by Penny Jordan
‘You can still be a success in your chosen career and be a wife and mother. In my opinion something would suffer, but that’s only because I think the children’s welfare should be paramount—at least while they are small the mother should stay at home if she can and take care of them. A child needs stability.’
Something poor Angelina had lost. Now it was up to Javier to provide the stability and love that had been ripped away so cruelly. There was no doubt in Sabrina’s mind he was more than up to the task.
‘Why is it that whichever way I turn I feel as if I’m in the wrong?’ Stupidly she felt like crying. If only her mother hadn’t chosen this particular evening to drop by and toast their marriage, because the experience had left Sabrina wishing with all her heart and soul that her marriage to Javier could be real.
‘You are not wrong because you have a different opinion. I know how much the business means to you, Sabrina. That is why I want to help you. At the end of the day you have to do what is best for you.’
‘And what is best for me, Javier? Do you know what’s best for me? Because I sure as hell don’t!’ She’d flown from the room before he had a chance to stop her and Javier put down his drink, dug his hands deep into his trouser pockets and wished his mother or sister could be here so that he could ask them to explain about women…
As he stood in front of Michael’s walk-in wardrobe, Javier’s gaze settled on all the tightly packed Savile Row suits and knew he could no longer ignore the fact that they were there and something had to be done. He had no intention of wiping out every sign that Michael had ever lived in the house, but he was certain that as long as there were too many visible reminders both he and Angelina would find it hard to make a new life. So he had to make a start. The first thing he would do would be to pack up all the contents of Michael’s wardrobes and drawers, and anything that wasn’t obviously personal or that Angela Calder didn’t want he would donate to a local charity shop. That done, he would get some quotes from decorators and think about redecorating both Michael’s and Angelina’s rooms. He would, of course, involve his niece in the design process and hopefully get her excited about planning a new look for her bedroom. He had had a little chat with Angelina before she went to sleep last night and they had both decided it was too soon to start searching for a new home. They would stay in the house until the summer at least, and maybe then they could think about moving.
Javier deliberately didn’t allow himself to dwell on Sabrina’s position in all of their plans or even if she would be involved. All he knew was that she had cried herself to sleep last night after refusing him entry and he had lain awake in his room down the corridor with his door opened, listening to her muffled weeping, his chest so tight that his breathing felt impeded. When she’d left for work this morning, her usual peaches-and-cream complexion looked pale and drawn and there were soft smudges of grey beneath her dulled blue eyes. Whatever was going on in that fertile mind of hers she hadn’t wanted to share it with her husband, and Javier had watched her leave the house with a heavy heart, knowing that sooner or later it was all probably going to end in tears.
Refusing to think about that now, he started to remove the suits from the wardrobe, glad to have something to keep both his hands and his brain occupied or else he would definitely go crazy.
‘How are you feeling today, sweetheart?’ Joining the child and her nanny in the living-room on her return from work, Sabrina bent low to the couch to kiss Angelina on her smooth, plump cheek. The little girl seemed happy and healthy, tucked up beneath her red tartan blanket watching television, Rosie sitting beside her companionably, munching a packet of crisps.
‘Much better, thanks. Tomorrow I’m going to get up properly because my friend Julie is coming over.’
‘Good news, eh? And how are you, Rosie? I was sorry to hear you weren’t well.’
‘I know.’ Rosie’s eyes rolled heavenwards. ‘Bad luck that I was laid up the same time as poor Angelina. Still, it was lucky you were here to help her uncle look after her, wasn’t it?’
‘It was.’ Clutching her bag to her chest, Sabrina forced a smile. ‘Where is Javier, by the way?’
‘In Daddy’s room,’ Angelina replied, her gaze fixed on the TV screen in the corner of the room. ‘He’s been clearing out things so that we can decorate.’
‘Oh.’
