Page 20 of The Tycoon's Diamond Demand

Maja forced herself to look at Jens, annoyed by him scrolling through his phone. As if sensing her eyes on him, he looked up. ‘We need to get back to the house immediately.’

Arrogant much? ‘Why, what’s the rush?’ Maja asked, not moving from her seat. Jens held out a hand for her to take, but she ignored it and stood up.

He gestured to the door and stood back to let her leave the studio first. ‘Hilda copied me in on an email she sent to you. She wants you to meet her at a hotel that might, for the right price, consider hosting our wedding a month from now. She’s sending a car to collect you in an hour.’

Maja shook her head. ‘You go—’ She saw his frown and sighed. She had to be cooperative if she wanted to have any hope of going back to the life that she’d created for herself. Part of her considered calling Jens’s bluff and sending out that press release herself.

But she wouldn’t, because M J Slater was her creation, something completely apart from her identity as a Hagen, untouched by preconceived perceptions. Her art was judged completely on its merits. She liked it that way. Didn’t she? Sure, she’d thought about how nice it would be to be publicly acknowledged, to claim her work, but she wasn’t ready for M J Slater to be burdened by Maja Hagen’s baggage.

Jens shortened his stride as they walked back to the house. They passed the pool and climbed the stairs to reach the terrace. At the French doors leading into the main reception room, he stopped.

‘Fighting with you is exhausting, Maja.’

‘I’m tired too,’ Maja admitted, feeling deflated. She wasn’t eating properly and hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since she’d met Jens. She felt as if she were living on fresh air and emotion.

‘I wish we could go back to being Jens and Maja, sailor and painter,’ she said, her words soft. She wanted to recapture, if they could, those halcyon days they’d spent twelve summers ago before the furnace of life had remodelled them.

‘But we can’t. What’s done is done, and our choices have brought us here.’

‘We can change our minds, Jens, we can make different choices,’ she insisted.

He looked tempted, just for a minute, but then determination firmed his mouth and cooled his eyes. ‘I’ve got to do this, Maja.’

He stepped away, and Maja wanted to grab him and shake him and tell him he didn’t, that things could be different. But nothing she’d said or done so far had shifted his perceptions. Or not enough to persuade him to alter his plans.

She wasn’t getting anywhere...and worse, she was running out of options.

Jens stopped and turned back to look at her. He held her eyes as the temperature in the room rose and the air became thinner. Her eyes darted to his mouth, and she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, biting down. She wanted him to kiss that slight sting away.

When she met his eyes again, he looked unembarrassed at the display of his desire, and she knew he wanted her as much as she did him. In every way a man wanted a woman. In every position possible.

Maja wasn’t sure who broke their hot stare, her or him, but she knew that if it had lasted one second longer, there was no telling what could have happened.

CHAPTER SIX

ITHADBEENyears since he’d visited Ålesund, and this was Jens’s first visit to the Hotel Daniel-Jean, situated a little outside the picturesque town that was the gateway to the famous Geirangerfjord and Hjørundfjord. This hotel was only a few years old, originally a luxurious mansion owned by the matriarch of the historic, and wealthy Solberg dynasty. An extensive renovation, the addition of two wings and the conversion of the outdoor buildings and stables into luxurious suites and a spa earned the hotel excellent ratings and a fierce reputation for high standards and uncompromising luxury. From the passenger seat of the helicopter, Jens noticed lush lawns running down to the rocky beach of the fjord. A large jetty ended with a pretty gazebo, perfect for wedding ceremonies.

With the Sunnmøre mountain range looming over the crystal-blue waters of the fjord and the hotel able to handle a large reception for discerning guests, he was already impressed.

Fifteen minutes later, Jens sat at the hotel bar, with a good view of anyone entering the hotel lobby, a beer in front of him. He looked at his watch. He’d had his assistant check with Hilda’s and was informed Maja and the wedding planner caught the two o’clock flight from Bergen to Ålesund. Travelling by helicopter was quicker and he’d bypassed Ålesund airport by landing on the hotel’s helipad. He reckoned his fiancée and his wedding planner would arrive in half an hour, maybe a little less.

He was still surprised at his impulsive decision to join them. In Bergen, he’d watched Maja unenthusiastically greeting Hilda from his study window. She’d reluctantly tossed her overnight bag into the boot of the wedding planner’s car, before slipping into the passenger seat of the huge Mercedes. And as they’d driven away, he’d wished he were going with her.

Then he’d realised he could, and should, and would. And as he’d packed an overnight bag and sent instructions to his helicopter pilot to file a flight plan to Ålesund, he’d assured himself he was following her to Ålesund, checking on the hotel to make sure that his orders were being followed, his demands being met.

He was gatecrashing their hotel inspection because he wanted to get this wedding business done and dusted—he hated loose ends. It wasn’t because Maja was Maja and wherever she was he wanted to be. He wasn’t a pining, driven-by-hormones teenager, for the love of God!

No, he wasn’t twenty-four any more, and naïve, and his happiness didn’t, and never would again, depend on a woman. Maja had crawled under his skin twelve years ago but now he had an impenetrable exoskeleton. He’d been burned once, he’d never become emotionally entangled with anyone, much less Maja Hagen, again.

When he left Maja standing at the altar, he’d close the book on this part of his life and start a new chapter. He’d never think about his mum again, forget that Maja left him with a breezy, vague explanation, and that her father stomped all over his life.

It would all beover...done.

Jens took a big sip of his beer and remembered her attempt to explain, yet again, why she did what she did. He’d closed her down, not wanting to hear what she had to say. Was that because he was afraid she had a vaguely good reason for her actions and because he might be tempted to forgive her? And if he forgave her, would he lose his reason for revenge?

No, he’d shut her down because an explanation now couldn’t, wouldn’t change a damn thing, including his mind. Maja was the only one left who could give him what he needed, what he deserved.

Some might say he was taking things too far. He didn’t see it that way. He saw it as evening the score.

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