‘However weirdly unquestioning my mother has been about the details of our so-called relationship, she’s not stupid. She does know me, and she knows that it’s unlikely that I would suddenly be attracted to someone who doesn’t at the very least make an effort to dress properly.’
A slow wash of colour rushed to her cheeks and Georgina felt a swell of rage. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘You know what I’m trying to say. Flowing skirts? Baggy tops? Shoes made for hiking in rough terrain?’
‘Do you have any idea how rude you’re being right now?’ she said tightly.
‘You have my sincere apologies—’
‘I’m a food photographer.’ She ignored the token lip service he had paid, trying to placate her. Her voice was cold and steely. ‘I’m freelance. There’s no need for me to have a wardrobe of power suits and cocktail outfits.’
‘Which is exactly why we won’t be heading for that section of Selfridges.’
‘What are you talking about? Why would we be going to Selfridges?’ The rollercoaster sensation was back with a vengeance. ‘I’m not following you.’
‘If we’re going to do this, then we’re going to do it properly, Georgie. No half-measures. We need to be convincing. The alternative is that my mother suspects it’s all a crock of lies and her health is set back even more than before. She will lose trust in both of us.’
Georgina didn’t say anything because he was painting a graphic picture. He was also making her realise just how sketchy she had been when she had told that first little white lie.
‘We might be able to gloss over the little technicality that we’ve previously spent most of our time together engaged in a series of low-level arguments... We might just be able to pull off that old chestnut of—as you’ve said—opposites attracting. But beyond that the details have to carry some verisimilitude.’
And after a long line of catwalk models, Georgina thought furiously, it would beggar belief that he would go for someone who didn’t think twice about snapping up bargain buys in the clothes section of a supermarket.
‘Well, what about you dressing down?’ she fired back.
‘For example...?’ he returned smoothly, with an undercurrent of amusement in his voice.
‘Well, less of the designer cool and more of the beach bum!’
‘Interesting thought.’ He sat back, leaning against the car door, his legs sprawled apart, one hand resting loosely on his thigh. ‘What would that be? Ill-fitting flowered shirt? Cheap shorts? Flip-flops? Is that the kind of look you would go for?’
Georgina blushed and looked away. The man was so good-looking that he would pull off a bin bag and he knew it. Hence the smile that made her want to grind her teeth together in frustration.
‘No one would ever believe that you would wear anything as casual as flowered shirts and flip-flops, Matias. Even when you’re relaxing you give the impression that you’d really rather be working.’
‘I had no idea you could be so accurate when it came to reading me. Maybe there’s more substance to our relationship than meets the eye...’
‘We don’t have a relationship—and I won’t be dressing like that woman you dispatched yesterday.’
‘I’m shocked you’re not kicking up more of a fight over this,’ Matias admitted with honesty.
‘Is that what you think I do? Kick up a fight over everything?’
That stung for some reason, because there was an element of truth in it. She knew that she picked at him, but she quickly told herself that he deserved it. He hardly ever came down to visit his mother...he always made it abundantly clear that he had moved on and was bored with the place he came from...he hadn’t even shown up to his dad’s funeral!
And yet so much about him refused to be corralled into neat little boxes.
‘Not everything,’ Matias conceded. ‘At least not in the company of other people. I’ve seen you laugh, so I know that when it comes to picking fights I’m the special one in your life. I get the folded arms and the scowls.’ He grinned, watched her colour rise, perversely enjoying it.
‘We’ve had our differences...’ Georgina could feel her cheeks suffused with colour. ‘But it’s only because I’ve always been close to your parents.’ She hesitated, then found herself confiding, ‘I adored mine, of course, but I didn’t have loads in common with them. I liked art and taking pictures and rummaging in the undergrowth. And you know my parents, Matias...they were all about intellectual pursuits. I think they pretty much packed it in with me when I hit my teens.’
This was something Georgina had never confessed to anyone, and she was surprised that she was confessing it now—especially to Matias—but then wasn’t that part and parcel of his compelling personality? So cool, so controlled, so annoying. And yet...and yet...he could engage with her on levels no other man she had ever met had been able to.
‘Meaning...?’
Georgina laughed, and that did something to Matias’s libido again, reminded him of those sexy, unexpected little curves he had glimpsed the night before.
‘I stopped getting big, thick books for birthday presents,’ she said drily, ‘and my mum stopped slipping law, international politics and university into the conversation.’
‘I never knew you were bothered by that,’ Matias murmured, an element of surprise in his voice.
‘A bit. But they were great when it came to supporting my decision to go into photography.’
‘Taking pictures of my parents’ produce...?’
‘It was a start, Matias. I have a steady stream of work now, but I can’t afford to splash out on a new wardrobe of clothes I’ll only be wearing for two minutes.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of letting you put your hand in your pocket to buy anything,’ he said flatly.
Their eyes collided and her heart skipped a beat. Heat rushed through her body and her mouth went dry. He really was so very beautiful. That raven-black hair curling at the nape of his neck, the sensuality of his mouth, the lazy intensity of his eyes...
