‘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.
He shrugged. ‘Maybe you imagine that pleading poverty will touch some kind of chord in me.’
‘That never crossed my mind,’ Sophie said honestly. ‘I can’t think that anyone would be mad enough to try and appeal to your better nature.’
‘Come again?’ Momentarily distracted, Matias stared at her with outright incredulity.
The woman was here on the back foot, staring bankruptcy in the face if he decided to go after her, and yet she had the cheek to criticise him? He almost couldn’t believe his ears.
Sophie didn’t back down. She loathed arguments and avoided confrontation like the plague, but she was honest and forthright and could be as stubborn as a mule. She had had to be because she had had to take up where her mother had left off when it came to breathing in deep and pursuing what she felt James Carney owed her.
Right now, she had no idea where Matias was going with some of his remarks. He had mentioned a solution to the problem staring her in the face, but she couldn’t help noticing that he hadn’t actually said what that solution might be.
If he was stringing her along only to pull the rug from under her feet, then she wasn’t going to sit back and allow him to bully her in the process.
‘If you had a better nature,’ she pointed out, ‘then you would try and understand what it’s like for me. You probably don’t have a clue about what it’s like to struggle, because if you did then you would be able to put yourself in my shoes, and if you did that you might try and find a solution to the problem instead. If you give me a chance, then I will pay you back, but first you have to give me a chance.’
‘Is this your idea of buttering me up?’ Matias said coldly. ‘Because if it is, then you’re heading in the wrong direction. Let’s not forget that you’re here with a begging bowl.’ He would come back to her father and exactly how hard he’d made Matias’s family struggle in due course.
Sophie’s soft mouth tightened. She had a lot of experience when it came to begging bowls and she had learned the hard way that buckling under threat never got anyone anywhere.
‘You said that you had a proposition for me,’ she reminded him, clinging to that lifebelt and already willing to snatch at it whatever the cost. Perhaps if she had had only herself to think about, she might have backed off, but there were more people at stake here than just her.
Matias was already pleased that he had decided to go with the flow and exploit the opportunity presented to him. Soft and yielding she might look, but it had quickly become apparent that she was anything but.
He felt the kick of an unexpected challenge. So much of his life was predictable. He had reached the pinnacle of his success and he was still in his early thirties. People kowtowed to him, sought his advice, hung onto his every word, did their utmost to please him. Bearing in mind that financial security and the power that came with it had been his ambition for as long as he could remember, he was now disappointed to acknowledge that there was something missing from his life, something that not even the glowing fires of revenge had been able to fulfil.
He had become jaded over time. When he thought back to the hungry young man he had once been, his whole body alive for the task he had set himself, he felt as if he were staring backwards at a stranger. Certainly, on a personal level, the fact that he could have any woman he wanted was something that had long lost its novelty value. Now, for the first time in ages, he was facing a challenge he could sink his teeth into and he liked the feeling.
‘In two weeks’ time...’ Matias had returned to his desk and now he pushed back his leather chair and relaxed with his hands folded behind his head ‘...I am due to host a long weekend party at one of my houses. Around eighty people will be descending and they will be expecting the highest standard of catering. I will provide the food. You will handle everything else. Naturally, you won’t be paid. Succeed and we can carry on from there. I have no intention of exercising my right to frankly bankrupt you because, for a start, driving without being insured is illegal. If I went the whole way, you’d be in prison by dusk. Instead, I will play it by ear.’
‘In other words,’ Sophie said stiffly, ‘you’ll own me until you consider the debt to be paid off.’
Matias tilted his head to one side and smiled coolly. ‘That’s one way of putting it...’ Okay, so it was the only way of putting it. He would be able to take his time finding out about her and thereby finding other ways back to her father. Were those rumours of foul play in the company vaults true? Was that something the man had confessed to his offspring? If so, if that level of information could somehow be accessed, then he would have the most powerful weapon for revenge within his grasp. He couldn’t care less about the damage to his car. He could take it to the nearest scrapyard and buy a replacement without even noticing any dent in his limitless income.
