A Muse Her

Chapter 16

Mateo plated eggs, bacon and toast on two plates before he sat beside Maia at the island and poured her a glass of orange juice while he contemplated what he was going to say. "I guess I should start by telling you the whole story of why I'm here."

Maia nodded, taking a sip of her coffee. "That'd be a good place to start."

"Right," Mateo said, pushing around the eggs on his plate. "I already told you that my reputation was damaged by my ex who I trusted to keep our relationship private."

"Yes and now that I know you're a prince it makes sense why your family is so concerned about their public image."

"Yeah. I've always been careful to keep my private life out of the public eye, well, most of it at least. I'm not a stranger to the media catching me at wild parties or socializing with the people of Oost den Burg as if I wasn't a royal."

Maia raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't seem so terrible. You just sound like a man of the people."

A smile tugged at his lips as he nodded. "I was nicknamed 'The Common Prince' because unlike my family, I don't care about social status. I was born into privilege and I have all the comforts of it, but I lived my life, more or less, like one of the people."

"Right." Maia smirked. "Because randomly buying a ranch on a whim, changing your name and running away from your life is very common."

"No, you're right. It's not," he said, dragging a hand through his hair. "But I had to remove myself to save my family's reputation."

"You mentioned you were here for damage limitation," she said, eating a piece of toast. "So what happened? What did your ex do?"

"She made a lot of money exposing my private life," he said, staring into his cup of coffee as he thought back to that painful and embarrassing moment. "I'm pretty open when it comes to having sex and I'm not shy about doing most things."

"Mm, yeah. I kind of gathered that. I'm guessing you have a kind of NDA with the people you're with."

"Exactly and everyone I'd been with respected it, until I dated Saskia," he said, shaking his head. "We were together for a little over a year and I thought I was in love with her, matter of fact, I nearly proposed to her. I didn't want anyone else and I was happy to just be with her."

"But she wasn't in love with you and she was using you for clout."

"Yeah." He sighed. "And I fell for all of it," he said, looking away from her. "I don't really like talking about this. It was humiliating what she did."

"It's okay," Maia said, sliding her hand over his. "I think I can put the pieces together. She lured you in, got you to trust her and then exploited you and put all your affairs on display, right?"

"Yes, but it was worse than that," he said, curling his fingers around hers. "I...I don't remember any of the pictures or videos she sold to the press. I didn't recognize the people I was with and I barely remember the party we were at."

"Mateo," Maia said, squeezing his hand. "Did she drug you?"

He nodded. "And I don't know why or what I did to make her want to do that, but it caused a lot of damage to my family's image," he said, cringing. "The pictures were bad and the press didn't blur any of it or leave anything to the imagination."

He heaved a heavy sigh. "The charity events my step mother ran were overshadowed by the constant media coverage of what I'd done. Adrie had to postpone her wedding, Eline couldn't go anywhere without being pestered by the media and the people wanted me to step down from my duties because of my indiscretions which caused my father to expedite his announcement to name Jorien as his successor."