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."