Billionaire's Baby Of Redemption
Michelle Smart
Claiming his heir is non-negotiableThe decision will be life-changing…When Spanish tycoon Javier Casillas learns his explosive night with Sophie Johnson left her pregnant, he’s adamant they wed! But not even the red-hot pleasures of their marriage bed can thaw the ice around Javier’s dark heart… Until warm, compassionate Sophie demands more. To truly claim his wife and unborn child, can Javier accept that giving them his all is the key to his redemption?
Claiming his heir is nonnegotiable
The decision will be life-changing...
When Spanish tycoon Javier Casillas learns his explosive night with Sophie Johnson left her pregnant, he’s adamant they wed! But not even the red-hot pleasures of their marriage bed can thaw the ice around Javier’s dark heart... Until warm, compassionate Sophie demands more. To truly claim his wife and unborn child, can Javier accept that giving them his all is the key to his redemption?
Get swept away by this powerful and emotional secret baby romance!
MICHELLE SMART’s love affair with books started when she was a baby and would cuddle them in her cot. A voracious reader of all genres, she found her love of romance established when she stumbled across her first Mills & Boon book at the age of twelve. She’s been reading them—and writing them—ever since. Michelle lives in Northamptonshire, England, with her husband and two young Smarties.
Also by Michelle Smart (#ud22b9ceb-eb32-5915-8bb9-470ba7ddc8ab)
Married for the Greek’s Convenience
Once a Moretti Wife
A Bride at His Bidding
Bound to a Billionaire miniseries
Protecting His Defiant Innocent
Claiming His One-Night Baby
Buying His Bride of Convenience
Rings of Vengeance miniseries
Billionaire’s Bride for Revenge
Marriage Made in Blackmail
Billionaire’s Baby of Redemption
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
Billionaire’s Baby of Redemption
Michelle Smart
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07257-1
BILLIONAIRE’S BABY OF REDEMPTION
© 2018 Michelle Smart
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This book is for Jennifer Hayward, Pippa Roscoe
and Nic Caws, who all made the writing of
Javier and Sophie’s story an utter joy. xxx
Contents
Cover (#u31a587b0-1e15-5e1e-8a13-d683ef6aff2e)
Back Cover Text (#uea749c21-087d-5733-82b2-5cdb3b87ebde)
About the Author (#u69ffe271-1faa-5c9b-bc9f-0e2b341fa6dc)
Booklist (#u7ba97633-6f07-5944-91ca-4d81f510e69c)
Title Page (#u6f1b9008-87b5-59ed-9c38-b3663aedfc06)
Copyright (#ub5b85368-c4ea-5f8a-bf72-df6e9efda493)
Dedication (#u5be24edc-de80-54ee-9b8a-a777a028cac3)
CHAPTER ONE (#u5fd25210-da7f-5351-9264-ea472dae60ff)
CHAPTER TWO (#uac095563-1468-57b5-81c2-9a9bda9b34ad)
CHAPTER THREE (#u4e93b438-bb46-5113-9a2c-0d5992e49da9)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u4453d521-e20d-5e84-a71c-85eae0a6259c)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ud22b9ceb-eb32-5915-8bb9-470ba7ddc8ab)
JAVIER CASILLAS KEPT his eyes fixed on the wide corridor ahead of him, jaw clenched, feet working automatically. He could feel the eyes upon him; had felt them all evening in the private box he shared with his twin. He’d steeled himself for it. His wildly infamous parentage meant the media spotlight was something he’d learned to endure but the past two months had magnified that spotlight by a thousand.
He would give them exactly what he had always given them. Nothing.
He had not allowed a flicker of emotion to pass his face throughout the performance.
Inside, the rage had built. He’d watched Freya, the woman he’d intended to marry, put on the performance of her life, listened to the rapturous applause, and all he had wanted to do was go home and beat the hell out of his punching bag.
Tonight was the culmination of a long-standing dream between Javier and his twin brother, Luis. A decade ago they’d finally had the funds to purchase the crumbling Madrid theatre and ballet school their prima ballerina mother had spent her childhood learning to dance at, buying the ballet company with it. They’d renamed it Compania de Ballet de Casillas in her memory and set about turning it into one of the most eminent ballet companies in Europe. They’d then bought another parcel of land close to it and built on it a brand-new state-of-the-art theatre and ballet school. Tonight was its grand opening. The world’s media was out in force, but instead of focussing on the theatre and ballet company and celebrating Clara Casillas’s memory, their focus was on Javier and his ex-fiancée.
The whole damn world knew she’d left him for his oldest friend.
What the whole world did not yet know was that Benjamin Guillem had stolen her in a sick game of revenge and that Freya had been happy to be stolen.
They were welcome to each other. Freya meant nothing to Javier. She never had.
The corridor he walked through on his way to the aftershow party forked. About to turn left with the group he was with, which included members of the Spanish royal family, Javier felt a hand settle on his shoulder and steer him firmly in the other direction.
No one other than his twin would have dared touch him in such a manner.
‘What’s the matter?’ Javier asked, staring at his brother with suspicion as they walked.
‘I wanted to talk to you alone,’ Luis replied.
There was something in his brother’s tone that lifted the hairs on the nape of his neck.
Tension had simmered between them since his twin’s foolhardy trip to the Caribbean. How Luis thought that marrying Benjamin’s sister would restore their reputations was still, well over a month on, beyond Javier’s comprehension. Although wildly different from him in both looks and personality, his brother usually had excellent judgement. His opinion was the only one Javier ever thought worthy of consideration.
Fortunately his brother had seen sense at the last minute and returned to Madrid as a single man but things had not been right between them since.
Luis was his only constant. It had been the two of them, facing the world and everything it could throw at them, together, since they had shared the same womb.
Luis waited until they were out of anyone’s earshot before turning to him. ‘You knew we were ripping Benjamin off all those years ago, didn’t you?’
The rage that had simmered in Javier all evening blazed at the mention of his nemesis’s name.
Seven years ago the Casillas brothers had invited Benjamin to invest in a project they were undertaking in Paris, the creation of a skyscraper that became known as Tour Mont Blanc. They had invited his investment only because the seller of the land, to whom they had paid a significant deposit, suddenly told them they had until midnight to pay the balance or he would sell to another interested buyer. They didn’t have the cash. Benjamin did.
‘We didn’t rip him off,’ Javier reminded him icily. ‘He was the fool who signed the contract without reading it.’
‘And you should have warned him the terms had changed as you’d said you would. You didn’t forget, did you?’
Javier might be many things but a liar was not one of them.