Having changed into jeans and an old chambray shirt, Sabrina knocked on the door of what was once Michael Calder’s bedroom and, hearing the terse ‘Come!’, cautiously stepped into the room. There seemed to be piles of clothing everywhere, on the chair, on the huge canopied bed, on the highly polished Victorian chest of drawers. From the opened door of a walk-in wardrobe, Javier appeared, his black hair mussed, his blue shirt opened at the collar with his sleeves rolled up, his long legs encased in soft, dark denim jeans with a black leather belt cinching his waist. He was scowling and didn’t exactly look pleased to see her but the scowl only served to highlight his inevitable attraction. Inside her chest, Sabrina’s heart gave a crazy little leap.
‘Need any help?’ she asked.
‘No. I have everything under control.’
‘You are angry with me?’
‘No.’
‘Then would you like something to eat? I bought some steaks and the makings of a salad. Even I can’t mess that up.’
He didn’t smile at her joke and her stomach lurched. ‘What’s wrong?’
Even though he briefly turned his face aside, Sabrina didn’t miss the flash of pain that passed across his eyes. Michael. How could she have been so insensitive as to walk into the room that had once been his brother-in-law’s, see the clothes that had once belonged to the man piled up ready for removal, and not realise that her husband was hurting, missing the man who had once been his friend—the man who had been married to his beloved sister…?
‘Nothing is wrong. Leave me. I will come and join you shortly.’
‘Javier, I—’
‘Go, Sabrina! Can you not understand that I do not want you in here?’ His black eyes were blazing, and she felt his fury hit her somewhere in the solar plexus. Swallowing down her hurt, she decided to stay her ground. This wasn’t about her. This was about the man who had sacrificed his own dreams, his way of life, to come and take care of an orphaned little girl because she was family.
‘What if I don’t want to go, Javier? What then?’
He swore in Spanish, shook his head, then started to pull open one of the drawers in the Victorian chest. Her heart pounding, Sabrina walked up behind him, slid her arms around his waist, felt his whole body stiffen in protest, then leant her head gently against his back. Her senses were immediately invaded by the warmth and the scent of the man, making her realise just how much she had been longing to touch him like this.
‘What are you doing?’
‘What does it feel like I’m doing?’ she murmured.
’Dios!’ Pushing her arms away, he spun round, his expression furious. ‘I told you I did not want you in here.’
She blinked. ‘I don’t believe you. You need me.’
‘I do not need anybody!’
‘You’re lying.’
‘Sabrina, I—’
Drawing level, she curled her hand into his shoulder and drew his face down to hers. Before he could react, she slanted her mouth deliberately across his, coaxing his tongue, drawing his silky heat into her own, then slid her free hand down his shirt, passed the leather belt round his waist, and boldly down to the now bulging fly of his denim jeans.
Moving his mouth from hers, he slid it in a damp trail across her cheek to her ear and Sabrina registered his helpless shudder with a small flare of excitement deep in her belly. Murmuring a destroyingly sexual entreaty against the tender skin of her lobe, he lifted his head to stare deeply into her wide blue eyes. ‘Go and lock the door,’ he commanded hoarsely.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHEN she came back he swept her down onto the soft blue carpet, his hands already on the buttons
of her shirt, pulling it aside—feasting his gaze on the soft, creamy mounds of her breasts in her white lace bra.
‘So,’ he said softly, ‘you will not share with me what is in your mind but we will share this, hmm?’
Even as he spoke, he was undoing her zipper, tugging at the heavy denim as he tried to rid her of her jeans. In a fever of desperate wanting, Sabrina helped him, then, urging his mouth down to hers, lost herself in the hot, deep flavours of his kiss, the hard, warm male textures of his skin. Feeling the taut muscles of his shoulders bunching beneath her palms, she realised he was reaching for his own zipper, easing it down, with one firm tug divesting her of the matching white lace panties she was wearing.
Reaching into his back pocket, he sheathed himself with the contents of the small foil packet he withdrew, then, positioning himself more fully on top of her, staked his claim with one sure, deep thrust, emitting a gravel-voiced groan as his hips ground against the firm but soft flesh of her thighs. Sabrina shut her eyes, murmuring words that were more like prayers—words she’d never uttered to any man before Javier. He consumed her; not just with his amazing body, but with his mind and his heart and his soul as well.
