Modern Romance Collection February 2025, #5-8

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SIX

T HE AbrUPT REJECTION as he stepped away felt like a warm shower turning ice-cold.

Clemmie shivered.

She felt physically sick.

‘What?’ she asked, pitching her trembling question at the figure who was now standing several feet away, looking...

At least he looked as if he was in pain, she decided, studying the darkness along the sharpened contours of his face. Hearing the breath whistling in and out of his parted lips. Pain was the least he deserved, she concluded, shaking with reaction.

‘Sorry,’ he said, in response to the voice in his head that was telling him he was a total fool in reacting to some misguided sense of chivalry.

Things changed, things moved on...they were both consenting adults.

She was a virgin.

That incredible fact alone should have put her out of bounds, but at some primitive level it aroused him more.

The idea of being her first lover...

He had never been anyone’s first lover.

‘That shouldn’t have happened.’

It was the timing that was wrong, not the action, he decided. She still thought they were engaged. She thought that she was kissing the man she was going to marry.

No way in the world could he rationalise that.

Clemmie hid her profound hurt at this fresh rejection beneath a surface layer of anger.

‘Well, it did! Was all that just to prove you don’t have a problem?’ Her eyes blinked wide, the sensual haze clearing as she bit out furiously, ‘You don’t want me. You are a piece of work,’ she declared hotly, feeling the sting of utter humiliation.

She jumped down from the table, waiting a moment for her shaky legs to steady before she looked at him.

‘What is wrong with me? Am I just a total—?’

‘Nothing is wrong with you. You are...’ His nostrils flared. As he covered the space between them he fought the urgent need that was taking bites out of his control. ‘A virgin...’ he said accusingly.

‘Yeah? So what? Hasn’t it come up in conversation during our engagement?’

He took a deep breath and took his hands off her shoulders, not really sure how they had got there. Desire was roaring like a furnace out of control, kept in check only by the knowledge that he was taking advantage of her ignorance. That she had bought into a lie.

Hurting her, taking advantage, was a low he could not sink to. So before his need outweighed his conscience, he knew he had to speak the truth.

The truth could not hurt her more than continuing this charade to its inevitable conclusion.

‘There has been no conversation.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There is no engagement.’

It took several heartbeats for this information to penetrate the sensual thrall she had sunk into, then a few more for her to fight her way clear of it.

‘I don’t understand...’

‘You haven’t forgotten we’re engaged because we never were.’

She shook her head, as if she was trying to make sense of his words, looking so vulnerable he felt worse than ever.

‘The ring...?’

He had lied to her. The one person she had believed would never betray her had.

‘My grandmother sent me the ring, trying to guilt-trip me. I shoved the damned thing in the glovebox and you found it in there and decided to try it on.’

She held out her hand and stared at the ring, hating it and in that moment hating him as she realised the truth. ‘It got stuck.’

‘Before it could be unstuck we crashed,’ he finished, delivering the basic sequence of events in a flat monotone.

‘Say that again? No, don’t. I get it,’ she choked out as the scenario he’d described flashed through her head.

Unlike the idea of them being a couple, it seemed lot more feasible—a lot more!

‘People assumed we were engaged at the hospital and I didn’t correct them because you were unconscious. I didn’t have a clue what was going on, and I knew a fiancé gets access and information. I thought that as soon as you woke up you’d put things right...or I would. Then the internet thing went viral and suddenly your mum was welcoming me into the family.’ He hefted out a sigh. ‘And you didn’t remember what happened. It was a nightmare!’

Her lips pursed. ‘A nightmare being engaged to me? Thanks a lot!’

Of course it was a nightmare for him. He had never hidden his belief that marriage was a trap. Why on earth had she imagined that she had made him think differently when all the beautiful women who had gone before her had not?

The sheer level of her self-delusion made her want to scream.

‘I meant...the thing took on a life of its own.’

She took a step towards him and pressed both hands to his chest. Then she pushed as hard as she could.

Caught unawares, Joaquin staggered back, but quickly regained his balance.

‘You make it sound like you were the victim!’ she shouted. ‘You lied—you betrayed me!’

‘That was not my intention—and it wasn’t my intention to continue this farce.’

