Page 102 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

Nodding to show he understood, he stood before a mirror to straighten his tie and decided to discard it. They were going to a party not a business meeting.

While he finished dressing, Rose, her make-up done, took off her robe and then, wearing only white lace knickers, her high breasts bare, slipped her arms into what first appeared to be another silk robe.

Dios, she was so graceful in her movements. So beautiful.

It was only when she’d fastened and tied it at the waist that he realised it was a long-sleeved knee-length dress. White with large peach roses and vibrant green stems and leaves embroidered on it, it gaped from shoulders to midriff but was so cleverly tied her seemingly exposed breasts were tantalisingly concealed and the exposure of her thigh managed to be both daring and modest.

Feet in high silver ankle boots with open toes, she sprayed perfume onto her exposed cleavage, fluffed her wavy dirty blonde hair around her shoulders, then opened a drawer and selected a small silver bag.

She faced him. ‘Ready?’

For the second time since entering the dressing room, Diaz found his chest tightening into a painful point.

After the birth of their daughters, Rose had stopped caring about her appearance. There had been subtle changes since their arrival in Spain, her outfits selected with care rather than the first outfit that came to hand being thrown on, but her make-up the rare times she bothered with it was kept minimal.

She’d always loved make-up. Dark, dramatic black liner and dark grey shadow to ring her eyes while keeping her lipstick subtle had been the Rose Gregory ‘look’. It had always made her beauty more striking, forcing you to look, forcing you to see the large blue eyes that always brimmed with whatever emotion she was feeling. That’s how it had always been for him, in any case, and he’d added it to his long list of things to despise her for.

He’d hated her intoxicating beauty and truculent sexiness. The way it made his blood heat and his pulses thicken. The fantasies it provoked. After his sister’s overdose, the times he slept under the same roof as Rose were spent alone in his bed consumed with awareness of how close her room was to his, despising himself for being so beguiled by someone so poisonous.

Looking at Rose now was to see her come fully back to life in all her vivacious glory and beauty.

Looking at Rose now was to accept that there had never been truculence to her sexiness. That had been what he wanted to see, and it came to him with a punch in the guts that the poison had existed only in his mind too.

‘Diaz?’

The dramatically ringed blue eyes were gazing at him. There was a tiny crease of concern in her forehead.

His heart was pounding so hard into his throat that it was an effort to speak.

He’d fed the poison. He’d fed it with a cruel ruthlessness to stop himself facing a truth he hadn’t been equipped to handle.

He pulled a smile together and reached for her hand.

Fingers with shapely nails painted the same black as her toenails threaded into his.

She stepped to him.

For a breathless moment he thought she was going to kiss him.

Instead, she pressed the palms of their entwined hands together. ‘What do you say that we just forget all the bad stuff and let loose for the night?’

He traced his thumb gently over her wide mouth. He remembered so vividly how soft her lips had felt against his.

How could he have believed someone who kissed with the whole of her heart, and who loved and cared with the whole of her heart, could have even an ounce of poison in their veins?

She placed a hand on his chest, right abovehisthumping heart.

A blue-eyed gleam speared him. She smiled with the whole of her wide mouth. ‘What do you say, Señor Martinez? Shall we go and have some fun?’

It came to him in a bolt that Rose didn’t just want to go out for the evening, she wanted to go out for the evening withhim. After everything he’d done, it washiscompany she wanted.

Spirits lifting absurdly high, he returned the smile and only just held himself off from cupping her face to kiss her. ‘Sí, mi corazón.Let’s go and party.’

CHAPTER TEN

Thehelicopterlandedon the roof of the private club the party was being hosted in. When Rose stepped out of it, she felt like the heroine of an action movie. All she needed was a gun in her knickers and she’d be ready to take down the villain of the piece.

She didn’t imagine action movie heroines had to make the short walk from helicopter to entrance holding their dress down to stop it lifting from the force of the spinning rotors though.

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