He’d had one plan when this situation had first arisen—it had been clean and simple—but now he didn’t want clean and simple. He needed to get more immersed in the water...and he was looking forward to that.

‘I will, to spell it out, want a percentage of your business. There’s no point my waiting for the time when you can repay me. I already have more money than I can shake a stick at, but I could put your business to some good use, branch out in ways that might dovetail with some of my other business concerns.’

Sophie shifted, not liking the sound of this. If he wanted a part of their business, wouldn’t that involve him being around? Or was he talking about being a silent partner?

‘Does your company have a London presence at all?’ Javier was thoroughly enjoying himself. Who said the only route to satisfaction was getting what you wanted on demand? He’d always been excellent when it came to thinking outside the box. He was doing just that right now. Whatever he sank into her business would be peanuts for him but he could already see ways of turning a healthy profit.

And as for having her? Of course he would, but where was the rush after all? He could take a little time out to relish this project...

‘Barely,’ she admitted. ‘We closed three of the four branches over the years to save costs.’

‘And left one open and running?’

‘We couldn’t afford to shut them all...even though the overheads are frightening.’

‘Splendid. As soon as the details are formalised and all the signatures are in place, I will ensure that the office is modernised and ready for occupation.’

‘It’s already occupied,’ Sophie said, dazed. ‘Mandy works on reception and twice a week one of the accountants goes down to see to the various bits of post. Fortunately nearly everything is done by email these days...’

‘Pack your bags, Sophie. I’m taking up residence in your London office, just as soon as it’s fit for habitation, and you’re going to be sitting right there alongside me.’

Not quite the original terms and conditions he had intended to apply, but in so many ways so much better...

CHAPTER FOUR (#ue0f63552-a459-5336-b914-208c50f2e4bb)

‘I DON’T KNOW what you’re so worried about. His terms and conditions seem pretty fair to me. In fact, better than fair. He’s going to have a percentage interest in the company but at least it’ll be a company that’s making money.’

That had been Oliver’s reaction when she had presented him, a fortnight ago, with the offer Javier had laid out on the table for her to take or reject.

He had been downright incredulous that she might even be hesitating to eat from the hand that had been extended to feed her. In a manner that was uncharacteristically proactive for him, he had called an extraordinary meeting of the directors and presented them with Javier’s plan, and Sophie had had to swallow the unpalatable reality that her past had caught up with her and was now about to join hands with her present.

Since then, with papers signed and agreements reached at the speed of light, the little office they had kept open in Notting Hill had been awash with frantic activity.

Sophie had refused to go. She had delegated that task to her brother, who had been delighted to get out of Yorkshire for a couple of weeks. He had reported back with gusto at the renovations being made and, inside, Sophie had quailed at the way she felt, as though suddenly her life was being taken over.

She knew she was being ridiculous.

Javier had agreed to see them because of their old connection but there had been nothing there beyond that historic connection. He had made no attempts to pursue any conversations about what had happened between them. He had been as cool as might have been expected given the circumstances of their break-up and she was in no doubt that the only reason he had agreed to help them was because he could see a profit in what was being offered.

Money was what he cared about and she suspected that he would be getting a good deal out of them. They were, after all, in the position of the beggars who couldn’t be choosers.

Hadn’t he greeted her with all the information he had accumulated about the company?

He had done his homework and he wouldn’t be offering them a rescue package if he wasn’t going to get a great deal out of it.

She brushed her skirt, neatened her blouse and inspected herself in the mirror in the hallway, but she wasn’t really seeing her reflection. She was thinking, persuading herself that his attitude towards her made everything much easier. For him, the past was history. What he had with her now was a business deal and one that had fallen into his lap like a piece of ripe fruit that hadn’t even needed plucking from the tree.

Maybe in some distant corner of his mind there was an element of satisfaction that he was now in a position to be the one calling the shots, but if that was the case, he would have to have cared one way or another about her and he didn’t.

