CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVEN

A LICE LOOKED AT HIM in shock. The shock was then followed by confusion. Was this the same guy who had, only days before, banged on about the situation requiring a businesslike approach? Since when had marriage been businesslike ? Weren’t business deals more along the lines of shaking hands and signing a contract?

‘I can see you’re surprised.’

‘Not what I was expecting, no.’

‘Seeing our baby, Alice, brought it forcibly home to me that this isn’t something that can be dealt with the way I would deal with a work problem.’

‘Well, Mateo, you don’t say.’ But her heart was beating like a sledgehammer. Marriage! It was everything she had dreamed of. The guy she loved...their baby...

She had sneaked a glance at Mateo in that small, darkened room and her heart had swelled with love as she drank in the beautiful lines of his face cast into shadows. Then she had looked at the small, living, breathing baby they had created together and the longing for them to be a family unit, a real family unit, had been so overwhelming that she’d had to breathe in deeply to control the rush of emotion.

And now, the prospect of marrying this guy was being dangled in front of her like a carrot. She thought of them bringing home their baby, buying stuff for their home together, stuff that wouldn’t be white or include any marble. She thought of them watching telly, going to the shops together, having friends and family to dinner...

When she blinked, what she saw was über-luxury all around her and a man who lived firmly in this world. A world that was a million miles from the dream world she had just concocted in her head. So much about this picture was right but so much more was wrong.

If the promise of normality with Simon had not been enough for her in the end...if she had, in fact, wanted something more extraordinary...then at the very heart of her, she knew that it would only be okay with a guy who truly loved her. What she’d found was extraordinary without the love. She longed for this extraordinary man but with the wonderful ordinariness of love. In the end, love was what made the small trivia in life oh, so amazing.

Mateo had been moved by seeing his own flesh and blood on that scan, just as she had. Now he was prepared to go a step further and offer her the one thing she knew he would never, ever have offered in any other circumstances: a ring. However much she longed to take that ring and slip it on her finger, how could she do it? How could she turn his world on its head and live with herself? He didn’t love her. Would she be able to cope with that for ever?

How long before they started wandering around this big, palatial house like two strangers bound together for the sake of the child they shared? How long before the isolation of doing the small things on her own began to eat away at all their noble intentions about being united for the sake of their baby? Would either of them be happy?

‘That’s not going to work, Mateo,’ she said gently. ‘Although I appreciate the offer.’

‘I realise this was never your Plan A, Alice, but it makes sense and I should have seen that from the very beginning. Let me get you something to drink: tea? Fresh juice? Water?’

‘Let’s just talk this out, Mateo. No, you’re right, I never thought that I’d be having a baby out of wedlock, for want of a better way of putting it. You know, it just wasn’t something that was ever on the radar.’ She sighed wryly. ‘That along with spending a few torrid nights with a complete stranger.’

‘But now we’re here and I feel that we need to both put our Plan As to one side and consider what’s best for the baby. And that’s both parents on board, married and united in making joint decisions and providing stability and security.’

‘Love is what makes a marriage work, or else it’s just as good for us to live apart and amicably share in this baby’s upbringing. We can like one another and get along without tying ourselves together. We both know the tie would break eventually, anyway.’ She sighed and looked around her, this time more slowly, before resting her eyes on him.

‘That’s not what you said when we were at my lodge,’ Mateo countered with silky assurance. ‘If I recall, you said that you wanted to see where our relationship led when we returned to London.’

‘Yes, well, that was then. That was before...’

‘Yes, things are different now, but what we had... Let’s be honest, it’s still there, isn’t it? It is for me. When you showed up at my office, when I saw you again, I wondered whether that thing I’d felt might have disappeared...that charge .’

‘Mateo, this is beside the point...’

She watched with alarm and excitement as he rose slowly from where he’d been sitting and sauntered towards her, dragging a foot stool which he placed so close to her that she could feel the heat emanating from him.

‘Is it?’

His eyes were dark, questioning and gently probing and they stirred a longing in her that was dangerously familiar.

‘What does it matter if this so-called charge is there or not?’ Alice whispered a little shakily. ‘Would you have done something about it if I’d shown up to ask you to pick things back up with us?’

‘I would have tried not to.’

His blunt honesty hurt but it showed a side of him that was to be commended. He didn’t play games. What he said would always be the truth.

