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‘That’s right. Why else?’
‘Why else indeed?’ Maude murmured, fighting back the sting of tears, knowing that time would take the sharp edges off and put everything into perspective.
‘And don’t tell me that there aren’t distinct upsides to this situation...’ He reached for her wrist and held her hand gently, turning it so that it was palm up and he could kiss the sensitive skin there.
On cue, Maude’s whole body went up in flames. She sighed and her eyes darkened. Mateo looked at her with wolfish intent. ‘I see you get where I’m coming from. Shall I spin the car around and we can find ourselves a nice little B&B ten minutes away? I’m sure your parents wouldn’t mind if we’re running an hour or two late.’
‘You’re terrible and, yes, they would send out a search party. I was so keen to fix a date to see them as soon as they came back that I’m sure they suspect something’s up, and knowing my mother, she’ll be bristling with all sorts of theories.’
Mateo relaxed because this was more certain ground. He didn’t like it when he sensed something in Maude, something deep inside unvoiced. He couldn’t deal with the nebulous suspicion that somewhere inside she was hurting. He hated the thought of that. This was much better.
‘Well, if you insist.’ He vaulted out of the car, loose-limbed, sexy and compelling and swung round to open the passenger door for her. When he helped her out, it was another reminder of the role she now played in his life—mother of his unborn child.
Her parents were waiting. The front door was flung open before Maude had time to reach for the door bell. Her finger was raised and poised to press it when her mother was standing in front of her, as brown as a berry, her hair even more white-blonde than ever and reshaped into a perky, shorter hairstyle.
‘Maude!’
Her father was beaming in the background, ushering them in and making a fuss.
They looked like what they were, two people just back from a holiday in the sun.
‘Mum, youdoknow that there’s such a thing as sun block?’ Maude teased, laughing and hugging them and then standing to one side while Mateo did the usual and blended in as though he had known them his entire life.
He was so at ease and so drop-dead gorgeous in a pair of black jeans and a cotton tan and black jumper and loafers. He was effortlessly sophisticated. He had told her about his childhood one night when they had been lying in bed, wrapped around one another while the last embers from their passionate love making had died down.
‘I grew up with nothing materially,’ he had said pensively, stroking her hair as she rested on his shoulder, curled into him like a cat. ‘And where I came from there was a choice of two roads to travel down to sort that out—drug dealing or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and doing the hard graft to get to the top.’
‘Was it tough going against the grain?’
‘Less so than you might think. My father was great when it came to the straight and narrow. He’d clocked the importance of money the minute my mother jumped ship for a rich guy. He might not have been able to achieve wealth himself but he made damned sure that I was on the right track to have a go at it myself, and I did.’
‘I had it easy.’ Maude had sighed with a pensive frown.
‘Not that easy,’ he had murmured, ‘Or else you would have ended up married to a rich man a long time ago and your career would have been knowing how to fold napkins and lay a good table.’
‘That’s a stereotype!’ But she’d burst out laughing and thought how good it was to be wrapped up in this man, so big, so dominant, so self-assured, a guy with a strong sense of duty and a deeply ingrained moral compass.
Whatever he’d grown up with or without, his father had been the bedrock when it had come to showing him the way forward, and he’d smiled when she’d told him, honestly, that she wished she could have met him.
That he was now the embodiment of everything that was uber-confident and crazily sophisticated showed just how much single-minded focus he had to get what he wanted out of life.
Such as power. Such as money. Such as this marriage, the passport to his child.
Maude felt his eyes thoughtfully watching her as they were ushered into the big family kitchen. Her mother was in her element, gesturing and describing their holiday while her dad smiled indulgently and went about the business of offering them drinks and nibbles, making the same well-worn jokes about having slaved to prepare the cheese sticks and dips, all of which were still in their wrapping.
‘I would have done them myself,’ Felicity said, ‘But I didn’t have the time. It’s been a flurry of activity ever since we got back day before yesterday.’
They had migrated to the living room, which was comfortable and cosy with squashy sofas and a wide sideboard with framed family photos laid out along it, a parade of pictures depicting the sort of family life Maude had always envisaged for herself.
Her eyes slid away from the photos to clash with Mateo’s. He was standing by the bay window, lounging against the ledge with a drink in his hand, legs lightly crossed at the ankles. Behind him, the back garden was shrouded in gloom, the days becoming shorter and announcing that autumn would soon be drawing in.
Their eyes held and, for a few moments, it felt as though time was standing still, allowing him to get inside her head and see the sadness that had lodged there.
Then they were both brought back down to earth by her mother clapping her hands, almost as though she was addressing a crowd of people, bringing them to order.
‘I know you two have something to tell me!’ She beamed and turned to her husband. ‘Don’t we, darling? And you must be absolutely fed-up hearing about the holiday...’
‘Wait until the photos get developed,’ Richard Thornton said. ‘Brace yourselves for a repeat performance, but tack on another hour poring over the snapshots.’