‘And if,’ he continued, ‘my mother suspected that you had, she would know for sure that this is a sham—because no woman of mine has ever been expected to pay for anything when I’m around.’
But I’m not your woman, Georgina thought confusedly.
‘And she would know that you’d bought your own clothes because you wouldn’t be able to resist buying items that are two sizes too big.’
‘That’s out of order!’
Matias laughed. ‘Entirely,’ he murmured, ‘but what’s the point in tiptoeing round the issue? Sexy, but refined is the image I’m thinking you should go for.’
Georgina blanched. In what world could she go from homely to sexy, but refined?
Aghast, she realised that while they had been talking the driver had been skilfully manoeuvring through the London traffic and had now pulled to a smooth stop at the back of the expensive department store.
She was channelled out of the car and shepherded to the designer floor where, somehow, a personal shopper had been summoned to assist them.
‘I’ll sit in on this,’ Matias said, sotto voce. ‘If we’re going to do this then, like I said, we’re going to do it well. And it starts with clothes.’
He sat on a velvet-upholstered sofa with every semblance of keen interest. He didn’t even open his computer. He watched in silence as clothes were brought out for inspection—clothes that she would, presumably, wear for him.
He watched as she resentfully paraded in them, chucking aside anything that looked too small, too short or too tight or showed off her boobs too much. Because he might go for that look, but Rose would know in an instant that she never would.
She opted for refined over sexy, and she did her utmost to ignore those lazily inspecting eyes as she tried to douse the hot fires of her embarrassment.
Eventually, when the pile of clothes had grown to a ridiculous amount, she put her foot down and resurfaced in her original outfit, hands on her hips and grim determi
nation on her face.
‘That’s it,’ she said flatly. ‘I’m not getting anything else.’
‘Why not?’
The assistant had vanished to start the business of packaging all the clothes, and Matias patted the space next to him on the sofa—which Georgina ignored.
‘I thought women enjoyed nothing more than buying clothes.’
‘Not me.’ Georgina stood in front of him, arms folded.
‘So you hated every second of the experience?’
Georgina hesitated. She refused to admit that a part of her had rather liked the business of trying on stuff she would never normally have worn, a lot of which hadn’t looked half bad. And a forbidden part of her whispered that trying on stuff for him had made the experience even more exhilarating.
‘It was a necessary ordeal,’ she offered in a clipped voice.
Matias laughed shortly, unfazed. ‘Liar. Well, you’re going to have to up the appreciation levels,’ he drawled, ‘and eliminate the sniping rejoinders if we’re going to be playing to the gallery.’
He stood up just as the assistant reappeared, obediently waiting in the background for his imperious beckoning finger.
‘But you’re right. There’s enough there to be going on with. It’s not as though this little play-acting game is destined to be a never-ending charade.’
Georgina followed his eyes to the expensively ribboned, tissue-wrapped pile of packages on the table by the assistant.
There were clothes and shoes for every conceivable occasion. For expensive meals out...for casual dining in his mother’s garden—he had informed her that he would be getting a top caterer in for the duration of his stay with her—for walks along the beach, with his mother doubtless tripping along with them as witness to their rosy relationship.
Before, presumably, it all began going sour.
Georgina wondered whether they should have got a few special it’s all going pear-shaped outfits. And then she thought that at that point she would just slip back into her normal gear and that would say it all.
‘You’ll have to show up wearing one of these outfits we’ve bought,’ he said, without glancing at her as he paid for the pile of clothes. Transaction done, he turned to her. ‘I’m thinking that your mystery visits to London, under cover of darkness, would have entailed something of your new persona being presented as my new and exciting love interest. In short, would you have turned up in London wearing comfy work clothes and shoes designed to take on rough terrain and stamp it into submission?’
‘I honestly don’t know how I’m going to look as though you’re the light of my life,’ Georgina muttered through gritted teeth, but she did as told, peeking into one parcel and then disappearing into the changing room.
She had made sure, during the clothes parade, to keep some of her own baggy clothes on—the flowing skirt twinned with a smaller top, the loose-fitting top twinned with slim-fitting trousers... But now, when she appeared a few minutes later, she was wearing a complete outfit, and she looked...
Matias tried not to gape. The woman looked stunning. The girl next door was gone. In her place was a woman any red-blooded man would have wanted to haul off to the nearest bed, caveman-style.
He sat forward. Slowly. He knew he was staring but he couldn’t help himself. She was wearing pin-striped silk culottes and a small silk top, and the ensemble managed to leave everything to the imagination while sending his libido into the stratosphere.
She had had her hair scraped back before, but now it was loose, tumbling over her shoulders in colourful curls. The practical sandals had been replaced with soft leather flats.
‘You look...pretty good.’ Matias stood up with fluid grace and nodded at the assistant to bring the bags, while keeping his eyes riveted to Georgina for a few seconds.
‘Thanks.’
