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‘Ah, was I? Thank you for filling me in. Saves me the bother of saying anything.’
‘You wouldn’t understand. I bet you’ve never experienced a broken engagement before—never known what it was like to pin your hopes on something, only for it to dissolve at the last minute.’
The silence that greeted this stretched and stretched until Alice began to fidget and wonder whether an apology might not be in order, although it wasn’t as though she’d asked him anything personal or been in any way offensive. He’d glanced down but now, as he raised his eyes to hers, they were cool and remote.
‘Can I ask something?’
‘What?’ Alice said cautiously.
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-four.’
‘Don’t you think you’re very young to be thinking about embarking on love, marriage and the whole nine yards?’
Alice thought about her happily married parents, having met when they’d still been teenagers going to the same school. There had been a brief separation when they had gone to different universities but breaking up had never occurred to them.
She uneasily wondered whether she had thrown herself into Simon in a subconscious desire to emulate the example her parents had set. Or had she just been lazy in following a path that had been set for her without examining whether that washerpath?
‘You’re never too young to fall in love,’ she said vaguely.
‘But you didn’t, did you? You made a mistake.’
‘Well...’
‘Not my problem. But, if you want to take some advice from someone a little further down the road than you, then I would say forget about the “true love” business at the moment. You have your life ahead of you; plenty of leg room to see what’s out there before you go looking for whatever it is you’re looking for.’
‘See what’s out there?’
‘Have fun and forget about the love,’ Mateo murmured in a low, silky voice that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
Have fun... I bet you’d be a lot of fun...
The thought leapt out at her with such surprising force that she was briefly struck dumb. She stared at him, her colour mounting, taking in the perfect symmetry of his face, his blatant sexuality and the lazy drift of his eyes that never left her face.
Surely he wasn’t flirting with her? That would be highly inappropriate, she decided.
At this point she felt that a jolt of alarm was in order. She should rise to her feet and say something about feeling tired and needing to get some rest. He wouldn’t stop her because, if there was one thing her gut instinct told her, it was that this guy was a gentleman, despite the arrogant, self-assured veneer and the annoying way he had of getting under her skin by telling her stuff she didn’t want to hear.
Instead, a buzz of forbidden excitement anchored her to the chair and she felt her pulse begin to pick up pace. Her body felt sensitive under the baggy clothes,hisbaggy clothes.
She fidgeted and then kept very still, just in case he noticed.
‘I’ll certainly have fun,’ she said politely.
‘Want some cheese? It’s the only dessert I eat.’
‘You have a lot of dos and don’ts in your life, don’t you?’
‘What do you mean?’
Mateo was efficient when it came to tidying up behind himself. One more didn’t add much to the process. He brought three packs of exotic soft cheeses out of the fridge, along with crackers from the cupboard, and could tell that she was sorely tempted to join him but for some reason had decided that she would be ladylike and refuse.
How was she to know that he liked the way she enjoyed her food? He was also surprising himself with his tolerance when it came to her airing her views about this, that and everything under the sun, despite the fact that she surely must have read the room and noted that he was not the most encouraging person in the world when it came to people sharing their opinionsofhimwithhim. In fact, thinking about it, hadn’t he already made that perfectly clear on a couple of occasions?
‘I mean...’ Mateo watched with interest as she leant forward. Her arms were resting on the table and her breasts were nestled on her arms. They were abundant enough to push against the baggy clothes and it was making his imagination go into overdrive. ‘Mmm...?’ he encouraged absently as he felt the stirring of an erection. It was disobeying everything it was being told to do, namely to stop saluting and stand down.
She leant forward a little more. He wondered what she would look like under his clothes: rosy nipples, taut, tender and waiting to be kissed; the weight of heavy breasts in his big hands; the glorious perfection of wet womanhood opening up to him like a flower...