Page 119 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

The twins were always happy as long as they had each other to hold onto.

She couldn’t begin to imagine how much Diaz must be missing them.

Another message pinged.

What do I say to him?

Just tell him that you’re sorry for everything and that you love him.

At least that was one salvageable relationship, she comforted herself. She was glad she’d made that call to Rosaria and told her to stop being a scaredy cat and let her brother back into her life. Within two days of her call she’d received a message from Diaz thanking her and asking if he could visit the girls soon, after his visit to Rosaria and his short trip to Vienna for the monthly high-stakes private poker game.

She’d come within a whisker of calling him and begging him to come to them now.

It had to be this way. They both knew it.

But, God, she missed him desperately.

The distance she’d hoped would ease the gaping wound of her heart had eased nothing.

Her period had finished and she still felt bereft at the conception that had never been. A conception she hadn’t even known she’d been longing for, a deeply rooted yearning from the heart that had never stopped loving Diaz, a yearn for another chain to tie herself to him.

It had to be this way. What chance of a future did they have with their history? How could they just wipe it all out and forget it? How could either of them move on?

But how could she move on without him?

And how could she find the love he said she deserved when her heart belonged in its entirety to him and their daughters?

Her heart suddenly doubled over and she sat up sharply, swiping at her phone to reread her last message to Rosaria.

Just tell him that you’re sorry for everything and that you love him.

What was Diaz doing that very minute? Flying thousands of miles to the sister he’d loved and protected his whole life and who’d cut him from her life as repayment.

The same Diaz whose parents had never shown him the love a child needed to thrive. If his love for Rose was a fraction as strong as her love for him, then no wonder it had terrified him. To his parents he’d been an encumbrance. His sister had rejected his love and protection. Knowingly or not, Diaz associated love with rejection. All things considered, it was a flipping miracle that he’d come to accept his love for Rose.

He’d unflinchingly admitted to his sins against her and set her free even when it had destroyed him to do so. He’d been making amends for those sins all along but she’d been too frightened of waking up again to an empty bed to realise. Too scared to trust him. Too scared of trusting what every single one of her senses had been telling her.

Diaz loved her. Truly loved her. As much as she loved him.

And when you loved someone as much as they loved each other…

Rose jumped to her feet and raced up the stairs to her room.

* * *

Diaz climbed out of the hire car.

The farmhouse was exactly as he’d imagined, a two-storey sprawling wooden ranch with a wraparound porch encircled by a white picket fence, and surrounded by fruit trees.

The front door opened.

A buxom brunette wearing denim dungarees appeared.

If he’d passed her in the street he wouldn’t have recognised her.

Rosaria walked to the porch steps. ‘Hello, Diaz. How are you? Good flight?’

He reached the bottom of the same steps. ‘The flight was good, thanks. You’re looking well.’ Looking healthy.

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