Page 131 of Modern Romance June 2025 5-8

‘How much?’

‘For what?’ she asked, her patience fraying further.

‘For you to come to Italy.’ He looked at her, and what she saw in his eyes stopped her heart.

Disappointment. Inevitability. Resignation.

She took a moment to gather herself. She wanted to feel indignant, outraged even. But could she really expect him to think any better of her? After all, she had married him for money. It was no wonder he thought that money would get him what he wanted. But she was no longer that desperate nineteen-year-old and she wouldn’t,couldn’t, take any more of his money.

Shame painted red slashes on her cheeks as she shook her head. ‘There is nothing, Mr Gallo. I can’t come to Italy,’ she said as firmly as she dared. Her job, her life—the life that she was only just beginning to get back on track—was here. And no amount of money would change that. Her phone buzzed, a message from work asking where she was. ‘I want to help, I really do,’ she said sincerely. ‘But I must go. When you figure out how to make this work, please call?’

‘I don’t understand. Is that a question? Why is everything so complicated today?’ he asked obtusely, the question clearly rhetorical.

‘Mercury is in retrograde,’ she offered with a touch of sarcasm, and allowed herself to relish the look on his face for a second before she hurried from the court.

She almost felt sorry for him. She doubted that Antonio Gallo was used to road blocks to his plans. Antonio might be the most aggressively handsome man that she’d ever encountered, but he was also the most ruthlessly selfish.

In the six years of their ‘convenient’ marriage, Ivy had reached out to him only once, three years ago. It had been the lowest point of her young life. She’d needed someone desperately. And, despite being called, he had not come. So she knew exactly what she meant to Antonio Gallo. Nothing. And it would remain that way. She would happily grant him the divorce they both needed, but she couldn’t let it derail her own plans.

The only person she could rely on was herself. The only person who could choose her was her. She had learned that the hard way.

‘This isn’t over, Ms McKellen,’ she heard him warn over her shoulder.

‘I would imagine not,’ she replied and hurried from the court to the bus that would take her to work, trying to ignore the way her feet burned with each step.

CHAPTER TWO

Ivy rubbed theache at her left temple, hoping that the tension there was just that and nothing more. Her boss, the formidable Mrs Tenby, was still glaring disapprovingly at her after she had burst through the doors to the library nearly forty minutes late and soaking wet from the unexpected thunderstorm. Rain battered the large double-glazed windows, providing a light drumbeat over her fragile nerves.

Ivy was raiding the first aid box for a plaster for her heel when Mrs Tenby helpfully reminded her that if she’d hurt herself on the premises then it needed to be added to the first aid book.

‘Yes, Mrs Tenby,’ Ivy replied, feeling like an errant schoolchild fornearlymisappropriating library resources.

She put the plaster back into the box and pulled the returns trolley into the stacks for reshelving, willing the quiet calm of the library to work its soothing magic after the sudden and shocking impact of that morning’s events.

But, no matter how many books she tried to shelve, all she saw was Antonio. The sharp line of his cheekbone, proud above the dark shadow of stubble that made him look more rake than businessman. Raven’s wing hair had glinted beneath the courthouse’s strip lighting and he seemed as out of place as a peacock strutting amongst the pigeons of Trafalgar Square.

In her mind’s eye she saw him looking after her as she walked away and guilt lashed at her conscience. She wanted to help him, truly she did, and she hated that she couldn’t go to Italy with him at the click of his fingers. Because marriage to him had been exactly as life-changing as she’d imagined it would be.

She thought of the picture her brother had sent her just last night. Grinning at the camera with twenty other young men and women. In military fatigues covered in mud, with a Scottish mountain range behind them, Jamie was almost unrecognisable from the angry, wayward kid he’d been at fifteen.

Thinking back to that time six years ago, she remembered how she’d been near sick with worry every minute of every day, desperate to come up with any solution to the demons he’d wrestled with. Drink, drugs, and the extreme anger that came from the deeply rooted hurt and confusion left behind by their absent parents was all he had known and nothing she’d said or done had got through to him. The helplessness of watching him lose the fight with his addictions over and over and over again had been devastating. He’d only had her, and Ivy had had no one. Her mother had left two years before and not been back once.

And when she’d called from France, or Spain, or wherever she was, it was always the same story, no matter how much Ivy had begged for her to come home.

‘Oh, love, I’ve just met this guy and he’s amazing, so I can’t leavenow.But don’t worry. Jamie will be just fine! He’s a fighter, that one.’

And if Ivy asked for money…

‘Sorry, love. You’re just going to have to make do.’

So she had. Ivy had made do the best she could, and it still hadn’t been enough. Jamie had continued to spiral…until Antonio’s proposal. She’d used the money from their marriage to send Jamie to an intensive residential rehab facility and put down a deposit on a small flat. For a man like Antonio Gallo, it was probably less money than he earned in a week, but to Ivy it had been a miracle.

Which was why she felt so terrible telling Antonio she couldn’t go to Italy. She wanted to help him, she really did, but she couldn’t risk losing this job. It had been made painfully clear to her by Mrs Tenby that the one condition of her appointment to the role was that she couldn’t take her leave during the summer holidays because all the other staff were parents who needed that time for their children.

As much as she felt guilty, she also knew that she couldn’t sacrifice her job for Antonio. Because when he got what he wanted he’d be out of her life and she’d never see him again. Just like her mother.

She shelved the last of the trolley’s books, slowly breathing through the hurt from that painful time, and returned to the desk for the next, but stopped short at the sight of Anita, the assistant librarian, eyes rimmed red, and Mrs Tenby in an uncharacteristic display of kindness rubbing circles on her back.

---