His wide, sensuous lips made the ghost of a smile before his large hands clasped her shoulders, and he leaned down to press a kiss to both of her cheeks.
There was no time for her to prepare herself or hold her breath before sensation zinged over her skin and she was engulfed in a scent so familiar and loved that everything inside her contracted.
Keeping his hands on her shoulders, he stepped back and studied her with a widening smile. ‘You look incredible.’
Somehow, she managed a playful wiggle of her head. ‘One does one’s best… So, how are things? I imagine the last few days have been difficult for you.’ Her grandfather had retired from the luxury brand conglomerate he’d founded with Xavi’s grandfather three years ago. She’d attended his retirement party, had been there when he’d publicly entrusted his share of the company in Xavi’s hands and expressed his full confidence in him to achieve great things for the Rosbel Group. She’d applauded like everyone else in attendance and congratulated Xavi with a smile and an embrace. She’d even kissed his cheek and resisted disinfecting her mouth until she was alone in a bathroom.
He’d been running the company single-handedly since, just as the bastard had always wanted. Her grandfather’s death had made international news, the press descending on the Rosbel Group’s headquarters in a frenzied determination to know what Raul Belmonte’s death meant for the company.
His smile became rueful. ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’
‘I’m sure.’ It was only human emotions Xavi couldn’t cope with.
‘How about you? Are you keeping well in yourself?’
‘Very much so.’
‘That’s good to hear.’ The smile around his mouth faded, but the sparkle in his eyes didn’t diminish at all. ‘Can you spare me a few minutes of your time? There is something I need to discuss with you.’
Her stomach plummeting, she made a point of looking at her watch. ‘I’ve got a flight to catch, so you’ll have to make it quick.’
‘I’ll be as quick as I can, but it is best we speak in private.’
Her plummeting stomach now quivering, she raised an intrigued eyebrow. ‘That sounds ominous.’
The lines around his eyes crinkled. ‘Nothing ominous, I promise. It’s to do with your grandfather’s estate and the legacy he’s left you.’
They were words to make her pause. ‘What legacy?’
‘That is what we need to discuss.’
‘Shouldn’t the lawyers be the ones to discuss it with me?’
‘Trust me, it is better you hear it from me first.’
How she didn’t punch him in the face for that she would never know.
Trust the man who’d promised to love her forever?
Trust the man who’d been her earth and her sun, and then broken her?
But Beth hadn’t spent eight years carefully curating social media posts—Xavi had never stopped following her on them, his frequent ‘likes’ and comments proving he kept an eye on them—and turning Photoshop into her best friend for nothing, and she made another point of looking at her watch. ‘I can give you ten minutes, and then I’m really sorry but I’ll need to make a move.’ She didn’t need to make a move anywhere. Her flight home didn’t take off for another six hours.
It was Xavi she wanted to escape; Xavi and this villa and all the memories tying together, memories making the past feel like she could touch it, and if she could touch it then she could feel it, and God help her if she ever had to feel any of that again.
‘I’ll be as concise as I can,’ he promised in his shamefully excellent English. ‘Walk in the garden with me?’
‘I don’t have sunscreen on,’ she lied as a strong memory of falling asleep on the sprawling de la Rosa lawn beneath the shade of an olive tree and being woken by a kiss smashed through her. The de la Rosas had been having a family summer party, and Beth had got all sleepy after too much sangria. With voices floating in the distance, Xavi had woken her with a kiss and then silently brought her to orgasm with nothing but his hand.
It had tortured her imagining him doing that with the women who had come after her. Her third trip to Madrid after their break-up had been to celebrate the New Year with her grandfather. He’d taken her to a party thrown by one of Spain’s leading art dealers, and the first person Beth had seen when they’d walked into the villa had been Xavi with a blonde bombshell attached to his arm. Beth had made a point of going over to them, throwing her arms around Xavi as if they were long-lost best friends and befriending the appendage. She’d kept her happy face going the whole night, dancing, drinking and making merry like everyone else. The next day she’d flown back to England, detoured to a supermarket on her way home, then sat in bed eating her weight in chocolate ice cream. It had taken her months to recover from the painful shock of seeing him so clearly happy with someone else. It was a shock Beth had never understood as she knew damned well he’d replaced her with that Ellen bitch days after breaking off his relationship with her.
‘Let’s talk in the study,’ she suggested. That was one room they’d never done anything dirty in.
In their time together, they’d made love in every room of this sprawling villa. It had been a game to them, their own playful version of sex bingo. Only the occupied bedrooms had been off-limits. The only room they’d failed to christen and so get a full house in before Xavi had dumped her was the study, so at least there wouldn’t be any sex memories to slap her around the face in it.
As soon as she crossed its threshold, though, and the door closed them inside the intimate space, Beth knew she’d made a mistake and cursed herself for lying about the sunscreen. They could have talked at the front of the villa by her hired car, and then she could have driven off, ‘accidentally’ screeching the wheels so he got a face full of gravel in the process.
Determined to give away nothing of her inner turmoil and to continue projecting the carefree image she so carefully curated on her social media feeds, she hitched her ample backside onto the highly polished mahogany desk and folded her arms loosely across her stomach rather than wrapping them in the tight hug she so desperately needed to hold herself with. She looked him in the eye with a smile. ‘Well?’
