Modern Romance Collection February 2025, #5-8

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR

‘T RUE ,’ SHE ADMITTED at the reminder. ‘But it won’t make me remember, will it? What if I never remember?’

She couldn’t keep the fear out of her voice as she saw a void of utter loneliness opening up in front of her.

The anguish on her face made things twist in his chest, and the unaccustomed feeling of helplessness made him struggle for a response.

‘There are a few things in my life I wouldn’t mind forgetting...’

‘Oh? Like falling out of a nightclub drunk or losing your phone? I’m not talking about that I’m talking about... It’s like losing a part of yourself, if that makes any sense.’

‘It does—and I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention to make light of your experience, but you will make new memories.’

‘Together?’ She flushed. ‘I mean...’

‘I’ll do anything I can to help.’

His jaw was taut as he brought the car to a gravel-spitting halt on the forecourt of the manor. In the gloom it glowed, the stone facade honey-gold.

As he switched off the engine the light-activated spotlights burst into life. Beside him he felt Clemmie’s sigh.

‘It is beautiful,’ she said, staring up at the three-storey building, with its mullioned and transomed windows. The sight of it always affected her on a visceral level.

‘You love this place, don’t you?’ he said.

‘I never get tired of this view,’ she admitted, unwilling to admit out loud that the connection she felt to her old home made her feel close to her sister. She gave a self-conscious little shrug. ‘Especially since your mother spot-lit it.’

‘And ruined the dark sky view.’

Her smile was tired, and so far from the usual fearless and confrontational Clemmie that he experienced a heart-clenching moment of protective tenderness.

She had always touched a part of him that no other woman had—none could. Without Clemmie in his life that part of him might have died years ago.

‘You’re tired.’ He reached out his fingertips, touching the bruise on her cheek.

She shivered. ‘Post head injury fatigue, apparently.’

Maybe that was why she couldn’t stop thinking about putting her head on his shoulder, which was so temptingly close.

They were engaged. It would be the most natural thing in the world to react to the impulse and feel his arms circle her, his fingers in her hair. She’d close her eyes and breathe in the clean male scent of him...

They were engaged.

No matter how many times she thought it, it didn’t seem real—and yet at the same time it felt so right.

Frustration bubbled up inside her. How could she not know, not remember? Not remember being kissed or...?

Her glance drifted to his mouth...the firm, sensual line of his lips. Why should she feel guilty for staring? It wasn’t as if she’d woken up and found herself engaged to a total stranger. She’d woken up and found herself engaged to her best friend.

How had it happened?

When had it happened?

She rubbed her forehead. The ache had started to dig in behind her eyes.

‘Shall we go inside?’ he asked.

She nodded.

At the doorway Clemmie braced herself; she always felt a tangle of emotions when she walked into her old home, and today the tangles were way more complex than usual.

It was a stupid situation. It hadn’t been her home for a long time and it was just stupid sentimentality. So what if generations of her family had lived here? She knew you couldn’t really feel a connection to a building, bricks and mortar, but it always took a few seconds for logic to reassert itself.

She remembered the look of surprise on her mum’s face when she had asked her how she coped with the fact that she saw this place every day—saw other people living here, in what had once been her home.

Her mum had laughed and said that all she felt was relief, explaining that she’d never felt like lady of the manor material, and that, to be honest, she’d felt a sense of freedom the day she handed over the keys.

It was also a massively inconvenient house, she had added.

Not as inconvenient now as it once had been, of course. The ancient plumbing was gone, and there were no leaks in the roof, but the new interior design was not exactly to Clemmie’s taste. To her, it made no sense to buy an ancient building and then try and make it look like a new build.

‘Luckily the historical listing and the conservancy people stopped her ripping everything out.’

Clemmie blinked; he had tuned into her thoughts so exactly that for a split-second she thought she had voiced her criticisms out loud. She realised he had not lost his uncanny ability to read her mind.

Did he read her mind when they were in bed, too?

The question came from nowhere, and opened a door to a subject she’d been carefully tiptoeing around. She still couldn’t get her head around the idea that they were intimate. That he knew her body, that she knew his, that they had lain together in a sweaty, breathless, post-coital tangle of limbs.

The images in her head made the panic she was keeping at bay by sheer force of will threaten to overwhelm her.

‘You all right?’

Her eyes skittered away from the concern in his.

‘I’m not qualified to give an opinion on interior design, but everything looks...expensive.’

Her choice of words dragged a laugh from him. ‘You hate it, don’t you? Admit it. Don’t worry—I won’t be offended. The wallpaper in my bedroom makes me feel that I’ve woken up in a jungle populated by purple silk zebras. But at least the fabric of the building is intact, and the new refurb might be an improvement.’

‘New refurb?’

