CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER EIGHT
A LICE HAD SAID YES : that had been seven weeks ago. Since then, things had moved fast. In two days’ time, they would be moving into the house she had looked around. He’d seemed startled when she’d asked him, some time back, if it wouldn’t be be too modest for his taste.
‘We come from very different worlds, Mateo,’ she had told him when she had accepted his marriage proposal. ‘Whichever side of the tracks you’ve come from, you’ve ended up on the side where the pavements are lined with gold, and I’m not sure if you’re going to find somewhere as unassuming as that cottage up to your current standards—especially if you’ll be living there with me full-time, not visiting once a week from your über-modern mansion on Mount Olympus.’
He’d grinned. ‘I’ll prove you wrong,’ he’d asserted, with such ease that she had been reassured and surprised at the same time. But, sure enough, he hadn’t looked back.
He had left the bulk of the soft-furnishing shopping to her, and had got a heavy-duty team of contractors on board, who had set to work turning one old and slightly dilapidated Victorian house into a work of art, while keeping every single original feature intact. It had been done at speed because no expense had been spared.
The wedding date had been set: a quiet affair with just close family and friends, to be held at the very parish church where her father preached. The small village was abuzz with excitement and her mother had swooped in with commendable enthusiasm for every part of the process, from picking out flowers to organising the choir.
Amidst all this, she expanded as the baby had grown, and there was not a single moment when she didn’t feel Mateo’s deep and honest involvement with the tiny human being maturing inside her. But he would never love her; of that she was now sure, having heard the rest of his story when it came to marriage and, as it turned out, pregnancy.
Everything about his relationship with his ex-wife explained the man Mateo was now. Not only had he rushed into marriage way too young but the marriage had been propelled by a pregnancy neither he nor his young girlfriend had planned.
However hardened he had been back then, he had obviously still been romantic enough to hope for a positive outcome. Maybe he had secretly thought that whatever love they’d shared at the start could be resurrected with a baby on the way. But the evolution of that relationship—the divorce, then the woman returning years later to try and fleece him for money—had opened his eyes to the bitter fact that not only had that love been little more than an illusion, but the very business of opening himself up a fraction could be disastrous.
Roll the clock on and Alice knew that, while she might love Mateo, he would only ever return love with, at best, affection mingled with a sense of duty. He wasn’t a guy who ignored learning curves and he had had his fill of them.
But she had had a glimpse of what her life would be like if she let him go. Forget all her high-minded principles of not wanting to suffer the pain of being with a guy who didn’t love her. The truth was that seeing him with that blonde woman had shown her that the pain of actually seeing him move on would always be hard for her to bear.
She would just have to plaster a smile on her face when she was with him, always keep a careful guard on her emotions and love him from afar, knowing that to be open about how she felt would risk turning him off.
And who knew? There were always surprises round every corner. He might not come to love her in the way that she defined love, but he could come to need her, and that would be a step up from affection.
Want and need were close companions, weren’t they? And he wanted her. It was there every time he glanced at her, or looked at her until her body was raging with an urgent, primal burn. One that matched his. Oh, how glorious it was to be able to feel that hard, perfect body once again.
She’d made her choice at his ultimatum: marriage and the knot tied for good, lovers once again. Since then, permission granted, they had fallen back into each other’s arms with the exquisite satisfaction of two people who knew each other intimately, who revelled in the pleasure of touching.
There was no question how he felt for her on a physical level: he wanted her. Honestly, whatever doubts she might harbour about this situation, one thing was absolutely clear: this part of their relationship worked and who knew if this one thing might not grow into more? One day he might need her. Need would make it harder for him to stray when the physicality between them eased away and he no longer wanted to touch her the way he wanted to touch her now.
Right now, getting done the final touches before she left for the leaving party her friends at the school were throwing for her, Alice blushed at the thought of those touches, that physicality . She would never tire of the way he could make her body sing and even now, with it swelling and getting bigger, he was still turned on—more so, if anything.
