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‘She must have produced her insurance certificate,’ Matias mused, eyes narrowing. ‘What’s the woman’s name?’
‘I’ll email you the details.’ Art sighed, knowing without having to be told the direction of his friend’s thoughts. ‘I haven’t had a chance to look at it but I took a picture of the document.’
‘Good,’ Matias said with some satisfaction. ‘Do that immediately, Art. And there will be no need for you to deal with this matter. I will handle it myself.’
‘Why?’ Art was the only person who would ever have dared ask such a forthright question. Especially when the question was framed in a tone of voice that carried a warning.
‘Let’s just say that I might want to get to know her better. Knowledge is power, Art, and I now regret that I didn’t dig a little deeper into Carney’s private life. But don’t look so worried! I’m not the big bad wolf. I don’t make a habit of eating innocent young girls. So if she’s as nice as you imply, then she should be as safe as houses.’
‘Your mother wouldn’t like this,’ Art warned bluntly.
‘My mother is far too kind for her own good.’ For a few seconds, Matias thought of Rose Rivero, who was recuperating from a near fatal stroke at one of the top hospitals in London. If his father had never recovered from Carney’s treachery, then his mother had never recovered from his father’s premature death. When you looked at it, Carney had not only been responsible for his family’s unjust state of penury, but beyond that for the stress that had killed his father and for the ill health and unhappiness that had dogged his mother’s life. Revenge had been a long time coming but, if only James Carney knew it, it was now a juggernaut rolling with unstoppable speed towards him...
* * *
Sophie Watts stared up at the soaring glass tower in front of her and visibly quailed.
The lovely man whose car she had accidentally bruised three days previously had been very accommodating when she had phoned the number he had given her when they had exchanged details. She had explained the situation with her insurance policy and he had been sympathetic. He had told her in a friendly enough voice that she would have to come and discuss the matter personally but he was sure that something could be sorted out.
Unfortunately, the building in front of her did not look like the sort of user-friendly place in which cheerful and accommodating people worked, sorting out thorny situations in a cordial and sympathetic manner.
She clutched her capacious bag tightly and continued staring. Her head told her that she had no option but to move forward with the crowd while her feet begged to be allowed to turn tail and flee back to her low-key corner of East London and her little house in which she did her small-scale catering and baking for anyone who needed her services.
She didn’t belong here and the clothes she had carefully chosen to meet Art Delgado now felt ridiculous and out of place.
The young women sweeping past her with their leather computer bags and clicking high heels were all dressed in sharp black suits. They weren’t dithering. They were striding with purpose into the aggressive glass tower.
A small, plump girl with flyaway hair wearing a summery flowered dress and sandals didn’t belong here.
Sophie propelled herself forward, eyes firmly ahead. It had been a mistake to come here first thing so that she could get it over with. That idea had been great in theory but she hadn’t banked on the early rush-hour stampede of city workers. However, it was too late now to start chastising herself.
Inside, the foyer was a wondrous and cruel blend of marble, glass and metal.
Arrangements of sofas were scattered here and there in circular formations. The sofas were all very attractive and looked enormously uncomfortable. Clearly management didn’t want to encourage too much lounging around. Ahead of her, a bank of receptionists was busily directing people while streams of smartly dressed worker bees headed for the gleaming lifts opening and closing just beyond an array of stunted palm trees in huge ceramic pots.
Sophie felt a pang of physical longing for her kitchen, where she and Julie, her co-worker, chatted and baked and cooked and made big plans for the upmarket bakery they would jointly open one day. She craved the feel of her apron, the smell of freshly baked cake and the pleasant playing around of ideas for meals they had booked in for catering jobs. Even though she was now talking to one of the receptionists, explaining who she wanted to see, confirming that an appointment had been made and stuttering over her own name, she was unhappily longing to be somewhere else.
Frayed nerves made her miss what the snappily dressed girl in front of her had just said but then she blinked and registered that a mistake had been made.
‘I don’t know a Mr... River,’ she said politely.
‘Rivero.’ Eyebrows arched up, lips tightened, eyes cooled.
‘I’m here to see a Mr Delgado.’
