Page 97 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

Stomach churning with fear at how easily she’d slipped into contentment with him, she said as evenly as she could manage, ‘What makes you think that?’

The hand gently kneading her lower back stilled. The eyes that had been gazing at her with a sex-satisfied gleam dimmed like a light being switched off.

Disentangling herself from his hold, she sat up and tugged at the sheets to cover herself with shaking hands.

‘Rose…’

‘What?’ Mustering all her strength and channelling all the pain the fresh wound had given her, she met his stare. ‘Did you think that one bout of great sex would suddenly make me decide that everything’s all hunky-dory?’

Incredulity flashed in his stare. ‘That meant more than sex.’

Her heart thumping, she eyeballed him. ‘Did it, really?’

His lips tightened.

‘Don’t bother answering,’ she said before he could speak, tearing her stare away. ‘I’m not in the mood for a dose of déjà vu.’

He took a long breath and kneaded his temples. When he spoke, it was with patience underlaid with an edge. ‘Rose, I know I…’

‘Don’t bother,’ she interrupted again. ‘I don’t want to hear it. You got your way—I’m in your bed like a good little wife. I was even a willing partner in sex with you, and I’ll happily be a willing partner again because it really was wonderful—congratulations, you’re a great lover—but you don’t get to bully and blackmail your way into taking all of me. Not after what you did.’

Charged silence surrounded them; a different charge to the one that had been holding them in its spell.

This charge tasted of poison.

The charge broke when Diaz swung himself off the bed and strode across the bedroom floor, disappearing into the dressing room.

Her heart now in her throat, Rose puffed out a short breath of stale air and blinked vigorously to clear the tears prickling her eyes, guilt already stabbing at her for her outburst.

She’d deliberately provoked him but she’d had no choice. The fear had been too great.

She needed to protect herself. When it came to Diaz she was more vulnerable than she could ever let him know, and she couldn’t let herself forget that he had essentially blackmailed her into staying here with him…

But he’d given her the girls’ passports, she reminded herself wretchedly. He’d stuck to his word in that respect. If there was blackmail, she’d gone along with it. She’d agreed to try. Whether he’d have let her go home with the girls if she’d said no was an unanswerable question because she’d said yes.

Blackmail aside, it didn’t change anything else.

That didn’t stop her heart lurching when Diaz reappeared wearing a pair of undone jeans and holding a black T-shirt.

His eyes met hers across the divide. There was nothing knowing or sensual in the glitter firing from them. For the first time in so very long she saw his mouth twist in loathing. ‘I’m going out. Don’t wait up for me—I would hate for you to think it necessary to add sleep deprivation to my list of crimes against you.’

She watched him tread to the door, trying her hardest to keep her composure.

She’d known it was only a matter of time before Diaz’s true feelings for her resurfaced but there was no satisfaction in proving herself right. Only wretchedness…and a flare of anger that burst out when he turned the door handle.

‘Are you really going to run away and leave me alone in a bedagain?’

* * *

Rose’s furiously delivered words sliced through Diaz like barbs.

The pulse in his jaw throbbing, he turned slowly, breathing heavily to smother the turgid emotions boiling like a cauldron in his guts. ‘You push me away and accuse me of blackmail and bullying, and expect me tostay?’

At her tight-lipped response, he dragged his fingers through the hair her own delicate fingers had threaded through only minutes ago.

‘I accept that I blackmailed you into staying here for the summer, but only because I know how impulsive and stubborn you can be,’ he said tersely into the silence. ‘Without that threat, you would never have given me a fair hearing, but I never bullied you into agreement. You agreed to try and make our marriage work.’

‘Iamtrying,’ she burst out. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

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