Ruthless Revenge: Passionate Possession. Cathy Williams

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.

      ‘All the old retainers will end up being sacked. Is that it?’

      ‘Needs must.’

      ‘Some of the old guys have families... They’re nearing retirement—and, okay, they may not have been the most efficient on the planet, but they’ve been loyal...’

      ‘And you place a lot of value on loyalty, do you?’ he murmured.

      ‘Don’t you?’

      ‘There are times when common sense has to win the battle.’

      ‘You’re in charge now. I don’t suppose I have any choice, have I?’

      Instead of soothing him, her passive, resentful compliance stoked a surge of anger inside him.

      ‘If you’d taken a step back,’ he said with ruthless precision, ‘and swapped blind loyalty for some common sense, you might have been able to curb some of your dear husband’s outrageous excesses...’

      ‘You truly believe that?’ She stepped back, swamped by his powerful, aggressive presence, and glared at him.

      The last thing Javier felt he needed was to have her try to make feeble excuses for the man who had contributed to almost destroying her family business. What he really felt he needed right now was something stiff to drink. He couldn’t look at her without his body going into instant and immediate overdrive and he couldn’t talk to her without relinquishing some of his formidable and prized self-control. She affected him in a way no other woman ever had and it annoyed the hell out of him.

      ‘What else is anyone supposed to believe?’ he asked with rampant sarcasm. ‘Join the dots and you usually get an accurate picture at the end of the exercise.’

      ‘There was no way I could ever have stopped Roger!’ Sophie heard herself all but shout at him, appalled by her outburst even as she realised