Luis had been the one to invite Benjamin onto the project. His investment was worth twenty per cent of the land fee. In the rush of sealing the deal Luis had told Benjamin it meant twenty per cent of the profits. Their lawyer, who drew up the contract in record time, had been the one to point out that the Casillas brothers would be doing all the work and that Benjamin’s profit share should be only five per cent, a point Javier had agreed with.
The contract had been changed accordingly. Javier had emailed it to Benjamin expecting him to read the damn thing and negotiate if the new terms were not to his liking.
‘I knew it.’ Luis took a deep breath. ‘All these years and I’ve told myself that it had been an oversight on your part when I should have accepted the truth that you never forget. In thirty-five years you have never forgotten anything or failed to do something you promised.’
‘I never promised to email him.’ Javier never made promises he didn’t intend to keep. People could say what they liked about him—and frequently did, although never to his face—but he was a man of his word.
‘Not an actual promise,’ Luis conceded. ‘But look me in the eye and tell me it wasn’t a deliberate act on your part.’
Luis had asked him to give Benjamin a heads-up about the changes in terms when Javier emailed the contract. At no point had Javier agreed to this request and Luis should be thankful for it. Benjamin’s failure to read the contract before signing it had made the Casillas brothers richer to the tune of two hundred and twenty-five million euros. Benjamin had still made an excellent profit—profit—of seventy-five million and all he’d had to do for that substantial sum was transfer some funds. That he’d had the nerve to sue them over it was beyond the pale. That Benjamin had refused to accept the court’s judgement when the judge had thrown the case out, and then stolen Javier’s fiancée from him, was despicable.
And the world thought he was the bad man in all this?
Blind, prejudiced fools, the lot of them. He knew what they all thought. The world looked at his face and saw his murderer father.
‘For what reason would it have been deliberate?’ he asked coldly.
‘That is for your conscience to decide. All I know for sure is that Benjamin was our friend. I have defended you and I have fought your corner—’
‘Our corner,’ Javier corrected, his limited patience right at the point of snapping.
Now his own twin was questioning his motives?
What happened to the loyalty that had always bound them together?
‘I assume this burst of conscience from you is connected to that damned woman.’
He’d had a sense of foreboding in the pit of his stomach since spotting Chloe Guillem, Benjamin’s sister, in the audience that night.
Chloe had betrayed them as greatly as her brother had; had aided and abetted his plot to steal Freya and was, unquestionably, the cause of all the tension that had hung between Javier and Luis since Luis’s return from the Caribbean.
A darkness rarely seen on his brother’s face suddenly appeared, and before Javier had time to blink, Luis had grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. ‘If you ever speak about Chloe in that way again then you and I are finished. Do you hear me? Finished.’
‘If you’re still defending her to me then I would say we’re already finished, brother.’ He spat the last word directly into Luis’s face.
Javier knew in his bones that something had happened between Luis and Chloe. Luis had always had a roving eye for the ladies but never had Javier had cause to suspect a shift in his brother’s loyalty from it.
If Luis wanted to be with that bitch after what she had done to him then Luis could get the hell out of his life. Loyalty counted for everything and if Luis had lost sight of that then he was no brother to him.
Eyeball to eyeball, they glowered at each other, the venom seeping between them thick enough to taste.
Then Luis released his hold and stepped back.
Javier stared at the man he had shared a womb with, had shared a bedroom with, had fought with, had protected, had been protected by, had grieved with, the other side of the coin that was the Casillas twins, and watched him take backwards strides until he turned his back on him.
Breathing heavily, his hands clenched into fists, his hardening heart thumping, Javier watched Luis collide with a petite blonde woman in his haste to get away from him.
In all their thirty-five years neither of them had ever turned their back on the other.
It would be the first and last time Luis walked away from him.
In the periphery of his vision he saw the woman his treacherous brother had bumped into come towards him, but with his gaze on Luis’s retreating back, it was only when she stood a few feet from him that her features came into focus.
Javier stared at the face he had last seen two months before when he had shown her to the door of his house.
Big pale blue eyes stared back, apprehension shining out of them.
The rage inside him ratcheted up another notch. Any higher and there was real danger he would combust.
This was a face he had never wanted to see close-up again.
‘You should be at the aftershow party,’ he snapped.
Sophie Johnson was part of Compania de Ballet de Casillas’s corps de ballet and had a contractual obligation to attend the aftershow party.
Colour flamed the pretty heart-shaped face, a pained crease forming in her brow. ‘I quit the company two months ago.’
His heart thumped to hear that surprisingly sultry voice again.
Sophie had the sweet looks of an innocent but a voice that evoked thoughts of dark red satin sheets and dim lighting.
She had quit the company...?
He had hardly looked at the stage during the performance.
‘Then what the hell are you doing here?’
But he knew. The pressing weight in his already tightly crushed chest told him the answer. He did not want to listen to it.
Her throat moved.
He’d kissed that throat...
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Now is the worst time to speak to me.’ And she was the last person he wished to see or speak to. Not now, when he could feel the fabric of his life dissolving around him.
He stepped past her and nodded a dismissal. ‘Excuse me.’
He’d taken no more than two paces when she said, ‘It’s important.’
His heart began to thrum wildly, every nerve ending standing on edge. Memories of their brief interlude surfaced in a wave, memories he’d not allowed himself to think of since showing her out of his home.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he half turned to her and inhaled deeply.
‘No,’ he told her harshly. ‘This is not a conversation we are going to have now. Go home.’
‘But—’
‘I said no.’
The vehemence in Javier’s gravelly tone made Sophie recoil.
She watched him stride down the long corridor, clenching her jaw so tightly it stopped the threatening tears from splashing over her cheeks.
She had shed enough tears these past two months.
She staggered on shaking legs to the nearest chair and sank down into it.
Covering her mouth, she forced deep breaths into her choking airway and drew on all the ballet training that had been instilled in her since early childhood to stop her frame collapsing.
A glamorous couple strolled past her, hand in hand, the woman giving Sophie a sideways glance.
She tried to give the smile that normally came automatically whenever she met another person’s eye but could barely move her cheek muscles.
She had once thought herself in love with Javier. Fool!
The stories about him being a cold-hearted bastard had all proven themselves to be true.
That she had ignored them, convinced that his was a soul in torment and that his reputation was not formed from a heart set in stone, was her own fault.
Sophie had taken one look at Javier when he’d paid a visit to the ballet company almost a year ago and felt her heart move and all the breath leave her body in a rush.
It had been a visceral reaction unlike anything she had experienced before.
Unlike the sculpted men of the ballet world, Javier was a bone crusher of a man, enormously tall and broad with a presence that made everyone look twice. He wasn’t handsome in the traditional sense, his nose too wide and with a bend to it, his light brown eyes too hooded and with a permanent look of suspicion etched in them to ever be considered a pin-up, but he had a magnetism that turned those flaws into something mesmerising. He had mesmerised her in more ways than one. Always attuned to others’ emotions, the pain she had sensed in Javier had reached deep into her.
