window-shop: Salamanca.
From there she had shopped until her feet ached, stopping only for a light lunch in a pretty little café along the Calle de Serrano.
Now she sat in the back of Javier’s car, imagining the furniture she would have in their child’s nursery, exhausted but happier than she had felt in months.
Javier had gone away but he had left with them in as good a state as they could be. Their marriage wasn’t perfect but for the first time she really felt they were making headway.
He’d told her to treat his house as her home.
The car stopped for the electric gates to open and welcome them home.
Resting her head to the window, she noticed a tiny black bundle on the kerb.
She squinted her eyes to peer closer.
The tiny bundle made the tiniest of movements.
‘Stop!’ Sophie screeched before Michael could start the car again.
Unclipping her seat belt, she opened the passenger door, jumped out and hurried to see what she hoped with all her heart she was wrong about.
She wasn’t wrong. The tiny black bundle was a puppy.
She crouched down next to it and put a tentative hand to its neck.
It opened its eyes and whimpered.
That was when she saw the blood and burst into tears.
JAVIER CLIMBED THE stairs and followed the scent of fresh paint to the room next to his.
He stepped inside it and stared around in wonder, his heart fit to burst.
‘What do you think?’
He turned to find Sophie behind him, dressed in a black jersey dress that fell to her knees and covered the belly and breasts that both seemed to have grown in his absence. It would not be long, he guessed, before she would be obviously pregnant.
She looked more beautiful than ever. His bursting heart managed to expand some more.
For the longest time neither of them spoke.
Five days away from her...
He had never thought time could drag so much.
He’d expected to be relieved to have a bed to himself again.
He had not expected to find the nights so empty without her.
‘You did this?’ he asked.
The walls had been painted the palest yellow and covered with a hand-painted mural of white clouds and colourful smiling teddy bears.
She smiled, a wide, sweet grin that pierced straight into his chest. ‘I hired a local artist to do it. I discovered her at a plaza near Calle de Serrano and offered her an obscene amount of your cash for her to drop all her other commissions and do it immediately.’ Then the smile dimmed a little. ‘I was hoping to warn you before you saw the room.’
‘Warn me that you’ve turned the room next to ours into a nursery rather than the room on the east wing that I said should be used?’
She nodded and rubbed her belly. ‘Even if we do agree on getting a nanny, I know there is no way I’d be able to sleep if I thought my baby was crying in a room too far away for me to hear.’
He’d thought of that too, in his time away.
He wanted Sophie to accept him for how he was. It worked both ways. He had to accept her for how she was too. He’d known from the start that she was different from everyone else who traversed his life.
She might not be the perfect wife he had wanted for himself but she would be the perfect mother for their child.
Sophie would protect and love their child in a way that would make it hardly aware of its father’s remoteness.
‘I need you to understand that if you won’t have a nanny then you have to be prepared to do it all yourself,’ he warned her. ‘I’m not going to be one of those modern hands-on fathers. I am not designed that way and I work too-long hours.’
The light in her eyes dimmed a little more. ‘Being hands-on would be good for you.’
‘I doubt that and I doubt it would be good for the baby. I’ll pay for any help you need but I won’t be doing any of the work myself.’
Seeing she was prepared to argue, he cut her off. ‘Carina, we have months until the baby comes. I’ve had five very long days in the company of sharks and now I want nothing but to go for a swim and have some dinner.’
Her brows drew together. ‘Did the trip not go well?’
Her obvious concern sliced through him. ‘It was successful. The deal was signed.’
But the negotiations had been a lot tougher than he’d anticipated.
The Casillas brothers had always negotiated together. It had not felt right without Luis there, as if he were negotiating with an arm tied behind his back and a leg missing.
Luis had always been the counterpoint to him, charming the people who mattered, willing to play the game when Javier would rather cut his toes off than schmooze.
This time he’d had to play the role of good cop and bad cop in one.
He had managed it though.
His successful negotiations had been the proof he needed that he didn’t need his brother in his life in any capacity.
‘Will you have to spend a lot of time in South Africa when the development starts?’
‘Yes. There will be occasions when I’m away for weeks at a time.’
He only just managed to cut himself off from suggesting that she accompany him on some of the trips.
The light in her eyes dimmed into nothing. Her lips drew tighter but then she hugged her arms around her chest and took a step back. ‘I have something to show you.’
‘What?’
‘I have to show you, not tell you.’
He stared at her quizzically, then shrugged. ‘Go on, then.’
He followed her down the stairs. As they walked, she kept up a light chatter about the nursery. ‘I’ve also hired a local carpenter to make some bespoke furniture for it but he can’t start working on it for a few weeks yet.’
‘He had some scruples, did he?’ he asked drily, wondering why she suddenly seemed so nervous.
She laughed but it sounded forced. ‘I discovered that not everyone can be bought.’
You can’t, he thought. In a world where money ruled he had married perhaps the only person on it who could not be paid for.
His thoughts turned to a blank when he stepped through the door Sophie opened that led into the smallest of his huge living rooms.
Lying on his solid oak floor, which he had treated twice a year to keep it in immaculate condition, fast asleep on a plastic oval bed heaped with blankets that dwarfed its tiny size, was a dog.
‘What the hell is that?’
As he spoke, the dog opened its eyes and clambered to its feet.
‘A puppy.’
He glared at her. ‘I can see that. I meant what the hell is it doing in my house?’
‘Our house.’ The dog had padded to her feet and was scratching at her knee. She scooped it up and held it protectively in her arms. ‘You said I should treat it as my home.’
‘That does not give you licence to buy a dog.’