‘Because you’re so attracted to me, right?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’ His eyes were lazy, roving over her flushed face in a leisurely, sexy scrutiny. ‘I would have been tempted but I would have probably reacted with my head and not that other unreliable part of my body. I would have known that I couldn’t offer you the long-term relationship you wanted. Even when you told me about the pregnancy, when I knew that I had to allow you the freedom to find a man who could give you what you really wanted in life, even then, I wanted you. But I resisted the urge to touch, to try and seduce you...to tempt you back into my arms.’

He edged closer fractionally, leaning slightly into her. ‘But things are different now. Now I want to offer you a long-term relationship.’

‘I never said I wanted a long-term relationship with you. I said we could carry on having fun when we got back to London. I always knew you weren’t the kind of long-term guy I was looking for.’ Alice looked away and licked her lips. Her eyes strayed to the knees almost touching hers and the strong, brown hand hanging over one knee.

Mateo pressed his thumbs to his eyes and then looked at her, deadly serious. ‘Having fun? No. I knew that would have been a bad idea. I’m not the sort of guy you would want to have fun with. You’d end up getting hurt.’

‘Who’s to say I would have been the one getting hurt?’

‘I’m well-insulated when it comes to women having that sort of effect on me. But who knows...?’ His green eyes darkened with wicked amusement. ‘Think you might have been the one to make me cry, Alice?’

‘I guess we’ll never know!’ She went bright red.

‘At any rate, things have changed. This isn’t about fun. This is about the baby we’ve made. I thought I could live with a situation whereby we shared this baby as friends, nothing more, but I can’t. Seeing our baby moving inside you, that small speck...’ He shook his head. ‘We could work, Alice. I respect you, I like you, we get along and then...’ he brushed her cheek with his finger ‘...there’s this.’

‘Mateo...’ Alice heard the husky tremor in her voice and half-closed her eyes, tilting back her head, utterly unable to resist the pull of an attraction that was too powerful for her. His finger on her cheek was soft and gentle and the breath caught in her throat when that finger found the contour of her lips and delicately traced them.

‘Kiss me,’ she heard herself groan and he did. He kissed her. She’d forgotten just how sweet and beautiful the feel of his mouth was on hers. Cool lips and the slide of his tongue roused her until she was squirming and wet for him. When he rested his hand on her thigh, she immediately parted her legs, wanting more. Instead, frustratingly, he pulled back and looked at her gravely.

‘We have more going for us than a hell of a lot of starry-eyed couples who start off with nothing more than the hope that a bit of fairy dust is going to last a lifetime.’

‘A little fairy dust never hurt anyone...’

‘Until it turns to shards of glass.’

‘You’re so cynical, Mateo.’

‘Realist. And realism is what is going to work so well for us. Marry me, Alice. You’ll find that I can make an excellent father and husband.’

Alice looked at him. There was so much going for what he had said—a stable life for a child who had not asked to be conceived. He would be a good provider and she knew that he would be an attentive husband. Her parents would be overjoyed; they were traditionalists through and through. And, yes, there was the sex. It would fade away, of course, and without love would slide into a sort of brother-sister amicability.

Inevitably, he would discreetly fool around. That went without saying. Duty would bind him to her but mutual respect, liking one another and having a child together would only go so far when it came to tethering him. He would be able to deal with the intensity of desire and the searing urge to protect what he would see as his, but would he be able to deal with the everyday normality that every relationship needed? Or would that bore him? Could an extraordinary man ever know the value of ordinary? And, however much she knew that she wanted and needed some extraordinariness in her life—that something that was all wrapped up with love —didn’t she also know that normality was also needed to be in the mix?

Her heart would be crushed on a daily basis and, whilst Alice knew that she should put their child first, the thought of her own projected misery filled her with panic and apprehension. Maybe if she stood back she might be able to build her own inner reinforcements to protect her from that. Would she get stronger and more immune to his pull over time? Wasn’t time supposed to do stuff like that?

‘I’m not willing to make such a big commitment just yet, Mateo.’

‘I’m not following you. Is it the love angle? Alice, there’s more to a successful marriage than love. We have all the ingredients to make it work, and that’s not even taking into account the fact that we’re still hot for one another.’