‘Your meeting is with Mr Rivero.’ The receptionist swivelled the computer towards her. ‘You are to sign in. Anywhere on the screen will do and just use your finger. Mr Rivero’s secretary will be waiting for you on the tenth floor. Here’s a clip-on pass. Make sure you don’t remove it because if you do you’ll be immediately escorted out of the building.’
In a fluster, Sophie did as she was told but her heart was hammering inside her as she obeyed instructions, allowing herself to be swept along in a group towards the nearest lift and then staring fixedly at nothing in particular as she was whooshed up to the tenth floor, as directed.
Who was Mr Rivero? She had banked on the comfort of explaining her awkward situation to the very nice Mr Delgado. What sort of hearing was she going to get from a complete stranger? She was as tense as a bow string when, disgorged into the plushest surroundings she had ever seen, she was taken in hand by a very tall, middle-aged woman whose expression of sympathy did nothing to quell her escalating nerves.
And then she was being shown into an office, faced with a closed door, ushered through it and deposited like an unwanted parcel in a room that was simply breathtaking.
For a few seconds, eyes as round as saucers, Sophie looked around her. She hadn’t budged from where she had been placed just inside the door of a gigantic office. She cravenly recoiled from actually being bold enough to walk forward. Bag clutched tightly in front of her, she gradually became aware of the man sitting behind the desk. It was as if, suddenly, she focused, and on focusing felt the thudding impact of shock because the guy she was staring at was the most stunningly drop-dead gorgeous specimen she had ever seen in her entire life.
Her breathing slowed and even though she knew she was staring, she couldn’t help herself. His hair was raven black, his eyes the colour of the darkest, richest chocolate, his features lovingly and perfectly chiselled. He oozed the sort of stupendous sex appeal that made heads swing round for a second and third look.
The silence stretched and stretched between them and then it dawned on her that she was making an absolute fool of herself.
‘Miss Watts.’ Matias was the first to speak. ‘Do you intend to hover by the door for the duration of this meeting?’ He didn’t get up to shake her hand. He didn’t smile. He did nothing to put her at ease. Instead he nodded at the chair in front of his desk. ‘Sit down.’
Sophie shuffled forward, not knowing whether she was expected to shake his hand as a formality, but his expression was so forbidding that she decided against it and instead sank into the leather chair. She almost immediately leaned forward and rushed headlong into the little speech she had earlier rehearsed.
‘I’m really sorry about the car, Mr...er... Rivero. I honestly had no idea that your friend was turning into the drive. It’s so difficult to see round that bend, especially in summer. I admit I may have been driving a little faster than usual but I want to impress upon you that it was unintentional.’ What she could have added but didn’t was that her vision had been blurred because she had been doing her utmost not to cry after a stormy and upsetting meeting with James Carney.
* * *
Matias was watching her intently, his dark eyes narrowed on her flushed and surprisingly pretty face. He was a man who went for catwalk models, with long, angular bodies and striking, photogenic faces, yet there was something alluring about the woman sitting in front of him. Something about the softness of her face, the pale, vanilla shade of her unruly hair, the perfect clarity of her aquamarine eyes, held his attention and he could only assume that it was because of her connection to James Carney.
He hadn’t known the woman existed but the minute he had found out he had recognised the gift that had landed in his lap for what it was.
He thought back to those letters he had unearthed, and his jaw tightened. That soft, wide-eyed, innocent look wasn’t going to fool him. He didn’t know the full story of the woman’s relationship to Carney but he certainly intended to find out, just as he intended to exploit the situation he had been handed to discover if there were any other secrets the man might have been hiding. The broader the net was cast, the wider the catch.
‘Employee,’ Matias replied. This just in case she got it into her head that special favours were going to be granted because of Art’s personal connection with him.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Art Delgado is my employee. He was driving my Maserati. Miss Watts, do you have any idea how much one costs?’
‘No, I don’t,’ Sophie said faintly. He was having the most peculiar effect on her. It was as though the power of his presence had sucked the oxygen out of the air, making it difficult to breathe.
‘In that case, allow me to enlighten you.’ He named a sum that was sufficiently staggering to make her gasp. ‘And I have been told that your insurance policy is invalid.’