She didn’t get it. When she thought of that woman she’d seen in the picture, leggy, skinny and tall enough to look Mateo in the eye instead of roughly somewhere in the region of his chest, Alice could only wince at the unfavourable comparison. She knew that she was marrying the most gorgeous, eligible bachelor on the planet through default and she had to fight to overcome the occasional burst of insecurity that generated in her. Yet, when he traced the contours of her swollen belly with such tenderness, she had no doubt that he wasn’t put off by her expanding girth.
Sometimes, at night, she wondered how things might change after the baby was born, which was no longer in the distant future. Would the romance of an unborn child and the adventure that represented turn into the more prosaic business of sleepless nights and exhausted days? Would he still be turned on by a tired, yawning wife who didn’t have time to look after herself because of the demands of an infant? Would temptation elsewhere begin to beckon as the mysterious pull of her pregnant body no longer existed?
Since she had no answers to those questions, and since she knew that speculation would only end up with her in a place where she probably wouldn’t want to be, Alice boxed up those concerns, to be considered some other time in the future.
She stepped back and looked at her reflection with a critical eye. She could see the change in her shape, the small but distinct roundness of her expanding belly. Possibly not a great idea to go for bright, summery colours when she was short, genetically plump and a few months’ pregnant. But, then again, she looked cheerful, which was exactly how she felt as she saw the beep on her phone: Mateo’s driver outside and waiting for her. She flew out, grabbing her bag and her lightweight jacket on the way.
She would miss her friends, but would still keep in touch with many of them socially, and, if she was finishing a tiny bit ahead of the usual maternity-leave schedule then that was fine. Deep down, she could see the sense of taking it easy and relaxing before the baby came along rather than trying to prove a point about independence when she really didn’t need to work. She would enjoy herself and then look forward to the new chapter in her life in a couple of days, when they moved in to their new place together.
Right now, she was still in the rented apartment Mateo had moved her to and Mateo had said he was making sure that as many complex deals were completed as possible before the baby came along. Alice hadn’t protested and, while she trusted him, she knew that there was no such thing as certainties in life, so she made damn sure not to go near any gossip pages just in case.
But tonight wasn’t for any anxious thoughts. Tonight was for enjoying herself.
Mateo had no idea why he had decided to surprise Alice at the school where her leaving do was being held. Things were exactly as he had hoped for: she had accepted his marriage proposal.
He was guiltily aware that a certain amount of tactical economy with the truth had played into that decision. He’d painted a nicely vivid picture of what Alice could expect when he found another woman. He’d allowed her to think that, having had his proposal turned down, he was already easing himself back into the dating scene...even though he hadn’t looked in the direction of another woman since Alice had returned to his life. But he had no regrets about those creative liberties. He’d got what he’d wanted and it was for the best.
What could beat two parents united and together when it came to bringing up the child they shared? What could beat the fire between them? He’d resisted her for as long as he could when he’d been waiting for her to come to him, but he had prodded and she had come to him, and it was damn near wonderful not having to deny what his body wanted—what both their bodies wanted!
There was no way she could deny that they got along. He’d been nothing but accommodating—the ideal husband to be and father in the making. But he was beginning to think that proving himself was a vain pursuit, because she honestly didn’t seem to notice all his hard work.
For instance, she had no idea how much grit it had taken to accept the wedding taking place in weeks rather than hours. He had nodded, murmured something or other and battled the instinct that had pushed him to firm things up while he still had her, because the longer they delayed walking down the aisle the more time it allowed her to reconsider.
For the guy who’d never given marriage a second’s thought in years, he found himself in the challenging position of desperately wanting it now.
He hadn’t raised an eyebrow when she’d made noises about the house he’d bought being too modest for his taste. True, he would have gravitated to something bigger and more impersonal, but he’d been quick to appreciate that that would never have been to her taste. Besides, as she had pointed out, infants were allergic to too much white and too many hard edges. So he’d left the choice of whatever décor she wanted to her.
He’d likewise listened with interest as she’d rambled on about resuming work locally once the baby was born. He didn’t see the point of that, but he was determined to prove to her that she hadn’t made a mistake when it came to giving in to him and giving up on whatever romantic dreams she still clung to.
