by Kitty French
"Sophie." Lucien's deep voice echoed along the hallway, and Sophie closed her eyes as Kara widened hers.
"Open this door, Sophie, or I will." His voice was level, but the threat was clear.
"Christ, is he going to break the door down?" Kara hissed, practically bouncing with excitement.
Sophie put her mug down and glanced worriedly along the hallway. She wasn't sure she could handle another showdown, but it seemed she was destined to have one anyway.
As she walked towards the door, she could make out Lucien's tall, familiar frame through the glass panes and her stomach rolled with nerves. The toast had been a mistake.
"I can see you, Sophie."
Her stomach flipped again, and it had little to do with the toast this time.
"Please go. I don't have anything to say."
"Well, I do. Now you can let me in, or I'll use this key that's right here in the door to let myself in." He paused to let his words sink in. "Which is it to be?"
Sophie's eyes darted in panic to her own keys safely on the hallway table, and then suspiciously towards Kara in the kitchen doorway. The frantic way she was feeling her pockets and the apologetic grimace on her face confirmed the worst. Lucien wasn't lying. He could have walked straight in. He was giving her a chance to invite him before he invited himself.
As her fingers hovered over the door catch, Sophie sighed and laid her head against the glass.
"I really don't want to open this door," she said, mostly to herself.
Lucien was silent on the other side. Waiting. Watching.
Sophie felt Kara's hand squeeze her shoulder in quiet solidarity.
"Open the door, Soph," she murmured. "I'm here. I'll make him leave if you really want him to."
Sophie swallowed hard, then pressed down the latch and pulled the handle towards her.
Pain registered first. Pain from the way Kara's fingernails suddenly bit into her shoulder. Sophie wasn't surprised. Meeting Lucien Knight for the first time had had a similar effect on her too.
Her gaze connected with his chest, solid, broad and clad in a battered black leather jacket.
She closed her eyes for a second before looking upwards, taking a moment to mentally assume the brace position. Three, two, one...
"Lucien."
It was the first time she'd said his name since he'd left this same hallway last weekend with Dan's blood on his hands, and it felt like a guilty pleasure on her lips.
His eyes locked onto hers.
"Sophie."
He didn't look away, didn't even seem to register Kara's presence beside Sophie.
"I need to talk to you."
Being so close to Lucien did strange things to Sophie's insides. She was seething mad with him for his previous behaviour, and yet the pure sexual pull of his body called to hers like a siren. How could she be so furious, and so mixed up, and yet still crave him too?
She hated her treacherous body for wanting him. Her resolve stiffened, and she glanced at Kara behind her. "I'll be okay." She patted her friend's hand to encourage her to release her death grip on her shoulder. "You should probably get going."
Kara's uncertain eyes slid from Sophie to Lucien, and then back to Sophie again.
"You're sure?"
Sophie nodded, and Kara's expression seemed to say a million things at once. She saw concern, and she loved her friend for it. She also saw admiration, and felt bolstered by Kara's confidence in her. And lastly she saw 'Let me stay because I want to stare at this man some more,' which Sophie could hardly blame her for.
She hugged her friend briefly and propelled her over the threshold, and Lucien stepped aside to allow her to pass. Sophie shivered and wrapped her arms around her midriff as she watched Kara's retreating back with an increasing sense of panic.
"So," Lucien said. "It's just you and me again."
Oh God. She couldn't do this. Everything he said came out sounding like a movie hero.
"What do you want, Lucien?"
"My PA back?" His tone was neutral as he held her gaze steadily.
A strangled laugh choked out of Sophie's throat.
"I’ve quit."
"I didn't get your resignation letter. Invite me in."
Sophie didn't want this big man in her small house, but the only other option was to continue the conversation on the doorstep, and she suspected that the neighbours were already having a field day with her marital problems. She could practically see the curtains twitching and hear the phone calls passing between them to alert each other to another potential sideshow going on in the street.
"Fine. Come in."
She turned her back on him and headed for the kitchen. She heard the door close and knew he was in the room by the crackling electricity of his nearness, but she forced herself not to turn around until she'd filled the kettle and reached for mugs.
"Sit down?" She turned and gestured towards a dining chair as she cleared the breakfast debris off the table, still not meeting his eyes.
He moved and sat where she'd indicated, his body somehow far too big for her kitchen. He was dressed in black, and it matched her mood.
Does he have to sprawl like that? How could he look so comfortable in another man’s kitchen, with another man’s wife? But then again, her husband had never registered highly on Lucien’s respect radar.
Coffee made and on the table, Sophie was all out of delaying tactics. It was time to face Lucien Knight.
Chapter Two
"You didn't come to work on Monday."
Sophie placed the mugs on the table and sat down opposite Lucien.
"Did you seriously expect me to?"
He lifted one shoulder, as if bemused she even needed to ask. "Yes."
She shook her head. He couldn't be serious. "You hit my husband."
"Do you expect me to apologise? He deserved it." Lucien worked hard to maintain his casual bearing but the expression in his eyes went from cool to lava hot, leaving Sophie well aware of how on edge he was.
