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He’d ordered a bottle of wine in advance of their meeting, an excellent red. Not one from his vineyard, of course, but from the region. He’d be interested in hearing what she thought of it. For someone who wasn’t particularly interested in drinking wine, she had a pretty good palate, as he had discovered in Tuscany.
‘Maude...’ Mateo rose to greet her. He reminded himself that, however satisfying it was to know that they were once again on the same page, he would still have to lay down his boundary lines. He might feel oddly out of control when it came to her, but laying down those lines would be a reminder to himself. He was still a guy in charge.
‘Hi.’
Now that she was here, standing in front of Mateo, overwhelmed by him once again, she was wondering whether she’d done the right thing in coming.
‘Don’t look so apprehensive. Shall we retreat to the dining area? Are you hungry?’
‘It’s fine here. I... I won’t be here long.’
Mateo frowned. ‘There’s no rush.’ He delivered one of those killer smiles that always made her weak at the knees and which made her go weak at the knees now. ‘I’ve cleared my calendar for you.’ He waited until she was sitting, until wine had been poured for both of them and the hovering waiter had left, with an order for some tapas, before he continued, the killer smile abruptly dropping to be replaced by an expression of deadly seriousness.
‘Look, I know that you’re finding this awkward.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes. It’s written all over your face. Don’t forget, I know you as well as I know the back of my hand. At least it seems that way to me. You’re finding this awkward, and I don’t blame you, but I’m glad you’re here. Glad that you’ve come back to me.’
‘Come back to you...’
‘I’ve been thinking about you as well. I’d go so far as to say that I’ve been missing...our passionate nights together. And days.’ The smile returned and his eyes darkened. ‘I’ve discovered that an empty bed is way too big when the woman I should be sharing it with is no longer in it. Which is why I don’t want you to feel awkward. We’re in the same place, Maude, we want the same thing. And I think we can both be honest and admit that giving one another up was good in theory but crap in practice.’
‘Hmm.’
‘But...’ Mateo let that single word hover in the air between them, inviting her to look at him with questioning blue eyes.
‘But?’ Maude politely parroted.
‘But...this is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this.’
‘Anything like what?’
‘For me,’ Mateo elaborated, ‘When a relationship ends, it ends. There’s no going back.’ He smiled wryly. ‘I would say even more so in the case of a relationship that ends because a woman has been the one to do the walking. Not that I would know that for sure, because it’s never happened before.’
‘I’m sure,’ Maude said, even more politely.
‘But because this is a first for me...well, how do I put this?... I don’t want you to read anything into it.’
‘Read anything?’
‘What we had was pure and simple. We had great sex. I’m very happy to pick up where we left off.’
‘Ah. I understand. You want to make sure I know that this is just a meaningless affair that has a timeline.’
Mateo frowned and shifted.
He had finished his glass and poured himself another, but realised that she had failed to take a single sip of hers, sticking to water instead. The tapas had been delivered to them. He had barely noticed the arrival of the waiter. He’d been utterly wrapped up in the glow of anticipation and the urgency of making sure he told it like it was, no room for misunderstandings.
Now, he realised that she had contributed remarkably little to the conversation and she certainly hadn’t shown any of the enthusiasm he had expected.
Why? It wasn’t as though he had tried to dissuade her, was it? The contrary! He had been open and honest about wanting her back in his life as much as she clearly wanted him back in hers.
‘That’s not how I would have phrased it,’ he said stiffly.
Maude shrugged.
‘I’m not here to get back together with you, Mateo,’ she clarified.