Yet, he had caught glimpses of her when she hadn’t realised he’d been watching her and her expression had hardly been one of undiluted joy. At times like that, his gut instinct was to touch her, because on that one front he was perfectly secure.
Her body curved to his as natural as a flower keening towards the sun, but he had to resist that because it was a cheap fix; he knew that. They could still lose themselves when they were making love, get to a place where nothing mattered and there was no sadness, thoughtfulness or anything at all but enjoyment of the moment, but more and more he found that he wanted more than just passing enjoyment.
He wanted her to smile all the time . He just didn’t know how to get there with that.
So he’d decided that he’d surprise her at her staff party—maybe remind her somehow that he was there for her and the baby. Show her that the life she was leaving behind wasn’t one that she should file under the heading of ‘whimsical nostalgia for the good times’. If she conditioned herself to think of her past as a sacrifice she’d been obliged to make, then there would be no chance of her ever really accepting the present without wondering whether an alternative would have been better.
He could have told her to expect him but he favoured the element of surprise. It was only as his driver neared the uninspiring building that he realised something: part of him was curious to see her in her natural habitat rather than his.
He knew the code to the door. With the agreement of the other members of staff, she had been allowed to share it with him. Mateo thought that his hefty financial contribution to the school finances might also have had a little something to do with that particular decision, but had tactfully refrained from pointing that out. Time had shown him that she was naive when it came to her accepting the unpalatable truth that money bought pretty much everyone and everything. Probably because she was the one exception to that rule.
He’d been to the school on a number of occasions and knew the layout pretty well, although it felt a little eerie to wander around without the noise of kids everywhere. Lord only knew why they’d chosen to have a party at the school, but Alice had been thrilled. She’d wanted it to be informal and private. And besides, she had confided at the time, her memories were all there, which was important to her. She hadn’t wanted lots of waiters and staff faffing around, serving them, with a deadline for them to leave and no music allowed.
He followed the noise. Only essential lighting was on in the corridors and the doors to the classrooms were all firmly shut. It wasn’t a big school, serving kids between the ages of eleven and sixteen, with a sixth-form college standing on other grounds not far away. If he’d somehow looked at it through rose-tinted specs, he would say that it was as cosy as a functional, unimaginative concrete and glass block could possibly get. That was thanks to sheer ingenuity when it came to filling the unappealing wall space with posters.
Mateo heard old-school 80s music as he nudged open the door to the staffroom, which was adorned with balloons, a banner and a long table groaning under the weight of food ordered in for the occasion.
And there she was: Alice.
She was chatting in a group, jigging about merrily and laughing.
Mateo drew in a sharp breath and remained standing where he was, framed in the doorway but not immediately noticeable in the dim room crowded with so many people—a huge turn-out for a popular teacher.
The door was angled in such a way that someone would have had to twist round to make him out, and no one was doing that. Everyone was too busy having a blast. At least thirty-five people were there. Most were dancing and there was a lot of laughter, talking and screeching.
Watching, Mateo felt as though he’d been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer, because what he saw on Alice’s face was absolute joy, and that absolute joy was something he hadn’t seen for a long time. He’d seen abandon when they’d made love, and appreciation for his thoughtfulness when they’d gone out for meals or visited the house they’d be sharing.
But that absolute joy ? No.
He pushed himself into the room, feeling as out of place as he’d felt in a long time. She instantly spotted him.
In the middle of turning to fetch herself some more of the nibbles on the table, Alice stilled. The last person she had been expecting to see was Mateo.
She’d become so used to guarding her feelings around him, hiding her love because she knew that it wasn’t returned, because she wanted to protect herself as much as she could. She stole glances at him when he wasn’t looking, like a thief stealing a cache of gold to be inspected later in privacy, but she made sure to school her expression when she was with him. She couldn’t let all her defences slip. Where would that leave her? As helpless as a turtle deprived of its protective shell.
He’d asked very few questions about the leaving party and she’d got the impression that he hadn’t been all that interested. Why should he have been? she’d asked herself impatiently. The leaving party didn’t involve the baby. The leaving party involved her and he wasn’t interested enough in her to ask for details.
