Page 105 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

They’d known perfectly well, too, that Rose had been Mrs Martinez’s only visitor when she’d been admitted into hospital with the stroke that had been the beginning of the end for the wonderful woman, and she thought back to all the calls she’d made to Julio to enable his mother’s discharge into her care. Thought back, too, to Julio and Camila’s failure to let Diaz know about the stroke and its seriousness for over a week even though they’d promised to let him know immediately.

The moment Diaz had, finally, been informed, he’d dropped everything to be there for the woman who’d been more of a mother than a grandmother to him, and as all these thoughts and memories reeled through Rose’s head, the building anger morphed into pure rage, and she wondered what the hell she’d been thinking spouting aboutacceptanceandmoving onto the one who’d most suffered at Julio and Camila’s neglect.

Julio made the sign of the cross and, without an ounce of contrition for neglecting his mother with the same zeal that he’d neglected his children, said, ‘She got to see you two married though.’

‘Which is more than we did,’ Camila added, now the one speaking pointedly, her attention on the son she’d rarely shared a roof with to kiss goodnight or been there for during a single one of his—or her daughter’s—childhood nightmares. ‘We didn’t know anything about it until you told us we were going to be grandparents.’

Rose’s rage-induced impulse to chuck her champagne over the abhorrently narcissistic pair was only thwarted by the fact she had no champagne left to throw.

Diaz was the one to respond, smoothly saying, ‘The last thing we wanted was for our wedding to be turned into a circus, but if you’d made the effort to visit while she was so gravely ill, one of us would have told you about it.’

Naturally, neither of his parents absorbed his reproach any more than they’d absorbed Rose’s.

Rose was right, he realised. They were never going to change. Which made the anger he could feel vibrating from her all the more mystifying.

She’d been the one to stop him exploding in temper at the funeral. His parents had breezed in late to the service and taken their seats next to him. It was the first time they’d set foot in England since his grandmother’s stroke. About to let rip at them, he’d been caught off-guard by the lightest of taps on his thigh.

He’d whipped his head to Rose, sitting to his right. She’d pulled her hand away, shaken her head, and quietly said, ‘Not today.’

Those two words had been enough to bring him to his senses.

A hostess appeared with more champagne. Diaz thanked her with a smile and took a drink, his thoughts drifting even further back, to the evening he’d agreed to marry Rose.

They’d been in the drawing room. It had been three weeks since the hospital had released his grandmother into Rose’s care. Diaz had reworked his diary to keep his international travel to a minimum so he could be there as much as possible. Rose had made them all a simple omelette, something his grandmother could chew without difficulty. Diaz had fed her.

They’d formed an unspoken, temporary truce.

It had been once the plates were cleared and they’d settled in what was by then their usual seats either side of her bed to watch a film that his grandmother had quietly said, ‘I want you two to marry.’

He could still feel the shocked silence that had reverberated around the room.

His grandmother had slowly spread her hands out for them to take one each.

In perfect unison, they’d risen from their seats and carefully sat on the edge of the bed clasping a hand each and facing her. Facing each other too. All three able to see each other clearly.

His grandmother had looked directly at Diaz with a plea in her eyes. ‘Don’t let Rose be alone when I’m gone.’

His stare had darted to Rose. Her face had drained of colour, eyes wide with the same disbelief he’d known resonated in his.

‘Will you marry her?’ his grandmother had rasped, clutching his hand with all her limited strength. ‘For my peace of mind?’

His heart had beaten so hard he could have sworn he’d felt it thumping to escape his ribs. ‘Do you know what you’re asking of me?’

To marry Rose? To make the most toxic woman alive, the woman he held responsible for his sister’s near-death and estrangement, his wife?

His grandmother had nodded and smiled. ‘Grant a dying woman her last wish and marry Rose. Stop this war. The love is there if you will only give it a chance.’

‘You’re not dying,’ he’d denied, lying to them both, too stunned at what was being asked of him to correct her on the love she’d spoken of.

They’d married four weeks and a day later in that same room, the tiny wedding party crowded around his grandmother’s bed so she could bear witness.

Two weeks after that simple wedding where the bride wore black and the groom wore the first suit that came to hand, his grandmother had died with Diaz and Rose holding the same hands they’d held when she’d made her final request to them, and he’d still been blind to the truth of her words.

The love is there if you will only give it a chance.

He hadn’t given it a chance. He’d run from it. And he’d left her on her own.

The truth had only come when Rose had been close to death and even then, knowing he loved her, knowing he needed her, still he’d resisted the fullness of it, still running, running, running from the full truth of his feelings, still letting himself believe her responsible…

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