Page 106 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

His mother’s voice cut through his pounding thoughts. ‘Have you heard from Rosaria lately?’

For a moment he was certain his darkening thoughts had conjured his sister’s name from his mother’s mouth.

She repeated the question.

He stared at her as if she were a stranger. She knew he hadn’t spoken to his sister in almost eight years.

And then Rose quietly answered, ‘A few weeks ago,’ and he felt his whole world lurch.

Rose was very much aware of Diaz’s stiffening beside her. Aware of his thumb, which had been gently stroking the top of her hand, freezing before he slowly pulled his hand from hers. Aware of his stare turning to her.

Bracing herself, she faced him.

His expression was incredulous, his voice hoarse. ‘You are in touch with my sister?’

It was the first time Rosaria had even been alluded to since they’d arrived in Spain. Longer.

But she’d been with them the entire time, one of the eggshells to be avoided, the largest elephant never addressed for fear of the poison that would be unleashed through it.

Quivering inside, Rose nodded and confessed, ‘We’ve always been in touch.’

She held her breath and waited for the explosion. It would be tempered—they were at a party surrounded by his friends and acquaintances—but it would come. It would be in his cutting words and the tone of his voice.

But the green eyes, narrowed as he searched her face, betrayed no hint of anger. Only the pulse ticcing on his jawline betrayed any emotion. ‘How is she? Is she well?’

She expelled the breath with another nod. ‘She’s doing great.’

A crease appeared in his forehead. ‘Really?’

‘She keeps bees.’

The crease in his forehead deepened. ‘Bees?’

‘She’s a complete hippy but where she lives…it’s not a cult or anything. She still smokes pot but doesn’t touch the hard stuff any more.’

He breathed in through his nose. ‘You have seen her?’

She hesitated before admitting, ‘I stayed with her three years ago.’

‘You never said.’

Rose had debated for months whether to tell him that she’d visited Rosaria. She knew Diaz kept tabs on his sister but also knew he would want to hear first-hand how she was doing. The problem was, he wouldn’t want to hear it from the person he blamed for her drug addiction and the estrangement. To tell him she’d visited Rosaria would only reopen wounds that had never fully healed.

Their history was littered with wounds.

Had he become so good at masking his feelings that she couldn’t read his anger and loathing any more?

Or had time and their babies finally…?

Don’t think like that, she told herself with a panicking voice as she downed half her champagne in one swallow.You fell into this trap before and inflicted the deepest wound of all.

The wound was a thread away from being ripped wide open again.

As blissfully unaware of the undercurrent running between his son and daughter-in-law as he’d been of Rose’s surge of anger towards him, Julio laughed and said to his son, ‘And you always said Rose was the wild one of the pair.’

* * *

Rose tried to enjoy the rest of the party but it was hard when she felt herself on tenterhooks for Diaz’s rage and questions when they were finally alone.

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