He came alive when he touched her, and his eyes lit up whenever they rested on her swollen stomach, proof positive that it was the baby he wanted. But otherwise he was kind, unfailingly attentive but keen on keeping some distance. Physical distance...no. Emotional distance...yes.
At least, that was what it felt like to Alice.
She drank the remainder of her lemonade, knowing that he’d been spotted from the awed reaction from everyone, and walked towards him. The conversation which had stopped for a few seconds picked back up again around her as she propelled her way forwards.
‘What are you doing here?’ was the first thing she asked when she was standing in front of him. ‘I thought you said that you were going to be working late this evening.’
‘Thought I’d surprise you, join in the fun. Are you disappointed that I’ve come?’
Alice hesitated. Disappointed? How could she ever be disappointed to see Mateo? He thrilled her to the bone. He looked sexy as hell, indolently leaning against the door frame, staring down at her in ways that made her whole body feel as though its primary mission in life was to fire up in readiness for him.
It was such a frustrating reaction that she reddened and scowled. ‘Surprised. Come on through.’
She began turning away, but then saw that he wasn’t immediately following suit, so she reluctantly turned back round to look at him.
‘Wait. I... I don’t want to interrupt your good time, Alice.’
‘Why did you come, Mateo?’
‘I came because...’
‘Did you want to see how the other half live?’
‘Of course not,’ he said shortly.
‘There are no waiters and waitresses here with great platters of expensive food and there’s no champagne. Everyone put money into a kitty towards the food. Sarah, the dinner lady, did the spread. And we all brought some alcohol and soft drinks, and James is the DJ for the evening.’
‘Why are you getting hot under the collar? Have I said anything about coming here because I wanted to see how the other half live ?’
‘No, but you weren’t exactly very interested when I told you about this leaving do.’
Alice heard the hurt petulance in her voice with dismay. She was punishing him for not taking the sort of interest in her that she wanted him to, seeing his surprise arrival here as patronising rather than interested, and she was ashamed of the pettiness.
So far she hadn’t involved herself in his social life, although in fairness he had invited her to an opening only a week before. Mateo might have come from a rough background, might have had to fight tooth and nail to get where he had, but now that he’d got there he blended in with the highest echelons of society as though he’d always belonged there. He knew how to do that because he didn’t care.
Hormones suddenly seemed to surge through her. In a rush, she felt self-pity for having fallen for a guy who didn’t return her love, and for her own blasted body, which reacted to him mindlessly every time he was within a metre of her. It all seemed hopeless as she stared down the barrel of a future of want, need and love, too much for her to contain but with nowhere to go.
She thought of how her life was going to change and it was really the first time she had given this thought house room. She would no longer have this cheerful crowd of friends around her every day. She would be mixing in a world that was going to be very different, and she had a moment of panic that she was just never going to be able to fit in.
‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ she said sharply. Her hazel eyes flashed with misplaced anger as she stared up at his beautiful face, noting the way the shutters dropped.
‘I wouldn’t have,’ Mateo returned tightly, ‘if I’d known that the reception was going to be as hostile as it is. Why’s that?’
Alice was steaming full ahead. Maybe it was just the fact of seeing him here, on the last day of life as she’d known it. She didn’t know. She just knew that everything seemed to have piled up on top of her and this was where it burst its banks.
She glared at him, and in return he raised cool eyebrows and stared right back at her with unflinching aloofness.
‘You don’t get it!’ she snapped miserably, half-stepping out of the room and then drawing the door behind them so that the world wasn’t witnessing this stupid spat that had sprung from thin air.
‘Tell me what I don’t get.’
‘I feel...’ Alice left the sentence hanging in mid-air because she wasn’t quite sure what she did feel. Things were not ideal but she thought she’d reasoned her way past the business of being in a loveless marriage. She knew that it was the right thing to do. So why all of a sudden was she miserable and tearful?
Was it because he had showed up here unannounced? Was he a reminder of the world she’d be entering in stark contrast to the one she would be leaving behind? Was there a part of her that was just pretending to accept the situation because she was afraid of the alternative? It felt unfair that love could be so painful.