‘And when you think about the alternatives,’ he mused, ‘you’ll conclude, pretty fast, that it’s a sweet deal for you.’ He gave a gesture that was as exotically foreign as he was. ‘You might even be able to...’ he flicked out the business card she had earlier given him ‘...distribute these discreetly during the weekend.’
‘And will I be able to bring my business partner?’
‘I don’t think so. Too many cooks and all that. I will ensure that you have sufficient staff to help but essentially this will be your baby.’ He glanced at his watch but didn’t stand, leaving it to Sophie to deduce that he was done with her. She stood up awkwardly and looked at him.
How could someone so effortlessly beautiful be so utterly cold-hearted?
Although, she had to acknowledge, at least he hadn’t done what he had every right to do and contacted the police. She could have kicked herself for that little window during which she had forgotten to renew her insurance with a different company. So unlike her but then she had had so much on her mind.
‘Will there be something...er...in writing?’
‘Something in writing?’
‘Just so that I know how much of the debt will be covered when I handle the catering for you that weekend...’
‘You don’t trust me?’
Sophie gazed off and thought of her father. She’d had to learn fast how to manage him. Trust had never been in plentiful supply in their relationship and she thought that it would be prudent not to rely on it in this situation either.
‘I don’t trust many people,’ she said quietly and Matias’s ears pricked up.
He looked at her carefully. ‘No?’ he murmured. ‘I don’t trust many people either but then, as you’ve pointed out, I don’t have a better nature whereas I expect you probably do. Am I right?’
‘I’ve found that people inevitably let you down,’ Sophie told him painfully, then she blinked and wondered what on earth had induced her to say that. ‘So it would work if I could have something in writing as I go along...’
‘I’ll get my secretary to draw something up.’ All business now, Matias stood up, signalling that her time was up. ‘Rest assured, you won’t be required to become my personal slave in return for a debt.’
His dark eyes flicked to her as she shuffled to her feet. She gave the impression of someone whose eyes were always downcast and he could see how Art had been knocked sideways by her meek persona, but he wasn’t so easily fooled. He had seen the fire burning just below the surface. She blushed like a virgin but those aquamarine eyes flashed like a siren call and he couldn’t wait to get to the bottom of her...and discover in the process what she could contribute to the picture he had already compiled of her father.
* * *
‘But I just think that there must have been some other way of sorting this situation out! I’m going to be left here for several days on my own and I just don’t know whether I can manage the Rosses’ cocktail party on my own!’
Sophie’s heart went out to Julie and she looked at her friend sympathetically. Sympathy was about all she could offer. She had signed up to a deal with the devil and it was a better deal than she might have hoped for. Even though she hated it.
She had been over all the pros and cons of the situation, and had apologised profusely to her friend, who was not as confident in the kitchen as she was.
‘But on the bright side,’ she said in an upbeat voice, ‘think of all the possible connections we could make! And,’ she felt compelled to repeat because fair was fair, ‘he could have just taken everything from us to sort out the damage to his car. I honestly had no idea that a car could cost that much to repair! It’s mad.’
He was sending a car for her and Sophie looked at her watch with a sense of impending doom. A fortnight ago, his secretary had emailed her with an extensive list of things she ‘should bring, should know and should be prepared to undertake’.
There was to be no veering off from the menu and she would have to ensure that every single dish for every single day was prepared to the highest possible specification.
She was told how many helpers she would have and how they should behave. Reading between the lines, that meant no fraternising with the guests.
She was informed of the dress code for all members of staff, including herself. The dress code did not include jeans or anything that might be interpreted as casual.
She gathered that she was being thrown in at the deep end and this detailed information was his way of being kind to her. She assumed that he had diverted his original catering firm to some other do specifically so that he could put her through her paces and she had spent the past two nights worrying about what would happen if she failed. Matias Rivero wasn’t, she thought, callous enough to take the shirt off her back, but he intended to get his money’s worth by hook or by crook. He might be unwilling to throw her to the sharks, but he wasn’t going to let her get off lightly by agreeing to monthly payments that would take her decades to deliver what was owed.