Her jaw tightened as she stood there, hands on her hips, glaring at him, refusing to let the hurt show in her expression. ‘Farce? Good to know what you think.’

He expelled a frustrated sigh. ‘You know that’s not what I meant. I had every intention of telling you yesterday morning, but the medics told me that I shouldn’t.’

‘Since when did you do what people tell you?’ she countered.

‘Granted. But you don’t pay money to a cabal of expert medics and then ignore their advice. They advised me not to fill in the gaps in your memory at this stage.’

‘They did?’

‘According to them, amnesia can be the mind’s way of protecting you from a painful memory—something you are not ready to face. And who was I to argue? Whatever the reason, it wouldn’t have been helped by you waking up in hospital...which is the reason why I didn’t push back when you wanted to come home too soon.’

His glance shifted to the bruise on her cheek that was more visible now the light covering of make-up she had applied earlier had faded.

‘And this is too soon, Clemmie.’

Too soon for him to be kissing her, the inner voice of guilt reminded him. And yet it had been something he could not control. The need he had felt had talons; he still couldn’t get his head around how that need had consumed him in a way he had never experienced before.

‘Ignorance is not bliss. It is a lie and it’s patronising. They told me Chrissie would be okay! My dad said he’d be back for the funeral!’

‘I know...’

He watched her breasts lift as she inhaled, flicking her hair from her face with a shake of her head. It was a tiny characteristic gesture, and he had seen the action a thousand times before. So why was he only just noticing how erotic it was? The way her fiery hair whipped back to reveal the slender pale column of her neck?

And afterwards she always...

She licked her lips. Even though he knew it was coming, the tiny flicker of her tongue across her lips sent a rush of testosterone-charged heat through his body.

He had wanted normal back—but how could that happen when he wanted her this way?

‘It wasn’t your choice to make. Even if our engagement hadn’t been a lie, it still wouldn’t have been. I had to get out of there!’ she cried through clenched teeth.

‘I understand.’

‘No, you don’t.’ She took a deep breath. ‘So...okay. I can see why it’s happened. But didn’t you at any point think enough was enough?’ An expression of dawning horror spread across her face. ‘I told you... Oh, God, I told you that I wanted to kiss you...!’ She groaned, her face contorting into a grimace of sheer mortification. ‘I told you I was a virgin!’ Swamped by the weight of sheer humiliation, she covered her eyes. ‘I tried to kiss you...’

He watched as her head dropped and her shoulders hunched.

‘Do you actually think that I didn’t want to kiss you back? That it didn’t...?’ He raked a hand through his dark hair, and the words were seemingly dragged out of him against his will as he continued in an uneven voice that reflected the strength of the emotions surging through him. ‘Hell, Clemmie, it killed me not to kiss you. And then I did—’ he said, realising as he broke off that that action had put the normal he so wanted them to return to out of reach...maybe for ever.

Her head came up, and her eyes were instantly caught and held by his. The dark, burning heat in his gaze sealed the contact.

‘You know what I think, Clemmie?’

‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’

‘I think we’re both guilty of self-delusion.’

‘Speak for yourself.’

‘I am. I’ve been dodging the fact that I want you because I was afraid of the fall-out. I didn’t want to mess up what we already had. But it’s out there now, so we have to deal with it.’

I want you.

The raw statement sent a primal shudder through her body.

He wanted her.

But he lied to you, the voice in her head countered coldly. The way your dad lied time after time to your mum, and your mum believed his lies.

‘I don’t want to deal with this...this is just too much,’ she whispered. ‘I want things back to the way they were.’

‘I think you want me more than you want that.’

The awful part was he was right.

She fixed her gaze on some safe, blurry point over his shoulder as if it was a lifeline as she fought off the suspicion that on some level she had already known the truth. She had known that it was impossible they were engaged, but she had gone along with it because she’d been enjoying living the fantasy.

She couldn’t blame everything on the concussion—though that would be nice. The fact was, there had been some glaring inconsistencies in the timeline of their engagement staring her in the face the whole time. She was worried that she hadn’t wanted to see them.

‘The doctor said there might be a trauma I don’t want to remember?’

He nodded.

‘Do you know what it is?’

‘No. I thought it was maybe just being in the hospital where your sister... That is the place where she was...’ he hesitated ‘...treated?’