"You had no right." Sophie's fingernails bit into her palms as her fists tightened. "I wanted to do things my way. You took away my choices."
She watched him digest her words and for the briefest moment, saw uncertainty flicker in his eyes.
"Choices?" He leaned forward and drummed his fingers on the table. "Way I see it, you didn't have any choices to make, Sophie. Your husband's a lowlife, you needed rid of him."
Sophie mirrored his rigid stance across the table. "And there you go again, making my decisions for me."
A pulse flickered along the hard set of his clenched jaw.
"I thought you'd make the wrong one."
"So you made it for me."
He leaned back, folding his arms defiantly across his chest.
"I'm not sorry."
"Men never are." Sophie regretted the cheap generalisation the moment it left her lips, but the last few days had left her more than a little jaded.
"I'm not like him, Sophie." Lucien's words were spoken so softly that Sophie only just caught them.
"No. No, you're not like him," she spat. "You're your very own brand of fucked up, Lucien."
Her words must have hit home, because he cast his eyes down and sighed heavily. Robbed of the luxury of his expression, Sophie was almost undone by the vulnerability in his new aspect: the sweep of his long lashes against his cheekbone and the fullness of his slightly parted lips. For a split second she was transported back to his office in Norway, looking at the photograph of the boy this man had become, the laughing child with the mother he adored. He was alone in the world, and her point-scoring felt suddenly shoddy.
"I didn't mean to take away your choices." Lucien's voice was quiet but steady.
Sophie believed him. He was a man who operated on his own screwed up set of morals, and in her heart she knew his actions had been driven by anger with Dan rather than a desire to control her.
Fact was, the end result would have been the same either way.
She'd
have told Dan about her affair. Dan would have confessed to his affair.
Where do you go from there, really? They'd betrayed each other's trust, trampling their marriage into the dust as they went.
"Lucien." Sophie looked back into his air force blue eyes when he raised them to hers. "What's happened has happened. I need to find a way to get through this, and you need to find a new PA."
He huffed lightly. "I don't want a new PA. Come back to work."
"Never in a million years."
He shook his head. "We could make it work. We're grown ups, Sophie."
She all but laughed. "What, so I should just come into work as if nothing has happened? Make your coffee, type your reports, and conveniently forget we've had sex?"
"Who said forget?" Lucien's eyes darkened as they settled on hers again. "I don't want to forget fucking you. I don't want to forget how you feel in my hands, or how your face looks when you come."
Sophie stared at him, dry mouthed. He had a directness that knocked the air clean out of her lungs.
"So no. Not forget. Move on." He sipped his coffee. "You can go back to being the girl who kisses envelopes before she mails them."
Sophie tried to remember that girl. It was almost impossible. She was a stranger, even though only a few weeks had passed since she’d posted that fateful letter.
"I can't do it," she said, flatly.
"Yes you can. If nothing else Sophie, we can be friends, and colleagues."
He made it sound so perfectly reasonable. So achievable. So very casual. Easy come, easy go. But then wasn't that exactly who he was?
It might be who he was, but it wasn't who she was.
"I can't, Lucien, it's too hard. I can't be friends with you, and I can't sort out the mess my life is in with you around."
Lucien looked around her small kitchen. "I take it he's not living here anymore?"
Surprised by his change of tack, Sophie shook her head and dug her nails into her palms again. Physical pain to distract from the mental pain, but the tears gathered regardless.
"Are you okay on your own?" he asked softly.
She closed her eyes. Don't do that. Don't be gentle. I'll dissolve if you do that.
She dashed the back of her sleeve across her eyes.
"Not really." Lying would have been smarter, but it felt way beyond her emotional capabilities. "I don't know who I am anymore. I'm not sleeping. I’m hiding from the neighbours. They're probably out there now photographing your car on their mobile phones."
Lucien reached out across the table, and Sophie snatched her hands away before he could touch them.
"You should go." She dragged her eyes up to his. "Don't come here again, Lucien." Her words were little more than a whisper in the quiet room. "This is my life. I need to find a way to live it."
She didn't look up until she heard the front door bang behind him.
Lucien scowled at the kids running around his car, sending them scattering.
Sophie was right. He had no place here.
Hell only knew why he'd come here today. Hadn't he already got what he wanted? Sophie had kicked her husband to the kerb, so why didn't he feel the victory as he ought to?
Because she was broken.
It shocked him to see her so gaunt, to know that he'd set her on a long, lonely path. He hadn't thought beyond the glory of winning the battle, and he hadn't counted on Sophie being amongst the losers.
He cast a long, last look at the small neat house.
This wasn't over. Not by a mile.
Chapter Three
Sophie closed the file on the computer screen and reached for her mobile. Even though it had only been a few weeks since she'd last worked at Hopkins Building & Double Glazing, sitting at her old desk felt like stepping back into shoes that didn't fit any more.
She knew she was lucky that Derek hadn't filled her position already, and she really ought to be more grateful that he'd taken her back on. And she was, she really was, but there was no denying that double-glazing quotes were far less scintillating than sex toy analysis reports. And as bosses went, Lucien Knight was a hard act to follow.
