Marriage Bargain With His Innocent. Cathy Williams
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Marriage Bargain With His Innocent - Cathy Williams страница 6
Название: Marriage Bargain With His Innocent
Автор: Cathy Williams
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Короткие любовные романы
Серия: Mills & Boon Modern
isbn: 9781474087735
isbn:
‘Yes, I’m getting the picture. You’ve known my mother since the dawn of time and you’re worried about her, despite hard evidence from the experts that everything’s ticking along nicely. So, Georgie, just say what you have to say—because my apprehension is still there. Why don’t we dump this meandering, getting-nowhere-fast route and stick to the main road? In fact, why don’t we just return to those little white lies of yours?’
‘Okay, Matias... I may have encouraged your mother to feel that she has every right to look forward to the future...’
‘Bracing advice.’
‘Because you’re involved with someone, and happily it’s not one of those women your mother disapproves of.’
‘The more I hear, the more I ask myself whether you and my mother have any topic of conversation aside from me.’
‘We never talk about you!’ Georgina snapped, momentarily distracted by the sheer egotism of the man. ‘It’s only because of the situation that she’s taken to confiding in me... Naturally I’m not going to tell her to keep her worries and fears to herself... Trust me when I tell you that I don’t encourage her to talk about you!’
‘Let’s leave that to one side for the while. So, I’m involved with someone my mother approves of? I suppose, as fairy stories go, that one could work—provided I’m not called upon to introduce this paragon to her. Because if I am, then it’s going to take a lot more than creative spin to cover up the cracks in your plan.’
‘Well, you see, this is where it may be less difficult than you imagine...’
She cleared her throat. She couldn’t carry on—especially when he was staring at her narrowly, his clever brain whirring away to make sense of what she’d just said. She inhaled deeply and reminded herself that this was why she was here—this was why she had made this inconvenient trip to London to see a man who had always managed to rub her up the wrong way.
She was here to do a job, so to speak.
Yes, she had acted on impulse—but impulse was not a dangerous thing because it was a good thing. All she had to do was look ahead to the good that could come out of it. And not be deterred by those bitter-chocolate-dark eyes staring at her with off-putting intensity.
‘I’m all ears.’
‘I’ve told your mother that you and I are an item,’ she said in a challenging voice.
It came out in a rush and left behind a silence that was thick and dense and so uncomfortable that she could only stare down at her sandals while wishing that the ground would open up and swallow her whole.
Oh, how different the whole thing had seemed when she had told Rose. She had watched how the older woman’s thin face had lit up. Rose had actually clapped her hands with delight, and Georgina had had a wonderful moment of basking in the warm glow of having made someone she loved very happy.
Before common sense had set in. By which time it had been too late to retract what she had said and the warm glow had been replaced by an icy, clammy dread.
Right now, right here, she wondered what had possessed her. How on earth could she have thought that this might be a good idea? She had travelled up to London prepared to stand her ground and fight her corner, but she had forgotten how intimidating Matias could be.
Why had impulse galloped ahead of common sense?
‘Sorry?’ Matias inclined his head with an expression of rampant disbelief. ‘I think I may have misheard what you just said...’
‘YOU HAVEN’T,’ GEORGINA said flatly.
‘Okay. So let me run this past you and you can tell me if I’ve got anything wrong. My mother is feeling a bit low...’
‘With all the signs of depression...’
‘Which could probably be taken care of with a course of tablets, because—believe it or not—tablets do exist for conditions like depression. But you’ve unilaterally, and without bothering to consult me, decided to rule that practical solution out.’
‘You’re making it sound so black and white and it’s not. Which is something you would see if you were around a little more often!’
‘Let’s leave the criticisms to one side for the time being, Georgie. In a nutshell, my mother is down, wishes she could hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet, and to oblige her and raise her spirits you’ve decided to tell her a whopper about you and I being involved.’
‘You should have seen the expression on her face, Matias. She hasn’t looked so overjoyed in... Well, I would say years. Not since your dad died. Even before the stroke!’
Matias looked anything but overjoyed. His expression was a mixture of outraged incredulity and simmering anger. Of course she hadn’t expected immediate capitulation, because that would have been too good to be true, but she saw she was going to have to use all her powers of persuasion. She couldn’t bear the thought of his mother fading away into a chronic depression.
Even after Antonio’s death Rose hadn’t sunk into the sort of dull-eyed, low-level despair Georgina had begun to notice in her recently. The fact that tests were still ongoing was simply feeding into her acceptance that the road she was travelling was heading sharply downwards. She was ill, she was down, and nothing was ever going to change.
Until now Georgie hadn’t really appreciated just how much of a surrogate mother Rose had become for her. Her own mother, whom she loved dearly, was worlds apart from her, wrapped up in academia—a world with which Georgina was unfamiliar. She had never got her intellect going, never been able to follow in her parents’ intellectual footsteps. Her father lectured in economics, her mother in international law.
She, on the other hand, even from a young age, had been a lot happier being creative. It was to her parents’ credit that they had never tried to push her towards a career she would have had no hope of achieving, and while they had busied themselves with university stuff Georgina, growing up, had drifted off to Matias’s house, bonded with his parents and adored their wacky creativity.
She loved his mother, and that thought put a bit of much-needed steel in her weakening resolve.
‘If I didn’t know better,’ Matias said, ‘I would be inclined to think that you’ve finally cracked. And here’s a little question, Georgie—why would my mother believe that you and I are an item? Every time we meet we end up arguing. I don’t like women who argue. My mother knows that. For God’s sake, she’s met enough of the women I’ve dated in the past to know that chalk and cheese just about sums it up when it comes to you and the kind of women I’m attracted to!’
Every word that left his beautiful mouth was a direct hit, but Georgina refused to let him get to her. However, she was distracted enough to ask, with dripping sarcasm, ‘So...you don’t like women who argue? Or do you mean you don’t like women who happen to have an opinion that doesn’t concur with yours? In other words, does your attraction to the opposite sex begin and end with towering blondes whose entire vocabulary is comprised of one word...yes?’
СКАЧАТЬ