‘Stop thanking me,’ Cesar commanded in the softest whisper she’d ever heard. ‘You landed a good blow there, making things easy for me, or why was that monster grabbing his crotch with one hand while attempting to strangle you with the other? If he’d had both his hands free—’
‘But he didn’t,’ she soothed. ‘And, anyway, you laid him out.’ She’d checked.
‘I’ve always been a bit of a scrapper,’ she admitted. ‘Four brothers?’
‘I should have been here.’ Cesar was in no mood for humour. Summoning his security team, he told them to remove the prisoner and lock him up.
‘You got here as soon as you could,’ Sofia argued. ‘You came looking for me. That’s all that matters.’
‘I had to,’ Cesar reflected grimly. ‘I know you well enough to be confident you wouldn’t leave the house without good reason. When I worked out what that reason could be, I knew I had to find you fast or you’d take things into your own hands. Are you sure you’re okay?’
The look in his eyes touched her somewhere deep. ‘I’m fine.’ She stood back as two military types dressed in black entered the room.
‘We have a lot to talk about,’ he said.
‘You read the article.’ She knew he must have and felt a flutter of alarm.
‘Of course,’ Cesar confirmed.
‘How did you know to find me here?’
‘How do we know anything?’ He frowned. ‘Intuition? The assembly of known facts into a recognisable picture?’
Now the initial shock was over, her knees had turned to jelly. Cesar’s steadying hand beneath her arm was more than welcome. It was one thing to be at the peak of physical fitness, and another to be attacked by someone who meant her harm, Sofia had discovered. She might have accepted that Dom was not the silky courtier he appeared, but his vicious lunge for her throat had really shocked her.
They went into Cesar’s library. It was a cosy, reassuring room, with wood-panelled walls and comfortable seating.
‘Take a seat on the sofa,’ he invited. Crossing the room to a well-stocked bar, he poured a generous slug of fine brandy into a crystal glass. ‘Here. Drink this...’
‘I don’t—’
‘You do,’ he insisted. ‘And then we’ll talk.’
She sipped and put the glass down, only then realising that the newspaper with its damning article—the same article that someone had kindly sent to her to make sure she didn’t miss it—was lying open on the low table between them.
Closing her eyes, she exhaled shakily. ‘How can I ever—’
‘Don’t.’ Cesar raised his hand, palm flat. ‘Let’s get one thing straight. This is not your writing, not your fault, and nothing to do with you.’
‘Without me, the campaign to discredit you wouldn’t have got started,’ she argued. Picking up the newspaper, she scanned the article she’d already read as if hoping it would somehow change into something she could read without feeling sick to the stomach that anyone could write such trash.
Cesar shrugged off her comment. ‘Blake would have found someone else to do his dirty work.’
Breath shuddered out of her. She didn’t want to be let off the hook so easily. ‘The article appears under my name and will seem totally plausible to anyone who reads it. My brothers will read it and they can only think I’m betraying you again.’
‘Then I’ll set them straight, though I believe you’re worrying unnecessarily. Do you really think they don’t know what’s been going on between us?’
What is going on between us? she wondered in the few seconds it took for Cesar to supply an answer to his own question but not to hers. ‘I’ve known your brothers a long time—too long for them not to have picked up the vibes between me and their only sister. They’re probably laughing their heads off right now as they read this garbage over the breakfast table.’
‘Thanks. I’d rather not think about that, not when this could be so serious for you.’
‘Believe me, I’m not taking it lightly,’ Cesar assured her.
‘And then there’s your mother and sister. What will they think? This is so unfair, especially when it’s clearly untrue.’
Maybe she had expected Cesar to argue this point, and say that there was something between them and that it was so deep that it transcended cheap gossip, but he remained silent, while she couldn’t seem to stop words pouring from her mouth.
‘All this rubbish about secret liaisons between us, and the things we do—’ Her cheeks blazed red. ‘With my by-line at the top of the article, it makes it seem I set you up.’
