‘What are you saying?’
‘That we need to admit defeat and call it a day.’
He reared back. ‘You want to leave me?’
‘No.’ Her throat moved again. ‘I don’t want to but I know I have to. I don’t care what you say, I don’t believe for a minute that you would ever hurt me, but if you don’t believe that and you keep holding me at a distance I think there is a very real chance you will destroy me.’
He didn’t understand. She could be speaking in tongues for all he comprehended.
She must have read what he was thinking on his face for she laughed as tears suddenly rained like a waterfall down her face. ‘And you say I’m the blind fool? I love you, Javier. I love you so much that it’s killing me inside.’
‘How can you love me?’ he asked, disbelieving...not wanting to believe. ‘I’ve treated you like dirt.’
‘Not all the time.’ She pushed the tears away with the palms of her hands. ‘I always understood your actions were deliberate. I’m not a fool, whatever you believe. But you listen. You compromise when you can. You’ve been supportive...so supportive. I cannot tell you how much that has meant to me, the way you tried to convince me not to give up dance when the baby’s born, then when you understood my dream was to be a vet and your belief and encouragement that I could do it... You said I need to put myself first and you’re right, I do. Me and the baby.’
She rubbed her face one last time and climbed off the bed.
Somehow, despite her tears, there was a dignity about her.
‘I can’t keep putting my dreams on hold for other people. My wonderful parents who rescued me, Freya... I regret none of it but now I know things have to change. I have to change. I refuse to put my whole life and heart on hold for you. I deserve better than to spend my life pining for you to fall in love with me when you won’t give your feelings a chance. Our child deserves better too. I thought that given time you would at least fall in love with our baby but I don’t see how that can happen when you won’t allow it and that breaks my heart. I understand if you can’t love me, but to deliberately withhold your love from our child...?’
As she spoke, the tears stopped falling and she grew in stature. But anger was coming through too, a whole gauntlet of emotions showing on her.
‘That’s cruel and it’s weak. Too scared to love a helpless baby?’
‘I am not scared,’ he disputed, furious at the accusation and her twisting of things. ‘I am trying to protect you both!’
‘Oh, yes, you are.’ The tears had gone completely now, her face as hard as he had ever seen it. ‘You are scared to love, Javier Casillas. It’s not me or the baby you’re protecting, it’s yourself, and not because you’re too damaged but because you’re too scared to let us in.’
She practically danced into the dressing room, reappearing moments later with a large suitcase in her hands.
‘You planned this?’ His anger had risen so hard inside him he could choke on it. ‘You already knew you were going to leave?’
‘No. I hadn’t planned to leave but I knew there was a good possibility of it.’
‘Where are you going to go?’ he demanded to know. ‘It’s the middle of the night!’
‘I’ll check into a hotel.’
‘It’s the middle of the night,’ he repeated through gritted teeth.
She put the case down and opened the door. ‘And why’s that? That will be because you spent the entire day avoiding me. You should be grateful—with me gone, you won’t have to hide from your own home any more. You can have a lovely time roaming your lovely empty house, which perfectly matches your empty life.’
‘I was not—’
‘Will you cut the crap?’ she suddenly screamed, hair whipping around her shoulders as she turned wild eyes on him. ‘As soon as anyone gets close to you, you push them away. You’re already pushing our baby away and it’s not even born! You brought your trip to Cape Town forward to avoid going to the scan with me and seeing your own child for yourself! If you won’t let it into your heart and give it the love it deserves then it’s better if you stay on the periphery of our lives and let me love it for the both of us.’
‘You had better not be threatening to take my baby from me,’ he warned. ‘You will not deny me access to it.’
‘Says the man who wanted to shove it in the east wing far away from us so you wouldn’t be disturbed by its cries?’
‘We signed a contract!’ If Sophie wanted to leave then good riddance but she would not take his child from him.
‘I don’t care! Our baby is not a possession, it’s a living being who needs love and security, not a father too scared to let anyone into his heart, who screws over his best friend and cuts his own brother out of his life rather than admit to his mistakes and admit that he needs them. Because, guess what? You need your brother.’
‘Do not bring Luis into this,’ he roared. ‘He’s the disloyal one who walked away from everything we built together, not me.’
‘Do you think he threw away your relationship and business on a whim?’ she asked scathingly, throwing her hands in the air. ‘At least he’s not scared to open his heart, and he’s lived through everything you have. He loves Chloe and if you had any concept of what real love is you would understand that and stop condemning him and accusing him of disloyalty. The world is not against you, Javier, whatever you think, and if the day comes when you see that too and are willing to open your heart to be a real father to our child and understand that you are not, I repeat not, your father, come and find me and you can have all the access you want.’