This was the biggest and most high-profile job she had ever got close to doing and the fact that he would be looking at her efforts with a view to criticism filled her with terror. She wondered whether he hadn’t set her an impossible task just so he could do his worst with a clear conscience when she failed. He struck her as the sort of man who saw ruthlessness as a virtue.
His car arrived just as she was giving some final tips to Julie about the catering job she would be handling on her own, and Sophie took a deep breath and reached for her pull-along case.
There would be a uniform waiting for her at his country house, which was in the Lake District. However, his instructions had been so detailed that she had decided against wearing her usual garb of jeans and a tee shirt to travel there and, instead, was in an uncomfortable grey skirt and a white blouse with a short linen jacket. At a little after ten in the morning, with the sun climbing in the sky, the outfit was already making her perspire.
She hung onto the hopeful thought that she would probably find herself stuck in the kitchen for the entire time. With any luck, she wouldn’t glimpse Matias or any of his guests and she knew that, if that were the case, then she would be all right because she was an excellent chef and more than capable of producing the menu that had been emailed to her.
She wouldn’t even have to bother about sourcing the ingredients, because all of that would already have been taken care of.
Her high hopes lasted for as long as the very smooth car journey took. Then nerves kicked in with a vengeance as the car turned between imposing wrought-iron gates to glide soundlessly up a tree-lined avenue on either side of which perfectly manicured lawns stretched towards distant horizons of open fields, shaded with copses. It was a lush landscape and very secluded.
The house that eventually climbed into view was perched atop a hill. She had expected something traditional, perhaps a Victorian manor house with faded red brick and chimneys.
She gasped at the modern marvel that greeted her. The architect had designed the house to be an organic extension of the hill and it appeared to be embedded into the side so that glass and lead projected as naturally from rock and foliage as a tree might grow upwards from the ground.
The drive curved around the back, skirting a small lake, and then they were approaching the house from the side where a sprawling courtyard was large enough to house all those important guests she had been expecting to find. Except the courtyard was empty aside from three high-performance cars parked haphazardly.
All at once, a quiver of nervous tension rippled through her. She could have become lost in a crowd of people. In an empty mansion, and it certainly looked empty, getting lost wasn’t going to be that easy.
And for reasons she couldn’t quite understand, reasons that extended well beyond the uncomfortable circumstances that surrounded her presence here, Matias made her feel...awkward. Too aware of herself, uncomfortable in her own skin and on edge in a way she had never felt before.
Her bag was whipped away from her before she had time to offer to take it herself and then she was being led through a most marvellous building towards the kitchen by a soft-spoken middle-aged woman who introduced herself as Debbie.
It was a cavernous space of pale marble and pale walls on which were hung vast abstract canvasses. She could have been walking through the centre of a fabulous ice castle and she actually shivered because never had she felt so removed from her comfort zone.
It had been hot outside but in here it was cool and quite silent. When she finally turned her attention away from her impressive surroundings, it was to find that Debbie had disappeared and instead Matias was lounging in the doorway of the kitchen.
‘You’re here,’ he commented, taking in the prissy outfit and the flat black pumps and the neat handbag, which had apparently replaced the Santa’s sack she had been carrying the last time he had seen her. He straightened and headed straight back in the direction of the kitchen, expecting her to follow him, which she did.
Sophie was tempted to retort where else would she be when she’d had no choice, but instead, she said politely to his back, ‘I expected it to have been a bit busier.’
‘The first of the guests don’t arrive until tomorrow.’ Matias didn’t bother to turn around. ‘I thought you might find it helpful to acquaint yourself with the kitchen, get to know where everything is.’
They had ended up in a kitchen that was the size of a football field and equipped to the highest possible standard. Sophie felt her fingers itch as she stared around her, dumbstruck.
‘Wow.’ She turned a full circle, eyes as wide as saucers, then when she was once again looking at him, she asked, ‘So are you going to show me where everything is?’
Matias looked blankly around him and Sophie’s eyebrows shot up.
‘You don’t know your way around this kitchen at all, do you?’
