“Tell me now,” he said quietly, fascinated to see how convincing she could be.
She nodded jerkily. “It was basically like Liv just said.” She shook her head in frustration. “But he wasn’t like it all along. In the last few months, he got a bit weird.” Her cheeks flamed. “It’s hard, when you’re working as a nanny. Those lines can get blurred.” She closed her eyes. “I’ve looked back and I’ve tried to see if I did something that encouraged him. I mean, I was always there, living with them, playing with the kids. It’s really intimate. Maybe he thought I was encouraging him.” She looked down at her tangled fingers. “I wasn’t though. At least, not intentionally. When he … made it obvious that he thought we were more than we actually were, I quit.”
“How did he make this obvious?” Alex pushed. And though he knew his wife was creating a fiction to save her hide, he still felt a sharp pang of jealousy for this man.
She shook her head. “Details aren’t important.” Sophie didn’t want to remember that night, when he’d come to her hotel room uninvited and drunk. It had taken all her strength and presence of mind to lock herself in the bathroom and wait until he’d calmed down.
“A secret, Sophie?”
“No.” She bit down on her lip and her look was so intensely vulnerable that Alex wanted to pull her into his arms. “Just … not something I like to talk about.” She sighed. “The next day, I quit. He had me sign a confidentiality agreement.”
“In exchange for what?” Alex pushed.
“Money.” At his look of disappointment, she added quickly, “I used it for my airfare to London, and then gave the rest away. I didn’t want a penny from him. I didn’t want him thinking that he’d paid me off, and that what he did was therefore somehow okay.”
“To whom?”
“To whom?” She repeated, lost by his question.
“To whom did you give the money?” He clarified impatiently.
“My sister Ava.” Sophie decided that some secrets could be lifted. “She’s a single mother. She runs our family vineyard and the little row of cottages we rent out for accommodation.”
He arched a brow and Sophie didn’t know what more he wanted her to say.
“I didn’t tell you because I’m not really allowed to discuss it. And also because I hate to think about it.” She fixed her gaze on his. “Even now, I wonder if I did something wrong. I’m … a friendly person. Maybe I was too friendly.”
Alex could have said dozens of things to assuage her worry, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure he believed her version of events, given the dossier he’d received from his investigator. And yet, there were several sides to any story, and particularly this one. The wife had blabbed. Sophie had not. Sir Edwin Thomas had not. Perhaps the wife had put two and two together and got five.
In the same way he’d first thought Helena might have been mistaken, until he’d gone to London for himself to see the degree of affection between Eric and Sophie.
“Are you going to say anything?” She whispered, after several long minutes of silence had passed.
“Let’s go to bed.”
Sophie’s heart sunk further. Yes. Her marriage was in a state of decline and she didn’t know how to arrest it.
She put her hand in his, and with it, all her hopes. She loved him. Surely he would see that, and he would let go of whatever was bothering him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“How long will you be away for?” Sophie was amazed by how well she kept the emotion from her voice. Liv had left them earlier that day, and now, Alex had lifted a few of his immaculate suits from the wardrobe and layered them into a hanger bag.
“I do not know yet.”
“I see.” She toyed with the ends of her hair and forced her gaze beyond him, to the window that framed the sea. “I was just thinking I might go back to London for a while.”
He froze, his heart decelerating to a soft, slow thud, before cranking back to fever pitch. “What for.” A statement, it showed that he was displeased. But she couldn’t care. Her heart, her broken, aching heart, could not hurt her more than it already was.
“Why do you think?” She murmured.
He snapped his zipper to the top and spun around to face her. “No.”
“No?” She mouthed the word with shock. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
He stared at her long and hard, and then walked slowly towards her. “I mean that I am not going to let you do it.”
“Are you kidding me?” She stared at him as though he’d turned into a Martian. “I’m not your prisoner. You can’t actually keep me here.”