She knew that she was blushing. He was looking at her, for the first time, in the way a man would look at a woman. So pretty good might not the compliment of a lifetime, but then this was a game they were playing. It wasn’t as though he was really attracted to her. But she was no longer invisible...
She reached for her backpack but he swept it up before she could fetch it.
‘We forgot about a handbag.’ He turned to the assistant and told her to get something in tan, price no object. ‘There’s no place in this charade for...’ he dangled her backpack from two fingers ‘...this.’
Georgina thought that was more like it. A brisk, businesslike approach to the situation foisted upon him. Bye-bye scruffy backpack—hello co-ordinating designer handbag. It was a timely reminder that when he had stared at her, sending her blood pressure soaring, it hadn’t been because he was seeing her—not really. He had been evaluating her, to work out whether or not she fitted the bill for the part she was playing.
She had felt a frisson, the feathery brush of excitement as those fabulous eyes had rested on her, but there was no need to hear any alarm bells. He didn’t fancy her and she certainly didn’t fancy him. And even if she did—if she found her eyes straying and getting a little lost in those sinfully exotic good looks—then her reaction was perfectly normal, driven by her hormones and not her head. He was stupidly sexy and she was, after all, a normal healthy woman.
But he’d never been her type and—especially after Robbie and the way she’d been dumped—she had sworn off men. If someone came into her life—someone solid and stable, with a dash of creativity...someone she could envisage sharing her life with—then all well and good. But she would never again be drawn to someone inappropriate.
Robbie had been inappropriate. He had always expected her to bow to his greater knowledge and compliment him on his achievements. He’d been smart and well-read and intellectual, and she hadn’t stopped to look any further because she’d been in love with the idea of being love.
* * *
The drive down to Cornwall was not the awkward situation she had anticipated.
Matias, confirming what he had said to her, worked for much of the journey, only surfacing when they were a matter of twenty minutes away from his mother’s house, at which point he briefly quizzed her on what, exactly, she had told her mother.
‘Not a huge amount,’ she admitted. ‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing and I came to London almost immediately to see you.’
‘I still find it difficult to credit that you could have made such a monumental decision on the spur of the moment,’ Matias murmured.
‘Don’t you do anything on impulse?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think it’s really strange. Your parents must be the most impulsive couple I’ve ever known, especially compared to mine, and yet you’re completely the opposite. Look at the way they embarked on their organic farming...and the way your mother took up Reiki...and then there was the whole horses for the disabled business...such a shame that crashed and burned.’
‘And yet anyone could have predicted that that would be a mistake.’
His knew his voice had cooled somewhat. He could remember his mother passing round her cut-price Reiki at Home business cards to some of the parents at his boarding school at the end of term, having rocked up in their brightly painted camper van, much to the hilarity of all the boys in the entire school.
‘I certainly did and I was barely out of my teens at the time. As for doing anything on impulse? They’re a successful argument for avoiding impulsive behaviour.’
What Georgina saw as romantic and glamorous, he saw as a regrettable handicap.
‘Maybe,’ Matias continued, ‘if they’d started with the organic farming from the very beginning and specialised in it, it might have gone further than it did. But instead they got waylaid by anything and everything, and naturally a Jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none will always be destined to fail.’
‘They were happy. They didn’t fail.’
Matias grunted, disinclined to continue a conversation that was going nowhere. ‘So, no stories we need to tally?’ He brought the conve
rsation back to the matter at hand. ‘No eyes meeting across a crowded dance floor? Good. The fewer lies, the less room for complications.’
‘And the quicker the inevitable end to our relationship?’
Georgina marvelled at his ability to see everything in black and white. No surprise there, but once again it made her realise how different they were. For some reason that was a reassuring thought, and she held on to it because it stopped her disobedient imagination from getting out of hand.
‘Should we plan that out now?’
‘No need to muddy the waters just yet. You can leave that to me. Like I said, I’ll take the hit.’
They were approaching Rose’s house, much to Georgina’s surprise, because the drive seemed to have been completed in the blink of an eye. They had already passed the turning that led to her parents’ house, which she was looking after and living in rent-free while they were in Australia. The houses had given way to open fields on one side and on the other a distant view of the sea.
Rose’s house sat on a hill, and Georgina felt as if she was seeing for the first time just how little enthusiasm the older woman now had for the fields she and Antonio had spent years cultivating. The crops looked vaguely straggly and ill-kempt. There was even a feeling of dilapidation about the house, as they approached it, although that shouldn’t be the case because a lot of money had been spent on it over time, thanks to Matias.
‘It looks tired,’ Matias pointed out, reading her mind. ‘I’ve tried persuading my mother that it would be in her interests to move to something more manageable but she won’t be budged.’
‘Many happy memories within those four walls,’ Georgina murmured, surprising Matias, because that emotional explanation would never have occurred to him.
His brain just didn’t function along those lines. He didn’t see the house in the same way at all. He’d been out of it for such a long time that when he looked all he saw was concrete and glass and a bunch of problems waiting to happen.
Modern Romance May 2019: Books 5-8 Page 5