Marriage Bargain with His Innocent

by Cathy Williams

  ‘Paris? Paris?’

  ‘I was a bit concerned as well, darling. You know our Georgie hasn’t travelled far and wide. But she introduced me to the lovely guy she’ll be working with...’

  ‘Lovely guy?’

  ‘Jacques something-or-other. Looks a little unconventional, but absolutely charming.’

  ‘Jacques something-or-other...?’ Matias gritted.

  ‘Are you feeling all right?’ Rose asked.

  ‘Never been better. Sit tight, Mother. I’m heading down to Cornwall. I’ll be there in a few hours.’

  He didn’t give his mother any time to question the decision. He knew what he had to do and he knew why he had to do it.

  Paris?

  Jacques something-or-other?

  Georgina was in a fragile place. He had turned her away, just as he had turned away every other woman who had dared venture into the forbidden territory of wanting more than he was programmed to give. He’d been too abrupt—had overlooked the fact that she wasn’t like all those other hard-nosed women he had dated in the past. She wasn’t equipped to get past a broken relationship just by hitting the clubbing scene.

  She’d been defiant and stood her ground, had denied every insinuation from him that she’d broken the rules of the game and fallen for him, but she had and she would be vulnerable. Vulnerable and in Paris. And that was a very bad combination, because vulnerable women had a way of appealing to just the kind of men they didn’t need.

  Who the hell was this Jacques character anyway?

  He needed to find out exactly where she was! And if she needed to be rescued then, by God, he wasn’t going to shy away from the task.

  At last he was doing something. And he hadn’t felt this good in a while.

  * * *

  It was after ten by the time Georgina stepped out of the taxi. The past week had been a frenetic round of social events, because everyone at the smart Parisian publishing house had wanted to make her feel at home and she couldn’t have been more grateful.

  She’d really needed this job—had yearned for the distraction it offered. She’d agreed to every term and condition and had been eloquent in persuading them that the sooner she was on board, the better. No sooner had the ink dried on the contract she had signed than she had been in Paris, ready to fling herself head-first into the commission—anything to lessen the pain of no longer having Matias in her life.

  Accommodation had been found fast and everyone had gone out of their way to welcome her.

  Tonight she had been for a casual meal in a lively bar with three of her colleagues and she was exhausted. Exhaustion was good, though, because the minute her mind stopped working in overdrive the thoughts began kicking in, and when that happened it was like spiralling down a bottomless hole.

  Thoughts of Matias...of what it had been like with him and the way she had discovered that you didn’t need to spend years finding out about someone to know that you loved them. It could happen in the snap of a finger. She thought about the way he had made her body sing, the things he would murmur when they made love. She hated it, but she was captive to the torment of remembering.

  She was a million miles away when she became aware of someone stepping out of the shadows—a looming figure that sent her into a panic.

  She didn’t think. She acted completely on impulse. Because figures stepping out from the shadows were never going to be pleasant surprises.

  She swung her handbag and she swung it hard. She aimed straight for the torso and she struck with perfect timing.

  ‘Georgie!’

  Georgina froze. She recognised that low, velvety voice instantly, but it still took her a couple of seconds to react, and then she sprang back and stared up, open-mouthed, as Matias straightened.

  ‘Matias? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I...’ He shook his head and looked away briefly. ‘I’ve come to talk to you,’ he said in a low, driven undertone.

  ‘Is that right? Well, I can’t think of anything we have to talk about—and how did you get hold of my address? How did you even know where I was?’

  ‘My mother told me.’

  ‘She had no right.’

  ‘She didn’t think it was a state secret. Let me in, Georgie.’ Matias paused. ‘Please. Remember there was a time when you showed up at my house...did I refuse you entry?’

  Georgina eyed him sourly. He was in black jeans and a black tee shirt and some kind of bomber jacket, and he looked utterly and unfairly drop-dead gorgeous.

  ‘Time’s moved on since then, wouldn’t you say?’ She was proud of how she sounded, which was a lot more controlled than she was feeling. ‘One cup of coffee, Matias, and then I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’

  They rode the elevator in silence, and she opened her front door and preceded him into the apartment without looking at him, although she was aware of his presence with every ounce of her perspiring body.

  She dumped her handbag and the backpack holding her camera equipment on the granite counter separating the kitchen from the living room and faced Matias with her arms belligerently folded.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I had no idea that you’d taken yourself out of the country. Do you have anything to drink?’

  Georgina gritted her teeth and glared. ‘I have coffee. Like I said.’

  ‘Anything stronger?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I deserve this...’ he muttered.

  ‘You broke off an engagement that wasn’t even an engagement.’ Georgina shrugged. ‘No big deal.’

  ‘Why did you feel that you had to take a job over here?’

  She flushed and her eyes skittered away. Her whole body was rigid with tension. Why had he come? She didn’t want to like the fact that he was here, but she did. She didn’t want her body to feel like this, hot and flustered and excited, but it did.

