Page 31 of The Tycoon's Diamond Demand

They weren’t. He couldn’t let them be.

Jens walked back into the suite, carrying his wine glass. He was already wrestling with how he was going to carry out his plans for revenge now that he’d made love to her. He’d known, dammit, that making love to her would complicate everything, but he’d been unable to resist her...

Still couldn’t.

How would he get the outcome he wanted if he didn’t follow through with this course of action? How would he get his revenge now? Every time he thought about their fake wedding and his plan to leave her at the altar, he felt fidgety. He didn’t know if he could do it, whether he should.

Maybe if he told her about Flora, maybe if she realised how dysfunctional and messed up he was, she’d slam on brakes, and he wouldn’t have to. It was a coward’s way out, he knew that. But if she knew that his mother’s casual cruelty and lack of interest caused him to be cold-hearted and hard-boiled, then she’d pull back and they’d be back on the same footing they were in Bergen. Maybe he’d be able to put some distance between them again. It was worth a shot. But he’d only give her the bare minimum, just enough information to make her understand he was irredeemable.

He took a seat at the wrought-iron table and tapped the newspaper with his index finger.

Stay cold, Nilsen. Unemotional. Inaccessible. Do not let her see how much your mother leaving affected you.

‘Flora is the woman who birthed me. She’s currently starring in a production in the West End. She’ll be in Oslo next week to accept an award for her contribution to Norwegian art and culture.’

He forced himself to look at her and Maja’s eyebrows, as he expected them to, flew up and shock jumped into her eyes.

‘Can’t you see the resemblance between us?’ he asked. It was one of the reasons his mother gave him a wide berth if they happened to be at the same A-list function. Anyone seeing them together would immediately know they were related. They had the same eyes, the same nose and mouth.

‘I can, actually,’ Maja admitted, glancing at the paper. ‘You look like a masculine version of her. She must’ve had you when she was very young.’

‘She was eighteen when I was born, she’s in her mid-fifties now,’ he answered, sounding as if he couldn’t get enough air. He always got uptight when he thought about his mother. And since he’d never spoken about her to anyone, it was no wonder his heart wanted to jump out of his chest. He needed to take it down a notch. Or ten.

‘She looks good.’

‘Yeah, it’s amazing what surgeons, a strict diet, plastic surgery and collagen injections can do.’ Now he sounded bitter and resentful. Well, hewasbitter and resentful.

‘How did you come to live with Jane?’ Maja asked.

Should he continue this conversation or cut it off? He had an internal debate and decided that as she was his fiancée—manoeuvred into the position or not—he could give her a little more information than most. ‘We lived in Oslo,’ he said, his words scalpel sharp. ‘Flora was a dancer at a club.’

He didn’t want to explain Flora had been an exotic daughter. ‘Was it a...’ she hesitated ‘...gentlemen’s club?’

He nodded, just once. Maja, thankfully, didn’t ask whether Flora provided services other than dancing. It was a question he’d never asked and didn’t want to know the answer to.

‘How did she go from working there to being a West End star?’

Jens drew patterns on the newspaper with his finger. ‘One of the entertainers, a singer, didn’t arrive for work one night and she filled in. Fortuitously, it was the very night a musical theatre producer from Broadway was in the room. He shipped her off to New York and she sent me to her sister.’

‘And your dad?’

He was a blank space on his birth certificate. ‘No idea.’ He doubted Flora knew who his father was either.

Maja didn’t react to his sharp statement. ‘Why didn’t your mum take you to London with her?’

Ah, the million-dollar question. The one he’d asked himself a million times as a kid. According to Jane, he couldn’t go because Flora moved into a communal house-share. There wasn’t space for him, and it wasn’t a good ‘environment’. Then, as her star rose, the excuses not to have him with her just got bigger and bolder. It was better for him to stay in Svolvær, to be raised as a Norwegian—between rehearsals and shows, she didn’t have time to spend with him. But there was no way he’d let Maja hear him whine.

‘Simply, she couldn’t be bothered to be a mother.’

He felt uncomfortable with the sympathy he saw in her eyes and looked away. He didn’t need it from her, or from anyone. Why had he opened this door, let her stroll on through?

‘How often do you speak to her, see her?’

This was harder to answer, tougher to admit. ‘I haven’t seen my mother since she dropped me off with Aunt Jane a few days after my fifth birthday. For the first few years, I received the odd phone call, a letter now and again. When I was eighteen—’

He stopped abruptly, not wanting to revisit that memory. He hated that, even after so long, he still wanted his mum to acknowledge him, introduce him to her world as her son. Why was that still so difficult for her to do? He was now successful, wildly so, rich, and educated. While he couldn’t claim to be charming, he knew how to conduct himself in public.

Flora shouldn’t be ashamed of him. Or maybe she was? Ashamed of the son who reminded her of the way she’d lived before achieving her own success.

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