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‘We ended our relationship months ago.’ Mateo’s voice cooled and he glanced at his watch, an invisible signal that the conversation was terminated as far as he was concerned.
In fairness, the blonde laughed again and smiled with a touch of puzzlement, murmuring, ‘Blow me, she never said...’ And then she nodded goodbye and headed towards the bank of shallow steps leading up to the house.
‘Well, ’ Mateo mused thoughtfully, ‘that was unexpected.’
‘I don’t know quite a few of the younger crowd here,’ Maude admitted. ‘I’ve never met that girl in my life before. She’ll be with Amy’s party. Amy’s a fashion journalist so they probably met through fashion. She seemed nice.’
Mateo shrugged and gazed down at the woman by his side.
‘Penny for them.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You’re lost in thought.’
‘She’s at the top of the steps with a few of Nick’s pals and they’re looking in this direction.’ Maude sighed. ‘She’s probably wondering what the heck you supposedly see in me after Cassie... Wasn’t Cassie a model? Look at me. I couldn’t be a model if I spent the next decade on a two-hundred-calorie-a-day diet!’
‘There you go again. Why don’t we show them all and prove a point?’
He didn’t give Maude time to object. He barely gave her time to think at all. He leant towards her, hand rising to cup the nape of her neck, gathering some of her long, thick hair between his fingers and tugging her close to him.
She wanted this. He could feel it in her tremble and the soft sigh that escaped her lips. And he wanted it too, more than he could have imagined possible. He’d wanted to touch her all evening. Only now, when he was actually touching her, did he realise that.
And it felt as if he wanted more...more than just a kiss. He wanted to silence her self-consciousness, make her know in her gut that she was as stunning as the rest of them. He wanted to make her feel really good about herself, as confident in her looks as she was in her professional abilities. Where was that urge coming from? For now, this was enough...
His mouth covered hers in a kiss that started gentle but then grew hungry, demanding, wanting more of the sweetness of her tongue against his.
The shooting hardness of his erection made him stifle a groan, but common sense wasn’t making an appearance.
Not yet. He was lost and it was up to her to shakily pull back, eyes wide as she stared at him.
Maude could hardly think straight.
He’d kissed her!
Her mouth tingled. She wanted to trace her lips with her finger, but she kept her hands by her sides and somehow managed to weave a path through her confusion back to the reality of the situation.
Mateo had kissed her to prove a point. He’d felt sorry for her—wasn’t that the truth of the matter? Confident in her work and clever at her job she might be, but she’d done what she always did when it came to that uncertain side of her—she’d laughed at herself, joked about the way she looked. And he’d automatically done the one thing that had occurred to him to do in front of an audience...he’d kissed her. Because he was a nice guy, underneath it all, and because he felt sorry for her. And, yes, because they were pretending to be an item and he’d been swept away by a bit of method acting because she’d pointed out their audience.
Maybe she’d given him some kind of invisible signal that she wanted him to kiss her.
Maude was mortified to think that.
‘That wasn’t necessary,’ she said briskly. She wondered whether he could detect the slight wobble in her voice and hoped not. Her eyes were glued to his face, but in the darkness she couldn’t begin to see what he was thinking.
Was he embarrassed that he had acted on impulse and done something he knew hadn’t been necessary? Now he was staring at her—was he making comparisons between her and the supermodels he was fond of dating?
No. Maude knew in her heart that was an uncharitable accusation, but she didn’t want to assume that he might have been attracted to her, even if it was for just a moment in time, caught up in the romance of a situation they had engineered. There lay a dangerous road—some gut instinct told her so.
‘Not necessary,’ he parroted huskily.
‘No. Not at all. I mean, I know you kissed me to...to show them that we were really an item...but there was no need at all! I doubt they were even looking in this direction.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You think I kissed you because I wanted to confirm the story we’d told everyone?’