She had spent months longing for a glimpse of him. The times she did—and they were rare times, his involvement with the day-to-day running of the ballet company minimal—her heart would soar. She had known it was a crush that would go nowhere. Javier Casillas was the co-owner of her ballet company, a property magnate with a net worth she could scarcely comprehend, an arrogant, aloof figure who conjured fear and admiration in equal measure. He would never look twice at her.
But he did look twice at Freya.
Freya was her oldest and closest friend, the reason for Sophie being in Madrid dancing for the company that had made Freya a star. Freya was beautiful. Freya was a dancer with the world at her pointe shoes, a dancer who stole the heart of everyone who watched her perform.
Sophie had never shared her feelings for Javier with Freya. It had been too personal and unlikely to share with anyone.
Javier’s marriage proposal and Freya’s acceptance of it had devastated her.
For months she had sat on her despondency, determined to support her oldest friend even if she did have grave misgivings about their forthcoming loveless marriage that had nothing to do with her own breaking heart. She even gamely agreed to be their bridesmaid.
Then, the week before they were due to exchange their vows, Freya had run off with Benjamin Guillem, leaving Javier for dust. A media frenzy had ensued.
Sophie had been trying to do a good deed when she’d gone to Javier’s home. She’d been packing Freya’s stuff for her from the flat they shared and had come across a copy of Freya and Javier’s prenuptial agreement and a file of other pertinent legal documents. Freya didn’t want them, so, not knowing what else to do, Sophie had decided the best thing would be to let Javier decide. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t want the documents to reach the public domain.
The day after Freya and Benjamin married, Sophie had braced herself and set off for Javier’s home.
His house was a secluded villa that more resembled a palace than a home. She’d had to speak into a camera before the electric gates had slowly opened and admitted her into his domain.
She remembered walking the long driveway, sick to her stomach with pain for him. He might not have loved Freya but he must be shattered that she had left him for his oldest friend and in such a public fashion too.
The whole world knew about it and had put the blame squarely on Javier’s shoulders without knowing even a basic fact—even she didn’t know a fact about it, Freya’s only communication being the one asking her to pack her belongings together—and was seeming to revel in portraying him as a monster in disguise. Sophie’s heart had twisted to hear the vile rumours about him.
Expecting a member of his household staff to open the front door for her, she had been surprised to find it opened by Javier himself.
What followed had been even more unexpected.
That was when she’d understood his ruthless reputation had been based on truth.
If he’d even given her a single thought since, he would have known she’d left his ballet company, left Madrid and returned to England. In the vain hope he would seek her out she had left her forwarding address on the company files. He could have found her without any effort if he had wanted to.
He hadn’t even noticed her absence from the stage that night.
She’d used those two months of silence to come to terms with the reality of her situation and get herself in an emotional place where she could face Javier again.
She would seek him out again tomorrow; seek him every single day until he was willing to have the conversation they so desperately needed to have.
Only when she was certain she could get back to her feet without her legs crumpling did she stand up, inhaling deeply.
Concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, Sophie headed back the way she had come. The theatre’s wide corridors were almost deserted now.
When she reached the top of the ornate red-carpeted stairs that led down into the foyer, her heart skipped to see Javier striding up to her, his long legs taking the steps two at a time.
She held tightly onto the gold railing and stared at the emotionless, menacing face fixed on her.
When he reached the top, he inclined his head for her to follow him, leading her to a secluded section of the corridor.
He stopped walking and gazed down at her, breathing heavily through his nose.
‘Why now?’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Why did you choose tonight of all nights to tell me? Why not approach me in private?’
She kept her gaze steady on him. ‘Because after the way you treated me, I didn’t trust you would agree to see or speak to me.’
He had gone from blazing passion to ice-cold in the whisper of a second.
He had escorted her out of his home.
His face twisted. ‘You are carrying my child?’
How she kept her composure to answer him without bursting into tears she would never know. ‘Yes. We’re going to have a baby.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ud22b9ceb-eb32-5915-8bb9-470ba7ddc8ab)
HOT DARKNESS FILLED Javier’s head, swimming like a blood-red fog through him.
He’d known the moment Sophie had come into focus why she was there but his already overwhelmed brain had fought to deny it.
He was going to be a father.
But the mother wasn’t the perfect woman he had sought to bear his children but this waif-like creature who had ignited something in him that should never have been allowed to breathe.
He wanted children. He and his treacherous brother had adopted their mother’s surname the moment they could legally dump their father’s and he wanted to carry that name on to the next generation.
He’d waited his entire adult life for the perfect woman to come along and bear him those children.
Freya had been that woman. Beautiful, coldly perfect Freya, who would have given him beautiful, perfect children and who had not elicited the smallest glimmer of desire in him and shown no desire for him either. Perfection in all ways.
Javier knew the danger of passion. His orphaned state was living proof of those dangers.
The dangerous blood that had swirled in his father lived in his own veins too. It pumped hot and strong inside him, a living thing he was reminded of every time he looked in a mirror.
He should never have allowed Sophie, this warm-blooded, sensitive creature, to come anywhere within his orbit.
She sighed and pulled a business card from the small black bag she carried. She held it out to him with those tiny fingers that had caused such mayhem to his skin when she had touched him.
‘This is the hotel I’m staying at,’ she said quietly. ‘Take the time to process what’s happening and then come and find me when you’re ready to talk.’
‘What is there to talk about?’ he asked roughly, not taking the card, not willing to risk touching her in any way.
He knew what he had to do. There was no point in wasting air discussing what was a foregone conclusion.
He’d walked away from her with his head reeling and the weight of the world crashing down on him. He’d intended to work all the stress out and bring himself to a point where he could trust himself to have this difficult conversation without exploding.
He’d got as far as his car when the implications had really hit him and he’d known that to leave her there would make him as big a monster as the world believed him to be.
‘We’re having a baby, Javier. I would say there’s a lot to talk about.’
‘Not for me there isn’t. If you’re carrying my child then there’s only one thing that needs to be decided on and that’s the date of our wedding.’
She blinked. ‘You are willing to marry me?’
‘My child will bear my name and if you want any kind of financial support from me then you will agree to it.’
Sophie was naïve. Damn her, she’d been a virgin, a fact she had neglected to mention when they’d been ripping each other’s clothes off.
If she had any illusions about him or their future relationship let her have them dispelled now. If she didn’t already know what kind of a man he was—and his failure to seek her out in any form these past few months must have given her some clue—then let her know now.