‘Same hospital, different building. The old children’s ward was replaced by a new building ages ago. It isn’t that specific hospital...it’s any hospital. It’s the smell. The...’

She paused and sucked in a breath before shaking her head. There were too many painful memories she didn’t want to revisit.

Playing with her twin and then later, when she was too tired and too ill to play, sitting beside her on the narrow bed, not wanting to let her go when it was time to go home.

The cycle of Chrissie’s hospital treatment and then coming home, and the hope that had seemed to last for ever.

But then came the day when Chrissie had never come home.

The survivor’s guilt had never truly left her.

Chrissie had been the brave part of her—the dominant twin. It made no sense even now that strong Chrissie was the one who had succumbed to that evil disease.

‘So, what are you going to do now?’ asked Joaquin.

She looked down at her hand. ‘I’m going to get this bloody ring off,’ she said, glaring down at it with loathing.

Half an hour later she left her room, a cool smile painted on her face and the ring still on her now red and swollen finger.

‘You can do this,’ she told herself as she walked down the carved staircase, trying not to look at the monster of a ring that seemed to symbolise this whole mess.

As she had scrubbed and tugged at the ring all she had been able to hear was Joaquin’s voice saying, ‘I want you.’

Had he meant it?

The thought made her tummy muscles quiver.

It didn’t matter if he had. Nothing was inevitable. It would be a disaster.

On the other hand, it already was a disaster!

What was the point in deciding anything? She knew full well that her resolve would crumble the moment he touched her.

She reached the bottom of the stairs and paused, listening, her ring-bearing hand on the ancient carved banister that had made Aria Perez furious because she was not allowed to replace it with something ‘less dark’.

Following the distant sound of voices, which seemed to be coming from the general direction of the west wing, she narrowed her search to the open door of what had once been the library. It had once smelt of musty old leather, and the bookshelves back then had heaved with dusty tomes, but they were long gone, all stripped out during the refurbishment.

She hesitated for a moment. She could hear two voices—one obviously Joaquin’s, the other female. For a split second she thought there was a woman in there. The feeling of furious betrayal only lasted a split-second before she realised that it was, in fact, a two-way phone conversation.

The fact that she had been on the point of charging in there in militant gotcha mode—that she had bought into this act so much that she had actually felt, even for a fraction of a second, like a betrayed fiancée—was a massive wake-up call.

She had to get herself under control!

She pasted an in-control expression on her face and, head up, walked through the door.

These days the room was dominated by a massive desk, pale wood and Scandinavian in design. The only reading material was the stack of glossy magazines arranged in geometric precision on its polished surface. Like the rest of the very expensive furniture, it would have looked good in many settings—but not this one.

Joaquin was standing with his back to her, so he didn’t hear her enter or see the expression of hopeless longing she knew had appeared on her face.

So much for under control, Clemmie .

His phone was lying on the blond wood, on speaker.

‘I saw the video...’

Clemmie immediately recognised the distinctive, rather nasal tones of Aria Perez.

‘What were you thinking of, letting someone film you?’

‘I had my mind on other things at the time.’

Despite everything, listening to Joaquin’s dry response to his mother’s complaint made Clemmie’s lips twitch. She had watched the clip they spoke of several times. Her five minutes of fame and Joaquin looking like some sort of Hollywood hero in a big budget action movie.

‘Are you insane? She is the cleaner’s daughter!’

About to reveal herself, Clemmie froze.

‘Housekeeper, Aria.’

‘Do not talk to me in that manner. I am your mother, and it is disrespectful.’

‘Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted? Me getting married? I’d have thought you’d be pleased.’

‘Do not be flippant. You cannot marry that girl—I forbid it!’

Forbid...?

Listening, Clemmie could not believe this woman’s stupidity. Did she not know her son at all?

Do you? asked the voice in her head.

The answer a few days ago would have been a confident yes. But a few days ago, while she had always known he possessed charisma off the scale, she had not seen his sex god persona up close and personal.

Not that close, complained the voice in her head .

‘Forbid...?’ he echoed.

Though the response was not directed at her, Clemmie shivered. It was made of steel, with an inherent hauteur that made him a stranger—a dangerous stranger. She had caught glimpses of this side of him over the years, but she had never really appreciated that it was as much a part of him as his teasing humour—probably more so.

