Chapter Three #2
Their presence allowed Beth to compose herself properly, push aside all the memories assaulting her and shake off the tendrils of tension the mention of Salamanca had unfurled between her and Xavi.
Getting to her feet, she shook the lawyers’ hands then positioned herself at the table facing Xavi, figuring she’d rather have him in her eye line than sit beside him and suffer his nearness.
It was a decision she soon regretted. The lawyers had given her folios and a heap of paperwork on the workings of the Rosbel Group so she could refamiliarise herself with it all, but instead of diving into the shareholder information, her eyes kept seeking Xavi.
The more she looked at him, the more her pulses kept racing into a canter and the more she was forced to concede just how well his longer, floppier haircut and trim beard suited him. How much sexier they made him, giving him an almost piratical edge.
Really, she should be glad she still found him so sexy, as it would make it easier to play the game of marriage until she took everything from him. Beth had tried to fake desire a few times in the years without him, but it had always ended in such a hopeless mess, she’d lost the will to even try.
He ended the call he was on and smiled triumphantly. ‘Two weeks on Saturday.’
Sixteen days? She came within a whisker of gulping. ‘At the Almudena?’
His triumph grew. ‘I told you they would fit us in.’
‘Fit you in,’ she commented drily. Her throat felt as dry as her tone.
Plans for a wedding that twenty-four hours ago hadn’t even been a thing were suddenly steamrolling ahead.
Beth had suggested the Almudena Cathedral on a whim, an impossible challenge for Xavi to fail at, never expecting they’d be able to fit them in on such short notice.
She’d forgotten the sheer clout Xavi held in Spanish society, a clout that could only have grown in their eight years apart.
‘You will courier your birth certificate and the other documents we spoke of?’ one of the lawyers asked.
She smiled brightly. ‘It will be my top priority.’
One of the lawyers who’d disappeared into Xavi’s office returned with an armful of documents.
Soon, everything that needed to be signed was signed, hands were shaken and the small army of lawyers bustled out. Beth had politely declined the offer of lunch with the excuse—a truthful one this time—of having a plane to catch.
‘I’ll drive you to the airport,’ Xavi said once she’d arranged for Salma to stay on and care for Diego until they returned from their honeymoon.
‘I’m sure you must need to get to work, so don’t worry about that. I can get a taxi.’
‘I insist.’
She managed not to clench her jaw. She’d be marrying him in sixteen days. She needed to learn how to cope with being alone with him. ‘Thank you.’
The summer sun was high in the late-morning air when they stepped outside. Protecting her eyes with her shades, Beth strode to the convertible car that had to cost more than her grandparents’ house.
It was incredible to believe that soon she would have the money to buy her grandparents and her father a swanky new home each and make the equivalent dent in her bank account as buying herself a new jumper currently made in it.
‘Still don’t like being driven around?’ she asked lightly once she’d strapped herself in and Xavi had lowered the roof, something for which she was grateful as it meant she didn’t have to breathe in such heavy doses of his gorgeous scent.
His scent was something else she hated him for. Why couldn’t he smell like a sewer?
He put his shades on and grinned. ‘No, I still don’t like being driven around, but the relentlessness of my schedule means I’m reliant on my driver more than I would wish to be.’
‘The downside of being the boss?’
‘The perks make up for it.’
‘And what are the perks?’
‘Not being answerable to anyone.’ He pulled out and joined the crawling traffic. ‘As we’re talking of jobs, what do you intend to do about yours?’
‘I’ll have to resign. It’s too hands-on for remote working, plus it would be weird to stay when I’m going to be a major shareholder of the Rosbel Group. We consider loads of your brands to be our rivals.’
‘Our brands,’ he corrected, flashing a quick grin at her. ‘Miss Amore is now our rival.’
‘Another thing for me to get my head around.’ She shook her overloaded head.
‘Are you still a fashion buyer there?’
‘I am indeed.’ It was a job she loved and one she was damned good at.
‘I imagine you’re excellent in the role. As I remember, you were always more animated about the fashion side of the business than the corporate side.’
He was referring to the three months she’d spent shadowing Xavi and their grandfathers within the Rosbel Group before she’d had that final spectacular fallout with her grandfather.
He wasn’t wrong. She’d found the whole process of turning the designs created into finished products fascinating, from identifying the next big fashion trend to sourcing the materials and accessories and getting the best price for them.
Her vague life plan to do a degree in English Literature and then find a career she could use it for had bitten the dust. Beth had found her path.
‘I considered training to be a designer, but then I remembered that I can’t draw for toffee.’
He laughed. It was the deep, spontaneous sound she used to love, but now landed like nails on a chalkboard.
‘I take it you didn’t consider using your connections for a similar role within the Rosbel Group?’
‘You know I didn’t want to work for my grandfather.’ He’d been insufferable to work for, a control freak who wouldn’t have looked out of place in a spy movie cast as the baddie set on world domination.
She’d never grown to love him like she did her other grandparents, but they’d developed their own unique way of handling each other and making the grandfather-granddaughter relationship work. To Beth’s mind, that had only been possible through her steadfast refusal to ever work for him again.
However much she’d not wanted to work for her grandfather was nothing to how she’d felt about Xavi.
She’d rather have eaten worms than work, however indirectly, for him.
The fashion world, though, had found its way into her blood, and she’d been grateful for it.
She’d used the knowledge she’d gained from her grandfather and Xavi to blag herself an internship at a growing hip fashion chain based in Manchester and never looked back.
Her job—the work itself and the fun, creative people who worked there—had saved her, had made her see she could live a happy and fulfilling life without Xavi de la Rosa.
When she’d taken her revenge and her marriage was over, she’d buy Miss Amore, she decided, and give everyone a pay raise.