  Would he ever stop having this sort of effect on her? she wondered despairingly. Would she bump into him in three years’ time, when he had another woman hanging like a limpet off his arm, and feel this same surge of unwelcome attraction? Was that her fate?

  ‘They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.’ She lowered her eyes and started making a pot of coffee.

  The apartment was purpose-built, in a new block, and the gadgets were all brand-new. It was very different from her parents’ house, where everything harked back to days gone by, from the crockery to the appliances.

  ‘I thought you were going to take something in London.’

  ‘Does it matter? Is that why you rushed over here? Because you were concerned that I wouldn’t be able to cope with a change of country?’

  ‘You don’t have much experience of big city living,’ Matias muttered. ‘You’ve lived in a small village all your life.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’ Georgina dumped the cup of coffee in front of him and then sprang back and glared at him. ‘How incompetent do you think I am, Matias? First you thought that you had to run as fast as you could because I’d made the mistake of falling for you! Did you think that I was daydreaming about actually marrying you and living happily ever after? With a guy who’s made a career out of making sure he doesn’t get too involved with a woman? Oh, yes, of course you did! I mention that I might find it helpful to move to London to progress my career and all of a sudden I’ve turned into a starry-eyed idiot who wants to settle down with you for real!’

  She heard the ring of outrage in her voice and felt the sting of pain in her heart. She’d started deluding herself into thinking about happy-ever-afters. She’d been a fool and he’d run away for a very good reason. She would never admit what she felt for him to his face, but it was something she would never be able to hide from herself, and denying her love, as she was doing now, was an agonising reminder of the truth.

  ‘It’s possible you may hav
e got that impression,’ Matias muttered, not giving an inch, programmed to defend his choices, whatever the provocation.

  ‘And second—’ Georgina had to stop herself from yelling as she overrode his interruption ‘—to add insult to injury, you storm over here on a mission, I presume, to save me from myself!’

  ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘Pretty much, Matias! I’m a simpleton from Cornwall, who’s so accustomed to village life that I couldn’t possibly handle the trauma of big city living!’

  ‘You’re putting words into my mouth,’ he said, but he was uncomfortably aware that that was precisely the impression he had given when he had shown up unannounced. The time had come to set the record straight. But setting records straight had never felt so momentous an uphill climb, and he was so far out of his comfort zone that he could scarcely corral his thoughts.

  ‘I’m doing no such thing, Matias Silva!’ She glared. ‘That’s exactly what you said! Did you think that I would find it all too much, living over here? In Paris? Well, for your information, I’m absolutely loving it over here!’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes! The job is invigorating! I’m learning all sorts of new camera techniques! I’m working alongside a talented crew of people and it’s fabulous being in a corporate atmosphere instead of doing my own thing!’

  ‘So you don’t miss anything about...anything at all...?’ Matias inserted roughly.

  She tilted her chin at a challenging angle. The thought of him feeling sorry for her was unbearable. Had Rose somehow implied that she was having a miserable time over here? She had made sure to sound as chirpy as a cricket in all her conversations with the older woman! But had Rose heard the unhappiness in her tone of voice and mistakenly assumed it was down to the job rather than down to the fact that her heart had been broken in two?

  ‘Nothing,’ she asserted firmly. ‘Nothing at all.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  MATIAS HESITATED. HE wondered if this was what it felt like to have one foot dangling over the edge of a precipice, with no safety net below. He’d become accustomed to exercising complete control over every aspect of his life, so this was a first, sitting here, staring at the woman who had been in his head ever since he had walked away from her, knowing what he had to do and what he had to say and yet fearful of an outcome he couldn’t predict.

  ‘I didn’t come here because I thought you couldn’t cope...with...with life in a big city...’

  ‘That’s not what you said.’

  ‘And it’s what I told myself when I decided to fly over,’ Matias admitted unevenly.

  Restless, he sprang to his feet, lean body taut with suppressed tension, and paced the small kitchen before sinking back into the chair. but this time leaning forward towards her, elbows on thighs.

  ‘I told myself that I was worried about you...that it was a perfectly understandable reaction. But that’s not why I came, Georgie.’

  ‘Good.’

  Something about the uncertain expression on his face was striking a chord inside her, eroding her determination to stand her ground proudly and get rid of him as fast as she could. Since when did Matias Silva ever look uncertain?

  ‘I had to come. I had to talk to you.’

  Georgina folded her arms and didn’t say anything. Silence, he had once told her, was always a successful ploy when it came to getting other people to say things they might not have banked on saying. What better time to try it out for herself?

  ‘I’ve been...thinking about you, Georgie... I haven’t been able to focus...’

  Georgina stiffened. He was a man who was only about sex—it didn’t take a genius to figure out why she’d been on his mind. It would certainly explain the hesitancy on his face.

  ‘In that case,’ she told him coldly, ‘you’ve had a wasted trip.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He looked at her narrowly, but the ground was slowly giving way under his feet and he couldn’t think straight.

  ‘I mean,’ she said quietly, as the energy for a fight seeped out of her, ‘I’m not returning to any sort of relationship with you.’

  ‘You’re not?’