‘It’s not that. Maybe when you first decided that we were better off apart, free to see where life took us while remaining committed to our child, I thought about it and realised that it made sense.’

Their eyes tangled and she saw that in that instant Mateo knew that he had lost the argument. If he wanted marriage, he was going to have to win her over. And the only thing she wanted was the one thing he couldn’t give her.

Alice was flicking through the paper in the staffroom three weeks later when she froze.

Three of her friends were busy marking papers and she was waiting for Mateo to show up because he wanted to show her something. He wouldn’t say what.

She’d done her best to curb her excitement because she hadn’t failed to notice that, ever since his heady marriage proposal, all had gone quiet on that particular front. She’d backed off and he’d immediately respected the distance she had insisted on keeping between them.

No more talk of the burning desire that simmered between them and no gentle persuasion for her to come round to his marriage solution. Had he actually been serious when he’d told her that he still fancied her, wanted her? Or had he decided that that was the best route to take because he had changed his mind and wanted to put a ring on her finger?

The uncertainty tormented Alice but she knew that the best thing she could do for their relationship was to ignore it. If he had changed his mind, then there was nothing she could do about it and, in every other aspect, he was turning out to be the responsible guy he had held himself out to be.

Besides, if the pull of that intense, crazy desire was snuffed out, then wouldn’t that be all to the good? Wasn’t that one complication removed?

He called her daily, saw her at least a couple of times a week and had insisted on relocating her from her rented place to somewhere more suitable. Alice had not objected, and the new place was so much more magnificent that she was quietly grateful that he had taken charge and stampeded through her weak protests that she was perfectly happy where she was. He’d also deposited a startling sum of money into her account, which he had labelled ‘petty cash’, and had opened several accounts for her at some of the high-end department stores.

He was as respectful and charming as any woman could have hoped for from the father of her unborn child and Alice struggled not to absolutely hate it . It was an adult, civilised relationship and she treacherously longed for the passion which had disappeared. No amount of bracing mantras could ease the anguish of having the man she adored so close and yet so far.

It hardly helped that when they had gone to see her parents, to jointly break the news to them, he had somehow managed to charm them into accepting what was presented as not marriage, but something sensible, loving and transparent—just as good in many ways.

The perfect guy. Except now, staring down at the pictures in the weekly gossip rag in front of her, the reality of their relationship was hitting home—because there he was, at some networking bash or other which he had attended the week before. And next to him, gazing up at him, was just the sort of leggy blonde he used to date before she’d come along.

She didn’t want to keep staring at the pictures, looking for clues, so she slapped the magazine shut. But the images were imprinted in her head and they were still there, churning around, when Mateo buzzed her fifteen minutes later to tell her that he was waiting outside.

Mateo was lounging against his car, waiting for Alice to emerge. Winter had morphed into spring and there was a pleasant hint of warmth in the air. It was a source of wonder as to why she insisted on remaining in her job when there was no need.

‘I like the people I work with,’ she had told him doggedly, when he had probed her on that point. ‘And I enjoy the kids, even though they can sometimes be unruly and stubborn. I love what I do and you can’t expect me to give it all up just because I don’t need the money any longer.’

Mateo was discovering what it was like to be with a woman who wasn’t impressed with what he could provide. He’d steered clear of returning to the subject of marriage. He figured that, the more he made of it, the deeper she would dig in her heels, and maybe she would see sense if he resorted to the art of subtle persuasion, but he was beginning to wonder whether it was a ploy that was going to work.

Accustomed to getting his own way in everything, it went against the grain to play the long game but he could see no other way. He was dealing with a woman who was completely different from any woman he had ever known and in this instance he was on uncertain territory.

He’d had to back off, and back off he had. He’d ditched all talk of marriage and had been scrupulous when it came to not touching her or giving her any reason to think that he wanted to revive the physical side of their relationship. It felt as if he was starting from scratch, playing an urgent courting game, the rules of which he was not wholly sure about.

She had principles. Having met her parents, he could see where that had come from. He could see that what she wanted was to emulate the quiet love her parents shared. The more he thought about that, the more hopeless he felt about his quest to convince her that there were alternatives, and that those alternatives were workable and satisfactory—that within the framework of marriage lay a host of different ingredients; that there were no hard and fast rules that applied to everyone.