She would never know it but he was doing her a kindness.
To his surprise, a small smile curved her pretty lips. ‘You don’t have to threaten me. I want us to marry.’
That took him aback. ‘You do?’
Her throat moved as she nodded.
He laughed, a guttural sound that grated to his own ears. For all her naivety and surface sweetness, Sophie was already making the financial calculations of how being his wife would significantly improve her bank account.
But there was no returning laugh from Sophie. Her eyes did not flicker or leave his face. ‘Our child is innocent. It did not choose to be conceived. It deserves to know and be wanted by both its parents.’
He made no attempt to hide his cynicism. ‘If that is true then why wait so long to tell me? You must have known for weeks.’
He was no pregnancy expert but he had studied biology at school and knew the ways a woman’s body worked.
‘I knew within a week,’ she said steadily. ‘I could feel changes happening inside me. I took the test the day after my period was due, so I have known for certain for six weeks. Technically I’m ten weeks pregnant as the due date is taken from the date of my last period. I waited before telling you because I needed my head to be in the right place before I faced you again.’
‘Did you have to research the best ways to leverage cash from the situation?’ he mocked brutally. He had never met a woman who didn’t have cash signs ringing in her eyes.
Having more money than he could spend in a thousand lifetimes was good for many things but leverage was its greatest gift. He’d used his wealth to buy Freya and she, the coldly perfect prima ballerina that she was, had been happy to be purchased. It was what had made her so ideal for him. ‘Is that why you have set your path on marriage to me?’
But, again, there was no flicker in Sophie’s pale blue eyes. ‘I want nothing but what is best for our child.’
From the corner of his eye he saw two security guards approach. They would be making a sweep of the theatre before locking up for the night; the aftershow party taking place in a basement conference room.
If there was one thing Javier despised it was people knowing his business. His family had been fodder for the world’s consumption since before his birth.
He might still be trying to process that he was going to be a father but already he knew that he would do whatever it took to protect his child.
Rubbing his jaw, he took a deep breath. ‘Whatever you say your motives are, our unborn child is the only thing that matters.’
‘Yes,’ she interjected softly.
‘It is late. This is something that needs to be discussed when we have fresh minds. I have had an incredibly difficult day.’ She couldn’t begin to understand how difficult it had been. ‘My driver will take you to your hotel. Get some sleep. You look tired.’
That made her eyes flicker.
‘I’ll have you brought to me in the morning,’ he continued, now walking back to the stairs. He kept his eyes focussed straight ahead of him, no longer wishing to look at the woman who had just detonated a bomb into his already turbulent life.
The bomb was of his own making, he accepted grimly. He was the damn fool who had failed to use a condom for the first and only time in his life.
He was the fool who’d invited her into his home.
Their baby was the consequence of that foolhardiness and, as Sophie had already pointed out, an innocent in all of this.
She remained silent as she kept pace beside him, silent all the way down the stairs and through the foyer. Only when they reached the exit door did she turn to him and say, ‘What time will your driver collect me in the morning?’
‘Arrange that with him.’ He stepped out into the warm night air and strode to his waiting driver.
‘Take Miss Johnson to her hotel,’ he said, then, without a word of goodbye or a second glance at her, set off for his home.
He could feel Sophie’s gaze upon him but kept his sight fixed ahead, increasing his pace.
As he power-walked the three miles to his home, the memories he’d spent two months suppressing came back to him with crystal clarity.
He’d woken that fateful day to the news Freya and Benjamin had married and a barrage of hate mail. Someone had leaked his personal email address online and keyboard warriors had had an excellent time aiming their poisoned ire at him. So angry had he been that he’d dismissed his household staff for the day.
His rage was best kept private. It was safer that way. For everyone.
And then his intercom had rung and he’d looked through the monitor to see Sophie standing there, a thick folder in her arms, which, she had claimed over the intercom, contained private documents of his.
He’d recognised her immediately. Freya’s dance colleague and flatmate. The wallflower who had never met his eye on the few occasions he’d been in her presence. If anyone had inside information on Freya and Benjamin’s treachery that he could use to his advantage it would be her.
It had been a baking summer’s day. She’d been dressed in a thin pale grey shirt dress, her long light blonde hair tied in a loose plait. When she’d removed enormous sunglasses to speak to him and fixed huge pale blue eyes on him, he’d seen compassion shining from them.
Not once in his adult life had he stared anyone in the eye and not seen a glimmer of fear shine back at him. Grown men, titans of industry and power brokers would shake his hand with a nervous laugh; glamorous, self-confident women would give him the come-to-bed eyes with excitement-laced fear.
This young English woman, a petite ballerina with the appearance of a waif, had turned up at his home and displayed not an ounce of fright.
The rage that had been bubbling so furiously inside him had suddenly reduced.
She had given him the sweetest, most sympathetic smile he’d ever been on the receiving end of. ‘How are you holding up?’ she’d asked softly.
In the week since Benjamin had stolen Freya from him, Sophie was the first person to have asked him that. The most he’d received from his twin had been a stoical slap to the shoulder.
He’d invited her in, made her a coffee, led her to the dining room, sat beside her at the huge table with the documents between them and quizzed her.
When she’d professed her innocence in the matter of Freya and Benjamin, he’d been surprised to find he believed her.
This belief had disconcerted him.
She had disconcerted him with those non-judgemental eyes and her subtle yet obvious compassion.
He’d found himself trying to get a rise out of her, asking if she’d read the documents, making it sound like an accusation.
She’d been unfazed and unabashed. She’d nodded and said, ‘Yes, I read through them with Freya. I won’t be sharing them with anyone, so don’t worry.’
‘You won’t share the details with the media?’ he’d asked cynically.
‘If I wanted to share anything with them I would have done so by now. They’ve been camped outside my apartment block all week.’
Something had crept into his veins at that, something he’d never felt before.
That this petite young thing should be harassed with no one there to protect her had set the anger boiling again.
Of course, he knew her waif-like frame belied a physical strength all ballerinas had but that didn’t change what his eyes saw when he looked at her.
Dios, he’d been unable to tear his eyes from her. He had never seen such naturally pink rosebud lips before...
A new kind of tension had sparked to life.
Sophie’s eyes had kept flickering to him, then darting away, pretty colour flushing across her pretty cheeks.
She really was incredibly pretty. How had he not noticed it before...?
He’d found himself leaning closer to her, catching a whiff of a light, floral perfume that had delighted his senses.
‘Speaking with the media would boost your profile,’ he’d pointed out.
A burst of antipathy had glittered in her eyes. ‘I don’t care. I’m not going to add to the frenzy and make things worse for you.’
Again, he’d found himself believing her but also curious...