‘I’m not a cook so it’s true to say that I’ve never had much time for kitchens. I’m seldom in one place for very long and I tend to eat out a great deal. I’m a great believer in the theory that if someone else can do something better than you, then it would be cruel to deny them the opportunity.’
Sophie laughed and was surprised that he had managed to make her laugh at all. Her cheeks warmed and she looked away from those piercing dark eyes. Her heart was beating fast and she was confused because once again she could feel the pull of an attraction that went totally against the grain.
For starters, he had proven himself to have all the characteristics she despised in a man. He was arrogant, he was ruthless and he had the sort of self-assurance that came from knowing that he could do what he wanted and no one would object. He had power, he had money and he had looks and those added up to a killer combination that might have been a turn-on for other women but was a complete turn-off for her.
She knew that because he was just an extreme version of the type of men her mother had always been attracted to. Like a moth to an open flame, Angela Watts had been drawn to rich, good-looking men who had always been very, very bad for her. She had had the misfortune to have collided with the pinnacle of unsuitable men in James Carney, but even when that relationship had died a death she had still continued to be pointlessly drawn to self-serving, vain and inappropriate guys who had been happy to take her for a ride and then ditch her when she started to bore them.
Sophie had loved her mother but she had recognised her failings long before she had hit her formative teens. She had sworn to herself that, when it came to men, she would make informed choices and not be guided into falling for the wrong type. She would not be like her mother.
It helped that, as far as Sophie was concerned, she lacked her mother’s dramatic bleached-blonde sex appeal.
And if she had made a mistake with Alan, then it hadn’t been because she had chosen someone out of her league. It had just been...one of those things, a learning curve.
So why was she finding it so hard to tear her eyes away from Matias? Why was she so aware of him here in the kitchen with her, lean, indolent and darkly, dangerously sexy?
‘Why don’t you look around?’ he encouraged, sitting at the kitchen table, content to watch her while he worked out how he was going to engineer the conversation into waters he wanted to explore.
She was very watchable. Even in clothes that were better suited to a shop assistant in a cheap retail outlet.
He was struck again by how little sense that made considering who her father was, but he would find out in due course and in the meanwhile...
He looked at her with lazy male appreciation. She had curves in all the right places. The hazy picture he had seen on Art’s phone had not done justice to her at all. His eyes drifted a little south of her face to her breasts pushing against the buttons of the prissy, short-sleeved shirt. At least the jacket had come off. She was reaching up to one of the cupboards, checking the supply of dishes, he presumed, and the shirt ruched up to reveal a sliver of pale, smooth skin at her waist, and a dormant libido that should have had better things to do than start wanting to play with a woman who was firmly off the cards kicked into gear.
‘Everything looks brand new.’ Sophie turned to him, still on tiptoes, and he could see that indeed the crockery and the glasses in the cupboards could have come straight out of their expensive packaging. ‘How often has this kitchen been used?’
‘Not often,’ Matias admitted, adjusting position to control his insurgent body. He glanced away for a few moments and was more in charge of his responses when he looked at her once more. Her hair was extraordinarily fair and he could tell it was naturally so. Fine and flyaway—with her heart-shaped face it gave her the look of an angel. A sexy little angel.
‘In summer, I try and get up here for a weekend or so, but it’s not often possible. Taking time out isn’t always a viable option for me.’
‘Because you’re a workaholic?’ Not looking at him, Sophie stooped down to expertly assess what the situation was with pots and pans and, as expected, there was no lack of every possible cooking utensil she might need. Next, she would examine the contents of the fridge.
With her catering hat firmly in place, it was easy to forget Matias’s presence on the kitchen chair and the dark eyes lazily following her as she moved about the kitchen.
‘I’ve discovered that work is the one thing in life on which you can depend,’ Matias said, somewhat to his astonishment. ‘Which, incidentally, is how I know your father.’
Sophie stilled and turned slowly round to look at him. ‘You know my father? You actually know him?’
‘I know of him,’ Matias admitted, his dark eyes veiled. ‘I can’t say I’ve ever met the man personally. In fact, I was contemplating a business venture with him, which accounts for Art heading towards the house when you came racing out of the drive and crashed into my Maserati.’ The delicate bones of her face were taut with tension and his curiosity spiked a little more.