‘I didn’t know,’ Sophie whispered. ‘I’m usually so good at dealing with all that stuff but things have been a bit hectic recently. I know I cancelled my old policy and I had planned on renewing with somewhere cheaper but...’
Matias held up one imperious hand to stop her in mid flow. ‘I’m not interested in the back story,’ he informed her coolly. ‘To cut to the chase, the damage you have done to my car will run to many, many thousands.’
Sophie’s mouth dropped open. ‘Thousands?’ she parroted.
‘Literally. I’m afraid it won’t be a simple case of sorting out the dent. The entire left wing of the car will have to be replaced. High-performance cars charge high-performance prices.’
‘I... I had no idea. I haven’t got that sort of money. I...when I spoke to your friend...sorry, your employee Mr Delgado on the phone, he said that we would be able to work something out.’
‘Sadly working something out really isn’t in his remit.’ Matias thought that his old friend would raise a sardonic eyebrow at that sweeping statement.
‘I could pay you back over time.’ Sophie wondered what sort of time line would be acceptable to the unforgiving man staring coldly at her as though she were an undesirable alien that had suddenly invaded his personal space. She somehow didn’t imagine that his time line was going to coincide with hers. ‘I run a little catering business with a friend,’ she hurtled on, desperate to bring this uncomfortable meeting to an end and even more desperate to find some sort of solution that wouldn’t involve bankruptcy for her and Julie’s fledgling start-up company. ‘We only opened up a year and a half ago. Before that we were both primary school teachers. It’s taken an awful lot of borrowing to get everything in order and to get my kitchen up to the required standard for producing food commercially, and right at this moment, well...there isn’t a great deal of spare change flying about.’
‘In other words you’re broke.’
‘We’re really making a go of things, Mr Rivero!’ Heat flared in her cheeks. ‘And I’m sure we can work something out when it comes to a repayment schedule for your car...’
‘I gather you’re James Carney’s daughter.’ Matias lowered his eyes, then he pushed back his chair and stood up to stroll across to the impressive bank of windows, in front of which was a tidy sitting area complete with a low table fashioned in chrome and glass.
Sophie was riveted at the sight of him. The way he moved, the unconscious flex of muscle under the expensive suit, the lean length of his body, the casual strength he exuded that was frankly spellbinding. He turned to look at her and it took a big effort not to look away.
His throwaway remark had frozen her to the spot.
‘Well?’ Matias prodded. ‘Art was on his way to pay a little visit to James Carney on business,’ he expanded, ‘when you came speeding out of his drive like a bat out of hell and crashed into my car. I had no idea that the man even had a family.’ He was watching her very carefully as he spoke and was mildly surprised that she didn’t see to ask him a very fundamental question, which was why the heck should Carney’s private life have anything to do with him?
Whatever she was, she clearly didn’t have a suspicious nature.
Sophie was lost for words. She had been shaken by the accident, upset after the visit to her father, and Art Delgado, so different from this flint-eyed guy assessing her, had encouraged her into a confidence she rarely shared with anyone.
‘Of course...’ Matias shrugged, curiosity spiking at her continued silence ‘...I am not primarily concerned with the man’s private life but my understanding was that he was a widower.’
‘He is,’ Sophie whispered, ashamed all over again at a birthright she hadn’t asked for, the consequences of which she had been forced, however, to live with.
‘So tell me where you fit in,’ Matias encouraged. ‘Unless, of course, that was a little white lie you told my employee on the spur of the moment.’ He appeared to give this a little thought. ‘Maybe you were embarrassed to tell the truth...?’
‘Sorry?’ That garnered her attention and she looked at him with a puzzled frown.
‘Young girl having an affair with an old man? I can see that you might have been embarrassed enough to have said the first thing that came to your head, anything that sounded a little less unsavoury than what you really are to Carney.’
‘How dare you?’ Sophie gasped, half standing. ‘That’s disgusting!’
‘I’m just trying to do the maths.’ Matias frowned and tilted his head to one side. ‘If you’re not his lover, the man must have had a mistress while he was married. Am I right? Are you Carney’s love child?’
