Page 32 of The Tycoon's Diamond Demand

Why was he dwelling on her? She wasn’t worth his time or energy, and she shouldn’t form part of his emotional landscape. He didn’t need her. He didn’t needanyone.

‘What happened when you were eighteen, Jens?’

Nobody, not even Jane, knew about his abortive trip to London, how he stood outside the stage door for hours in the rain begging the security guard to let him see Flora.

Jens rolled his empty glass between the palms of his hands. ‘Long story short, I stood outside her theatre for six hours one day, eight the next, trying to get to see her. I finally got a note to her through a security guard.’ Jens had written three bullet points on that note: Jane, Svolvær and that he was either going to see her or he’d find a journalist interested in his story. ‘She wasn’t thrilled to see me.’

Maja let him talk, she didn’t push him, and he appreciated that.

‘When I got to her dressing room, she was in a temper. She demanded to know what I wanted, what the hell I was doing there.’

‘You just wanted to see her, you were hoping to reconnect,’ Maja stated as she lifted her feet onto the bench and wrapped her arms around her knees.

Exactly. ‘She didn’t want to.’

That was a mild description of their conversation. Flora had brutally told him she wasn’t interested in him and never had been. He’d asked whether she’d ever admit he was her son, she’d made it clear she never would. He was an embarrassment and didn’t fit into her world. Then she’d offered him money to go away and told him that whatever the papers offered him for his story, now or in the future, she’d double it to keep her from being associated with him.

‘How did you leave things with her?’ Maja asked, anger turning her eyes gold.

Jens gripped the bridge of his nose before answering her. ‘She spoke, I listened, and then I walked out without saying another word.’

He sometimes wondered if Flora had ever done an Internet search on him, whether she ever saw the newspaper articles detailing his business successes. She had to know about his successful career—he’d been interviewed often and photographed on many red carpets and at celebrity events. But she never reached out and her silence was an ongoing reminder that she’d simply acted as an incubator for a child she’d never wanted. He was a long-ago stain on her youth, something to be ignored and dismissed.

He was in his mid-thirties and she’d yet to acknowledge him. If he was honest with himself, he knew she never would.

Jens pushed back his shoulders. He was done with this conversation, over feeling sorry for himself. He didn’t whine or wail, he was someone who preferred action to introspection, doing to thinking. Why he’d even told Maja this much, he had no idea. They’d had sex, great sex, sure, but good sex wasn’t a reason to spill his secrets. If it was, then he would’ve blabbed to several women who’d shared his bed over the years.

Jens felt irritated with himself. He stood up, injecting steel into his spine as he did so. ‘I’m going for a run,’ he coldly informed Maja, irked by the empathetic expression on her admittedly lovely face. He didn’t need it. He didn’t needanythingfrom her.

She surprised him by nodding. ‘I think that’s a good idea. You need space and I probably could do with some too.’

He started to ask her why she needed space from him, then remembered that he was trying to put some emotional distance between them. And he’d succeeded. So why did he suddenly feel as if he wanted to reel her back in, stop her from going anywhere?

‘Have something to eat, don’t wait for me,’ he said. ‘If you want anything else, just call Reception. Then get some sleep. We’ll be heading back to Bergen first thing in the morning.’

He hated the way he sounded. So cold. But better that than whining to the woman he was blackmailing into marrying him, about his mummy issues. He’d known that sleeping with her would be a bad idea, that it would add a layer of confusion to an already chaotic situation. He’d steamed ahead regardless.

He should’ve stayed sensible, resisted temptation and kept his trousers zipped.

Maja heard Jens move into the bedroom of the spectacular suite and her soft curses danced on the scented night air. She was horrified by his mother’s actions, and a little hurt that he’d never told her any of this when they were together.

Maja pushed her self-pity away. This wasn’t about her. She dropped her legs, let her bare toes touch the slate tiles and gripped the edge of the swing with both hands. His mother, and her refusal to let him be part of her life, hurt Jens badly. She now understood, on a deeper level than before, why he’d loathed their secret relationship. He would’ve thought she was embarrassed to be seen with him when she’d only been trying to protect him from her father.

But, in hindsight and with this new information, her insistence on secrecy would’ve been salt in his emotional wounds, her words a reminder of his mother and her rejection of him. Maja bit down hard on her lip and scrunched her eyes. Regret, hot and acid, swept through her. Had she known...

She couldn’t change how she’d acted, but she could tell him the real reasons why she’d left, the part Håkon had played in her leaving. She had no idea whether anything she said would change his mind about her and the past, but he needed to know. She was sick of half-truths, lies and misunderstandings. How could they go forward if their foundation was built on shifting sands? But was she sure she wanted to go forward? With him?

Could she start again with Jens, meet him on level ground, see if they could resurrect a relationship from the scorched ruins of the past?

His hard exterior was a shell, and his sharp tone and cutting words were his way to keep the world at a distance. That wasn’t who he was...she could see that now. Under his armour was the grown-up version of the man she once loved. A man who wanted to be acknowledged, loved, but was afraid of being rejected. Just as his mother had rejected him, just as Maja herself had. Or was she kidding herself? Did she want to believe he was better than he was because she was besotted by his body, entranced by the way he made her feel?

Jens appeared in the doorway to the suite, his face a thundercloud. ‘I didn’t bring any running shoes.’

She clocked his glittering eyes, the frustration on his face. He always used physical exercise to relax and to calm his washing-machine mind. He reminded her of a caged cat, a panther or a cougar about to jump out of its skin.

Maja lifted her thumb to her mouth, flicking her nail against her front tooth. She wanted to talk to him, explain why she left him and why she never returned. But when his eyes slammed into hers, she knew he wasn’t ready to listen, wasn’t in the right state of mind to hear anything she had to say.

He was frustrated, tense and probably regretting telling her about his mum. He wasn’t a guy who wore his heart on his sleeve... Even twelve years ago, he’d kept his emotions under wraps. She’d known he’d loved her, but expressing his emotions wasn’t something he’d known how to do.

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