‘Ourbrands,’ he corrected, flashing a quick grin at her. ‘Miss Amore is nowourrival.’
‘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 shewaskeen, 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.
