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She had reacted with immediate horror.
She’d thought back to that kiss and had then projected to a few days spent lazing around somewhere with a pool, and her nerves had gone into instant freefall.
She was thirty-two years old! She wasn’t a teenager swooning over the hottest boy in the class! She knew better than to let her emotions rule her head again. She was mortified because she knew that he had no such qualms about being anywhere with her, whether there were chaperones around or not.
Yes, he had told her that she was beautiful, but Maude knew to take that compliment with a pinch of salt. In the wake of her having confessed her insecurities to him, he had responded with kindness, as many would in a similar situation.
Left with no option, Maude had decided that she would simply have to accept the break with routine but treat it as work related.
And now she was here. At the designated airfield not a million miles away from where her parents lived, as it happened.
And their destination?
Italy.
She’d packed the minimum. He had sent a car for her and she had stepped into the sleek, black Range Rover, with its privacy glass and breathed a sigh of relief—because, as it had sped away, she had spotted two cars parked half on the grassy kerb outside the gates of the house.
Maude had had a comfortable life, but nothing had prepared her for the feeling of stepping out of that chauffeur-driven car to wait for a private jet to whisk her away.
The place was crowded. Small light-aircraft were lined up, booked for flying lessons. People were spilling out of the café, drinking coffee and gazing at the planes from behind a protective wire fence.
There were several private jets, and she was staring at them when she heard Mateo say, right next to her, ‘I see you’re travelling light. That’s a first, in my experience, when it comes to a woman...’
Maude spun round, heart beating fast, and shielded her eyes from the glare of the sun.
He oozed sex appeal in a pair of faded jeans and a white, collared tee-shirt. At his feet was a well-used luxury leather holdall and he was wearing dark sunglasses, although he removed them to gaze down at her.
‘I...just threw in a couple of things. We’re not going to be there long. Your jet...’
‘Will be here.’ He glanced at his designer watch and then she followed his gaze to where a black speck was approaching the airfield, filling the air with the distinctive roar of its powerful engines. ‘Right about now...’
Maude’s mouth fell open.
The black beast dominated the airfield, a shark among minnows, and there wasn’t a face in the crowd that didn’t turn to stare.
‘Come along.’ Mateo jostled her briskly. ‘I can’t waste too much of this day. I have meetings lined up and I want you along for a couple of them.’
‘Of course!’ This was more like it—thank goodness. She would have to stop fretting about things that weren’t going to happen.
Behind them, the driver had taken their bags. The crowd parted as they walked through to the jet. This was what immense wealth felt like, Maude acknowledged. Everything paled in comparison. It was the material manifestation of his ruthless drive towards the top.
He’d gone from an impoverished background to having everything at his fingertips. The ultimate maverick who had defied the odds to become the biggest lion in the jungle.
What had been sacrificed along the way?
Curiosity had no place here, but Maude was suddenly consumed with it. What had life been like for him? He had let slip that confidence about his mother...had shown her a glimpse of a boy who had grown up with the notion that he had been abandoned. Some things were very hard to paper over with common sense and grown-up logic—that was one of them. To think that you’d been left behind by your own mother, that she had chosen another life rather than the one with you in it, would have cut deep.
Was that why he was so detached from women? Why he could have countless relationships without ever allowing any of them to become a permanent feature in his life?
It was funny to think that, for all their backgrounds were so different, she too had absorbed things as a child that she had not been able to shake. She had had love and all the privileges of a middle-class background. Yet she had never been able to forget the way the other kids had looked at her when she had started shooting up—the giggles behind their hands, the invitations that hadn’t dropped on the doormat.
She’d developed lots of coping mechanisms but had those experiences, like his, followed her into adulthood, defining what she did and how she reacted to stuff?
Had she spent a lifetime shying away from giving herself to anyone because of her own insecurities, which had been compounded by a youthful misjudgement with a guy, the sort of thing that happens to everyone at least once in their lifetime?
Of course she had. Maude knew that, just as she knew that time had gone by and the past should never dictate the present or, worse, the future. But what was to be done about it?
Her love life had frankly been non-existent for years. The occasional date, boyfriends here and there, had always taken second place to her career.