The effect he still had on her was not mutual. And even her responses to him were an illusion, no more than a reminder of the power of nostalgia, because truthfully her heart was safely locked away, never again to be taken out to see the light of day.

She blinked and focused on the tidy image staring back at her. Everything in place. In a few minutes the taxi would come to take her to the station. A month ago, she would have hit the bus stop, which was almost a mile away, but he had deposited a large advance of cash in the company account to cover expenses and to ensure that everyone on the payroll was compensated for the overtime which they had contributed over the months and which had not been paid.

She would take the taxi to the station and then the train down to London so that she could see the final, finished product, the newly refurbished offices in which she would be stationed for as long as it took to get things up and running.

‘How long do you think that’s going to take?’ she had asked Javier on day one, heart thumping at the prospect of being in an office where, on a whim, he could descend without warning.

He had shrugged, his dark-as-night eyes never leaving her face. ‘How long is a piece of string? There’s a lot of work to do with the company before it begins to pull its weight. There’s been mass wastage of money and resources, expenditures that border on criminal and incompetent staff by the bucketload.’

‘And you’re going to...er...be around, supervising...?’

His eyes had narrowed on her flushed face. ‘Does the prospect of that frighten you, Sophie?’

‘Not in the slightest,’ she had returned quickly. ‘I would just be surprised if you managed to take time off from being the ruler of all you surveyed to help out an ailing firm. I mean, don’t you have minions who move in when you take over sick companies?’

‘I think I might give the minions a rest on this particular occasion,’ he had murmured softly.

‘Why?’ Sophie had heard the thread of desperation in her voice. She couldn’t be within five feet of him without her body reliving the way he had once made it feel, playing stupid games with her mind.

‘This is a slightly more personal venture for me, Sophie,’ he had told her, leaning across the boardroom table where both of them had remained after the legal team had exited. ‘Maybe I want to see that the job is done to the highest possible standard given our...past acquaintanceship.’

Sophie hadn’t known whether to thank him or quiz him, so she had remained silent, her eyes helplessly drifting down to his sensual mouth before sliding away as heat had consumed her.

With a little sigh, she grabbed her handbag as she heard the taxi circle the gravelled forecourt, and then she was on her way, half hoping that Javier wouldn’t be there waiting at the office when she finally arrived, half hoping that he might be, and hating herself for that weakness.

She had no idea what to expect to find. The last time she had visited this particular office had been two years previously, when she and Oliver had been trying to decide which of the offices to shut. She remembered it as spacious enough but, without any money having been spent on it at all, it had already been showing telltale signs of wear and tear. That said, it had been the biggest and the least run-down, so they’d been able to amalgamate the diminishing files and folders there from the other offices.

Not for the first time, as she was ferried from north to south, she thought about how clueless she had been about the groundbreaking changes that had been happening right under her nose.

Ollie, at least, had had the excuse of being abroad, because he had left on his sports scholarship two years before she had gone to Cambridge. He’d been a fresh-faced teenager wrapped up in his own life, with no vision of anything happening outside it.

But she had still been living at home, in her final years at school. Why hadn’t she asked more probing questions when her mother’s health had begun to fail? The doctor had talked about stress, and now Sophie marvelled that she hadn’t dug deeper to find out what the stress had been all about, because on the surface her mother could not have been living a less stressed-out life.

And neither had she questioned the frequency with which Roger’s name had cropped up in conversations or the number of times he’d been invited along to the house for various parties. She had been amused at his enthusiasm and had eventually drifted into going out with him; she had never suspected the amount of encouragement he had got from her parents.

All told, she had allowed herself to be wrapped up in cotton wool. So when that cotton wool had been cruelly yanked off, she had been far more shell-shocked than she might otherwise have been.

Everything had hit her at once. She had been bombarded from all sides and, in the middle of this, had had to wise up quickly to the trauma of discovering just how ill her father was and the lengths he had gone to to protect them all from knowing.

She should have been there helping out long before the bomb had detonated, splintering shrapnel through their lives.