Worse for him?
She didn’t even know him.
Professional dancers spent their lives fighting to get to the top and when you were as driven as that any advantage for name recognition would be snatched upon. His own mother had been shameless in her quest for media attention.
Sophie had ducked her head and refused to answer questions even when it would have seen her face plastered over the tabloids as a bit player in the biggest scandal Spain—indeed, most of Europe—had had for years.
What was her agenda? Everyone had one, so what was hers? Why go out of her way for him?
He’d leaned even closer and dropped his voice to a murmur. ‘Why are you here?’
The colour already staining her cheeks had darkened, the pale blue eyes darkening with it. It had been the most beguiling sight.
She had cleared her throat, the pink rosebud lips opening and closing as if she were trying to get out words that did not want to be revealed.
It was sheer impulse that had led him to kiss those lips.
What happened next had been utter madness.
Javier increased his pace and inhaled the Madrid autumn night air deeply to counteract the blood thickening all over again at the vivid memories.
She had kissed him back.
And then he had hauled her out of her chair and into his arms.
For a few brief moments all his torment and anger had been dispelled and forgotten.
Sophie’s kisses had been the sweetest he had ever tasted and instantly addictive.
Desire like nothing he had ever experienced had pulsed through him. Heady, hungry and utterly consuming.
He tried to throw the memories off him now, not wanting to remember any more, disgusted with himself for the manner in which he’d used her hot, willing body.
That was his only saving grace, he thought grimly.
Sophie had been utterly willing.
There had been nothing one-sided about it.
In that moment, the madness had lived in both of them.
He’d spread her flat on his dining table, drinking in her hot, sweet kisses as he’d plunged into her that first time. He’d felt the resistance of her body and known in an instant what it had meant.
Her eyes had widened.
He would have pulled out there and then if she hadn’t then smiled at him, put her hands to his face and kissed him so deeply that he had lost all sense of himself.
But as soon as it was over the only thing he’d been able to taste was revulsion, at himself for his actions and at Sophie for throwing away her virginity in such a seedy way and on a man such as him.
But mostly at himself.
They hadn’t used any protection.
He hadn’t used any protection.
He’d needed her gone before he said or did something he regretted.
He felt no pride in remembering how he’d coldly walked to his front door and held it open for her.
She would never know it but he’d been saving her from herself.
And now she was pregnant. Sweet, sweet Sophie was pregnant with his child.
Damn it all to hell.
Javier had experienced only one day worse than this. The day his father had murdered his mother.
* * *
Sophie waited until the driver opened her door before stepping out in front of the imposing Tuscan-style villa that was Javier’s home.
The first time she had been there she had been filled with so many emotions she had hardly taken anything in other than its titanic size.
Now there was an array of sights and smells filling her senses. She’d noticed that increase in her perceptions during the first week of her pregnancy. It was like discovering secrets of the world, an unexpected symptom that warmed her.
She needed all the warmth she could get.
She’d lain in her hotel bed telling herself over and over that she was doing the right thing. Not telling Javier about the pregnancy had never been on the cards. He was the father. He deserved to know and deserved to be involved if that was what he wanted.
She was glad for their child’s sake that he did want to be and that he’d come to the decision of marriage so quickly. For once, it hadn’t been the anguish she always felt at the thought of disappointing her adoptive parents, good, loving, decent people who believed strongly in the sanctity of marriage, but for her child. Her child deserved nothing less.
Sophie often thought of her biological father. Had he ever known of her conception? Had he been party to the decision to abandon her? Or had he spent twenty-four years unaware he had a daughter out there, being raised by people who were strangers to him?
These were just some of the many questions that had haunted her life. She had long stopped seeking answers for them—they all led to dead ends—but had never stopped wondering. She would wonder about the man and woman who had given her life for ever.
Her child would not. Whatever happened between Sophie and Javier, her child would know who both its parents were.
Stepping onto the marble stairs that led to a wrap-around porch, Sophie followed the driver, who had insisted on taking her suitcase, to the front door.
Everything about Javier’s home looked so much richer and more palatial than her first and last visit. Private and secluded from the bustle of Madrid’s busy streets, it screamed opulence. This was the kind of house any self-regarding billionaire would be proud to call home.
Marble pillars flagged the wide oak door that opened before the driver could raise his hand to knock.
Javier stood there, casually dressed in an olive-green shirt unbuttoned at the neck and black jeans that showcased the muscularity of his thighs. Thick stubble covered his jawline. His hooded light brown eyes met hers for the briefest of moments before he nodded his thanks at the driver and dismissed him.
‘Refreshments are being made for us,’ he said as he led her through the grand reception room twice as high as a normal room and adorned with ancient Egyptian relics, including a bust of a sphinx almost as large as Javier himself.
The first time she had been there she had been too overawed at being invited in by the man she had mooned over for so long to pay much attention to anything, but now she was determined to keep an analytical head and pay attention to everything.
‘Is it okay to leave my suitcase in here?’ she asked.
He stopped and turned, a frown creasing his forehead, fleshy, sensuous lips pulling together. ‘Why have you brought your suitcase with you?’
‘I checked out of my hotel.’
Now his eyes narrowed. ‘I hope you are not expecting to move in today.’
‘I’ve checked out of the hotel because my reason for staying in it is done—you know about the baby. I’ll fly back to England when we’ve finished discussing everything and set a game plan out.’
Disconcerted, Javier ran his fingers through his hair. He could read nothing but honesty in Sophie’s wide gaze and he didn’t trust it an inch.
The dreamless sleep he had hoped for had proven fruitless. He doubted he’d had more than an hour of solid sleep.
Sophie was pregnant with his child. The puffiness of her eyes was proof she must have found sleep as elusive as he had, but where his stomach was knotted with thorny barbs she had a calm serenity about her.
She’d had a head start on getting her head around being a parent, he reminded himself grimly. She’d known for certain for six whole weeks and had kept it to herself when she should have told him immediately.
Dios, his head felt ready to combust. All these betrayals, it was like a sickness. Benjamin’s refusal to accept his own negligence and then stealing Freya from him had been only the start, culminating in the disaster that had been the night before, the night when he and his twin celebrated their mother’s memory with a world determined to remember her torrid death rather than her magnificent life, now tainted for ever. Luis, his own twin, had betrayed it and had betrayed him so greatly it felt as if he’d been sucker-punched. The business they had built from nothing would have to be split, the brotherhood that had driven his life rent apart with one gross act of disloyalty.
And he was going to be a father. He was going to marry a woman so far removed from his ideal of what a suitable wife for himself should be that she could be from Venus.