She looked at him in mute, misplaced anger and then glanced down.
‘Talk to me, Alice.’
He put one hand on her chin and tilted her face to his. When their eyes met, his were gentle and curious, which actually didn’t make her feel much better.
‘I don’t want to talk,’ she said with a defensive toss of her head.
‘What do you want to do?’
‘I’d quite like to make love to you.’
She watched the way his eyes darkened and the flush of simmering heat that stole into his face.
She didn’t want polite and if this was the only way to get passion then, right now, it was a ploy she wasn’t averse to using.
‘I don’t think an empty hall outside a staff room where there are forty people celebrating your imminent departure is going to do the trick, do you, Alice?’
‘We could leave.’
‘No, we could not.’
‘Don’t you want me? Don’t you want to make love to me?’
‘Where the hell is all this coming from?’
Alice shrugged, dealt him a challenging, provocative stare from under her lashes and felt a kick of power. However polite he might be in his role of perfect husband to be, nothing could hide the flare of passion he still seemed able to provoke. How much longer that would last, she had no idea, and she knew that this uncertainty was just something else that unsettled her.
She sighed and looked at him ruefully.
‘I’m just kidding,’ she said. ‘Come on through. It’s fun in there. Everybody’s really put themselves out and you know they all like you.’
‘It was a mistake coming here,’ Mateo returned roughly. ‘But it’s obvious something’s on your mind and I want to know what that something is. I’ll wait up for you.’
‘You’ll wait up for me?’
‘I’ll be at your place and, Alice...don’t overdo it tonight.’
‘Because I’m pregnant?’ she couldn’t help but ask sweetly, immediately spotting his area of concern which, of course was for the precious cargo she carried. ‘Staying up late isn’t going to damage the baby, Mateo. I’m pregnant. I’m not ill!’
He didn’t say anything. He gave her one final look before turning on his heel and walking away and she followed him with her eyes until the door had shut behind him.
Mateo was sprawled on the sofa in Alice’s apartment and was consulting his watch for the eighth time in less than an hour when he heard the sound of her key being inserted in the door.
He’d left her over three hours ago. It had been a mistake to surprise her at her leaving do. He hadn’t been invited for a reason, and the reason had become patently obvious the second she had spotted him. He’d seen the dismay on her face, noted the way the laughter had died on her lips and had known that she hadn’t asked him along because she hadn’t wanted him there.
He’d never been in a position like that in his life but Mateo was already growing accustomed to the fact that there was a Mateo that had existed before Alice and one that existed post-Alice. The post-Alice version could take nothing for granted and was conscious of the fact that at any given moment he might find himself in alien territory without any signposts and no idea what lay round the corner.
He certainly hadn’t foreseen being dismissed in not so many words. As soon as he had walked out of the building, his imagination had gone into overdrive. He’d remembered the happiness on her face before she’d spotted him and then he’d tried to think who she’d been with in that little group.
Had there been any men there? Mateo had always prided himself on not being jealous. In fact, he’d never cared about his girlfriend’s exes and had never had the slightest concern about any of them playing the field behind his back. Why should he? Few could match what he brought to the table and the women he dated had always been grateful to go out with him. He’d grown lazy, it had to be said, and Alice never failed to remind him of that.
But as he waited for her, nursing one drink for the entire time and unable to focus on anything but the crazy scenarios in his head, he did his best to try and recall who’d been there.
Had she been having a few last flirtatious encounters for the road? She was pregnant, for God’s sake! Mateo didn’t know where his runaway brain was going with that scenario but, once it took root, it refused to budge.
Was there some teacher there who had had a crush on her before the whole pregnancy thing had happened? Before she had found herself in the position of having to seek him out through sheer decency, only to find herself embroiled with him because he’d given her as little choice as he could get away with? Because he had played on her driving need to do the right thing?
Was that a great place for him to be? Since when had a ruthless need to get what he wanted trumped generosity of spirit?
Maybe the time for talking had finally come—and this time he would have to accept whatever outcome it led to.