The Real Romero(19)

                ‘Interesting concept. A jealous and anxious wife worried about her beloved husband sharing a ski lodge with a total stranger...’ He tried the thought on for size and tried not to burst out laughing.

                When it came to women and commitment, he was the least likely candidate. Once bitten, twice shy and he had had his brush with his one and only near-escape. It had been a decade and a half ago but as learning curves went it had been a good one. He had been a nineteen-year-old kid, already with plenty of experience but still too green to recognise when he was being played. He’d been young, cocky and arrogant enough to think that gold-diggers all came wrapped up and packaged the same way: big hair, high heels, obvious charms.

                But Betina Crew, at twenty-seven nearly eight years older than him, had been just the opposite. She had been a wild flower-child who went on protest marches and waxed lyrical about saving the world. He had fallen hook, line and sinker until she’d tried to reel him in with a phoney pregnancy scare, which he had so nearly bought, and had so nearly walked down the aisle. It was pure chance that he had discovered the packet of contraceptive pills tucked away at the back of one of her drawers and, when he’d confronted her, it had all ended up turning ugly.

                Since then, he had never kidded himself that there was such a thing as disinterested true love. Not when the size of his bank balance was known. His parents might have had the perfect marriage, but they had both started off broke and had worked together to make their fortune. His mother still believed in all that clap trap about true love, and he hadn’t the heart to disillusion her, but he knew that when and if he ever decided to tie the knot it would be less Cupid’s bow and arrow than a decent arrangement overseen by a lawyer with a watertight pre-nup.

                ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No anxious, jealous or whatever-you-want-to-call-it wife keeping the home fires warm.’

                ‘Girlfriend?’

                ‘Why the interest? Are you suggesting that there might be something for a woman to be jealous about?’

                ‘No!’ Milly nearly choked on her espresso. ‘In case you’d forgotten,’ she added, regaining her composure, ‘I came over here to try and escape. The last thing on my mind would be involvement with anyone! I just don’t want to think that there’s anyone out there who cares about you and who might be alarmed that we happen to be stuck here together through no fault of our own.’

                ‘In that case, I’ll set your mind at rest, shall I? No girlfriend and, even if there was a girlfriend, I’m not a jealous guy and I don’t encourage jealousy in women I date.’

                ‘How can you discourage someone from being jealous?’ She hadn’t been at all jealous when it came to Robbie. Why was that? she wondered. Was it because she had known him off and on for a long time, and one was never that jealous when it came to people they were familiar with? She hadn’t even thought twice about Robbie and Emily being alone together. And yet there was something deep inside telling her that surely jealousy was something that attacked at random and couldn’t be debated or ordered out of existence?

                ‘I’ve never found a problem with that. The women I date know my parameters and they tend to respect them.’

                ‘You’re the most arrogant guy I’ve ever met in my entire life,’ Milly said with genuine wonderment.

                ‘I think you’ve already told me that.’ He drained his cup and dumped it on one of the coffee tables, then he stood up and flexed his muscles, watching as she uncurled herself from the sofa and automatically reached to gather his cup along with hers.

                His automatic instinct was irritably to tell her to leave it, that someone would tidy it away in the morning, then he remembered that there would be no cleaner trooping along to make sure she tidied in his wake.