Page 130 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

That makes two of us, then.

He’d known she was lying to him earlier—because Melody had always been a terrible liar, every single emotion she felt always visible on her face. But even so it had surprised him—after he’d had his garage staff woken up to question them—that she would risk her own safety just to avoid him.

He’d been waiting a good twenty minutes for her to put in an appearance, his fury and frustration, and that ache in his stomach—at the evidence of how much she despised him, which he hated even more—building by the second.

But right beside the fury was the kick of adrenaline. And awareness.

While Mel had always infuriated and antagonised him, he also admired her refusal to back down from a fight. It was unfortunate, though, that her temper and that scent still had a marked effect on his libido. Especially as they were now going to be stuck together for five hours.

Then again, no woman had ever excited him the way she did.

Why else would he have taken what she offered that night, even though he’d known it would not end well? And why else would he have found it so impossible to get over her?

Clearly, they needed to confront the fallout from that night, after four years of denial, so they could both move on. But he’d be damned if he’d confront it before he was good and ready. And as they now had all the time in the world, way too much time, in fact, he would let her stew for a change—the way he’d had to all evening.

‘Are you even legal to drive?’ she murmured. ‘How much have you had to drink tonight?’

He tensed at the accusation. How typical of her to poke at a wound which might never heal. But he’d be damned if he’d have her accuse him of endangering her life tonight, as well as his own, by driving under the influence when she had forced him to make this damn journey in the first place.

‘For your information, I haven’t had an alcoholic drink in four years,’ he snapped, then wanted to kick himself.

He didn’t need to defend his behaviour to anyone, and he didn’t want her figuring out his decision to sober up for good had been made as he’d been tiptoeing out of her student digs in London—barefoot, dishevelled, hungover and racked with guilt.

It wasn’t the increasingly brutal hangovers, though, which had messed with his head that morning after… It was the insane desire to wake her up and have her look at him again as she had the night before—as if he could hang the stars—which he had only narrowly managed to resist.

Fortunately, instead of figuring out the timing of his decision to stop drinking, she simply made a scoffing sound in her throat.

‘Who’s the liar now?’ she murmured. ‘If you haven’t had a drink for four years, why were you hungover at Isabelle’s wedding ten days ago?’

He hadn’t been hungover, he’d been sleep-deprived—the familiar nightmares returning—at the prospect of spending hours sitting beside her at the banquet. Which had proved to be a titanic effort, just as he had expected it would be, because when she wasn’t ignoring him, she had been giving him the evil eye.

One thing he intended to get across to her on this infernal drive was that her days of taking cheap potshots at him were over. She wasn’t eighteen any more, she was a grown woman, and he was through putting up with her temper tantrums, when his decision to leave her sleeping that morning, and to ignore her texts and calls over the days that followed, had been one of the few unselfish things he had done in his entire life.

Not only that, but he was damned if he was going to keep taking all the blame for what had happened between them four years ago.

She had come on to him, not the other way around. Maybe he should have resisted her artless flirting. With a bit more maturity himself that night, and a bit less of the Napoleon brandy they’d both had too much of after she and her friends had come up to him at the West End nightclub, he might have been able to.

But what was past was past. And it was time she got over it.

‘Believe what you like, but I am more than sober enough to drive,’ he said, determined to put an end to the conversation.

He did not want her to know exactly how their one night had changed him or she might start getting delusions again. Although, from the derisive glare she sent him, he doubted that would be a problem.

That she would always think the worst of him now made the ache in his gut twist, but he ignored it.

The harsh lesson he’d taught her, about not trusting him, not relying on him, not believing he was a good man, when he had always known he wasn’t—nor did he particularly want to be—was a valuable one, which she ought to thank him for.

‘I’d hazard a guess I also have a lot more experience driving this car on these roads than you do,’ he added, shifting into first as the road began to climb along the ridge overlooking the Castle.

She shrugged and turned away from him to stare out of the Jeep’s window. ‘If you think I’m going to thank you for kidnapping me, you can think again, Rene.’

Kidnapping her?

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. ‘I see you’re still as much of a drama queen as you were when I first met you,’ he murmured, remembering that belligerent ten-year-old tomboy with an odd dose of nostalgia.

She’d challenged him at every turn even then—because she had been brave and loyal and prepared to defend her new best friend. So, of course, being a sixteen-year-old boy who had never had a friend he could trust, it had been all but impossible not to torment her and Isabelle even more.

‘And I see you’re still as much of an overbearing bastard,’ she shot back.

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