Page 195 of Modern Romance October 2025 5-8
She answered on the fourth ring.
‘Hey, stranger.’
As always, her voice pulled at something in his chest. He cleared his throat. ‘Jamie, hi.’
‘You sound cross. Is everything okay?’
Jamie knew him better than anyone on earth. The fact she could correctly deduce his mood after hearing just a couple of syllables showed that to be true.
‘Do you have a minute?’
‘For you, I have five minutes, at least. What’s up?’
He stood, prowling towards the window, bracing an elbow on the glass and staring down at London, the Thames writhing through it like a big, pewter snake.
‘There’s no easy way to tell you this. I’m getting married.’
Her sharp intake of breath might as well have been a whip against his flesh. He winced, wishing he could take back the words. Wishing, no matter what he’d just told himself a minute ago, that he could renege on this whole stupid deal.
Nothing on earth was worth hurting Jamie for.
‘Oh. Erm, congratulations.’
She sounded like she was about to cry.
‘Listen, Jamie,’ he began, aware that his accent had thickened, as it always did when he was battling the depth of his emotions. His failures where his ex-wife was concerned.
‘It’s okay.’ She cleared her throat. ‘We’re divorced. I didn’t expect you’d be single forever.’
Silence fell, a staticky, heavy silence that, to Dante’s ears, was prickly with accusations, no matter how kindly she was letting him off the hook.
‘I did,’ he said, simply. ‘You know that.’
‘Yes.’ Another clear of her throat. ‘So, who is she?’
He thought of Charlotte and something fizzed in his gut for a whole other reason. Where everything with Jamie was heavy and charged with dreadful guilt and grief, Charlotte was the exact opposite. When he thought of her, he felt levity and lightness, happiness and simplicity.
‘No one you know,’ he said, though perhaps that wasn’t true. After all, they all moved in similar circles. ‘Charlotte Shaw.’
‘Never heard of her,’ she said.
Dante suspected that would change. Not just with their marriage, but when the truth of her parenthood came out and she took possession of the Papandreo Group.
‘What’s she like?’
‘She’s—,’ he searched for the right words, and drew a blank. What could one say to their ex-wife about their future wife? ‘You’d like her,’ he finished, after a beat.
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Jamie said, a little wistfully. The implication was clear: we’ll never meet.
More silence. He smothered a sigh. They’d divorced and that was for the best, but the guilt over how he’d failed Jamie followed him still. He wished he could have given her what she wanted. She had deserved better. He shifted his weight to the other foot, pressed his palm to the glass, feeling the cold smoothness and picturing Jamie.
‘Do you love her?’ It was barely a whisper, the softest words, a question into the darkness.
He closed his eyes on a wave of feeling. Panic, regret, remorse, guilt.
‘Never mind. I shouldn’t have asked—,’
‘No,’ he said, because he’d failed Jamie so often, so many times, and at least he could give her this. He had told Charlotte that this would be their secret, that it was imperative that nobody else knew the truth, but Jamie, he realised now, had to stand outside of that bubble. ‘We’re not in love, Jamie.’