He was a good man, the best man, and she loved him with a depth of feeling and emotion that had been beyond her experience until now. It was terrifying how much she loved him. But oh, how she craved for him to love her back, craved as much of him as he was willing to give and more. As he thrust deeper, the ache for him growing into an unstoppable crescendo, her fingernails dug into the coiled steel muscle of his biceps as he brought her to climax, her body digging deeper into the soft blue carpet beneath her with the force of his possession. With a harsh, heavy groan, his own release quickly followed, his body pumping harder into hers as she sagged, spent, against the floor, her mind spinning, her body throbbing in the aftermath of the torrid, urgent coupling that had just taken place.
As he dropped his head onto her chest his warm, ragged breath whispered tantalisingly across her breasts in the white lace confines of her bra, and even though she was still dazed from his loving she wanted his hands on her again, skin to skin, breath to breath. Consumed by love, Sabrina pushed her fingers through the short, silky strands of his black hair. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked him gently.
He lifted his head, his dark eyes glittering back at her with hunger and sorrow and something else that she couldn’t quite reach.
‘You ask me if I am all right?’ His perfectly even white teeth looked even whiter against the smooth bronze of his skin. ‘It is I who should be asking you that question. I confess I had planned on a long, slow, sweet seduction some time soon before I completely lost my mind with wanting you—but this?’ Apparently furious with himself, he made a move to detach himself, but Sabrina stroked across the rippling muscle in his arm beneath his shirt and her lips parted in a softly coaxing smile.
‘Passion has a life of its own, you said. Remember?’
Nodding slowly, he gazed down at her lovely face, those bewitching blue eyes with their sweeping honey-brown lashes, the soft pink flush on her cheeks. ‘Sí. I remember.’
‘Then don’t be angry.’
‘I am not angry with you.’ In one fluid movement he detached himself from her, grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on the chest of drawers, disposed of the condom then pulled up the jeans that he hadn’t removed completely. Then, reaching for Sabrina’s scattered clothing, he dropped the items gently down across her belly. ‘It is the world in general I am angry at—maybe God too. I cannot help wondering what else the powers that be have in store for me.’
‘Only good things, Javier. I am sure of it.’
‘I am not sure of anything right now. I miss the wisdom of my friend. Michael always seemed to know the right thing to do in a crisis. After Dorothea died, people were amazed at how well he coped; how he was able to soothe others even in the depths of his own grief—me included. But I knew his heart was broken. That is why he never married again. In eight years I think he had one or two dinner dates—that’s all. He was not interested in any other woman except my sister.’
Sucking in a shaky breath, Sabrina clutched her clothes to her stomach then slowly started to put them on. ‘He must have loved her very much.’ Her voice husky, she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. The sorrow in his voice made her want to protect him from every hurt that ever came his way again. It made her want to throw herself into his arms and tell him how desperately, how deeply she loved him, that she could understand Michael not wanting anyone else after Dorothea because she felt the same way about Javier. But she couldn’t tell him that, could she? Not when they’d made an agreement. And Javier wasn’t ready to surrender his heart—she could see that—not when he associated loving someone with losing them.
‘I’ll make us a nice meal.’ Touching his shoulder as she walked up behind him, she sensed his relief that she was bringing this conversation to an end.
‘Will you join me in a while?’
‘Sí.’ For a moment the heat of his gaze scorched her and she couldn’t look away, then he lifted his hand, smoothed back a lock of her hair and sighed.
‘Thank you, Sabrina.’
But as she left the room, Sabrina wasn’t exactly sure what it was he was thanking her for.
‘William, darling, don’t cover Auntie Sabrina in flour, please! She’s got to go back to work very soon.’