He saw her push through the glass door of the school and he straightened. She wore loose dark-grey trousers, a dark-grey jumper and serviceable flat shoes. It was the outfit of a working woman who put comfort above appearance and who had certainly done nothing in the way of dressing to impress because he was picking her up.

He walked towards her and had to resist the temptation to tuck some of those loose strands of hair behind her ears. The physical chemistry he felt buzzed like a live wire just beneath the surface of his polite conversation. Again, he was questioning his vow not to touch her. Was torturing himself like this even the right way to get what he wanted?

‘How was your day?’ he asked, relieving her of a backpack that seemed far too heavy for someone in her condition.

‘Good, thank you. And yours?’

Mateo flicked her a curious, sideways glance as he picked up something in her tone of voice that was a little off-key.

‘The usual,’ he drawled. ‘Stuck behind a desk making a shedload of money.’

‘Anything else you’ve been doing recently?’

‘Throw me some clues so that I can see where that question is going, would you?’

‘It’s not important. Where are you taking me? I hope it’s nowhere fancy because I won’t be changing into any party outfits. I’m tired after a hectic day at school, and honestly, all I really want to do is go home, have a shower, mark some homework and then go to bed.’

‘Why on earth are you hanging onto that job? You’re pregnant. You shouldn’t be working your fingers to the bone.’

‘We’ve already been through this, Mateo. I’m a normal person who enjoys doing a normal job. I’m not one of these glamorous types who thinks it’s okay to swan around doing nothing but going to beauty parlours and attending fancy social dos.’

‘Where the hell has that come from?’

‘Nowhere,’ Alice muttered. ‘I’m just tired. Tell me where we’re going.’

‘It’s a surprise but I’m hoping it’ll be a pleasant one.’

He held open the door of his black BMW and she slid into the passenger seat.

Before he started the engine, he turned to her. ‘Okay, spit it out. What’s bothering you?’

‘Nothing’s bothering me.’

‘Think I don’t know you well enough to know when something’s on your mind?’

‘Honestly, Mateo, I’m just tired.’

She was the first to look away, and suddenly Mateo felt the vice-like grip of panic wrap around him. Was this a sign of her pulling away from him? Who knew what those friends and colleagues of hers talked about? Was she slowly being persuaded into taking the hard line that there was no way she would ever consider marriage?

He thought he’d left that door open for her to consider, to come to her senses. But had he? Should he have kept hammering home to her that marriage was the best solution, best for the baby? Should he have played hardball and seduced her into bed with him, put her in a place where walking away would have been a lot more difficult? Should he have ruthlessly exploited the fact that the chemistry wasn’t just confined to him?

Maybe there was someone there, some teacher she was interested in, one of those touchy-feely, sensitive types providing a shoulder for her to cry on.

Unused to such flights of imagination, Mateo didn’t quite know what to do with his thoughts. It took an effort for him to grapple his way back to a position of common sense. He shrugged and started the engine into life, and his powerful car purred away, cutting through the London traffic, heading south away from central London. When he glanced sideways at her, she was staring through the window. He wanted nothing more than to reach inside her head and find out what was going on in there.

They drove in silence, and it was only as they cleared the congested roads of London that she perked up and looked a little more curious about where they were going.

‘I want to show you a house,’ Mateo said, breaking the silence.

‘A house?’

‘You can’t live in a rented place for ever. I’ve personally had a look around this place, and I think it’s a good find. Although naturally, if you don’t like it, then that’s that.’

‘We don’t have the same taste in houses.’

Mateo heard the underlying cool in her voice and gritted his teeth.

‘You like lots of white and marble, stuff with sharp edges—not very toddler-friendly.’

‘My bachelor pad,’ Mateo returned drily, ‘wasn’t meant to be toddler-friendly. I’ve always found I can manoeuvre round table corners without bumping into them and I rarely spill ice lollies on the white marble.’

‘Not funny, Mateo. You might say your lifestyle isn’t toddler-friendly.’

‘Are you determined to pick an argument with me, Alice? And, if you are, then maybe you could explain why so that I can defend myself?’

He pulled away from the main drag and began manoeuvring through the picturesque lanes and streets that circled the sprawl of Richmond Park.

Looking at him, Alice could feel the tension stiffening his shoulders and she knew that she was being unfair. So what if he was out there having a good time? So what if he was doing what he normally did, networking with beautiful blondes? She’d built up an entire scenario around a few photos in a stupid rag and had then needled away at him in a manner that was shamefully passive-aggressive—not like her at all.