‘Let us discuss our game plan now,’ he said icily, leading her through to one of his four living rooms, his least favourite for relaxing. He would never allow himself to relax again around Sophie. It was too dangerous, especially for her.
Initially he’d planned for their meeting to take place in the dining room but when he’d stepped into it a powerful memory of making love to her on that table had sent a thrill of desire racing through him, so, with a click of his fingers, he’d ordered the documents to be moved.
He indicated the sofas arranged in a square around a coffee table. ‘Take a seat.’
She obeyed his command by sitting gracefully and crossing her legs.
He wished she hadn’t. Until that moment he had refused to pay any attention to her attire but now his eyes focussed on the athletic but decidedly feminine figure clad in fashionably ripped jeans and an oversized thin sweater that fell off the shoulder. She’d left her long blonde hair loose.
A member of his staff entered the room carrying the refreshments he’d ordered and he was glad of the diversion.
He waited until the drinks and pastries had been laid out before seating himself opposite Sophie and pouring himself a coffee. ‘Help yourself.’
Again, she obeyed. Soon she had a palmier on a plate on her lap and was sipping a glass of fresh orange juice.
He allowed himself a slight breath of relief. So far she was displaying all the signs of obedience. Things would be much easier if she were to fall in with his plans without questioning them. He knew little about Sophie but the impression he’d formed before he’d stupidly made love to her had been of a shy woman who had little in the way of spine or gumption.
He’d climbed out of his bed that morning knowing he needed to learn something concrete about the woman he was going to marry, so he had woken the ballet company’s human resources manager, ordering her to email Sophie’s employment file to him. It had been a quick but illuminating read. Sophie had been educated at the same ballet school as Freya, worked for a provincial English ballet company upon her graduation, then followed Freya to Madrid. She’d had no starring roles in any ballet production of note and was described in the file as warm but shy.
It had been illuminating in that it had confirmed his prior thoughts about her.
She was probably so relieved he’d agreed to marry her that she would now agree to anything to keep him onside.
Perfect.
He downed his black coffee and poured another, then waited until she had bitten a delicate amount of pastry before saying, ‘Those documents on the table are for you to read through. They’re the prenuptial agreement you’ll need to sign before we can marry.’
Her eyes remained on his face as she chewed slowly. When she swallowed, a flicker of pink tongue popped to the side of her mouth to lick a stray crumb.
Javier inhaled deeply and forced his attention back to the documents she now leaned forward to pick up, only to be confronted by a glimpse of cleavage as her sweater dipped.
He clenched his hands into fists and commanded his loins to stay neutral.
Sophie was only a woman. There was nothing special about her, nothing that should make his loins twitch and his veins heat. He would not allow the memories of their one time together to trick his body.
She leaned back and casually flicked through the documents he’d woken his lawyer at six a.m. to produce, right after he’d called the human resources manager.
After a few minutes of silence she put the file back on the coffee table and stared at him. ‘This is the same contract you signed with Freya.’
‘With a few modifications.’ Namely the section on children being in the future at a time of his wife’s choosing. That was an issue now taken out of both their hands. ‘Everything about how our marriage is to proceed is laid out in black and white. There will be no ambiguity and no need for us to argue about any issues at any point in the future because they are all set out in this. You will see that you are also generously provided for.’ He would treat her fairly and well. She would be his wife and the mother of his child and he would respect her for both those roles.
Something undefinable sparked in her eyes. ‘Your provisions are generous but the rest of it... I’m not signing this.’
He fixed her with the stare that had been known to make an entire conference room of business people freeze. ‘If you want me to marry you, you will.’
She shook her head slowly. ‘No.’
No. A simple one-syllable word rarely uttered in his earshot and even more rarely directly at him.
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his thighs. ‘Then let me explain it like this. If you won’t sign the contract I will not marry you and I will take custody of our child. If you want to be a mother to it then you will sign. Otherwise you can leave right now and stop wasting my time.’
CHAPTER THREE (#ud22b9ceb-eb32-5915-8bb9-470ba7ddc8ab)
SOPHIE STARED INTO the light brown eyes fixed on hers with such hooded cruelty and experienced an unexpected wave of compassion for him.
She didn’t want to feel anything for Javier, but right then, how could she not, even when she knew it was her compassion towards him that had got them to this point?
This was a man who had lived through the worst thing a child could live through: the murder of his mother at the hands of his father. Judged and feared by the world, was it any wonder he hit back at it by encasing his heart in steel? She had felt his pain from the first moment she had set eyes on him and fallen under his spell.
He folded his arms across his chest, his stare menacing. ‘Well?’
Her heart thundering painfully beneath her ribs, Sophie got to her feet.
Not giving herself time to reflect on what she was doing, she walked around the coffee table and stood before him. Javier was such a tall man and she so short that they were the same height with him seated.
She put her hand to his and locked her fingers around his wrist, feeling him jolt with surprise at her forwardness. His surprise was to her advantage, enabling her to pull his arm free from across his chest and place his hand on her belly.
She tried not to shiver as the heat of his hand permeated through the fabric of her sweater and sent shocks of sensation travelling through her bloodstream.
She had to ignore it.
She should wish she had ignored it two months ago but that would mean wishing her unborn child away and she would never do that.
He tried to pull his hand away but she refused to let go, holding it tightly to her abdomen, grateful for the first time for the physical strength all the ballet training she had endured through her life had given her.
‘I know you can’t feel it yet but, under your hand, our child is growing inside me,’ she said quietly. ‘It is over an inch long and has eyes and ears and a mouth. Its fingernails are beginning to grow and it can already bend its arms and legs. You can’t feel it but I can. My body’s changing because of this little kumquat, and our little kumquat is wholly dependent on me. As it grows, it will learn the sound of my voice. If you are by my side it will learn your voice too and when it’s born it will recognise both of us. It is innocent of everything and needs us both, so I beg you, please, do not use our child as a weapon to threaten me with. I won’t sign that contract because I disagree profoundly with the reasons behind it and I disagree with every one of the clauses you have in it. If we are going to marry then it should be a real marriage.’
Not the cold business arrangement he had made with Freya. That was a marriage Sophie could never tolerate for either herself or her child.
Javier wrenched his hand from her hold, his movement so sudden that Sophie stepped back in shock, straight into the coffee table. She would have toppled backwards onto it if his reflexes hadn’t kicked in and the hand he had just snatched from her hadn’t flown forward to grip onto her elbow and pull her to him.
She gazed into the eyes holding her with such loathing, greatly aware of the heavy thuds of her heart and the melting of her insides as his tangy scent crept into her senses.
His chest rose and fell at speed, his tanned throat moving, his lips pulling together, nostrils flaring.
For the wildest moment Sophie felt a compulsion to take the one step forward needed to become flush with him.
