Page 27 of Marriage Bargain with His Innocent
And soon they would be leaving together. He would be spending the night in her house. In a different room, but still... The thought of them being alone together after what he had said, with the atmosphere so charged between them, brought her out in a cold sweat.
The conversation drifted around her. She participated, but her voice seemed to come from a long way away, barely penetrating the chaos of her thoughts, which were all over the place.
She surfaced to hear Rose asking her about the upcoming shoot.
‘How will those pictures of my carrots and asparagus come out, do you think?’ She was smiling at Matias. ‘You wouldn’t believe how talented she is,’ she confided proudly. ‘And always doing her best to promote the produce here.’
‘I saw some samples of her work.’ His silver-grey eyes settled on Georgina, bringing a pink tinge to her cheeks. ‘She’s brilliant.’
The pink tinge turned to a deep red—a mixture of pleasure and embarrassment at the flattery. She launched into a jerky speech about the chef who had commissioned her for the photo shoot, and heard herself babbling on about the procedure for getting just the right shots put together so that everything looked natural, but enhanced.
‘Anyway,’ she concluded, wanting to feel more relieved than she actually did at the thought of having a perfectly valid excuse not to spend the next day with Matias, even if the night ahead lay before her like the threat of the hangman’s noose, ‘the shoot is tomorrow and then I shall be going to her place in the evening to show her the mark-ups, get her opinions. So...’
She turned to Matias with a phoney smile and he raised both eyebrows, unfazed.
‘It’ll be a perfect opportunity for you to catch up on all that...er...work you told me you had to do...’ she said, and turned to Rose with a woman-to-woman look. ‘He’s a workaholic... Sometimes I have to drag him away from that computer of his! I shall have to change that or we’ll soon find ourselves at loggerheads! That’s just the sort of thing that can bring a relationship crashing down. You know how womenloveattention...and a man whose first love is his work...? Well...’
Rose looked at her thoughtfully. ‘You could take Matias with you in the evening. I’m sure Melissa wouldn’t mind meeting your boyfriend, Georgie, and Matias...? Georgie’s right. Relationships are all about compromise. It would do you good to see her in action...’
‘But it’s going to be baking hot,’ Georgina protested, hanging on to her smile by a thread. ‘And she lives up a hill! I usually walk up for the exercise! But Matias...’ She looked over to him and said, with complete honesty, ‘He doesn’t do walking...’
‘I could start,’ Matias returned without batting an eye. ‘How steep can a hill be around here? I might not tackle Everest, but I’m as fit as the next man, my darling—as well you know.’
Rose looked delighted. Matias looked highly amused. And Georgina... She felt the pit of her stomach fall away, even though she knew that she was being silly.
Matias wasn’t going to chase her like a horny teenager pursuing a hot prom queen. He could have any woman on the planet he wanted. And if he wanted her for a couple of seconds because they’d been thrown together, because he was bored and between women and she happened to be wearing less hippy-like clothes, then the feeling wouldn’t last.
* * *
‘Nice try.’ It was the first thing he said on their way to her house. ‘I’m a workaholic you’re going to come to blows with sooner rather than later because you want romance and I’m too busy staring at my computer to indulge you...’
The night air was humid and still. Georgina was keeping her distance but she could still feel his powerful personality wrapping itself around her, wanting to draw her close.
‘It’s true. You are a workaholic... I’m not breaking new ground by pointing out the obvious.’
‘But there was just a whiff of desperation when you started clutching at that straw...and in your eagerness to make sure I’m not around tomorrow. Are you nervous at the prospect of the both of us in the same house?’
‘No! I told you that I don’t believe in...in...’
She eyed her house with relief. They had chosen to walk there rather than take the car and it beckoned to her like a port in a storm—because once inside she could flee to her room and shove him into the guest room she had prepared.
‘Casual, scintillating sex? Don’t worry. I won’t come knocking on your door in the middle of the night...’
Which immediately conjured up all the wrong images in her head.
‘And I’ll leave you alone during the day too, to do what you have to do, because as it happens you’re right. I have a lot of work to get through. I shall take myself off to a business in Padstow I’ve been contemplating buying for the past couple of months. So you can relax. Reluctance in a woman has always been a turn-off for me.’
They’d reached the house and he lounged against the door as she unlocked it and then preceded him into the hallway. When he paused she reluctantly turned and looked at him.
His dark eyes were cool. ‘I’ll be ready at six for this walk I shouldn’t be able to do because the only exercise I’m capable of is getting into the back seat of my chauffeur-driven car.’
‘Matias...’
‘Goodnight, Georgie. Sleep well in your empty bed.’
With which he vanished in the direction of her father’s office at the other end of the house, leaving her to pointlessly mull over the joyless coldness of her empty bed and to spend the night tossing and turning, wondering where he was in the house and whether he was thinking about her at all, before finally falling into a restless sleep at a little after midnight.
* * *
