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

Javier resisted the urge to try to prise answers out of her. ‘So you learned to cook,’ he said, moving the conversation along, past the point of his curiosity.

‘And discovered that I rather enjoyed it.’ She didn’t fail to notice how swiftly he had diverted the conversation from the controversial topic of her past, the years she had spent after they had gone their separate ways. His initial curiosity was gone, and she told herself that she was very thankful that it had, because there was far too much she could never, would never, tell him.

But alongside that relief was a certain amount of disappointment, because his lack of curiosity was all wrapped up with the indifference he felt for her.

She suddenly had the strangest temptation to reach out and touch him, to stroke his wrist, feel the familiar strength of his forearm under her fingers. What would he do? How would he react? Would he recoil with horror or would he touch her back?

Appalled, she thrust a plate of food in front of him and sat down opposite him. She wanted to sit on her treacherous hands just in case they did something wildly inappropriate of their own accord and she had to remind herself shakily that she was a grown woman, fully in control of her wayward emotions. Emotions that had been stirred up, as they naturally would be, by having him invade her life out of the blue.

She heard herself babbling on like the village idiot about her culinary exploits while he ate and listened in silence, with every show of interest in what she was saying.

Which was remarkable, given she had just finished a lengthy anecdote about some slow-cooked beef she had tried to cook weeks previously, which had been disastrous.

‘So you like the apartment,’ Javier drawled, eyes not leaving her face as he sipped some wine. ‘And the job? Now that the work of trying to repair the damage done over the years has begun?’

‘It’s...awkward,’ Sophie told him truthfully.

‘Explain.’

‘You were right,’ she said bluntly, rising to begin clearing the table, her colour high. ‘Some of the people my father trusted have let the company down badly over the years. I can only think that employing friends was a luxury my father had when he started the company, and he either continued to trust that they were doing a good job or he knew that they weren’t but found it difficult to let them go. And then...’

‘And then?’ Javier queried silkily and Sophie shrugged.

‘Getting rid of them never happened. Thankfully the majority have now left, but with generous pension payments or golden handshakes...’ Yet more ways money had drained away from the company until the river had run dry.

‘The company is in far worse shape than even I imagined...’

Sophie blanched. She watched as he began helping to clear the table, bringing plates to the sink.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your father didn’t just take his eye off the ball when he became ill. I doubt his eye had ever really been fully on it in the first place.’

‘You can’t say that!’

‘I’ve gone through all the books with a fine-tooth comb, Sophie.’ He relieved her of the plate she was holding and dried it before placing it on the kitchen counter, then he slung the tea towel he had fetched over his shoulder and propped himself against the counter, arms folded.

Javier had always suspected that her father had been instrumental in her decision to quit university and return to the guy she had always been destined to marry. Even though she had never come right out and said so; even though she had barely had the courage to look him in the face when she had announced that she’d be leaving university because of a family situation that had arisen.

He had never told her that he had subsequently gone to see her parents, that he had confronted her father, who had left him in no doubt that there was no way his precious daughter would contemplate a permanent relationship with someone like him.

He wondered whether the old man’s extreme reaction had been somehow linked to his decline into terminal ill health, and scowled as he remembered the heated argument that had resulted in him walking away, never looking back.

This was the perfect moment to disabuse her of whatever illusions she had harboured about a father who had clearly had little clue about running a business, but the dismay on her face made him hesitate.

He raked his fingers uncomfortably through his hair and continued to stare down at her upturned face.

‘He was a terrific dad,’ she said defensively, thinking back to the many times he had taken the family out on excursions, often leaving the running of the company to the guys working for him. ‘Life was to be enjoyed’ had always been his motto. He had played golf and taken them on fantastic holidays; she recognised now that ineffective, relatively unsupervised management had not helped the company coffers. He had inherited a thriving business but, especially when everything had gone electronic, he had failed to move with the times and so had his pals who had joined the company when he had taken it over.

In retrospect, she saw that so much had been piling up like dark clouds on the horizon, waiting for their moment to converge and create the thunderstorm of events that would land her where she was right now.

Javier opened his mouth to disabuse her of her girlish illusions and then thought of his own father. There was no way he would ever have had a word said against him, and yet, hadn’t Pedro Vasquez once confessed that he had blown an opportunity to advance himself by storming out of his first company, too young and hot-headed to take orders he didn’t agree with? The golden opportunity he had walked away from had never again returned and he had had to devote years of saving and scrimping to get by on the low wages he had earned until his retirement.

But Javier had never held that weak moment against him.

‘Your father wouldn’t be the first man who failed to spot areas for expansion,’ he said gruffly. ‘It happens.’

Sophie knew that he had softened and something deep inside her shifted and changed as she continued to stare up at him, their eyes locked.

She could scarcely breathe.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered and he shook his head, wanting to break a connection that was sucking him in, but finding it impossible to do so.

‘What are you thanking me for?’

‘He was old-fashioned, and unfortunately the people he delegated to were as old-fashioned as he was. Dad should have called a troubleshooter in the minute the profits started taking a nosedive, but he turned a blind eye to what was going on in the company.’

And he turned a blind eye to your ex as well...

That thought made Javier stiffen. Her father had been old-fashioned enough to hold pompous, arrogant views about foreign upstarts, to have assumed that some loser with the right accent was the sort of man his daughter should marry.

But that wasn’t a road he was willing to go down because it would have absolved Sophie of guilt and the bottom line was that no one had pointed a gun to her head and forced her up the aisle.

She had wanted to take that step.

She had chosen to stick with the guy even though she knew that he was blowing up the company with his crazy investments.

She had watched and remained silent as vast sums of vitally needed money had been gambled away.

She had enabled. And the only reason she had done that was because she had loved the man.

He turned away abruptly, breaking eye contact, feeling the sour taste of bile rise to his mouth.

‘The company will have to be streamlined further,’ he told her curtly. ‘Dead wood can no longer be tolerated.’ He remained where he was, hip against the counter, and watched as she tidied, washed dishes, dried them and stayed silent.