How could she still react to him like this? He had made love to her, then escorted her out of his home moments later as if she were the carrier of a disease. He had made no effort to contact her when he knew there was a danger he had impregnated her. He’d cared so little that he hadn’t noticed that she wasn’t on the stage at the theatre opening, had not cared to discover she had left his ballet company.
She should not react like this to him but she would not lie that a part of her wasn’t glad she still felt this desire for him. If she was going to get her way and forge a proper marriage with him then they needed a glue to keep them together other than their child.
Javier did not scare her. He probably should. He was a ruthless, coldly arrogant, wildly rich control freak. He’d threatened her with the removal of their child.
But he was human. She had experienced his human side, glimpsed the pain in his eyes and knew in her heart that his own heart wasn’t so far gone in the dark that his humanity could not be reached.
She would never love him, not now she knew the depths of his cruelty, but, whether they married or not, their unborn child meant they would always be in the other’s life.
Javier stared into pale blue eyes with a thousand emotions churning through him. Where had this woman with her calm, compassionate logic that could neuter his arguments come from?
And why the hell was his body straining towards her...?
Disgusted with himself, he released his hold on her elbow, got to his feet and strode away from her.
‘I do not want a real marriage,’ he told her as he paced. ‘What you are asking for is impossible. I like my solitude.’
‘We both need to make sacrifices. Speaking on a personal level, you are the last man I would wish to commit my life to but this is not about you or me, this is about our child, who deserves the best life can give. It deserves to be raised with a mother and father who are united. If you’re worried that I’m after your money then I am happy to sign an agreement that protects your wealth if we divorce.’
He pounced on her words. ‘You are already thinking that far ahead!’
He’d known she couldn’t be as self-sacrificing as she was making herself out to be, her words all a script designed to make him feel like a bastard for wanting to protect her from the dangers he posed.
Dios, how could she be so naïve? There was a reason he had reached the age of thirty-five without a single long-term relationship to his name. For a woman proving herself to be far more intuitive than he had credited, she should surely be able to see it.
‘If we both enter marriage with open minds we can make it work for our child, I truly believe that,’ she replied, following him with her eyes. ‘But I am not stupid. The odds are against us and we should work together to protect our child against every eventuality. I will be glad to sign a contract that states that should we divorce the only thing I get from you is a home of my own here in Madrid so we can share custody of our child. I don’t want a war with you, Javier, and I absolutely do not want our child to be a casualty of it either. I would have thought you of all people could appreciate that.’
For a moment he stopped pacing to stare at her, stunned.
No one—no one—ever alluded to his parents, not to his face.
His parents’ marriage had been fodder for the press long before his mother’s death. His father, Yuri Abramova, had been a ballet dancer from Moscow from the days of the USSR and had defected to New York in the seventies. Clara had been a Spanish prima ballerina, much younger than her famous husband, whose own fame had soared with her talent until she had eclipsed him in all ways. Their marriage had been volatile and filled with infidelities and jealousy on both sides. Lovers had popped up like cockroaches to sell their stories to an eager press who had known stories of the most famous marriage in the ballet world always sold out its print run.
In the midst of all this toxicity had been two boys who had both suffered but who had got through it by sticking together and protecting the other.
If someone had told the young Javier that his twin, his only confidant, would one day betray him for a woman he would have laughed in their face.
But now their brotherhood was dead, as dead as the mother Javier had worshipped but who had always preferred Luis and as dead as the father who had worshipped Javier and hated Luis.
His entire past was gone. The grandparents who had raised him and Luis after their mother’s death and father’s incarceration had died within a year of each other a decade ago. Louise Guillem, his mother’s closest friend, who had been like an aunt to them, had died seven years ago. Benjamin, Louise’s son and Javier and Luis’s oldest playmate, was alive and kicking but effectively dead to him.
They were all gone and yet...
Inside this woman who stared unblinkingly back at him, life grew. A child. His child.
An unexpected stab of guilt plunged into his guts.
Sophie was right. Their child was innocent, just as he and Luis had been innocent. His child deserved more than to be used as a weapon before it had grown bigger than his thumb.
Staring hard at the mother of his child, he could see in her eyes that already she loved it enough to fight for its best interests in any way she could. As a child he would have given anything to have been on the receiving end of that kind of love from his own mother.
Was that how Sophie had found the nerve to allude to his childhood and not flinch? How else could she look at him and not recoil in fear at the man who stood before her?
But she hadn’t been scared when she had turned up at his door with the same documents he’d had remade early that morning in her name...
Coldly perfect Freya had never displayed any overt fear for him either, but that had been understandable because coldly perfect Freya had never shown any emotions other than on the stage when she came alive in her dance.
Why wasn’t Sophie scared of him?
He dragged his fingers down his face and contemplated her some more before nodding slowly. ‘Bueno. I do not know what your expectations of a real marriage are...’
‘One that doesn’t give the husband a licence to take a mistress for a start,’ she interjected drily.
He gaped at this unexpected glimpse of humour. ‘You expect fidelity?’
He’d had the clause put in that he could take a mistress if he chose as a black-and-white warning that he was committing to a marriage only on paper. Freya hadn’t blinked an eye at it.
‘My only expectation is that we both try to make things work.’ She expelled a long breath of air and sat back on the sofa. Taking hold of her glass, she gave him a rueful smile. ‘All we can do is our best. To be faithful, to be honest, to just...try.’
How could he argue with that? he thought, anger mixing with incredulity.
Sophie had flipped everything on its head and made it all sound so easy.
Did she not see that she was asking the impossible? Javier had no idea if he was capable of fidelity; he’d never had a relationship run long enough for him to find out.
But honesty he could do. He was always honest.
‘Do not expect the impossible,’ he warned her darkly. ‘You know the kind of marriage I had envisaged for myself. I like solitude. I always have and always will. I suspect your idea of a real marriage differs greatly from mine.’
She shrugged. ‘The contract makes clear the kind of marriage you want, my refusal to sign it makes clear it’s not the marriage I want. We’ll both have to make compromises. I’m willing to try if you are.’
For the first time in his adult life Javier found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to bend to someone else’s will. With Luis there had been much compromise in the way they ran their business but they had been so in tune with each other’s thoughts it had never been an issue. Besides, Luis was his twin. It was a different scenario.
Sophie was only...
The mother of his unborn child.
Damn her, being so reasonable, leaving him little room to manoeuvre.
The thought of sharing his daily life with another person made his skin crawl. The thought of sharing it with this woman made his chest tighten and his stomach cramp.