He didn’t deserve that. He’d been open and honest with her from the beginning and she could hardly find fault with whatever activities he decided to get up to in his own time. If anything, seeing those photos should have reminded her of his unsuitability long term. The player could never be taken away from the game for too long, and Mateo was a player at heart. Had he reconciled himself to that? The fact that they were in a ‘no touching’ place pretty much said it all.

Determined to be less emotional, she paid attention to where they were and, when he finally pulled up in front of a red-brick Victorian house in its little plot, she was open-mouthed with surprise.

‘Not a single slab of marble in sight,’ Mateo murmured, circling round the car to open her door for her. ‘No sharp edges. Extremely toddler-friendly.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Alice said, looking at him and resting her hand on his arm. ‘I haven’t exactly been great company this afternoon.’

‘To be discussed. Come in, have a look around and tell me what you think.’

Alice forgot about Mateo padding along slightly behind her as she explored the house. It was cosy, with little nooks and crannies leading to rooms in a topsy-turvy, charming way. There were wood floors throughout, and in the downstairs sitting room parquet flooring reminded her of where she had grown up in the vicarage. Outside, the garden was as tangled and charming as the inside had been, a broad stretch of lawn with fruit trees at the back growing against an old brick wall.

‘It’s perfect...’ Alice breathed, finally turning to Mateo and smiling sheepishly. ‘And not at all what I was expecting.’

They were walking back to his car and she glanced over her shoulder, already knowing that this was where she wanted to be. The sun was starting to lower in the sky, and her heart warmed when she looked sideways at Mateo, impressed at how he had managed to get something as big as this just right.

‘I’m a guy who’s full of surprises. I’ve booked a table for an early dinner for us so that we can discuss the place.’

‘You assumed I’d like it?’

‘I’d assumed even if you didn’t that we would have a lot to discuss.’

As he circled the small courtyard in front of the house heading out towards the town centre, Alice murmured, ‘I haven’t said how great it is that you’ve taken all this in your stride.’

Mateo looked at her in silence for a few seconds.

He’d made sure to take a step back as she’d looked around, wanting to gauge her reaction without her being aware of him gauging her reaction. She loved it, as he’d known she would; subtle persuasion had been his game plan. Now, he was in the process of gauging something altogether different—namely whatever had prompted her mood earlier on.

‘You can move in as quickly as next month, but it will entail quitting your job. I can’t see the commute working.’

‘Mateo...’

‘If you want to hang on at the school, then be my guest, but the seller wants to get rid of the house as soon as possible and there are already three offers under review. I’ll outstrip them all, but only on your say so.’

‘Can I think about it?’

Mateo shrugged. ‘I’d say you have little more than twenty-four hours to do that.’

‘I’m just so attached to the school and to all my friends there.’

Mateo gritted his teeth and tried to check resurfacing notions of some fellow teacher laying it on thick about Alice’s situation, mopping up her tears of sadness that she hadn’t found true love with the father of her baby. Jealousy didn’t usually feature in his life but he was having a hard time fighting it. When he thought of her pouring out her disappointment to some other guy, he literally saw red.

‘What was all that about?’ he ground out, before clearing his throat and trying to sound as composed as possible, given the weird feelings tearing through him.

‘What was all what about?’

‘Your mood earlier on.’

‘I...’

‘Don’t be shy—it’s not your style. I’m too accustomed to you saying exactly what you think so, like I said, spit it out.’

‘If you must know, I saw a picture of you—actually, several pictures of you.’

‘No idea what you’re talking about.’

‘I happened to be looking through the paper in the staff room and there you were, at some do or other last week, with a blonde.’

‘Ah. I see.’ He did see, quite a bit. In a heartbeat he thought...to heck with the long game. He should never have denied the man he was, the guy who’d literally fought to get where he was, the guy who’d always known that all was fair in love and war. ‘I think I remember the occasion—a bash for a charity dealing with mental health issues in youngsters.’

‘And was the woman with you?’

‘That’s not really your concern, now, is it, Alice?’

Had there been a blonde woman there? More than likely. Expensive charity fund raisers with high-profile guests usually attracted a very pretty crowd, and a lot of them tended to gravitate towards him.

