The Real Romero(58)

                ‘You could have helped me out when I began listing all the reasons why we didn’t make sense as a couple.’ She sprang to her feet and plonked herself down on a chair far away from him although, even though there was now distance between them, she could still feel the weight of his arm around her and the warmth of his thigh pressed against hers.

                ‘Did you see your mother? She thought it was cute that I was pointing out all our differences!’

                Lucas shrugged and Milly gritted her pearly-white teeth in pure frustration.

                He hadn’t seen his mother this happy in a while. How long had she been secretly harbouring hopes that he would meet the woman of his dreams and bring her home? She had dropped hints in the past but she had really only begun pressing him after her illness. But had she been fretting long before then?

                ‘The time isn’t right for a two-pronged attack.’

                ‘There’s no question of an attack.’ Why did he have to be so dramatic? she wondered. Why did he have to make her out as the bad guy in this when she was only here because of him and only gently laying the foundations for their break-up because that was what she had been primed to do?

                ‘And,’ she continued, ‘I’d rather you didn’t sit so close to me...’

                ‘Sit so close to you?’

                ‘I just think that your mother might find such public displays of affection a little embarrassing, that’s all.’

                ‘We’re sharing a bedroom. Somehow I don’t think she’s going to swoon because I stroke your thigh now and again. Did she look embarrassed?’

                ‘That’s not the point.’

                ‘The point is, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not going to retreat to the furthest corner of the room. That would be unnatural. Furthermore, I don’t see why it’s such a big deal.’

                ‘The big deal,’ Milly said with a ferocious whisper, because how could he be so cool when she was all over the place? ‘Is that I’m still in the process of getting over something pretty big and pretty horrible and maybe I need just a little more physical space than you’re giving me. Lord knows what your mother must secretly think of me.’ A sudden thought occurred to her. ‘What if she thinks I’m a gold-digger? After all, one minute I’m engaged to one guy and the next minute I’m going out with a billionaire.’ She wrung her hands in despair at the misconception.

                ‘What if she thinks I targeted you...? It makes horrible sense in a way, doesn’t it? What if she imagines that I’m just one of a long line of women who want you for what you can do for them...?’

                Lucas raised his eyebrows and held up one imperious hand to stop her before she could begin exploring this new theme in exhaustive depth.

                ‘She doesn’t think that,’ he told her flatly. ‘Nor does she think that you’re somehow emotionally unstable and fickle because you’re going out with me hard on the heels of a broken engagement.’

                ‘You can’t say that.’

                ‘Oh, but I can and I have.’

                ‘What do you mean you have?’

                ‘I told my mother that this was not a case of you jumping from one man to another without pausing for breath. I’ve explained that I’m not a rebound love affair—which, as you can imagine, would not have sat well with her.’