Page 205 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 1-4

‘Forget I asked.’

‘No, I won’t. Youdidask and now’s a good time for us to discuss this. If I happened to have gone to that bash with a woman, then I don’t have to answer to you for that decision, because what we have here, right now, is something that exists purely for the sake of the baby inside you. I want you to look a little into the future when our baby starts growing up and I want you to get used to the idea that there will be women in my life and then, eventually, just the one woman, because as a father I will no longer be interested in playing the field.’

‘I’ve already thought about that, Mateo.’

Mateo chose to ignore her because some keen sixth sense had picked up a thread in her reaction that was the very same thing that had been bothering him. The tone of her voice when she’d asked about the woman at the party had given a lot away and he intended to use that to his advantage.

She wanted love, but she didn’t wanthimto find it. She would have been happy for him to remain celibate in the background, even though she would realistically know that that was never going to happen. If she’d thought about him moving on, then it had been in an abstract way. until now...

‘And that may happen sooner rather than later,’ he told her gravely. ‘I take my responsibilities seriously, and a woman by my side is something I would find desirable.’

‘That’s so different from what you said when I first told you that I was pregnant.’

‘I... I had my reasons for being wary of jumping into marriage because of a pregnancy,’ Mateo said with driven honesty. He raked his fingers through his hair and looked at her, jaw clenched as memories took over.

It was so rare for him to lose control of the narrative when it came to his private life that he floundered and only picked back up the thread after a few seconds of silence. She wasn’t urging him to open up and he appreciated that.

‘When I rushed into marriage with Bianca, it was because she was pregnant. It was early days, but I was keen to do the right thing, even though we’d been on the point of breaking up. It was a mistake. Bianca miscarried three weeks after we married, but we were locked into a situation by then that was never going to work out. I gave it my best shot but it was a harsh lesson in how the head should always rule the heart. If I’d used my head, I would have worked out that our relationship was fundamentally flawed and would never have survived even if a child had been involved.’

‘I’m really sorry, Mateo. That must have been such a painful time for you.’

‘Life happens. We divorced.’

‘But you should never have married,’ Alice said slowly. ‘And then along I come, telling you that I’m pregnant, and of course you don’t want to repeat your mistake. So why the change of heart?’

‘The minute I saw our baby on that scan, something kicked in,’ Mateo admitted truthfully, in a rough undertone. ‘It was different with Bianca. I was very young, and the baby was more of an abstract reality, but seeing that baby move...the heartbeat.’

He glanced away and clenched his jaw. ‘So here we are,’ he continued in a cool, measured voice. ‘I will meet someone, Alice. I will marry. My first choice would be to marry the mother of my child, but failing that I will not remain a bachelor playing Dad from a distance. If you want the cottage, I intend to have a place of my own also in Richmond, which I will share with the woman I make my wife, and there will be more than just the two of us then in the family unit. So the blonde lady? I may have a little fun for a while, but not for long, I predict.’

He looked at her and then said, without bothering to beat around the bush, ‘You don’t like the thought of me having another woman dangling from my arm, do you?’

‘It’s not that. I wouldn’t want any child of ours to be exposed to a dad who plays the field.’

‘Which, I assure you, I won’t be doing by the time any child of ours is old enough to cotton on to anything like that. So I’ll ask you one more time and then the question will no longer be posed—do you want to finally accept the benefits of marrying me, or are you aiming for the blended family, because you still think that love is really the one and only thing that matters here?

‘I’ll repeat for your benefit: Bianca and I were a mistake before we tied the knot. You and I? We’re not. This chemistry between us... We can be lovers again and, if we’re both honest to ourselves, isn’t that what we want? Tie this knot, Alice, and it remains tied. You’ll never open a sordid magazine to find me pictured with a blonde on my arm again, ever. Your choice.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

ALICEHADSAIDYES: that had been seven weeks ago. Since then, things had moved fast. In two days’ time, they would be moving into the house she had looked around. He’d seemed startled when she’d asked him, some time back, if it wouldn’t be be too modest for his taste.

‘We come from very different worlds, Mateo,’ she had told him when she had accepted his marriage proposal. ‘Whichever side of the tracks you’ve come from, you’ve ended up on the side where the pavements are lined with gold, and I’m not sure if you’re going to find somewhere as unassuming as that cottage up to your current standards—especially if you’ll be living there with me full-time, not visiting once a week from your über-modern mansion on Mount Olympus.’

He’d grinned. ‘I’ll prove you wrong,’ he’d asserted, with such ease that she had been reassured and surprised at the same time. But, sure enough, he hadn’t looked back.

He had left the bulk of the soft-furnishing shopping to her, and had got a heavy-duty team of contractors on board, who had set to work turning one old and slightly dilapidated Victorian house into a work of art, while keeping every single original feature intact. It had been done at speed because no expense had been spared.

The wedding date had been set: a quiet affair with just close family and friends, to be held at the very parish church where her father preached. The small village was abuzz with excitement and her mother had swooped in with commendable enthusiasm for every part of the process, from picking out flowers to organising the choir.

Amidst all this, she expanded as the baby had grown, and there was not a single moment when she didn’t feel Mateo’s deep and honest involvement with the tiny human being maturing inside her. But he would never love her; of that she was now sure, having heard the rest of his story when it came to marriage and, as it turned out, pregnancy.

Everything about his relationship with his ex-wife explained the man Mateo was now. Not only had he rushed into marriage way too young but the marriage had been propelled by a pregnancy neither he nor his young girlfriend had planned.

However hardened he had been back then, he had obviously still been romantic enough to hope for a positive outcome. Maybe he had secretly thought that whatever love they’d shared at the start could be resurrected with a baby on the way. But the evolution of that relationship—the divorce, then the woman returning years later to try and fleece him for money—had opened his eyes to the bitter fact that not only had that love been little more than an illusion, but the very business of opening himself up a fraction could be disastrous.

Roll the clock on and Alice knew that, while she might love Mateo, he would only ever return love with, at best, affection mingled with a sense of duty. He wasn’t a guy who ignored learning curves and he had had his fill of them.

But she had had a glimpse of what her life would be like if she let him go. Forget all her high-minded principles of not wanting to suffer the pain of being with a guy who didn’t love her. The truth was that seeing him with that blonde woman had shown her that the pain of actually seeing him move on would always be hard for her to bear.

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