Page 91 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

‘I only know I owe it to all of us to try.’

How her poor, foolish heartlongedto believe him.

The loud ring of his phone broke the spell cast over them in one trill.

With a rueful smile, he brushed his thumb against her chin before stepping back to pull his phone out of his pocket. Reading the message, he captured her stare one more time. ‘It is time to change for my trip.’

That strange alchemy of relief and disappointment collided all over again.

CHAPTER SEVEN

AnoiseshockedRose awake. In an instant she’d thrown her duvet off and was padding quietly to the adjoining door. Her racing pulses already knew before she reached it that it hadn’t been the girls who’d woken her. It had been Diaz closing his bedroom door.

He was back from Sweden.

Heart in throat, she tiptoed back to bed and buried herself under the duvet.

This was the last time she would sleep under this duvet.

From tomorrow night she would be sharing Diaz’s bed.

It destroyed her to know the hot, knotted sickness low in her belly was the sickness of anticipation. Excitement.

It destroyed her even more to know that, even in sleep, her subconscious had been waiting for him.

* * *

Early the next morning, Rose sat on the sill of her bedroom window hugging her knees as she waited for the rest of the world to wake up. Her room overlooked the sprawling, romantic garden and she watched the flowers respond to the rising sun. She knew how they felt.

She’d spent half the night awake, on tenterhooks that Diaz would come to her. She still didn’t know if she was relieved or disappointed that her door remained closed.

There would be no closed door between them tonight.

She hugged herself tighter and tried to breathe through the ripples of her thumping heart.

A real marriage. That’s what he wanted. What she’d agreed to, even if only for a few months. What her tingling body yearned for.

If she could separate her body from her heart she would have few qualms about the agreement, would happily go to his bed and use him with the same shamelessness that he’d used her until the summer ended and she took the girls back to England and divorced him.

When it came to Diaz though, Rose’s heart and body were inextricably linked, and she had no idea how she was going to sever that link when she was sharing his bed every night.

Movement in the grounds caught her eye.

Her breath caught in her throat.

Striding over the path towards the swimming area, a towel slung around his neck, Diaz, wearing nothing but grey swim shorts.

As if sensing her stare, he stopped and looked up.

She ducked out of sight.

A few moments later her racing heart skipped wildly to see his name flash on the screen of her phone. A simple message.

Join me?

Thelongingthat ripped through her…

It was a longing reawoken on her arrival to Spain and now back with a vengeance.

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