He shrugged. ‘Maybe you imagine that pleading poverty will touch some kind of chord in me.’

‘That never crossed my mind,’ Sophie said honestly. ‘I can’t think that anyone would be mad enough to try and appeal to your better nature.’

‘Come again?’ Momentarily distracted, Matias stared at her with outright incredulity.

The woman was here on the back foot, staring bankruptcy in the face if he decided to go after her, and yet she had the cheek to criticise him? He almost couldn’t believe his ears.

Sophie didn’t back down. She loathed arguments and avoided confrontation like the plague, but she was honest and forthright and could be as stubborn as a mule. She had had to be because she had had to take up where her mother had left off when it came to breathing in deep and pursuing what she felt James Carney owed her.

Right now, she had no idea where Matias was going with some of his remarks. He had mentioned a solution to the problem staring her in the face, but she couldn’t help noticing that he hadn’t actually said what that solution might be.

If he was stringing her along only to pull the rug from under her feet, then she wasn’t going to sit back and allow him to bully her in the process.

‘If you had a better nature,’ she pointed out, ‘then you would try and understand what it’s like for me. You probably don’t have a clue about what it’s like to struggle, because if you did then you would be able to put yourself in my shoes, and if you did that you might try and find a solution to the problem instead. If you give me a chance, then I will pay you back, but first you have to give me a chance.’

‘Is this your idea of buttering me up?’ Matias said coldly. ‘Because if it is, then you’re heading in the wrong direction. Let’s not forget that you’re here with a begging bowl.’ He would come back to her father and exactly how hard he’d made Matias’s family struggle in due course.

Sophie’s soft mouth tightened. She had a lot of experience when it came to begging bowls and she had learned the hard way that buckling under threat never got anyone anywhere.

‘You said that you had a proposition for me,’ she reminded him, clinging to that lifebelt and already willing to snatch at it whatever the cost. Perhaps if she had had only herself to think about, she might have backed off, but there were more people at stake here than just her.

Matias was already pleased that he had decided to go with the flow and exploit the opportunity presented to him. Soft and yielding she might look, but it had quickly become apparent that she was anything but.

He felt the kick of an unexpected challenge. So much of his life was predictable. He had reached the pinnacle of his success and he was still in his early thirties. People kowtowed to him, sought his advice, hung onto his every word, did their utmost to please him. Bearing in mind that financial security and the power that came with it had been his ambition for as long as he could remember, he was now disappointed to acknowledge that there was something missing from his life, something that not even the glowing fires of revenge had been able to fulfil.

He had become jaded over time. When he thought back to the hungry young man he had once been, his whole body alive for the task he had set himself, he felt as if he were staring backwards at a stranger. Certainly, on a personal level, the fact that he could have any woman he wanted was something that had long lost its novelty value. Now, for the first time in ages, he was facing a challenge he could sink his teeth into and he liked the feeling.

‘In two weeks’ time...’ Matias had returned to his desk and now he pushed back his leather chair and relaxed with his hands folded behind his head ‘...I am due to host a long weekend party at one of my houses. Around eighty people will be descending and they will be expecting the highest standard of catering. I will provide the food. You will handle everything else. Naturally, you won’t be paid. Succeed and we can carry on from there. I have no intention of exercising my right to frankly bankrupt you because, for a start, driving without being insured is illegal. If I went the whole way, you’d be in prison by dusk. Instead, I will play it by ear.’

‘In other words,’ Sophie said stiffly, ‘you’ll own me until you consider the debt to be paid off.’

Matias tilted his head to one side and smiled coolly. ‘That’s one way of putting it...’ Okay, so it was the only way of putting it. He would be able to take his time finding out about her and thereby finding other ways back to her father. Were those rumours of foul play in the company vaults true? Was that something the man had confessed to his offspring? If so, if that level of information could somehow be accessed, then he would have the most powerful weapon for revenge within his grasp. He couldn’t care less about the damage to his car. He could take it to the nearest scrapyard and buy a replacement without even noticing any dent in his limitless income.

‘And when you think about the alternatives,’ he mused, ‘you’ll conclude, pretty fast, that it’s a sweet deal for you.’ He gave a gesture that was as exotically foreign as he was. ‘You might even be able to...’ he flicked out the business card she had earlier given him ‘...distribute these discreetly during the weekend.’

‘And will I be able to bring my business partner?’

‘I don’t think so. Too many cooks and all that. I will ensure that you have sufficient staff to help but essentially this will be your baby.’ He glanced at his watch but didn’t stand, leaving it to Sophie to deduce that he was done with her. She stood up awkwardly and looked at him.

How could someone so effortlessly beautiful be so utterly cold-hearted?

Although, she had to acknowledge, at least he hadn’t done what he had every right to do and contacted the police. She could have kicked herself for that little window during which she had forgotten to renew her insurance with a different company. So unlike her but then she had had so much on her mind.

‘Will there be something...er...in writing?’

‘Something in writing?’

‘Just so that I know how much of the debt will be covered when I handle the catering for you that weekend...’

‘You don’t trust me?’

Sophie gazed off and thought of her father. She’d had to learn fast how to manage him. Trust had never been in plentiful supply in their relationship and she thought that it would be prudent not to rely on it in this situation either.

‘I don’t trust many people,’ she said quietly and Matias’s ears pricked up.

He looked at her carefully. ‘No?’ he murmured. ‘I don’t trust many people either but then, as you’ve pointed out, I don’t have a better nature whereas I expect you probably do. Am I right?’

‘I’ve found that people inevitably let you down,’ Sophie told him painfully, then she blinked and wondered what on earth had induced her to say that. ‘So it would work if I could have something in writing as I go along...’

‘I’ll get my secretary to draw something up.’ All business now, Matias stood up, signalling that her time was up. ‘Rest assured, you won’t be required to become my personal slave in return for a debt.’

His dark eyes flicked to her as she shuffled to her feet. She gave the impression of someone whose eyes were always downcast and he could see how Art had been knocked sideways by her meek persona, but he wasn’t so easily fooled. He had seen the fire burning just below the surface. She blushed like a virgin but those aquamarine eyes flashed like a siren call and he couldn’t wait to get to the bottom of her...and discover in the process what she could contribute to the picture he had already compiled of her father.

* * *

‘But I just think that there must have been some other way of sorting this situation out! I’m going to be left here for several days on my own and I just don’t know whether I can manage the Rosses’ cocktail party on my own!’