  ‘Matias...’ She tugged her fingers through her long, unruly hair and sat facing him, chin propped in her hand, green eyes sad and pensive. ‘I know what this is about. You tell me that I’ve been on your mind...that you can’t focus? I realise that what you want to say is that you miss the sex. But I won’t be coming back to you to pick up where we left off until you get genuinely bored with me. We had a clean break and now I’m moving forward.’

  ‘You can’t be.’

  Georgina laughed shortly. How dared he? ‘Really, Matias? And why’s that?’

  ‘Maybe because I’m not, and I’m desperate enough to hope that I’m not alone in that.’

  His voice was a mumble and she had to strain to pick up what he had said.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to say, Matias,’ she told him bluntly, just in case hope started sprouting shoots and staging a takeover.

  ‘I haven’t come here because I miss the sex. I haven’t come here to rescue you from your decision to leave England. I’ve come here because I haven’t moved on.’

  He sat back, swept his hands through his hair, his eyes not quite meeting hers, and then he sighed and pressed his fingers against his eyes.

  ‘I never realised it before and maybe I should have,’ he muttered in a shaken voice, watching as she inclined her head to one side, wary and attentive at the same time.

  ‘What do you mean? And please don’t spin me any stories, Matias. Don’t say stuff you don’t mean because you think it’ll make me feel better or worse, or because you think it might get me back into bed with you. What have you never realised before?’

  ‘When you waltzed into my house you were the last person I expected. You’d never been to see me before. You’d never expressed any desire to come to London. You’d never shown any interest in what sort of life I led there, or what sort of place I lived in. And yet...’

  ‘And yet...?’

  ‘And yet I wasn’t fazed. I didn’t stop to think about that. I should have. If I had, I would have realised that you and I...we have so much history between us. I’ve known you for ever.’

  ‘And that’s a good thing?’ Georgina asked gruffly. ‘Matias, you’ve always struck me as someone who likes novelty. Even when we embarked on...on the physical side of things, I got the impression that I was...a novelty...a change from your usual type of woman...’

  ‘I deserve that.’ He met her gaze evenly and then shook his head with regret. ‘My priorities were cemented when I was too young to question them. My parents lived from one day to the next. I hated that...’

  His voice was halting as he began to explore emotional territory he had always been loath to cover. He raked his fingers through his hair and realised that they weren’t quite as steady as he might have hoped. The weird thing, he thought, was that she knew all of this—either by inference or because he had told her in some way, shape or form during the time they had spent together. And yet tension was snaking through him, strangling his vocal cords and blurring his thoughts.

  ‘I don’t suppose they ever gave it a moment’s thought, but their lifestyle made me realise that the one and only thing I wanted from life was security. Financial security. I’d watched as they bounced from one scheme to another. I stopped focusing on the fact that they were perfectly happy doing that. I stopped focusing on the fact that their choices didn’t impede on their responsibility as parents. I only saw...’

  Georgina reached out and impulsively rested her hand on his, barely registering that he didn’t remove it, that he covered it with his own.

  ‘I suppose,’ Matias said pensively, ‘that going to boarding school conferred innumerable advantages upon me, but there were also warnings there that I was too young to interpret. I was an
impressionable adolescent, and my parents’ hippy lifestyle suffered in contrast to the well-ordered lifestyles of the well-heeled kids I was suddenly having to live with. I didn’t envy what they had, but bit by bit I knew, whatever their private lives might have been, that financial security was something that protected them—like varnish on wood. By the time I left that school my ambitions were in place. And there was no room in that agenda for relationships.’

  ‘So you enjoyed women for a while and then...then you moved on...?’

  ‘Something like that.’ He smiled crookedly—a heartbreaking smile that made her jaw tighten. ‘But I’m straying off-topic here. I... I think I might need something stronger than coffee.’

  ‘I have some red wine...’ Georgina began, standing, but he wouldn’t release her hand.

  ‘Maybe not. Georgie, let’s sit somewhere more comfortable.’ He indicated the sofa in the sitting room of the open-plan apartment. ‘Maybe I need to say what I need to say without the help of alcohol but not in an upright metal chair.’

  ‘Am I going to like what I hear?’

  ‘Depends on what you want to hear.’

  ‘I’ll withhold judgement until I’ve listened to what you have to say.’

  But she knew that she was losing perspective. He was so...so much a piece of her...so spellbinding...just so beautiful... And right now he was as open as she had ever seen him, and that, in itself, riveted her attention and made her heart beat so fast that she wanted to pass out.

  ‘When you walked through the door of my house that very first time it felt natural. I guess I should start with that. Though it was something that hardly registered with me then. Your scheme was crazy. It was also the most generous thing anyone could have done. Generous and impulsive. I turned you away because I was accustomed to being the one in control, and then, when I did decide to go along with your charade...’

  ‘Your first idea was to get me to dress the part.’

  Georgina gave him a tentative smile. She had given up trying to work out where this was leading. It was honest, and that was the main thing. She would deal with wherever it ended up when it got there.