Sophie laughed bitterly because nothing could have been further from the truth. Love had never come into the equation. Before her untimely death, her mother, Angela Watts, had been an aspiring actress whose great misfortune had been her Marilyn Monroe blonde-bombshell looks. Prey to men’s flattery and pursued for her body, she had made the fatal error of throwing her net too wide. James Carney, young, rich and arrogant, had met her at a club and, like all the others, had pursued her, but he had had no intention of ever settling down with someone he considered a two-bit tart with a pretty face. Those details had been drummed into Sophie from as soon as she was old enough to understand. He had had fun with Angela and she had foolishly thought that the fun would actually go somewhere, but even when she had contrived to trap him with a pregnancy he had stood firm, only later marrying a woman he considered of the right class and social position.
‘He met my mother before he was married,’ Sophie confessed, belatedly adding, ‘not that it has anything to do with...well, anything. Mr Rivero, I would be more than happy for you to draw up a schedule for repayment. I will sign it right here and right now and you have my word that you will have every penny I owe you back. With interest if that’s what you want.’
Matias burst out laughing. ‘That’s very obliging of you,’ he drawled lazily. ‘Believe it or not, I haven’t become a successful businessman by putting my faith in the impossible. I have no idea what you owe the bank but I suspect you’re probably barely making ends meet. Am I right?’
He tilted his head to one side and Sophie looked at him with loathing. He might be sinfully handsome but she had never met anyone she hated more on the spot. She wasn’t stupid. He had all the money in the world, from the looks of it, but he wasn’t going to be lenient when it came to getting back every penny she owed him and she knew that he wouldn’t give a hoot if he drove her little company into the ground to do it.
Right now, he was toying with her like a cat playing with a mouse.
‘We could work out a schedule,’ he mused, ‘but I would be on my walking frame before you made the final payment.’ She really had the most wonderfully transparent face, he thought. Impossible though it was, she looked as pure as the driven snow.
But perhaps she wasn’t fashioned in the same mould as the father. Certainly, she wouldn’t have had the example set by him on a daily basis if she was the product of a youthful affair. He was surprised, in fact, that she had any contact with the man at all and he wondered how that had worked when Carney’s socially acceptable wife had been alive.
Matias wasn’t going to waste time pondering stuff like that, however. Right now, he was working out how best to use her to his advantage. When he pulled the plug on Carney, he intended to hit him on all fronts and he wondered whether she could be of use to him in that.
What other secrets was the man hiding? Matias knew that the company was beset with financial problems but, in the ether, there had been rumours of foul play... Sometimes skeletons were hard to find, however hard you dug, and Carney was a man who was sly and smart enough to cover his tracks. Wouldn’t it be satisfying if all his dark secrets were to be exposed to the cruel glare of light...?
Could this fresh-faced girl be the key to unlock more doors? And what if there were personal skeletons? An attack on all fronts was certainly worth considering. He was honest enough to acknowledge that this level of revenge was probably beneath him, but those letters he’d found...they had made this personal...
‘You could always ask Daddy for the money,’ he ventured smoothly, knowing what the answer would be.
‘No!’ This time she did stand up. Her full mouth was drawn into a thin, obstinate line. ‘I won’t have...my father involved in this. Bankrupt me if you want.’ She reached into her bag, pulled out one of the business cards, remembering how filled with optimism she and Julie had been when they had had them printed. ‘Here’s my business card. You can come and see the premises. It’s just in my kitchen but the equipment must be worth something. I have a number of big jobs lined up, so if you’re patient I can do those and you can have the money. As for the rest... I will sell my house and I should be able to sort out the rest of the debt with money left over after the mortgage has been covered.’
Matias looked at her, every line of his powerful body indicating a man totally relaxed, totally unfazed by her emotional outburst.
Dark eyes roamed over her. She had tried to do something businesslike with her hair but somewhere along the line it had rebelled and tangled, white-blonde strands already curling around her cheeks. Her eyes were wide and a curious shade of turquoise and fringed, he noted, with thick dark lashes, which was at odds with the colour of her hair. And her body...
He shifted in his chair, astonished that he was even bothering to notice that she had curves in all the right places and luscious breasts that were prominent against the truly appalling flowered dress she was wearing.