‘Apparently this is all “dreadfully dated” now, but the real reason is the that my father gave his last girlfriend an apartment as a parting gift. This refurb is my mother’s way of hitting him where it hurts—his wallet. Oh, the joys of matrimony.’

His cynicism and distaste for marriage seemed intact—which made her wonder why they were engaged. Was he already regretting it?

His phone buzzed, and after glancing at the screen he grimaced. ‘Sorry, I have to take this.’

‘No problem.’

By the time he’d finished his call, Clemmie had vanished.

He called her name, but all he got back was an echo. After a short search he eventually found her standing outside a bedroom door on the second floor.

She turned her head, sensing his approach. ‘This used to be our room—mine and Chrissie’s.’

‘I know. It was mine for a while. You must have resented me.’

She shook her head. ‘No, not really. I wasn’t very happy when I lived here, but in this room we couldn’t hear Mum and Dad arguing.’ A sad smile tugged a corner of her mouth upwards. ‘Once Chrissie took her piggybank down and told them they could have all her money if they stopped yelling.’ Her smile faded when she saw his expression. ‘Have I already told you that?’

‘No.’

‘I was not canvassing for the sympathy vote,’ she cut back, wincing internally at the thought.

‘I never thought you were. Do you want to see inside?’

She shook her head. ‘This room holds no ghosts to exorcise for me... Well, not many,’ innate honesty made her add.

But she could deal with the past, she thought. It was the present that she was struggling to get her head around.

‘A good philosophy,’ he agreed as he followed her to one of the windows in the gallery that led to the next wing of the house. It overlooked the garden, and on a clear day gave glimpses through the trees of the village church spire.

Clemmie’s breath caught as his muscled thigh touched her own when he sat down on the wide windowsill beside her. She was aware of an internal battle between her instincts: one urging her to push into him, the other to shuffle away. It resulted in a draw. She stayed exactly where she was and hoped the quivering of her own thigh muscles was not obvious.

The internal battle was exhausting. Was this something she had already gone through and moved beyond? Well, she supposed she must have. They were intimate.

The thought of it sent prickles of sensation along her nerve-endings. It just seemed so impossible.

She was living her secret fantasy—she just really wished she could remember.

‘It’s a store room now, I think,’ he said.

‘I know. I used to help Mum in the holidays, remember? I also know that your current room is the one above the library, and—’

‘Why do you pretend you don’t love this place?’

She turned her head, the abrupt action sending a section of curls across her face.

‘I... I... How did you know?’ She had barely acknowledged the truth herself. ‘Sorry. I know we must have shared that, and more, but I don’t remember.’ The utter futility of it all hit her. ‘It’s just a building...bricks and mortar...or stone and mortar, at least. But it makes me feel close to Chrissie.’

Her pallor was beginning to concern him. ‘I should have made you stay in hospital.’

She flashed a smile. ‘You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to...’ She paused, her eyes dropping.

‘You can have your privacy tonight, Clemmie.’

She nodded, relieved that she hadn’t had to explain. ‘I know that this must seem odd to you, but to me you are not my fiancé.’ She frowned as she tried to pick her way through the minefield of wrong words in her head. Maybe there were no right words.

‘Your mum will have made up my room—you take that.’

‘Thanks.’

He shrugged, and had the immediate impression that her gratitude had made him tighten the guilt screw another notch. Because all he could think about was being inside her.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.

She shook her head. At this point just putting one foot in front of the other was an effort. ‘I think maybe I just need to sleep for a while.’

Even though she said it was unnecessary, he shadowed her as she made her way to his room on the next floor.

He opened the door and looked down at her. ‘Maybe you should have stayed with your mum tonight. Shall I call her?’

‘No, I’m fine.’

‘Can I get you anything?’

She shook her head.

Inside the bedroom there were no clues to the man himself—but then why would there be? He stayed here once a year, maybe. She wandered through to the bathroom and filled a glass with water, then returned to the bedroom and sat on the bed, before kicking off her shoes.

Suddenly she didn’t feel tired at all. She lay down and wondered if she should ring her mum.

Sleep came before she had decided.

Joaquin chose the room a door down from where Clemmie was and went downstairs. An hour or so and several emails later, he made his way back to the top floor and, seeing the light under the door of his bedroom, he knocked.

There was no reply.

He fingered the card in his pocket that had come with her discharge pack. It listed the signs to look out for with concussion. Scanning them, he figured that checking someone was alive trumped the invasion of privacy.

Calling her name, he pushed the door open. The main light and the bedside lamp were on and the curtains were open. He walked across to the bed—his bed—where Clemmie was lying fully clothed, one arm flung above her head, her face turned into the pillow, exposing the bruised side of her face. Her chest rose and fell with slow breaths. Her colour seemed good.

