Page 72 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

Those dreams had already dissolved, and Rose blinked the remnants away knowing they’d only resurfaced because this was the first time Diaz had entered the house since that fateful night.

‘Do you still want it in your room?’ he asked once he’d brought the huge box inside.

‘Please.’ She couldn’t meet his stare. ‘Next to the bed.’ The bed they’d conceived their babies in. ‘Either side will be fine.’

Carrying the box to the stairs, he stopped before taking the first step and looked directly at her. ‘Are you feeling okay?’

She shrugged. ‘Just feeling very pregnant today. Why?’

His green eyes narrowed in speculation before he gave a short smile. ‘You must look more pregnant than last time. Rest your feet. I won’t be long getting this together.’

Rose turned away so she wouldn’t have to watch him climb the stairs.

* * *

For all that he’d pre-set his mind into ‘get done and get out’ out mode, Diaz still found he needed to brace himself before crossing the threshold into Rose’s bedroom.

How he’d resented his grandmother for giving this room to her. It had been the room his parents used when they visited. His grandmother’s dry, ‘But they’ve only visited once in the last four years and there are three other rooms they can use if they ever grace my door again,’ had cut no ice with him. The interloper had inveigled herself even more tightly into their lives. That his grandmother had allowed the move into the bedroom to be a permanent thing once Rose finished senior school, even after she’d caused his sister’s near-death and been the catalyst for Rosaria cutting him from her life, had angered him like nothing else ever had… Apart from when Rose denied culpability.

He breathed deeply, refusing to let memories of that sickening row surface. Especially the way it had ended. Especially that.

Except he was now in her room for only the second time since she’d taken occupancy of it and having to fight the memories from that one other time from surfacing too.

He should have got one of his team to bring the cot over and put it together, not let his caveman instinct of doing it himself override his rationality.

He wanted to put together his babies’ bed but didn’t want to see the bed they’d been created in and deal with all the memories that came with it, and so he blurred it from his sight…but couldn’t blur the neat, white dresser with the baby change mat on it, or the pretty box filled with tiny nappies. Couldn’t blur the calming, feminine aesthetic of a room that had once been more functional than lived in.

Despite his intention to ‘get done and get out’ his gaze was drawn to the photo tiles artfully placed on the walls. Rose and her mother, Amelia. Rose’s mother alone on the beach with her eyes closed and her face tilted to the sun. Rose and his grandmother. Rose’s father and his wife and children in what Diaz presumed was the garden of their Australian home. Rose and Rosaria…

He tore his gaze from the pictures and got to work.

* * *

In the kitchen, Rose had turned the radio on so she didn’t have to hear Diaz move around her bedroom and be consumed with the memories of the one and only time he’d stepped foot inside it since his grandmother had insisted it be Rose’s all those years ago.

He’d been furious when he’d found out, she remembered painfully. Not that he’d said anything. He hadn’t needed to. Diaz’s fury had been etched on his face. He’d accepted Rose moving out of the housekeeper’s cottage and into the manor house after her mother’s death so she could complete her final school year, but hadn’t expected the move to become permanent. He’d thought she would complete her exams and then go to her father in Australia, a man she’d never lived with and hadn’t seen in the flesh since she was a baby; she was perfectly certain Diaz would have paid a one-way ticket to be rid of her for good.

Mrs Martinez had had other ideas.

‘This is your home, and I want you to stay. You’ve got your university place, and Plymouth’s only a short drive so you can still do your degree and still have all the fun that comes with student life, but you’re too young to be out in the world on your own,’ she’d said, even though Rose had recently turned eighteen. ‘And I’m too old to be in this rambling place on my own.’ She’d smiled. ‘Besides, I’d miss all your noise.’

‘That’s a really lovely offer,’ Rose had said, covering the elderly woman’s hand, ‘but what would Diaz say? You know how he feels about me.’

Mrs Martinez’s face had hardened. Clearly, she was remembering the terrible evening and terrible row that had taken place only weeks earlier. ‘I love my grandson but when it comes to you, he has a blind spot. I can do whatever I want in my own home, and what I want is your young, lively presence to live vicariously through.’

‘He’ll think I’m trying to take Rosaria’s place in your affections,’ Rose had warned.

‘Then he’s a fool because you earned your own place in it a long time ago. I don’t want to live on my own, Rose. Diaz is too busy conquering and travelling the world to visit as often as I’d like, and Rosaria…’ She’d sighed sadly. ‘Rosaria has chosen her path.’

Indeed she had, Rose now thought wearily. And it was a path Diaz still blamed Rose for Rosaria taking.

She squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to think about that awful confrontation. Seven years had passed. It shouldn’t still have the power to hurt.

Movement in her belly was just the distraction she needed…except the accompanying stabbing sharpness wasn’t the usual discomfort she’d become used to since the babies had grown so big inside her. Close to tears with the pain, she rubbed at the spot with one hand, and stared intently at the other hand. Was she imagining it had swollen even more?

‘All done… What’s the matter?’

Rose looked from her swollen hand to Diaz, who’d appeared at the kitchen door. Tried to smother the panic suddenly gnawing at her. ‘I think we need to phone the midwife.’

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