Page 104 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

By the time she’d taken the pregnancy test, she’d long come to the crushing acceptance that his words, Spanish and English alike, spoken in the heat of passion and in the stunned aftermath, had all been a lie, and for the first time in so very long, she was unable to block her heart from beating the pain as if the wound were as fresh as it had been all those nights spent curled on the sofa watching films in a language she didn’t understand.

She could have kissed Diaz’s parents for choosing that moment to appear at their booth.

‘There you are!’ Camila said, sliding in beside her son without invitation. ‘Pedro said you’d arrived. Why are you hiding away?’

‘So you wouldn’t find us,’ Diaz replied drolly.

Camila slapped his thigh with a, ‘We need to work on your sense of humour,’ and beckoned a passing hostess for more champagne.

Fresh flutes before them, Diaz put his to his mouth.

‘Wait,’ his mother commanded. ‘We must make a toast.’

‘To what?’ he asked. ‘The joys of grandchildren?’

She fixed him with a beady stare. ‘To family.’

Even Rose winced.

* * *

The beat of the music being played by the famous DJ changed. Bodies began gravitating to the dance floor.

‘How is business going?’ Julio asked his son.

Rose squeezed Diaz’s hand and braced herself for another cutting remark. It never came. Diaz returned the squeeze and answered his father cordially, and soon he was deep in conversation with both his parents, business talk that went completely over Rose’s head. She was grateful for the time it gave her to compose her emotions.

More memories were pushing like a tidal wall at her brain, and the only way to push them back was to concentrate and focus her mind on people watching.

‘You must wish you had your camera with you?’ Camila observed, breaking Rose’s mental attempt to put a name to the Hollywood actor gyrating on the dance floor with three scantily clad women.

‘Could you imagine if I started taking pictures now?’ she said with a wry smile.

‘You would be escorted out and your camera destroyed,’ Camila hooted. ‘When will you start taking commissions again?’

‘I haven’t really thought about it.’

‘But you must miss it, surely?’

‘Having twins doesn’t leave much time for missing things.’ She didn’t add that she hadn’t taken any commissions since Mrs Martinez’s stroke. Caring for her substitute grandmother had been a full-time occupation and one she had never begrudged, not after everything that wonderful woman had done for her.

Diaz had cared for her too. Between the two of them, they’d nursed her through her final months while Mrs Martinez’s son and daughter-in-law had continued their jet-setting life.

She’d always accepted the selfish nature of Diaz’s parents. They weren’t going to change, something she’d pointed out to Diaz just hours ago, but sitting in this booth, absorbing the heat of Diaz’s body, their fingers entwined, a little swirl of anger unfurled at the damage their selfishness had caused.

Camila waved a dismissive hand. ‘You have staff for the twins. It is a crime to let your talent go to waste.’

‘I’m sure I’ll get back into it again one day but, for now, my priority is the girls.’

‘But children are so boring and messy, and a career is so fulfilling. With your talents, you could be travelling the world and making a real name for yourself.’

The little swirl of anger grew but she tempered it into a pointed rebuke. ‘I’m not like you, Camila—I could never leave it for other people to raise my children for me.’

Both her in-laws looked at her in bemused confusion. She had no idea what Diaz’s expression was as her attention was entirely on his parents, but the hand clasping hers had tightened.

Giving a put-upon sigh, Camila finished her champagne. ‘Oh, well, I can see your mind is made up so I will not argue about it, but I think you’re making a mistake. Now, tell us about your wedding. Diaz refuses to tell us anything. Am I right in thinking it was just the two of you and Josephine?’

‘Nearly—we had the registrar and two witnesses there too.’ Rose looked at Julio and, again pointedly, said, ‘Your mother wanted to be a witness but she wasn’t well enough to sign the certificate. She wasn’t well enough because she was dying.’ Something Julio and Camila had both known perfectly well.

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