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For a few seconds Mateo was deprived of speech. She was drying her hair, body tilted, her heavy breasts practically spilling out of the very sober, very old-fashioned one-piece swimsuit. She stood at nearly six feet and her legs were long and well-shaped, her hips rounded and feminine, dipping to a narrow waist, and he could see her way-more-than-a-handful breasts. It was sheer torture, not giving in to the urge to stare like a teenage boy with no self-restraint.
He looked away hurriedly and began strolling towards the house. He breathed more easily when she fell into step alongside him—just about.
‘Self-taught,’ Mateo said in a roughened undertone. He cleared his throat. This was about asun-cool as he had ever felt in his life.
‘Wow. I’m impressed! I had tons of lessons growing up and I always thought I was pretty decent. I used to out-swim the boys in my class most of the time, but I’m green round the ears compared to you!’
They were back in the villa, front door closed and the pale marble flooring generating wonderful cool. He turned to her, still fighting his own rebellious body, knowing that it was imperative to keep some distance at the moment or else make a fool of himself by gawking. Damn it, he wished she would justcover up. How much more could a red-blooded male deal with?
‘You barely looked as though you...’
‘I’m going to head upstairs, Maude. Also, I have work to catch up on—emails. Probably a good idea for you to carry on without me this evening as planned.’
‘Oh, yes, of course...’
‘Right.’ Mateo took a couple of steps back. ‘I’ll head up now. I will see you in the morning.’
He swung round on his heels and Maude watched him vanish into the bowels of his mansion with a sinking heart. What on earth had possessed her to start feeling as though they were best friends, relaxed, chatting and swimming in his pool without a care in the world...as though they really were the couple they were pretending to be?
Mortified, she raced up to her bedroom, towel clutched tightly around her, locked the bedroom door and leant against it, calming down.
Her bedroom was more of a suite, with a seating area and a gianten suite. Pale wood made the floors underfoot cool, as did the overhead ceiling fan which she immediately turned on, finding the whirr of the blades soothing.
She forced herself to have a long bath and to relax but, by the time she made it to the kitchen an hour and a half later, she had determined that hanging around for another week or so, until reporters might or might not have lost interest in their stupid phoney engagement, wasn’t going to do.
Indeed, there was no reason for her to stay on at all. Yes, she was sure he had work to do out here, and it was convenient being around to get through it, but what did that have to do with her? She wasn’t needed for consultation on any of the engineering issues because they had their own guy out here who had covered all of that.
She could return to England, go and stay with her parents and there she could start laying the groundwork for the house of cards that would come tumbling down approximately one day after Nick and Amy were safely married off and her parents’ attention was no longer focused on the wedding.
And if there were reporters lurking behind bushes? They would soon lose interest when they clocked that there would be no pictures of the loved-up couple, but just of her. And if they wanted to ask intrusive questions then she was fully capable of smiling, nodding and saying absolutely nothing at all.
She would also take a couple of weeks off, which she was entitled to. At the end of it, and by the time she finally clapped eyes on Mateo again, she would hopefully have rid herself of her inconvenient attraction.
After all the formal evening meals prepared by a qualified chef, it was fun rooting through the fridge and larder for bits and pieces with which make herself something to eat.
She had washed her hair but not bothered to dry it and she knew that it would get very curly as it dried. On her own, and with no need to dress to impress, she was in cut-off jeans, a tee-shirt and some flip-flops. She had brought down her mobile and was playing some music, half-humming along even though the audio was poor, so only became aware of Mateo’s looming presence when she swung round with a plate of salad in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.
She had no idea how she retained a grip on both as she stopped dead in her tracks to stare at him, utterly confounded by his unexpected appearance.
He had vanished earlier, leaving her with the impression that she was the last person he wanted to spend time with. He had shut down her friendly chit chat in mid-flow and stalked off without a backward glance, leaving her to assume that he was bored with her company and keen for her to realise that he wasn’t her pal, let alone anything else. Possibly just in case she started getting ideas.
Yet here he was, and Maude could feel a sense of fury building because him just standing there, darkly, dangerously and thrillingly sexy was scuppering all her carefully worked out plans.
‘I thought you were working,’ she said tightly. She galvanised her body into motion, walked towards the kitchen table and sat down with her plate and glass of wine. She didn’t look at him. This was his house, and she could hardly stop the man from moving freely inside it, but her heart was thumping and she could feel her resentment ratcheting up.
‘I couldn’t.’
Maude shrugged, eyes fixed on her plate as she dug into the salad which tasted of cardboard.
She switched the music off and then wished she hadn’t because the sudden silence was now deafening. She glanced up when he dragged a chair over to where she was sitting, positioning it so that she had absolutely no choice but tobe awareof his proximity.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t prepared any salad for you,’ she said politely. ‘You made it clear that you weren’t going to be around.’
‘I don’t like salad. I prefer to leave that stuff to the rabbits to dispose of. I needed to talk to you.’
‘Good. Because, actually,Ineed to talk toyou.’ Maude pushed the plate to one side, sat back and folded her arms. ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that this trip might have been a good idea at the start, but it’s been a number of days, and I feel it’s time for me to return to London. If you don’t mind, I will take a few days off work, perhaps as much as a couple of weeks. I’m actually due the time off. I have holiday accrued since...’
‘You think I vanished because I didn’t want to spend time in your company?’