She felt Xavi’s gaze glance her. ‘He never stopped hoping you would change your mind and join us.’
She smiled sadly. ‘I know, but it was for the best that I didn’t. We clashed too much to work together.’
‘I remember.’ A smile resounded in his voice as the traffic came to a stop. ‘At times, it was like dealing with two rutting bulls.’
About to make a quip back at him, Beth’s tongue froze, her senses soaring to high alert a beat before Xavi slid a hand onto her thigh and gently squeezed. ‘You cannot know how good it feels to have you back in my life.’
There was no time to react to his touch or his words as the traffic started moving again and Xavi moved his hand to put the car back in gear.
She blew out the breath she’d sucked in and tried to relax.
Theirs had always been an affectionate and physical relationship, and the kiss she’d instigated in the study had led him to believe that it was a side of their relationship she was willing—keen even—to resume.
And she was keen, but only insofar that she would be using it as a weapon to destroy him with.
His affectionately delivered words just then meant nothing to her, not after all his lies, but if she could resurrect even a fraction of Xavi’s old feelings for her, it would make his fall when she pulled the rug out from under him taste that much sweeter.
And the way to Xavi’s heart was through his cock.
If she kept him happy in the bedroom, he’d have no reason to believe she was plotting his downfall behind his back.
But she wanted to be in control of it. Fully, completely, entirely in control, and that one squeeze of her thigh had proved how easy it would be for her to lose it.
It was disconcerting how quickly her senses had retuned themselves to his frequency to the extent her body had anticipated his touch before her mind had.
She’d only been back in his orbit for a day!
‘What about you?’ he asked.
She hated that his voice still acted like nectar to her ears. ‘What about me?’
‘How do you feel about having me back in your life?’
‘I don’t know.’ That, at least, contained a nugget of truth. Beth had been racked with such a tumult of emotions since her return to Spain that to narrow it all into one concise sentence was impossible. ‘I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything.’
‘You must feel something for me to have agreed to my proposal.’
With this, she was able to look at him, and with complete truthfulness say, ‘Xavi, my feelings for you are as strong as they have ever been.’
‘Good strong or bad strong?’
Time had dimmed how perceptive he could be.
She laughed and looked out at the other vehicles fighting the same fight through the traffic as they were. ‘Let’s just leave it at strong, okay?’
Although she wasn’t looking at him, she felt his smile before she heard it in his voice. ‘Strong feelings I can work with. Indifference would be a different matter.’
She wondered if he’d feel so positive about her strong feelings for him if those strong feelings manifested in her throwing vases at his head.
If only she did feel indifference for him. She might have been able to move on in her personal life. ‘Indifference is one thing I don’t think I could ever feel for you.’
‘Good… Music?’
‘Sure.’
Using voice commands, he selected an album of the rock band he’d flown her to Germany to watch perform live.
Glad she had her sunglasses on, Beth closed her eyes and worked at not letting her inner feelings show on her face.
Mercifully, the traffic thinned out, and soon they were out of the city itself and homing in on the airport.
Only the blasted music of the band she’d spent eight years avoiding listening to stopped her chest from lightening with relief, and when he pulled up at the express drop-off point, it took everything she had not to throw herself out of the car. It took even more to face him.
He was already looking at her, his shades removed. Wordlessly, he removed her sunglasses, too, and for a long moment simply gazed at her.
Bringing his face close to hers, he gently stroked her cheek. ‘I know you still have doubts about me,’ he said quietly, ‘but I promise you will not regret your decision.’
The surge of emotion that rose so powerfully in her almost shocked Beth into silence.
That Xavi could still read her so well despite all her efforts to conceal her true feelings was almost as frightening as the longing to believe him and the depth of her need to cover his hand and press it tighter to her cheek.
Gazing into eyes that were like melted dark chocolate, she whispered, ‘Aren’t you worried that you might regret it, too?’
His gaze didn’t so much as flicker as he brought his face closer to hers. ‘No, I’m not.’
Her lips were tingling with anticipation before she felt his breath on her lips and the tickle of his beard, and then she was filled with the glorious sensation of his tender caress on her lips.
He drew back with the ghost of a smile. ‘You should go.’
Wishing she wasn’t already craving more of his mouth on hers, she nodded.
He clasped the back of her head and nuzzled his nose to hers. ‘Let me know when you’ve landed?’
Unable to resist, she pressed her mouth to his for one last kiss and murmured, ‘I promise.’
When Beth strode into the airport on legs that felt all wobbly, she didn’t have to look back to know he was watching her.
When Beth was out of his sight, Xavi turned the engine back on and drove away, resisting the temptation to abandon his car and follow her back to England.
He’d long wondered what her apartment, or flat, as she referred to it on social media, looked like. All she’d revealed were snippets; nothing that would allow a follower to identify the location or make an educated guess to it.
Her job, though, he knew a lot about, not just because of what she’d told him the few times they’d seen each other over the years or through what she’d posted, but because he owned the company.
Miss Amore was the first fashion chain he’d bought as a personal investment. He hadn’t put it under the Rosbel Group umbrella, and only expert journalistic levels of digging would find his name as the owner.
He’d bought it on a Beth-like whim when she’d posted about starting an internship there.
He’d experienced a lot of guilt in those days.
Beth had only been expected to spend the summer in Madrid.
It was because of Xavi that she’d given up her place at university to stay past the summer, and so when he’d learned that she’d decided to join the fashion world after all, he’d felt he owed it to her to smooth her path into it.
It had been at his behind-the-scenes insistence that her internship had become a full-time position.
Everything else she’d achieved had been through her own hard work.
She’d excelled without him. Thrived without him, personally and professionally.
Whereas he…
Xavi didn’t like to remember the days when he’d had to bury himself in work just to get through the days without her.