Page 38 of Marriage Bargain with His Innocent
‘Let’s agree not to question this, Georgie. So what if it doesn’t make sense? We got on this rollercoaster and I think we should just go along for the ride. When the ride comes to an end we’ll deal with it...’
* * *
‘You should at least think about it,’ Rose was saying as she fussed around them.
They had come for breakfast—a routine that had been established ever since they had arrived, a week ago. Their nights were spent together at Georgina’s house. Their days were largely spent with Rose. Time was galloping past and Georgina had decided that uncomfortable thoughts were best left unexplored.
She’d made big decisions. She’d chosen to carry on sleeping with Matias instead of doing what her head had told her to do, which was to write off that single night at Melissa’s as an anomaly. She’d made loads of excellent arguments to support her decision, but now that the decision had been made what was the point of tormenting herself with pointless speculation about whether she’d done the right thing or not?
Besides, with each passing day Rose seemed to have a renewed lease of life, and Georgina knew that the openly touchy-feely stuff between herself and Matias partially accounted for that.
They were no longer involved in a charade—at least not as far as the physical side of things went—and maybe she had picked up on some intangible vibes and was responding to them. Who knew?
Right now Rose was waiting for a response to a question that had the potential to open up a can of worms.
Sprawled in a chair, long legs stretched out in front of him and crossed loosely at the ankles, Matias was watching Georgie from under luxuriant dark lashes and maintaining an unhelpful silence.
‘It wouldn’t work,’ Georgina said awkwardly as she began to clear the table. ‘I mean, Rose, so much of my work is tied up here... I couldn’t just ditch all of that and move to...er...London. It’s a dog-eat-dog world there and I’m just a minnow. I’d be eaten alive.’
She paused after that bagful of mixed metaphors and tried to garner support from Matias with a meaningful look. He returned her stare without taking the bait.
Rose’s face fell. ‘But then I just don’t see how things are going to work between the two of you.’ She looked at Matias with a hint of apology. ‘I know you hate talking about things like this, Matias, and I hope you won’t be offended...’
Matias waved a casual hand and shifted ever so slightly. ‘Feel free, Mother. I don’t want you to think that you have to edit your words because of me.’
‘Well, I do understand that all those clandestine meetings in London must have been terribly exciting...’
She paused fractionally to look at Georgina, who duly responded, ‘Terribly...’
‘But after the first excitement relationships have to grow and mature. You’re both here now, and I can see with my own eyes just how much enjoyment the pair of you find in one another. You’re in one another’s company all the time and I think that’s giving you so many opportunities to really deepen the connection between you. In fact, I’ve seen that with my own two eyes! I’ve seen the way you look at each other!’
Out of the corner of her eye Georgina was aware of Matias’s discomfort at this perfectly reasonable observation from his mother and a dart of malicious satisfaction streaked through her.
He was absolutely in favour of them continuing their relationship while he was enjoying the sex, and because of that he had jettisoned all plans to engineer their situation towards an eventual break-up. Was it any wonder that his mother was now beginning to look beyond the present to the future?
‘It’s going to end up being impractical if you have to conduct a long-distance relationship. Those things seldom work. It’s far too easy to be tempted by someone else if the person you love is a thousand miles away.’
‘Cornwall isn’t a thousand miles away from London,’ Georgina pointed out. ‘And,’ she added for good measure, ‘if a guy is tempted just because there’s a bit of distance between himself and the woman he’s supposed to be madly in love with, then he wasn’t madly in love in the first place.’
Rose knew her son, and she knew very well that Matias had always been short on commitment and big on variety when it came to women. Georgina could understand perfectly well why she was worried about the distance between them, but there was no way she was going to pretend that her migrating to London was an option.No way.
And wasn’t this a good excuse to start sowing the seeds of what might go wrong between the love birds?
It had been so easy over the past few days to be lulled into thinking that there was an element ofrealityabout all this—but she and Matias had two very different takes on reality.
For her, reality was a relationship founded in commitment—a relationship that was going somewhere, developing into something that had a future. Something beyond sex.
For Matias, reality was taking what he wanted. It was sex and fun until the sex got boring and the fun began to peter out.
‘Some might say that a long-distance relationship really siphons off the flash-in-the-pan romance from the slow burn of something long-lasting. Wouldn’t you agree, Matias?’
Matias shrugged and raised his eyebrows.
‘Your mother has a point, don’t you think? Clandestine is all very well and good, but when the thrill of that is over and done with, what next?’
Silence greeted this provocative remark, and Georgina bit down hard on a hiss of impatience.
The telephone trilled from the hallway, breaking the silence, which had continued to stretch.
