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

‘I...I...’

‘Let me in.’

‘I was just about to...have something to eat, actually...’

‘Perfect. I’ll join you.’

That wasn’t what she’d had in mind. What she’d had in mind was a lead-up to a polite excuse and an arrangement to meet when she had some sort of defence system in place. Instead, here she was, hair all over the place, wearing jogging bottoms and an old, tight tee shirt bought at a music festival a dozen years ago and shrunk in the wash over time.

‘Come on, Sophie! I’m growing older by the minute!’

‘Fine!’ She buzzed him in, belatedly remembering that it was actually his apartment, so he had every right to be here. And not only was it his apartment, but she wasn’t paying a penny towards the rent, at his insistence.

She scrambled to the mirror by the front door, accepted that it was too late to start pinning her hair back into something sensible, and even though she was expecting him, she still started when he rapped on the door.

He’d obviously come straight from work, although, en route, he had divested himself of his tie, undone the top couple of buttons of his shirt and rolled his sleeves to his elbows. Her eyes dipped to his sinewy forearms and just as quickly back to his face.

‘You look flustered,’ Javier drawled, leaning against the door frame and somehow managing to crowd her. ‘I haven’t interrupted you in the middle of something pressing, have I?’ This was how he remembered her. Tousled and sexy and so unbelievably, breathtakingly fresh.

And innocent.

Which was a bit of a joke, all things considered.

Dark eyes drifted downwards, taking in the outline of her firm, round breasts pushing against a tee shirt that was a few sizes too small, taking in the slither of flat belly where the tee shirt ended and the shapeless jogging bottoms began. Even in an outfit that should have done her no favours, she still looked hot, and his body responded with suitable vigour.

He straightened, frowning at the sudden discomfort of an erection.

‘I haven’t managed to catch much of you over the past couple of weeks.’ He dragged his mind away from thoughts of her, a bed and a heap of hurriedly discarded clothes on the ground. ‘So I thought I’d try you at home before you disappeared up north for the weekend.’

‘Of course.’

There was a brief pause, during which he tilted his head to one side, before pointedly looking at the door handle.

‘So...’ He looked around him at his apartment with satisfaction. He’d had it redone. ‘How are you finding the apartment?’

Some might say that he’d been a little underhand in the renovating of the apartment, which had been in perfectly good order a month previously. He’d walked round it, looking at the soulless, sterile furnishings, and had been able to picture her reaction to her new surroundings: disdain. He had always been amused at her old-fashioned tastes, despite the fact that she had grown up with money.

‘I imagine your family home to be a wonder of the most up-to-the-minute furnishings money can buy,’ he had once teased, when she’d stood staring in rapt fixation at a four-poster bed strewn with a million cushions in the window of a department store. She’d waxed lyrical then about the romance of four-poster beds and had told him, sheepishly, that the family home was anything but modern.

‘My mum’s like me,’ she had confessed with a grin. ‘She likes antiques and everything that’s old and worn and full of character.’

Javier had personally made sure to insert some pieces of character in the apartment. He, himself, liked modern and minimalist. His impoverished family home had been clean but nearly everything had been bought second-hand. He’d grown up with so many items of furniture that had been just a little too full of character that he was now a fully paid-up member of all things modern and lacking in so-called character.

But he’d enjoyed hand-picking pieces for the apartment, had enjoyed picturing her reaction to the four-poster bed he had bought, the beautifully crafted floral sofa, the thick Persian rug that broke up the expanse of pale flooring.

‘The apartment’s fine.’ Sophie stepped away from him and folded her arms. ‘Better than fine,’ she admitted, eyes darting to him and then staying there because he was just so arresting. ‘I love the way it’s been done. You should congratulate your interior designer.’

‘Who said I used one?’ He looked at her with raised eyebrows and she blushed in sudden confusion, because to picture him hand-picking anything was somehow...intimate. And of course he would never have done any such thing. What über-rich single guy would ever waste time hunting down rugs and curtains? Definitely not a guy like Javier, who was macho to the very last bone in his body.

‘I’m afraid there’s not a great deal of food.’ She turned away because her heart was beating so fast she could barely breathe properly. His presence seemed to infiltrate every part of the apartment, filling it with suffocating, masculine intensity. This was how it had always been with him. In his presence, she’d felt weak and pleasurably helpless. Even as a young guy, struggling to make ends meet, he’d still managed to project an air of absolute assurance. He’d made all the other students around him seem like little boys in comparison.

The big difference was that, back then, she’d had a remit to bask and luxuriate in that powerful masculinity. She could touch, she could run her fingers through his springy, black hair and she’d had permission to melt at the feel of it.

She’d been allowed to want him and to show him how much she wanted him.

Not so now.

Furthermore, she didn’t want to want him. She didn’t want to feel herself dragged back into a past that was gone for good. Of course, foolish love was gone for good, and no longer a threat to the ivory tower she had constructed around herself that had been so vital in withstanding the years spent with her husband, but she didn’t want to feel that pressing, urgent want either...

She didn’t want to feel her heart fluttering like an adolescent’s because he happened to be sharing the same space as her. She’d grown up, gone through some hellish stuff. Her outlook on life had been changed for ever because of what she’d had to deal with. She had no illusions now and no longer believed that happiness was her right. It wasn’t and never would be. Javier Vasquez belonged to a time when unfettered optimism had been her constant companion. Now, not only was the murky past an unbreachable wall between them, but so were all the changes that had happened to her.

‘I wasn’t expecting company.’ She half turned to find him right behind her, having followed her into the kitchen.

The kitchen was big, a clever mix of old and new, and she felt utterly at home in it.

‘Smells good. What is it?’

‘Just some tomato sauce. I was going to have it with pasta.’

‘You never used to enjoy cooking.’ Yet again, he found himself referring to the past, dredging it up and bringing it into the present, where it most certainly did not belong.

‘I know.’ She shot him a fleeting smile as he sat down at the table, angling his chair so that he could extend his long legs to one side. ‘I never had to do it,’ she explained. ‘Mum loved cooking and I was always happy to let her get on with it. When she got ill, she said it used to occupy her and take her mind off her health problems, so I never interfered. I mean, I’d wash the dishes and tidy behind her, but she liked being the main chef. And then...’

She sighed and began finishing the food preparation, but horribly aware of those lazy, speculative eyes on her, following her every movement.