As he looked down at her the surge of fierce emotion he’d experienced before gathered in his chest and he found himself reaching out, the action instinctive. His expression intent, he brushed a strand of her hair from her cheek, freezing as she shifted and murmured in her sleep.

When her breathing evened again he went to the chair set against the wall and took the folded throw that was there. He spread it across her and walked out of the room.

Twice in the night he returned to check on her. Both times she looked fragile and vulnerable, and he felt a total heel for wanting her.

The first time she was sound asleep.

The second time she opened her eyes and looked at him.

‘Don’t go...please stay.’

He did. Arranging himself beside her, he drew her into his arms and felt her sigh. Even after she had fallen asleep he stayed, stroking her hair. He recognised the irony; he had never stayed the entire night with a woman, and this one he had not even had sex with.

Clemmie was not a woman you just had sex with—she was a woman you made love to. And for the first time in his life Joaquin found himself regretting that he was not a man who made love. He was a man who had sex.

Clemmie awoke confused. She had no idea where she was. And then, as she moved and her bruises made their presence felt, it all came back. Well, not all—and that was the issue.

She sat up in bed and looked down at the cashmere throw that lay across her legs. She genuinely didn’t remember how it had got there. Normally this would have bothered her, but compared with all the other things she had forgotten this was a very small thing.

She had dreamt that Joaquin was holding her last night. A dream so real she had half expected to find him there this morning. It had made her feel safe and warm.

How could her mind blank out sex...making love with a man like Joaquin? A man she had been pretending not to lust after most of her adult life—actually all her adult life. She was living her own fantasy and she had forgotten it!

She eased out of the clothes she had slept in and twisted around in front of the mirror to view the bruises that were developing. There was a particularly livid one along one shoulder, but at least that one could be hidden. Not so the one her cheek, which looked terrible.

She rifled through a bag she recognised—presumably packed by her mum—and was glad to find a selection of toiletries and make-up.

The shower eased some of her stiffness, and a judicious application of concealer on top of her tinted moisturiser improved but didn’t hide her facial bruises.

She knelt on the floor and selected linen trousers and a matching jacket that seemed appropriate for a hospital appointment.

Just thinking about it made her stomach quiver with apprehension. She told herself not to be a wimp and texted her mum before making her way downstairs, using the back route that took her through several interconnecting rooms and down one of the many staircases.

This one led directly to the kitchen, where there was a pile of warm croissants on a tray and the smell of coffee in the air. She poured herself a mug from the pot, buttered a croissant and stood eating it as she looked out of the window, envying the grazing sheep in the field who, it seemed to her, had an inner peace that eluded her.

Yes, she decided, rinsing her mug under the tap. I have definitely lost it. I am envying sheep.

She walked through several rooms to reach the hall and there was still no sign of Joaquin. She was sliding her arms into her jacket when he appeared, dressed in a pale grey suit, a white shirt and, she assumed as a concession to informality, no tie.

His hair was still wet from the shower and slicked back, dark against the even gold tones of his skin. Any cuts on his face had obviously been superficial, because they were scarcely visible this morning. He exuded a vitality that, considering the fact she felt terrible, was almost an insult.

I look like the morning after the night before without the fun, and he looks like a...a...sex god!

The ease with which sex god had sprung to her mind deepened her frown and made her blush—an irritating habit she ought to have long outgrown.

She took comfort from the fact that Joaquin couldn’t know why she was blushing, and that it probably just blended into the bruises that the make-up she had applied didn’t totally disguise.

Joaquin glanced at her, frowning in a way that she decided suggested he thought she looked terrible too. She took the silent insult on board and glowered.

‘I’ll take you,’ he said, picking up the car keys from the table.

Clemmie shook her head, controlling her irritation with difficulty. ‘I don’t need you to take me. This is really overkill, you know. I feel perfectly well, and I wish you’d stop watching me as though I’m an unexploded bomb!’

‘Someone got out of bed the wrong side this morning.’

Your bed , she thought—and therein lay the issue. She had never allowed herself to imagine sleeping with Joaquin...having sex with him. Because she knew that even if she caught him in a weak moment, it would mean the end of their friendship as she knew it.

And now she had woken to a world where it seemed she had slept with him—where they presumably had enjoyed wild and uninhibited sex. It was something she really found hard to imagine herself capable of, and she didn’t remember a thing about it.

But that hadn’t stopped her imagining last night—when at some point she had jerked herself into wakefulness, afraid of the nightmares she sensed were waiting for her—how nice it would have been to have him hold her. She had even imagined she could smell the scent of the elusive male fragrance that clung to him...

‘If Mum isn’t free, I’ll call a taxi.’ Well aware that she was behaving like a bit of brat, and yet unable to stop herself, she slid her eyes from his dark, knowing stare as she mumbled defensively, ‘This entire thing is stupid anyway.’