With two huge, meltingly blue eyes staring wonderingly up at her beneath a shining curtain of precision-cut blond hair, Sabrina grinned at the little boy who up until a moment ago had been liberally dusting flour from his mother’s baking all over the kitchen floor, and wished with a sudden fierce longing that he was hers. The yearning for a child of her own had been slowly creeping up on her ever since she’d met Javier and the delightful Angelina and there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to put a stop to it. Consequently when she’d woken early that morning with stomach cramps that were bad enough to pressgang her out of bed and into the bathroom, she had hugged her arms tightly around herself and cried shamelessly at the visible proof that she couldn’t be pregnant. It didn’t make sense. The ordered, tidy, safe little world she’d so carefully constructed around herself for the past fifteen years had been totally turned on its head and she didn’t feel as though she had a hope of righting it any time soon.
‘He’s all right. He’s just being creative, aren’t you, William? He might be a top chef one day, you never know.’
‘Just as long as he makes loads of money and keeps his mother in the style to which she could easily become accustomed, eh, Will?’ Reaching for the broom, Ellie began to energetically sweep the trail of flour dust into a corner before scooping it up in a dustpan. From the living-room Tallulah’s sudden indignant wail cut through the house and Ellie pushed back her hair and rolled her eyes at Sabrina.
‘Kids, eh? Who’d have ’em? I expect Henry has lobbed something at her, as usual. I can’t seem to make him realise she’s not some kind of bendy toy doll that won’t break.’
Following her sister into the topsy-turvy living-room that was turned upside-down by an earthquake of clothes, books, toys and half-nibbled discarded biscuits, Sabrina watched Ellie stoop to pick up the distressed baby from the playpen while little Henry plonked himself on the carpet and picked up a rattle, apparently oblivious to his sister’s cries.
‘There, there, now. You’re all right. Mummy’s here, darling girl.’ With a kiss on the top of her head and a firm cuddle, Ellie’s practised ministrations quickly soothed the baby’s crying, and as the child pressed her face into her mother’s faded green T-shirt Sabrina once again had to hold back the tide of emotion that threatened to overwhelm her.
‘You’re looking a little peaky if you don’t mind me saying.’ Her brow puckering, Ellie suddenly narrowed her gaze suspiciously at Sabrina.
‘Oh, my God! You’re not—?’
‘No, I’m not.’ Kneeling down beside Henry, Sabrina coaxed the toddler into her arms, s
itting him down on her lap with the baby’s rattle. ‘For goodness’ sake, you’re as bad as Mum. When are the pair of you going to get it through your thick skulls that this marriage of mine is only temporary? A business arrangement?’
‘Who are you trying to kid? It’s as plain as the nose on your face, Sabrina Kendricks, you’re loopy about the man! And if I’m not mistaken—and I know I’m not—he feels exactly the same about you. And if you’re telling me that you’ve spent all this time under his roof and haven’t done the deed then either your libido has ground to a halt from lack of use or you’re an even slower worker than I thought you were when it comes to men!’
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it. And by the way, that hurt look doesn’t wash with me either. You’re in love with him, aren’t you?’ Her voice softening, Ellie joined her sister on the carpet, carefully sitting Tallulah down in front of her to face Henry.
‘What do you want, a signed confession?’ Sabrina’s blue eyes looked pained.
‘Have you told him?’
‘Are you mad? Of course I haven’t told him!’ At Henry’s startled glance, Sabrina hugged the child to her, ruffling the top of his baby-fine hair with her fingers. ‘Javier doesn’t want to get involved with me that way. He’s lost his sister and his brother-in-law and Angelina is his priority, and nobody could blame him for that. The last thing he needs is an emotional entanglement with a woman eight years older than him and a workaholic to boot.’
‘You’re not a workaholic. You used to be, but since you’ve met Javier you’ve changed, Sabrina. Can’t you see it? We were lucky if we got to see you once a month, let alone once a week. Now you drop by fairly regularly and when you do you mainly talk about Javier and Angelina—a sure sign that work is no longer your big priority.’
Ellie was right, Sabrina realised. Of course, East-West Travel was still important, but somehow, without her knowing, her priorities had changed. Javier and Angelina had become her family without a doubt and they did take priority in her life. So much so that it was going to be an unbearable wrench to leave them behind—as one day soon she would have to. And somehow she knew that, no matter how successful her business became, nothing would ever compensate for the awful loss of the man and child who had come to mean so much to her.
