“No, it isn’t. Why pretty it up? You saw me as easy pickings, and I saw you as a way to get my own back. No more, no less.”

She reached for the door, but his hands clamped around hers.

“Okay, Ms. Black. You’ve had your say. Now I’d like mine.”

She stilled because he left her no other option; his hands held her, vice-like.

“Believe it or not, I really am sorry for showing you those pictures, but I’m not one bit sorry for having sex with you. You are fucking beautiful, Sophie Black, and you needed someone to remind you of it.”

Sophie met his eyes in silence. Fierce frustration turned his blue irises smoky, and his body angled towards hers was rigid as stone. Only his thumbs moved, sliding over the pulse points of her wrists.

“You had sadness written all over your face the first day you walked into my office,” he said softly. “I wanted to take it away. ”

She wanted to look down but his eyes demanded hers. How did he do that? Sincerity came so easily to him, but after this morning she had no way of telling if he was just a damn good liar. Lucien had a way of looking at her that made her want to fall back in to his arms again, but wasn’t that exactly what his clever words were designed to do? To reel her in then make a fool of her?

“Newsflash, hero. You haven’t made things better. You’ve made them ten times worse.”

She saw him flinch and tried to pull her hands from his, but he held her fast.

“Can you tell me you didn’t enjoy all those things we did? Because I know better.”

He leaned closer, and Sophie stiffened.

She didn’t want him near her.

She did want him near her.

“’I know because I watched your eyes, Sophie. I watched them every time you came, and I didn’t see sadness any more.” His massaging thumbs were driving her crazy. “I saw joy, and I saw beauty. I saw you shine.”

His raw honesty melted her anger and left her defenseless. She was suddenly tired beyond endurance, and her heart ached with sadness.

“How exactly was this supposed to end then, Lucien?”

He sighed and shook his head. “I figured I could screw you happy, I guess.”

It was up there amongst the craziest, sweetest things Sophie had ever heard. How could someone so devastatingly sexy and masculine be so childlike?

“And then what? Are you planning to drop down on one knee and declare true love?” Sophie saw his jaw harden and his eyes flicker. “No, I thought not. So, let me guess… I’m supposed to go home and give Dan what for while you move on to rescue the next spurned wife?” A pulse was visible in Lucien’s clenched cheek. “Am I supposed to turn up for work on Monday as if nothing happened?”

She looked out of the window at the spattering rain. He really hadn’t thought this fairytale thing through. In all the stories she’d loved as a child, the knight didn’t rescue the princess and then hand her right back to the evil prince.

Lucien opened his mouth to answer when she turned back to him, but then seemed to change his mind and simply shook his head with a resigned half-shrug. It was just as well. There was nothing he could offer in the way of justification.

“Grow up, Lucien. Life isn’t like that.”

Lucien didn’t try to hold onto Sophie’s hands when she eased them out of his and opened the door. He stepped out of the car too, cold drizzle dampening his face as he lifted her bag out of the boot.

He saw how Sophie’s eyes were drawn to her front door. She was obviously desperate to get away from him. He couldn’t blame her. Her cheeks were colourless and her eyes brimmed with regret so poignant that it hurt to look at her.

“I’ll call you later?” He reached out without hope and touched the sleeve of her cherry red coat.

She shook her head, dashing the back of her hand across her eyes.

“Come to work tomorrow,” he tried again, unable to keep the edge of urgency out of his voice. He needed to see her soon, just to know that she’d made it through whatever she now had to face with Dan.

“I can’t, Lucien,” she whispered. “You know I can’t.”

He touched his fingers against her cheek, wet with tears and rain.

“I don’t want to leave you like this.”

“You’re not leaving me.” Her voice steadied as she took the bag from him and stepped back. “I’m leaving you.”

Lucien shoved his hands through his hair as he watched her go.

He’d screwed up.

What the fuck had he been thinking?

He should never have showed her those photographs. He’d have given anything to go back and change the last few hours. The pain in Sophie’s eyes when she’d been confronted with the technicolour truth had all but torn his heart out of his body.

He now knew how his mother’s face must have looked when she’d walked in on his father bent over his secretary: he’d felt like a bastard watching Sophie crumple.

A heavy sigh escaped him as he glanced at her resolutely closed door. She’d crossed back into her own world.

He thumped his fists down hard on the steering wheel as he climbed back into the driver’s seat. He’d intended to send her into battle ready to rip her fuck-wit of a husband to shreds, but his shock-jock brand of pep talk had backfired badly. She wasn’t battle-ready. Sophie was battered and broken before she’d even stepped into the ring, and it was all his fault.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Sophie walked through the cold, silent rooms of her house, still wearing her coat and carrying her weekend bag with the air of a visiting hotel guest.

She remembered the first time she and Dan had viewed the house, six months before their wedding. They’d fallen head over heels for it the moment they’d walked through the door. It wasn’t the biggest or the flashiest, but they could make it into the perfect nest for two - or three, given time - Dan had grinned to the estate agent.

The black marble work surface in the kitchen was cool beneath her fingers. It had been beyond their modest budget really, but Dan had broken the bank to get it because Sophie had loved it so much.

She paused in the living room to study the photograph of them, taken on their wedding day. It wasn’t the best photo of Sophie, but she’d awarded it pride of place because it had captured a smile of pure joy on Dan’s face. Looking at it now, all she could see was that same smile on a different photo, being bestowed upon another woman.

In the bedroom, she dropped her bag on the end of the neatly made bed and perched awkwardly beside it. Of all the rooms in the house, this one felt by far the most foreboding.