Extending the handhold for the case to wheel it beside her, she left the room without a backwards glance.
‘Get back here,’ he hollered down the corridor, loud enough to wake the live-in staff in their self-contained flats in the basement. ‘We are not done yet.’
‘Oh, yes, we are.’ Sophie would not look back. She didn’t dare.
Already the outburst that had exploded out of her from nowhere was fading and she could feel her legs weakening as her resolve faltered.
She must not let it falter.
‘If you leave you will never come back. The next time you see me will be in a courtroom.’
She did not answer.
Her throat no longer worked.
Frodo was at the bottom of the stairs, sitting up and looking at her. For once his tail didn’t wag to see her.
From upstairs a door slammed.
She squeezed her eyes shut, took the longest breath of her life, then messaged for a cab.
In the living room that had been cleared of all Javier’s precious artefacts, she gathered Frodo’s stuff together, put his lead on him and took him outside and down the long driveway.
The electric gate opened when she reached the bottom.
The cab pulled up.
Holding her dog tightly on her lap, she took one last look at the house she had hoped so hard would be her home.
And then the tears flowed freely.
* * *
The meeting was not going well. The government official Javier had brought in to look over the blueprint of the development plans before it was officially submitted was being deliberately obtuse and obstructive.
The lead architect, a rising star in Daniele Pellegrini’s architectural empire, was looking everywhere but at Javier, clearly afraid to meet his eyes.
And so he should be scared. This was his fault and Javier would make damned sure Daniele knew it.
Aside from himself, five people sat in this meeting room. Incompetent fools, the lot of them. If they couldn’t produce the blueprints to an earlier deadline without cutting corners they should never have agreed to do so.
His phone buzzed.
He snatched it off the table without looking at it, instead glaring at the people around the table. ‘I shall
take this call and when I get back I expect to be given solutions, not additional problems. Understood?’
He strode from the meeting room without waiting for an answer.
A few minutes alone-time would do him good. Hopefully it would purge his need to bang heads together.
He’d wanted to bang a lot of heads these past few days. His punching bag had had almost forty-eight hours of continual pounding.
He should have brought it to Cape Town with him.
His phone had stopped buzzing. He swiped it and saw his accountant’s name flash up.
He was about to call him back when his phone buzzed again, this time a message alert.
This time, the name that flashed on his screen was not his accountant but his wife.
Heat rushed to his head.
Javier had not seen or heard from Sophie in four days.
He was damned if he would open it. From now on, all contact between them would be done through their lawyers.
As soon as he got back to Madrid, he would call his lawyer and get the ball rolling, couldn’t think why he hadn’t already done so.
That damned black mist had blinded him.
Damn her, they had signed a contract agreeing joint custody in the event that they split up, something she had insisted on. And now she wanted to break it. Not him, her, the woman who had professed her love for him in one breath, then thrown unfounded accusations at him with the next.
Clearly her declaration of love had been a lie, although for what purpose he could not begin to imagine.
He had been honest with her from the start. He had bent over backwards to find compromise and protect her and their child.
Sophie was not taking their child from him. He would never be a hands-on father but he would be a father and he would not allow her to deny him that.
In his mind, he would be a father who would share an evening meal and impart authority and wisdom. He would be a father to look up to.
He would not allow himself to get close enough to be a father who was feared.
About to shove his phone in his pocket, he instead found himself swiping the message.
There was no text. Only a video attachment.
Rubbing violently at his scalp, he stared at the screen in his hand, then, again working of its own volition, his thumb pressed to open it.
He blinked hard, not quite recognising what he was seeing, his heart hammering in his throat, wonder increasing as the golden frames rotating in front of him suddenly became clear.
Little hands were curled in balls at the sides of a round head where eyes, nose and a mouth were clearly delineated, the lips slightly parted as if his tiny baby was snoring gently in its cocoon. A short neck, then a round belly moving up and down, tiny wiggling feet that ended with ten long toes...
Something hot stabbed the backs of his eyes and he blinked a number of times, inhaling deeply, fighting for air.
In his mind flashed the acute pain that had shone in Sophie’s eyes when she had realised he’d deliberately arranged things so he would miss the scan.
Had she sent this as a rebuke?
A taunt?
He pinched the bridge of his nose and pulled shuddering breaths into his lungs.
He felt winded.
Sophie did not do taunts.
He dragged more air into his lungs.
It was only a scan. Only an image.
He needed to pull himself together.
He had a meeting to finish.
Five pale faces sat in silence on his return.
He took his seat and rubbed his hair.
All the anger he’d carried with him since Sophie had left had gone.
Now there was nothing but an acute pain clenching in his guts.
He’d taken his anger out on these people, he realised with a stab of guilt.
He’d been behaving in the exact manner he despised.