‘No, I know that. I was just a little curious, that’s all.’

‘But curiosity about who I may or may not be going out with doesn’t enter the equation, not now.’ He slowed down and pulled into one of the spaces close to the restaurant and waited for her to digest what he had just said for a few minutes, then he opened the door for her, and they walked to the place he had booked for them.

‘If you had chosen to accept my marriage proposal,’ he told her as soon as they were seated and water had been poured, ‘then you would naturally have had a right to that kind of curiosity, but you chose another road, and that road has a different set of rules.’

‘Forget I asked.’

‘No, I won’t. You did ask and now’s a good time for us to discuss this. If I happened to have gone to that bash with a woman, then I don’t have to answer to you for that decision, because what we have here, right now, is something that exists purely for the sake of the baby inside you. I want you to look a little into the future when our baby starts growing up and I want you to get used to the idea that there will be women in my life and then, eventually, just the one woman, because as a father I will no longer be interested in playing the field.’

‘I’ve already thought about that, Mateo.’

Mateo chose to ignore her because some keen sixth sense had picked up a thread in her reaction that was the very same thing that had been bothering him. The tone of her voice when she’d asked about the woman at the party had given a lot away and he intended to use that to his advantage.

She wanted love, but she didn’t want him to find it. She would have been happy for him to remain celibate in the background, even though she would realistically know that that was never going to happen. If she’d thought about him moving on, then it had been in an abstract way. until now...

‘And that may happen sooner rather than later,’ he told her gravely. ‘I take my responsibilities seriously, and a woman by my side is something I would find desirable.’

‘That’s so different from what you said when I first told you that I was pregnant.’

‘I... I had my reasons for being wary of jumping into marriage because of a pregnancy,’ Mateo said with driven honesty. He raked his fingers through his hair and looked at her, jaw clenched as memories took over.

It was so rare for him to lose control of the narrative when it came to his private life that he floundered and only picked back up the thread after a few seconds of silence. She wasn’t urging him to open up and he appreciated that.

‘When I rushed into marriage with Bianca, it was because she was pregnant. It was early days, but I was keen to do the right thing, even though we’d been on the point of breaking up. It was a mistake. Bianca miscarried three weeks after we married, but we were locked into a situation by then that was never going to work out. I gave it my best shot but it was a harsh lesson in how the head should always rule the heart. If I’d used my head, I would have worked out that our relationship was fundamentally flawed and would never have survived even if a child had been involved.’

‘I’m really sorry, Mateo. That must have been such a painful time for you.’

‘Life happens. We divorced.’

‘But you should never have married,’ Alice said slowly. ‘And then along I come, telling you that I’m pregnant, and of course you don’t want to repeat your mistake. So why the change of heart?’

‘The minute I saw our baby on that scan, something kicked in,’ Mateo admitted truthfully, in a rough undertone. ‘It was different with Bianca. I was very young, and the baby was more of an abstract reality, but seeing that baby move...the heartbeat.’

He glanced away and clenched his jaw. ‘So here we are,’ he continued in a cool, measured voice. ‘I will meet someone, Alice. I will marry. My first choice would be to marry the mother of my child, but failing that I will not remain a bachelor playing Dad from a distance. If you want the cottage, I intend to have a place of my own also in Richmond, which I will share with the woman I make my wife, and there will be more than just the two of us then in the family unit. So the blonde lady? I may have a little fun for a while, but not for long, I predict.’

He looked at her and then said, without bothering to beat around the bush, ‘You don’t like the thought of me having another woman dangling from my arm, do you?’

‘It’s not that. I wouldn’t want any child of ours to be exposed to a dad who plays the field.’

‘Which, I assure you, I won’t be doing by the time any child of ours is old enough to cotton on to anything like that. So I’ll ask you one more time and then the question will no longer be posed—do you want to finally accept the benefits of marrying me, or are you aiming for the blended family, because you still think that love is really the one and only thing that matters here?

‘I’ll repeat for your benefit: Bianca and I were a mistake before we tied the knot. You and I? We’re not. This chemistry between us... We can be lovers again and, if we’re both honest to ourselves, isn’t that what we want? Tie this knot, Alice, and it remains tied. You’ll never open a sordid magazine to find me pictured with a blonde on my arm again, ever. Your choice.’