A Virgin For Vasquez. Cathy Williams

Gordon Griffin-Watt had done had been to allay her fears about their financial situation while dealing with his own disastrous health problems, which he had refused to tell his wife about. She had had two strokes already and he wasn’t going to send her to her grave with a third one.

      ‘Vasquez is willing to listen to what we have to say.’

      ‘Javier won’t do a thing to help us. Trust me, Ollie.’ But he would have a merry time gloating at how the mighty had fallen, that was for sure.

      ‘How do you know?’ her brother fired back, pouring himself another drink and glaring, challenging her to give him her little lecture about staying off the booze.

      ‘Because I just do.’

      ‘That’s where you’re wrong, sis.’

      ‘What do you mean? What are you talking about? And should you...be having a second drink when it’s not yet four in the afternoon?’

      ‘I’ll stop drinking when I’m not worrying 24/7 about whether I’ll have a roof over my head next week or whether I’ll be begging in the streets for loose change.’ He drank, refilled his glass defiantly, and Sophie stifled a sigh of despair.

      ‘So just tell me what Javier had to say,’ she said flatly. ‘Because I need to go and prepare information to take with me to the bank tomorrow.’

      ‘He wants to see you.’

      ‘He...what?’

      ‘He says he will consider helping us but he wants to discuss it with you. I thought it was pretty decent of him, actually...’

      A wave of nausea rushed through her. For the first time ever, she felt that at the unseemly hour of four in the afternoon she could do with a stiff drink.

      ‘That won’t be happening.’

      ‘You’d rather see us both living under a bridge in London with newspapers as blankets,’ Oliver said sharply, ‘rather than have a twenty-minute conversation with some old flame?’

      ‘Don’t be stupid. We won’t end up living under a bridge with newspapers as blankets...’

      ‘It’s a bloody short drop from the top to the bottom, Soph. Can take about ten minutes. We’re more than halfway there.’

      ‘I’m seeing the bank tomorrow about a loan to broaden our computer systems...’

      ‘Good luck with that! They’ll say no and we both know that. And what do you think is going to happen to that allowance we give Mum every month? Who do you think is going to support her in her old age if we go under?’

      ‘Stop!’ Never one to dodge reality, Sophie just wanted to blank it all out now. But she couldn’t. The weight of their future rested on her shoulders, but Oliver...

      How could he?

      Because he didn’t know, she thought with numb defeat. What he saw was an ex who now had money and might be willing to lend them some at a reasonable rate for old times’ sake. To give them a loan because they had nowhere else to turn.

      She could hardly blame him, could she?

      ‘I told him that you’d be at his office tomorrow at six.’ He extracted a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and pushed it across the table to her.

      When Sophie flattened it out, she saw that on it was a scribbled address and a mobile number. Just looking at those two links with the past she had fought to leave behind made her heart hammer inside her.

      ‘I can’t make you go and see the man, Sophie.’ Oliver stood up, the bottle of whisky in one hand and his empty glass in the other. There was defeat in his eyes and it pierced her heart because he wasn’t strong enough to take any of this. He needed looking after as much as their mother did. ‘But if you decide to go with the bank, when they’ve already knocked us back in the past and when they’re making noises about taking the house from us, then on your head be it. If you decide to go, he’ll be waiting for you at his office.’

      Alone in the kitchen, Sophie sighed and rested back in the chair, eyes closed, mind in turmoil.

      She had been left without a choice. Her brother would never forgive her if she walked away from Javier and the bank ended up chucking her out. And her brother was right; the small profits the company was making were all being eaten up and it wouldn’t be long before the house was devouring far more than the company could provide. It was falling down. Who in their right mind wanted to buy a country mansion that was falling down, in the middle of nowhere, when the property market was so desperate? And they couldn’t afford to sell it for a song because it had been remortgaged...

      Maybe he’d forgotten how things had ended, she thought uneasily.

      Maybe he’d changed, mellowed. Maybe, just maybe, he really would offer them a loan at a competitive rate because of the brief past they’d shared.

      Maybe he’d overlook how disastrous that brief past had ended...

      At any rate, she had no choice, none at all. She would simply have to find out...

CHAPTER TWO

      SOPHIE STARED UP at the statement building across the frenzied, busy street, a soaring tower of glass and chrome.

      She’d never had any driving desire to live in London and the crowds of people frantically weaving past her was a timely reminder of how ill-suited she was to the fierce thrust of city life.

      But neither had she ever foreseen that she would be condemned to life in the tiny village where she had grown up, out in rugged Yorkshire territory. Her parents had adored living there; they’d had friends in the village and scattered in the big country piles sitting in their individual acres of land.

      She had nothing of the sort.

      Having gone to boarding school from the age of thirteen, her friends were largely based in the south of England.

      She lived in a collapsing mansion, with no friends at hand with whom she could share her daily woes, and that in itself reminded her why she was here.

      To see Javier.

      To try to pursue a loan so that she could get out of her situation.

      So that she and her brother could begin to have something of a life free from daily worry.

      She had to try to free herself from the terror nibbling away at the edges of her resolute intentions and look at the bigger picture.

      This wasn’t just some silly social visit. This was...a business meeting.

      She licked her lips now, frozen to the spot while the crowds of people continued to swerve around her, most of them glaring impatiently. There was no time in London to dawdle, not when everyone was living life in the fast lane.

      Business meeting. She rather liked that analysis because it allowed her to blank out the horrifying personal aspect to this visit.

      She tried to wipe out the alarming total recall she had of his face and superimpose it with the far more manageable features of their bank manager: bland, plump, semi-balding...

      Maybe he had become bland, plump and semi-balding, she thought hopefully as she reluctantly propelled herself forward, joining the throng of people clustered on the pavement, waiting for the little man in the box to turn green.

      She had dressed carefully.

      In fact, she wore what she had planned to wear to visit the bank manager: black knee-length skirt, crisp white blouse—which was fine in cool Yorkshire, but horribly uncomfortable now in sticky London—and flat black pumps.

      She had tied her hair back and twisted it into a sensible chignon at the nape of her neck.

      Her make-up was discreet and background: a touch of mascara, some pale lip gloss and the very sheerest application of blusher.

      She