Page 177 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 1-4

This getaway here was a taste of sanity. Being here with her meant she had no idea who he was and that was beginning to feel a little like a taste of sanity: stolen...temporary...pleasurable. She might not be his type. He definitely didn’t go for fluffy, small, voluptuous women who talked a lot, but he could write a book on the appeal of the unpredictable.

All taboo, when he thought about it. He shook himself free of the disturbing feeling of control slipping through his fingers.

‘So no argument with your boyfriend has brought you here,’ Mateo inserted briskly. ‘You were overcome with a need for some fresh air.’

‘Not as such.’

‘What does that mean?’

He opened his mouth to tell her again that he didn’t care whether she confided in him or not, that in fact he would rather she didn’t, but some base-level curiosity got the better of him and he shot her an encouraging look.

‘Well,’ Alice confided in a hitched voice. ‘My friend announced her engagement with lots of fanfare and champagne-cork-popping and I...well... I guess it just got to me. I was engaged eight months ago and... I broke it off. It’s not as though I’m sad that it ended, but all of a sudden I just felt empty inside and I had to get away. So, when I say the blizzard swept in from nowhere, it might have been a case of being so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t notice the sky getting darker and the snow getting thicker. At least, not until it was too late to do anything about it.’

Mateo shifted because, generally speaking, he disliked all this touchy-feely stuff. But then frowned as he saw tears begin to gather in the corner of her eyes. He hastily scouted round for something useful and settled on some paper towels on the kitchen counter, which he pushed over to her.

‘If you ditched the guy then why are you shedding tears over him? It obviously wasn’t much of a relationship.’

‘How can you say that?’ Alice rounded on him and vigorously dabbed her eyes.

‘You dumped him.’

‘Doesn’t mean—’

‘Doesn’t mean what?’

‘Doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. Simon and I went back a long way. I’d known him since I was fifteen! He should have been the ideal guy for me.’

‘Mmm.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Mateo shrugged. ‘I’m the last person qualified to give advice on the makings of a good relationship, but if you’d known the guy since you were a kid, then maybe it was all just a little too cosy. Cosy,’ he said wryly, ‘is just a cousin once removed from boring, and who wants a boring partner?’

He looked at her with guarded appreciation and a little voice whispered to him,what would it be like, this woman who is so different from anyone else you’ve ever known...?

He shifted and cleared his head of the treacherous thought. It just didn’t pay to have thoughts like that. Bianca had beendifferentonce upon a time, until she’d ended up being just the same.

‘Simon was far from boring.’

‘So did the excitement get too much for you?’

‘I don’t know why I bothered to say anything to you about this,’ Alice muttered.

She met his gaze with fierce resistance but was thrown by the cool, amused, all-knowing,worldlylook in the green eyes resting on her.

What must he think of her?She shouldn’t care but suddenly she saw herself through his eyes: small, could lose a few pounds, way too talkative and willing to confide, even in the face of all his signals that he was not that interested.

He might be an IT nerd but, with his looks, she reckoned he could have anyone he wanted, and from what she had seen of his chalet he was also not living in penury. He was one of those IT nerds with cash and those were in high demand. So was it any surprise that he found heramusing, after his initial horror that she had ruined his holiday for one? He didn’t see her asa woman. He saw her as a novelty toy: wind her up and watch her go. At least, that was her suspicion, and it was making her self-conscious.

‘I’m sorry,’ he surprised her by saying quietly. ‘I don’t mean to make fun of you or to somehow belittle what you’ve been through. It must have been tough, breaking off an engagement...’

‘It was,’ Alice said, drawn once again into his orbit and seduced into opening up, because there was something so compelling about him. ‘Everyone expected us to end up together, and I felt awful, because Simon is the nicest guy in the world.’

But just a tiny bit boring, she thought with a rare flash of acerbity.Way too cosy...way too much of a known quantity...‘I know what you’re going to say.’

‘Do you? Enlighten me.’

‘You’re going to say thatniceequalsboring.’

---