She glanced surreptitiously at the screen of her phone. No messages. Not that she was expecting any. Dan had gone radio silent over the last three weeks, and Lucien seemed to have taken her at her word since their last encounter.
She missed them both.
"Sophie, my girl." Derek blustered into Sophie's tiny box room of an office and squashed his not inconsiderable bulk alongside her behind the desk. Sophie swallowed hard as he laid his chubby hand on her shoulder and squeezed it whilst he squinted at her screen.
"Everything alright, love? Settling back in?" Sophie smiled tightly and nodded, trying not to notice the way his belly was bidding to escape through his straining shirt buttons.
"Found everything you need?" Derek's grip on her shoulder went from squeezing to massaging, and Sophie had to work hard to keep the grimace off her face. She nodded again, unable to speak through gritted teeth.
He was still massaging.
"I knew you'd be back. Can't keep away, eh?" he laughed dirtily, and then leaned in so his body touched against the side of Sophie's. His fingers edged along her shoulder to rub at the exposed skin at her collar; clammy, raw sausages that made Sophie's skin crawl.
"I hear on the office grapevine that your husband's got himself a piece of skirt."
Sophie really needed this job.
She'd tried and failed to find anything else over the last few weeks. Coming back here had been the only immediate way she could see to pay the red bills that had started to fall through the letterbox. Derek obviously knew it too. He had her over a barrel and clearly felt that he was the ideal candidate to step into Dan's recently vacated shoes, but he'd overstepped the mark by a mile. She wasn't the same girl he'd lazily harassed in the past.
"Derek... I don't think..."
His massage turned to a grip that held her down, and his other hand landed on the side of her ribcage, horribly close to her breast.
In normal circumstances, Sophie would have made it clear to him that his advances were unacceptable, but these weren't normal circumstances or normal days. She was already battered, and this was one fight too many. Shameful tears gathered in her eyes as Derek's cigarette breath assaulted her nostrils.
"It's good to have you back, Sophie."
The telephone shrilled on the desk and broke the moment, and Derek pulled back and patted her shoulder. "You’d better get that, love. I'll come back later when the lads have gone home."
There was not going to be a later.
Sophie watched Derek shamble across the yard outside, and anger engulfed her, anger fiercer than she'd ever known before, leaving her ready to beat her fists on the glass and scream at the top of her lungs.
Too much, too much, too much.
She reached for her coat and slung her bag over her shoulder. She'd lose her home before she lost the last few shreds of self-respect she had left.
Chapter Four
The following Monday found Sophie doing something she'd never expected to do again. No one gave her a second glance as she walked through the black glass atrium and rode the elevator to the top floor, and no one waylaid her as she walked down the plush corridor and tapped on the closed door at the end before pushing it open.
Lucien looked up from the report in his hand and stared at her in surprised silence, then slowly placed the plastic coffee cup he was holding down on the desk in front of him.
"A million years turned out to be too long," Sophie said, clicking the door shut behind her. She'd been rehearsing that comment all the way to work, determined to make a dignified entrance.
Lucien nodded slowly and gestured for her to take the seat opposite his.
"Have you already filled my job?"
He picked his pen up and tapped it idly on the desk. "A good PA is hard to find, Sophie. I'm taking my time."
She swallowed. He wasn't making it easy for her, but
then she'd told him in no uncertain terms that their paths weren't going to cross again.
"Do you have any references, Ms. Black?"
Sophie sighed. So this was the game he wanted to play.
"No. I walked out of a job last week because the boss expected more than my typing skills for his money."
Lucien frowned and leaned forward, his dark shirt clinging to his defined shoulders. "Did he hurt you?" There was a rough edge to his voice that wasn't usually there.
Sophie shook her head. "Just my pride. I walked out before he could do anything else."
Lucien leaned back in his chair again, but his eyes were troubled.
"So here you are. Out of the frying pan, into the fire."
"I need a job, Lucien. That's all." Sophie fought to keep her voice steady as she said more of the words she'd practiced over and over in her head on the way there. "I'll type your reports, and I'll make your coffee, and at the end of the day, I'll put my coat on and go home again."
He nodded. "To your empty house."
Sophie's eyes flicked sharply to his. Was he fishing to find out whether Dan had moved back home? She steadied her breathing and shrugged one shoulder as she nodded.
"To my empty house."
Lucien steepled his fingers beneath his chin and studied her.
"Will you kiss my envelopes before you mail them?"
"Will you give me my job back if I say yes?"
He gestured towards the doorway to her old office.
"It's all yours."
Relief flooded Sophie's bones, and also an unexpected, disorienting sensation of safety, too.
"Just colleagues," she said.
"And friends," he murmured, with the slightest flicker of an eyebrow. He glanced sideways into Sophie's office at the gleaming coffee machine and dropped his plastic cup in the bin.
"Any chance you could start by making me a decent cup of coffee?"
Lucien sat for a second and listened to the clatter of cups and the tapping of keys on the keyboard from the room next door. Sounds that heralded the return of Sophie Black, the girl who surprised him. She'd done it once again today, just as she had the first time he'd met her. He knew how much it must have cost her to come back here today, and he wasn't fool enough to think she'd have come at all if she had any other options.