She lacked sophistication and clearly had no style gene whatsoever, so what, he wondered, with a certain amount of irritation, was it about her that captured his attention so completely?
‘You’re overreacting,’ he told her as she remained standing, her blue eyes dark with worry, anger and distress.
‘You’ve just told me that you’re not willing to come to any kind of arrangement with me about the money I owe you for your stupid car!’ Easy-tempered by nature, Sophie was shocked at the stridency of her voice and the fact that she was yelling at him! ‘I can’t go to my bank and draw out the kind of money I would need to make good the damage. So, of course I’m going to be upset.’
‘Sit down.’
‘No. I’m going. You can get in touch with me on the number on the card! I’m going to have to talk this through with Julie. I don’t know what she’s going to say. She’s put in most of her savings to try and get this business of ours going, as have I, so I’m going to have to find the money to pay her back too and make sure she doesn’t have to pay for my mistake.’ Her voice was wobbling and she stared off into the distance in an attempt to stop herself from crying.
Matias squashed all feelings of guilt. Why should he feel guilty? He was staring at a woman whose father had destroyed his family. In that scenario, guilt didn’t exist. After all, all was fair in love and war, wasn’t it?
‘You could do that,’ he murmured, ‘or you could sit back down and listen to the proposition I have for you.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ueaebf79f-284e-5107-8131-4d5a7ac3dabf)
‘GO EASY ON THE GIRL,’ Art had urged his friend the previous day. ‘Because Carney’s her father, doesn’t mean that she has been cut from the same cloth.’
Matias hadn’t argued the point with his friend, but he had privately held the view that the apple never fell far from the tree and an innocent smile and fluttering eyelashes, which he was guessing had been the stunt the woman had pulled on Art, didn’t mean she had a pure soul.
Now, however, he was questioning the judgement call he had made before he had even met her. He was seldom, if ever, wrong when it came to summing people up, but in this instance his friend might have had a point. Matias wasn’t going to concede that the woman spent all her spare time helping the poor and unfortunate or that she was the sort who wouldn’t have recognised an uncharitable thought if it did a salsa in front of her. What he did recognise was that he would be better served in his quest for revenge by getting to know her.
She was an unexpected piece of a puzzle he had thought was already complete and he would have to check her out.
He had waited years for retribution. Waiting a couple of weeks longer wasn’t going to kill him and it might put him in an even stronger position than he already was.
He looked at her anxious face and smiled slowly. ‘There’s no need to look so worried,’ he soothed. ‘I’m not a man who beats about the bush, Miss...it is Miss, isn’t it?’
Sophie nodded and automatically touched her ring-free finger. Once upon a time, she had had a boyfriend. Once upon a time, she had had dreams of marriage and kids and a happy-ever-after life, but reality had had something different to say about that.
‘Boyfriend?’ Matias hadn’t missed that unconscious gesture. No ring on her finger. Had there been one? Once? Was she divorced? She looked far too young, but who knew? It wasn’t his business but it paid to know your quarry.
Sophie sat on her hands. ‘I don’t see what that has to do with...your car, Mr... Rivers...’
‘Rivero.’ Matias frowned because it wasn’t often that anyone forgot his name. In fact, never. ‘And in point of fact, it has. You owe me money but if you’re telling the truth, then it would seem that you have little to no hope of repaying me.’
‘Why wouldn’t I be telling the truth?’
Matias debated whether he should point out that her father would surely not be keen to see his child slaving in front of a hot oven cooking food for other people, so how likely was it that catering was her full-time occupation? Or maybe she was the sort who rebelled against their parents by pretending to reject money and everything it stood for? When you came from money and had comfort and security as a blanket to fall back on, it was easy to play at enjoying poverty. From what he knew of the man, keeping up appearances ran to a full-time occupation and surely his offspring would have been dragged into that little game too?
However, he had no intention of laying any of his cards on any tables any time soon. At any rate, it would be a matter of seconds to check her story and he was pretty sure she was telling the truth. Her car, for one thing, did not suggest someone with an enviable bank balance and the oversight with the insurance added to the impression.
