‘That is not an answer to the question, Matt. If you really think you’re leaving,’ she said, thinking about the excuse he’d given her, ‘you’re deluding yourself.’
‘Frankly, I don’t really care what you think.’
Oh, that hurt. The pain that scythed through her nearly made her pass out. ‘You bastard,’ she breathed.
Matt flinched as if she’d struck him. ‘OK, fine,’ he bit out, his eyes suddenly blazing. ‘You want to know the real reason why I don’t want a relationship? Because relationships are messy,’ he snapped. ‘They sap your energy, your time and they screw up your judgement.’
The bitterness in his voice cut right through her and her heart clenched at the bleakness of his face. ‘What happened?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘I know you don’t. But you’re going to have to, because I’m channelling Module Three, and without your jeans you can’t escape.’
The ghost of a smile flickered at his mouth and then vanished. Matt rubbed his hand over his face and let out a heavy sigh. ‘The last relationship I had was with my then fiancée, and it didn’t end well.’
In the silence that followed his words you could have heard a pin drop.
Matt had been engaged?
Laura’s brain began to pound. To whom? When? How? And what had gone wrong? God, there was so much she didn’t know about this man.
‘You were engaged?’ she said faintly.
‘I was.’
‘When?’
‘Eight years ago.’
‘What happened?’
Matt shrugged as if he couldn’t care less, but his face was tight and a tiny flicker of turmoil flashed in the depths of his eyes. ‘Nothing spectacular. We were young. We simply drifted apart and eventually split up.’
‘If it was nothing spectacular then why haven’t you had a relationship since?’
‘I haven’t had the time.’
She didn’t believe that for a second. ‘What was her name?’
‘Alicia.’
‘Did you love her?’
‘I asked her to marry me.’
‘Not quite what I asked.’
His eyes flashed. ‘Yes, I did.’
Laura ignored the stab of jealousy that struck her chest. ‘So what went wrong?’
‘Do you ever give up?’
Laura gave him a tiny smile. ‘Not any longer.’
‘My work got in the way.’ Ah. ‘The business was at a fragile stage. On the point of taking off. I had to devote a lot of time to it.’
‘And Alicia didn’t appreciate that?’