Chapter 10 #3
The moment Matteo and I are alone, he breathes out a sigh of relief which is understandable seeing as he’s juggling work and I’m juggling all these wedding shenanigans.
We place our costume bags carefully on the bed.
Matteo runs a finger slowly down the front of my chest and hooks it into the waistband of my jeans.
He tugs me towards him. ‘What would you like to do for the’ – he peers at his phone – ‘two hours we have spare before we go all nineteenth century?’
He knows about the Bridgerton buttocks scene. We have re-enacted it many, many times. I flutter my lashes at him coyly. ‘Why, my Lord Viscount. I thought you’d never ask.’
Matteo has a dark twinkle in his eye as he slides to his knees, his hands tracing the outline of my curves.
I run my fingers through his silky hair and we make delicious eye contact.
He slowly unbuttons my jeans and is about to peel them from my hot, wanton body when there’s a banging on the door. We jump a mile.
‘Connie? Connie. We need you.’
‘It sounds like Liberty,’ I say to him. With a sigh of resignation, he gets up while I quickly button up my jeans. I hurry to the door and swing it open.
‘Come with us,’ Liberty says, yanking me out of the room. She leans in to shout across to Matteo. ‘We need to borrow your wife for a few minutes!’ Tash, who is hovering at her side, closes my bedroom door on his perplexed face.
‘We need you to help us,’ she hisses.
‘What with?’ I whisper back.
Liberty squints up and down the corridor.
‘Not here. Let’s go to my room because Kev’s watching K-Pop Demon Hunters with the girls in Tash’s.
’ Tash and I follow her down the hallway to her room in silence.
Once she shuts the door behind us, she spins round.
‘We need to see what they’ve caught on camera. We need to know what they’ve filmed.’
I regard Liberty’s worried expression and the urgent tone in her voice. Oh. Crap. I’m almost too afraid to ask why. ‘Is this to do with Nacho?’
She nods, hanging her head. ‘We’ve asked if they would allow us to review the footage and they said no and pretended they couldn’t speak English and didn’t understand why we needed to see it.’
‘And I need to see it too,’ exclaims Tash. ‘I may have said some things about Kev’s mother being a bitter, interfering, jealous, leathery old soak with an Oedipus complex who needs to cut the apron strings and stop babying her man-child, which I’d rather not have on film.’
I gulp.
‘And…’ Tash’s cheeks enflame. She looks guilty as hell. ‘Obviously, I didn’t know the cameras were in the dining room so this morning, before you all got there, Kev had to go back to the room for his phone charger and I… I had a little sneak peek at his phone messages.’
I shrug. ‘That’s not so bad, is it?’ I’m sure it’s the sort of violation of trust that Kev would expect from her.
‘I wanted to see what his mother had written about me.’
‘Okay.’
Liberty is being suspiciously quiet so she must know what is coming next.
‘Kev’s mother thinks I’m a cougar, out to trap him while he’s in his prime and sexually vulnerable. She thinks I’ve mesmerised him somehow… like a cult leader, and that he’s blindly going along with whatever I say.’
I mean, seen in a prudential light, it’s not far from the truth.
‘I think I may be on camera telling everything to Liberty.’ Tash nervously wrings her hands. She takes a deep breath in. ‘I might also have yelled that as soon as Kev gets me preggers, she can go to hell in a handcart. Only Kev has told me specifically that he doesn’t want kids just yet.’
Ah.
‘And I need to see if the camera crew have been following me and Nacho around,’ admits Liberty. ‘They may have filmed something they shouldn’t.’
‘I told her she should just bone him and get him out of her system before Eddie gets here,’ adds Tash matter-of-factly.
‘Lucky I didn’t listen to you then, isn’t it? Or this would be even worse.’ Liberty sounds very stressed.
So she hasn’t slept with Nacho? ‘But it’s still something you’d rather Eddie didn’t see?’
Liberty nods. ‘And also because it may be illegal here in France.’
Now I really am too afraid to ask. ‘Right. What’s the plan?’
‘We need Matteo to put pressure on the camera crew. He’s the only one who speaks French,’ she says. ‘Plus, he’s quite moody, isn’t he? He’s got that fuck-you energy about him.’
‘Well, I definitely wouldn’t say no to him,’ says Tash. ‘I’m a sucker for that sexy, hot boss vibe.’
I swallow. That’s all very specific. ‘Okay. Leave it with me.’ Just because they both seem to be actively trying to destroy his working relationships with Eddie and Birdie, I’m sure Matteo won’t mind at all.
And by that, I mean I’m not sure in the slightest. I don’t know him well enough yet and from what I’ve seen he doesn’t suffer fools.
We’ve pushed his patience to the limit at times.
‘I’ll ask him, but I can’t promise anything.
He’s very busy at the moment with work and… stuff.’
‘He’s your husband now, babe. Just tell him to get the fuck on with it.’ Tash frowns, raising a vape to her lips. ‘Otherwise, what’s the point of being married?’