‘You had an appointment with my father?’
‘Not as such,’ Matias told her smoothly. ‘Art was going to...let’s just say...lay the groundwork for future trade...’ In other words, he had sent Art to do the preliminary work of letting Carney know that his time was drawing to a close. He, Matias, would step in only when the net was ready to be tightened.
‘Poor Art,’ Sophie sighed, and Matias looked at her with a frown.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I don’t think he would have got very far with James even if he’d managed to gain entry to the house.’
‘James? You call your father James?’
‘He prefers that to being called Dad.’ Sophie blushed. ‘I think he thinks that the word dad is a little ageing. Also...’
‘Also,’ Matias intuited, ‘you were an illegitimate child, weren’t you? I expect he was not in the sort of zone where he would have been comfortable playing happy families with you and your mother. Not with a legitimate wife on the scene.’
Sophie went redder. What to say and how much? He was being perfectly polite. He wasn’t to know the sort of man her father was and, more importantly, the reasons that had driven her mother to maintain contact with him, a legacy she had passed on to her daughter. Nor was she going to fill him in on her private business.
But the lengthening silence stretched her nerves to breaking point, and eventually she offered, reluctantly, ‘No. My mother was a youthful indiscretion and he didn’t like to be reminded of it.’
‘He got your mother pregnant and he refused to marry her...’ Matias encouraged.
Sophie stiffened because she could see the man in front of her was busy building a picture in his head, a picture that was spot on, but should she allow him to complete that picture?
The conversation she had had with her father just before she had blindly ended up crashing into Matias’s car had been a disturbing one. He was broke, he had told her.
‘And don’t stand there with your hand stretched out staring gormlessly at me!’ he had roared, pacing the magnificent but dated living room that was dark and claustrophobic and never failed to make Sophie shudder. ‘You can take some of the blame for that! Showing up here month in month out with bills to settle! Now, there’s nothing left. Do you understand me? Nothing!’
Cringing back against the stone mantelpiece, truly fearful that he would physically lash out at her, Sophie had said nothing. Instead, she had listened to him rant and rave and threaten and had finally left the house with far less than she had needed.
What if he was telling the truth? What if he was going broke? Where would that leave her...? And more importantly, where would that leave Eric?
As always, thinking of her brother made her heart constrict. For all her faults and her foolish misjudgements, her mother had been fiercely protective of her damaged son and had determined from early on that she wasn’t going to be fobbed off by a man who had been happy enough to sleep with her for four years before abandoning her as soon as the right woman had finally appeared on the scene. She had used the only tool in her armoury to get the money she had needed for Eric to be looked after in the very expensive home where his needs were catered for.
Blackmail.
How would those fancy people James mixed with like him if they knew that he refused to support his disabled son and the family he had carelessly conceived, thinking that they would all do him a favour and vanish when it suited him?
James had paid up and he had continued paying up because he valued the opinion of other people more than anything else in the world, not because he felt any affection for either the son he had never seen or the daughter he loathed because she was just an extension of the woman who, as far as he was concerned, had helped send him to the poorhouse.
If there was no money left, Eric would be the one to pay the ultimate price and Sophie refused to let that happen.
If Matias was interested in doing a deal with her father, a deal that might actually get him solvent once again, then how could it be in her interests to scupper that by letting him know just how awful James was? If her father had money then Eric would be safe.
‘That’s life.’ She shrugged, masking her expression. ‘There aren’t many men who would have found it easy to introduce an outside family to their current one.’ She took a deep breath and said, playing with the truth like modelling clay, ‘But he’s always been there for my mother... And now...er...for me...financially...’
Matias wondered whether they were talking about the same person. ‘So you would recommend him as someone I should have dealings with?’
Fingers crossed behind her back, Sophie thought of her brother, lost in his world in the home where she visited him at least once a week, her brother who would certainly find life very, very different without all that care provided, care that only money could buy. ‘Yes. Of course. Of course, I would.’ She forced a smile. ‘I’m sure he would love to have you contact him...’