He made sure her attention was fixed on him before giving a sharp nod. ‘Bueno. We will try it your way, but I warn you now, keep your expectations realistic. I live my life to please myself. This is my home and it is run to suit me. I will make accommodations for our child when it is born, but if you want to enter a marriage where the small details of our lives are not already agreed on then you must live with the consequences when you find the reality not to your liking.’
* * *
For the third time in as many months, Sophie approached Javier’s front door. This would be her last approach as a visitor. When she stepped through it this time, she would be staying.
This beautiful villa was going to be her home.
This was the best course of action, she told herself firmly, for what had to be the hundredth time.
The past fortnight had passed in a whirl of activity, Sophie busy packing and making arrangements for her new life. She had lived and worked in Madrid for eighteen months but it had never been permanent and she’d lived a minimal life there, always intending to return to England for good when her ballet career was over. Now, embracing that the rest of her life would be spent in Madrid whatever happened in her marriage, she was moving her entire life over.
She had no idea what Javier had been doing since their short meeting where they had thrashed out an agreement that suited neither of them but was best for their child.
She would give their marriage her best shot and she would force him to give it his best too. He had agreed to try. She had to hold onto that even if his actions since she’d returned to England had been less than positive.
He’d politely declined her offer to go to the hospital with her for the first scan, claiming he was too busy, so she had gone with her mother.
Her mother, bless her gentle heart, had been enthralled with the image on the screen. Her father had spent an age staring at the grainy picture she had given him of it. It had broken Sophie’s heart to tell the loving couple who had adopted her at eighteen months that their grandchild would be raised in Spain, but she had been able to offset their disappointment by promising lots of visits. She knew it had comforted them to know she would be marrying, although it had been another disappointment to them that they wouldn’t meet the groom before the wedding day.
Her poor parents. They’d masked their disappointment at her unplanned pregnancy well but she’d seen the pained glances they’d exchanged before embracing her and offering their full support.
Her parents had both been virgins on their wedding day. Sophie had never expected to stay a virgin until her own but she had been waiting for the thunderbolt they had both told her about, that certainty that she had found ‘the one’, the man she would spend the rest of her life with. She would never willingly disappoint them with anything less.
Javier was the only man she had looked at and felt her heart and pulses soar.
She had emailed the scan to him but received no response, either positive or negative. His next message to her had been to confirm the date of their wedding, written in the style of a business memo.
The man who had threatened to take full custody of their child if Sophie didn’t comply with his demands had so far shown zero interest in it.
She would force an interest. By the time their child was born in six months, she was determined Javier would be as excited for its arrival as she was. She didn’t expect miracles. She doubted he would be a hands-on father—the thought of that towering inferno of a man changing a nappy evoked hysterical laughter in her—but for their child’s sake she wanted Javier to reach a place where he could open his heart and love it.
She had to believe he was capable of love. She had to.
To be fair to him, he hadn’t abandoned her completely. She’d arrived back in the UK to find a chauffeured car waiting for her at the airport, the driver informing her she had him at her disposal until her return to Madrid. When they had settled on the date for her to move in with him, Javier had insisted on sending his private jet to England to collect her. He’d also arranged for a company to collect and transport all her belongings. They should have beaten her here, her stuff all ready for her to unpack in the house she very much hoped would soon feel like home.
Her heart thudded painfully as she took the heavy knocker in her hand, not yet ready to simply walk into this mansion as if she belonged there. She had barely moved it when the door opened.
A thin man in a sober suit greeted her with a nod. ‘Miss Johnson, please, come in,’ he said in impeccable English. ‘I am Julio, Mr Casillas’s butler. I run the household staff.’
Sophie tried to stop her eyes popping out of her head.
Javier had a butler? Wow.
On her previous two visits she had seen only one member of staff and had thought little of it. But now she did think about it and realised there was no way a house of these proportions and of such magnificence could be maintained by only one person.
‘How many staff are there?’ she asked curiously.
‘Nine. Three of us live in. Can I get you any refreshment?’
‘I ate on the flight over, thank you.’
He smiled. ‘Then shall I show you to your room so you can get comfortable?’
‘Is Javier not here?’
‘Mr Casillas is in a meeting. He will be back this evening.’
She forced a smile to hide the pierce of disappointment.
Javier hadn’t said he would be at home to meet her. She had made an assumption that he would want to greet her and make her feel welcome because that was what decent men did for the women carrying their child.
She had a feeling this was a deliberate act on Javier’s behalf, a throwing down of the gauntlet, a reminder that this marriage was not how he wanted it and he would not have his space encroached.
‘Then show me to my room,’ she said with artificial brightness. ‘Has my stuff arrived yet?’
‘It was delivered last night,’ he confirmed, leading the way up the grand staircase that spread like wings at the top for the two long sections of the house. He turned right and strode down the wide landing lined with chaises longues and cabinets filled with ancient artefacts until he reached the furthest door at the end and opened it for her.
Sophie stepped inside and immediately sucked a breath in.
The room was beautiful.
‘I hope you don’t mind but we took the liberty of unpacking for you,’ Julio said. ‘If you are not happy with where your possessions have been put then we will put them where you think more suitable.’
She grinned, her sense of humour tickled at the butler’s gravity. ‘I’m sure wherever they’ve been put will be fine and if it’s not then I can move them myself.’
‘As you wish but please remember we are here to serve. Whatever you require, it is our job to provide it.’
Slowly she gazed around the fabulous room with its three high, wide windows overlooking Javier’s beautiful garden, the furthest revealing a glimpse of a swimming pool. She opened a door to find a bathroom bigger than her childhood bedroom, another that revealed a dressing room as large as the living room of the flat she had shared with Freya.
Everything was so soft and clean and feminine...
Narrowing her eyes, she stared harder and walked back into the bathroom.
There was not a single masculine product to be found.
As casually as she could manage, she turned her attention back to the butler, who now stood formally by the bedroom door. ‘Where’s Javier’s room?’
‘At the end of the west wing. Would you like me to show you around the rest of the house?’
It placed a great strain on all her facial muscles to pull a smile to her face but she managed it. ‘No, thank you, Julio. I’m sure you have work you need to be getting on with. I’m happy to explore on my own.’
‘If you are sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
After asking once again if she required anything and giving instructions on how to contact the staff for when she did, he left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
When she was alone, the smile on Sophie’s face dropped and she folded her arms protectively around her belly.
So much for them creating a real marriage. Javier had stuck her as far away from him as he could get her.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ud22b9ceb-eb32-5915-8bb9-470ba7ddc8ab)
JAVIER SENSED SOPHIE’S presence the moment he stepped through the front door.
There was nothing of her in his eyeline, everything in the same spotless order it was always in, but he could feel her there nonetheless, as if she had arrived and imprinted herself on the walls. If he closed his eyes he could smell her perfume.
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