‘It was the deal we made. And if you call your mum she’ll think we have rowed.’

She fixed him with an irritated, narrow-eyed glare. ‘We haven’t done anything ! I mean... I didn’t mean that sort of anything.’

‘I feel frustrated, too,’ he said.

It was true that he enjoyed sex, but this was something else. Last night when he had held her, the tenderness he had felt had been on a cellular level. This morning his body was still humming with a sexual pulse.

‘You do?’ she said, mollified slightly. And then, ‘I won’t be admitted to a ward.’

Clemmie didn’t like the understanding that flickered in his dark eyes. His understanding made her feel vulnerable and exposed—especially as she didn’t understand herself.

‘When you get a clean bill of health your mum will back off.’

‘What if I don’t? What if they find something?’

She could still remember the school doctor, who had been doing routine school medical checks, pulling their mum to one side while she and Chrissie played. The expression on her mum’s face...the fear—even though at the time she hadn’t really understood what it was—was etched into Clemmie’s memory.

‘I think that is not very likely.’

‘So, you think there is some chance they’ll find something?’

A frustrated sigh whistled through his clenched teeth as he prayed for patience.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.

‘If there is an issue, we will deal with it.’

The way the ‘we’ had come so naturally sent a wave of unease through him.

This isn’t real , a dry voice in his head reminded him.

He dropped the car keys into her hand.

Clemmie looked down at them for a moment and then shook her head. ‘Actually, it might be better if you drove me.’

‘Fine,’ he said as she held out the keys. ‘Hurts more when the bruises start coming out, doesn’t it?’

She nodded, quite happy to encourage his assumption that her mood was totally attributable to her various bruises. Actually, she was more than happy to accept it herself.

‘You too...?’ she asked brightly. ‘Actually, it’s not just that. I haven’t actually been behind the wheel since I passed my test.’

A look of shock spread across his face. ‘You were seventeen! And wasn’t the idea to give you independence?’

‘I know. I always thought I’d have a little car by now. But it costs a lot to keep a car on the road, and I have been living in London. A car is not a priority...’

He looked at the hand still extended to him and after a moment reached out, but only to close her fingers firmly over the keys.

‘If you are feeling up to it, you can drive me.’

‘But your car is...’

The car that had appeared like magic to replace the one that had been written off in the crash was, if anything, even larger than the sports models she knew he normally drove. It was some sort of four-wheel drive, with a leather interior you could sink into and a wooden dashboard that looked as if it belonged in a space shuttle.

His shoulders lifted in a negligent shrug. ‘It’s a smooth ride.’

‘I would have thought that one crash in a week would be enough for you.’

‘You plan on crashing?’

‘No, of course not!’ she retorted indignantly.

‘I always said you passing first time was a fluke.’

Her mouth opened and her eyes widened in outrage before her indignation melted into a lopsided smile. ‘Don’t try your pop psychology on me.’

He grinned back. ‘Fine.’ He held out his hand for the keys.

‘I suppose you can afford to write off two cars a week,’ she said.

‘I’ve only one neck, though.’

He lifted his chin to reveal his brown throat, the warm skin dusted with the faintest shadow of stubble even though he had obviously shaved this morning.

Her stomach muscles clenched as she imagined what it would feel like to press her mouth to that warm skin and work her way to his mouth.

But she already knew—if only she could access those memories...

‘You don’t have to drive,’ he said, watching her face. ‘You don’t have anything to prove.’

Except that I can go five minutes without wondering what sex is like with you?

‘I know that,’ she said, but her attempt at bright and breezy sounded a bit manic.

At least focusing on driving had taken her mind off the dreaded medical check-up ahead. As she parked up she snapped off her seat belt and swivelled in her seat to face him.

‘How was that?’

The sarcastic comments, unwanted advice or even the odd wince had never come. But he had seemed lost in his own thoughts most of the way. She sensed a tension in him—as though he was the one getting tested, not her.

‘Good.’

‘You seemed zoned out. Or was that just fear because of my driving? At least I haven’t forgotten how to drive,’ she added, trying to get a response from him and feeling frustrated. Yes, it was a pretty feeble attempt at a joke, but he hadn’t even smiled.

‘Don’t force it—that’s what the doctor said.’

She felt a surge of impatience. ‘Anyone would think you didn’t want me to remember.’

He felt a fresh stab of guilt—maybe because there was a grain of truth in it. He wanted her to recover her memory—of course he did—but when she did he knew the friendship he valued, the trust that had existed between them, was going to need some repairing.

In the past, every time he had felt the tug of attraction he had closed it down. Filed it away in a box marked Do Not Touch. And now, because of a crazy combination of events, he was forced to deal with it.

And the fact he was, he wasn’t dealing with it well.