Instilling healthy fear was one thing—as a rule he didn’t need to do anything but raise an eyebrow to achieve that—but acting like a pig-headed toddler having a tantrum was quite another.
‘I owe you all an apology,’ he said heavily. ‘I realise I pushed for the plans to be completed early and that you have all worked your backsides off to achieve this.’
He lifted the landline phone and pressed the button that put him through to his PA, who had accompanied him on the trip. ‘Can you arrange for refreshments to be brought in for us from Giglis?’ Giglis was a deli a few streets away. ‘Ask for enough to feed a dozen people, and make sure to buy some for yourself.’
Turning back to the startled faces before him, he got back to his feet. ‘Food will be with you shortly. Eat, then take the rest of the day off. Get back together tomorrow to find solutions to the problems when heads are clear. When everything is ironed out, let me know and we can video conference. I’m going home.’
He didn’t need to be there.
Sophie had called him out correctly that he avoided his home when she was there.
She was gone now. He didn’t need to avoid it any more.
* * *
‘What are you doing?’ Javier asked when he walked into his dressing room and found Marsela rifling through the clothes Sophie had left behind.
She spun around to face him, the colour draining from her face.
He guessed she hadn’t received the message he would be returning early.
She stammered an apology, which turned into a garble. Eventually he was able to gather that Sophie had asked her to pack the possessions she hadn’t had the time to take with her and forward them to England.
He held his palms up and backed out of the room. ‘Carry on. Use our usual courier for it.’
This was good. Excellent in fact. His room, his home, were all becoming his own again. No more opening his bathroom cabinet to find ladies’ toiletries in there, no more walking down his stairs avoiding tripping over a dog, no more clock-watching in the office knowing Sophie was at home waiting for him to return.
The nursery door was open.
He’d blanked it from his mind since Sophie had left but as he passed it something inside caught his eye.
A large white wardrobe, dresser and crib had been delivered in his absence, all placed against a wall ready to be set in their new places.
Swallowing a huge lump that had formed in his throat, Javier was about to call for Marsela to explain where the items had come from when he suddenly remembered Sophie telling him she’d employed a local carpenter to craft the baby’s furniture by hand.
That had been right before she had introduced him to Frodo.
Right before she had told him about her beginnings and he’d feared his heart would splinter.
On the wall beside the tall wardrobe rested a full-length mirror with an edging crafted in the same design as the other bespoke items of furniture.
He dragged his feet to it and stared at his reflection.
From as far back as he could remember everyone had always said how much like his father he was and how much like their mother Luis was. That resemblance had always been something Javier had hated. After their father had killed their mother, he had actively avoided mirrors. Who wanted to see the face of a murderer? Such was his loathing that when he did come across one he would squint his eyes to turn his appearance into a blur.
Sophie didn’t see the face he saw or that others saw.
He narrowed his eyes and peered closer.
What did she see?
How was she able to penetrate the surface to find a part of himself even he didn’t know was there?
He thought hard, remembering the day she had first come to him with the legal documents that would have tied him to Freya. He remembered the soft compassion that had rung out at him when he’d looked into her eyes.
No one had ever looked at
him like that.
No one had ever looked at him the way Sophie did.
She looked for the good in everyone.
She’d ignored all the stories about him, ignored his warnings and all the evidence of his cruel nature and given her heart to him.
Why?
How could she trust her feelings the way she did and trust that the light would break through when all he ever saw was darkness?
But he had seen light with Sophie. Moments of joy when his guard had dropped enough to allow the light to filter through the dark.
How could she put her heart and life in the hands of a man with the potential for such violence...?
His heart made a sudden thump.
The night of Dante’s party...
The green-eyed monster had reared its head straight after his discovery that Luis had married. He’d been so full of angry emotion but he hadn’t lashed out. Even at that awful, low point he hadn’t raised a hand to her; he’d swallowed all that angry passion and made love to her instead, real love, not a mechanical act of going through the motions.
He hadn’t raised a hand to the man he’d thought was flirting with her either, and why had that been? Not just because even in his rage he’d known on a fundamental level that to strike out would be wrong, but because he’d known Sophie would be horrified and that his actions would hurt her.
Sophie could not bear to see another’s pain. It would have hurt her as much as his father’s beatings of his twin had hurt him.
And he could not bear to see her pain.
He would never lay a finger on her, just as he’d been unable to lay a finger on Luis when they had had that terrible row.
Javier was not his father.
He could never hurt someone he loved.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
NIGHT SETTLED IN MADRID.
Javier sat on the floor of the nursery his wife had created for their unborn child, unable to move. His reflection shone back at him, lit by the light of the growing moon that cast shadows that loomed ominously over him.
Billionaire's Baby of Redemption Page 15