‘You are normally so...fastidious, Joaquin,’ his mother complained, and there was a note of pained bemusement in her penetrating voice. ‘That girl...she is not even... She was always a positively feral little thing...’

‘ “That girl” is a woman. And she is and always has been the one authentic person I know. If anything, she is too good for me.’

There was a short silence while Clemmie stood still, emotion welling in her throat to hear his impassioned defence of her.

The silence was broken by a nasty little laugh that filled the room like a poisonous echo. ‘Oh, my...she really must be good in bed.’

From where she stood Clemmie saw Joaquin surge explosively across the room until his nose was almost pressed against the big mullioned window. His fist was clenched and raised as though...

She gave a little sigh of relief when he lowered his arm. She had been afraid for one split-second that he was about to punch the glass.

He spoke then, but in Spanish—something sharp and short that drew a gasp from his mother that made Clemmie wish she could translate it.

‘I sometimes wonder what I did to deserve a son who is so... How dare you? Can you imagine what people will think? Can’t you just sleep with her?’

‘What gives you the idea that I care about what people think? What you think...?’

‘Fine—become a figure of fun. But at least get a decent prenup...’ A sound of exasperation echoed down the line. ‘And get her a stylist. I doubt the girl has ever seen the inside of a beauty salon—and that hair! I don’t think she even combs it from one week to the next. Is she pregnant? Did she trap you?’ she wondered out loud.

Clemmie bit her tongue quite literally as she fought the temptation to reply to this awful woman herself. Knowing her impulse was not an option, that left disappearing and pretending she had never been there, or alerting Joaquin to her presence.

‘Mother, I think you should stop talking now. Before I say something that you will regret. My life is none of your concern.’

He snapped his fingers with an air of finality, but without any real belief that his words would get through to her. This was a message that had not got through for the last ten years, so he doubted it would get through his mother’s narcissistic barrier now.

He was right.

‘You have not thought this through,’ she said. ‘Look at the mother if you want to see your future. I’m not surprised the husband didn’t stay around. The woman is nothing but a common tart. She beds anything with a pulse and floats around with her airs and graces as though she’s wearing silk. But it’s polyester. I only keep her on out of charity.’

This claim drew a grim laugh from Joaquin. ‘You keep her on because she is good at what she does and she doesn’t ask to be paid overtime.’

He knew his family, like many, had got to be rich and stay that way because in part they were mean.

Clemmie, who had walked up behind him during this last interchange, laid a hand on his arm. She felt the tension in his muscles and read the shock on his face as he twisted around.

Read it through a red mist, because she was fizzing with fury.

The woman could bad-mouth her—she could take it. If pushed, she could even respond in kind. But this was her mum, and nobody was allowed to do that!

‘Oh, Aria darling ...!’ she said, injecting as much insincere adoration as she could manage into her raised voice, everything in her focused on making this hateful woman’s day a bad one! ‘Oh, gosh. I can’t call you Mrs Perez now, can I? Do you prefer Mother or Aria?’ she gushed, with an artificial titter.

She was aware of Joaquin shedding his tension like a skin, rolling his eyes as he fought off a grin.

‘I’m so glad to have a chance to speak to you. I told Joaquin that we couldn’t just invite ourselves, but he tells me that you can’t wait to meet me and very much want me to be part of the family celebrations. How many years is it that you have been married? I just hope that Joaquin and I will be as blessed in our union. Also, you are right—I am very good in bed.’

There was a choking sound from the other end of the line before Joaquin ended the call, picked up his phone and slid it back into his pocket.

Lacking a plan, Clemmie just stood there.

Joaquin’s face was unreadable; the light filtering through the half-closed window drapes cast his face half in shadow.

The adrenaline rush had receded, leaving her feeling shaky and anxious—probably with good reason, she decided, as she mentally reviewed her own words.

‘I don’t know what got into me...’ she said.

‘How long were you standing there?’ He arched an ebony brow. ‘Let me guess...long enough?’

She nodded. ‘I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but she made me so mad. I know she never liked us being friends when we were kids, but honestly... “The cleaner’s daughter?” ’ she said, adopting a close approximation of the older woman’s voice.

There was amusement in his eyes as he watched her thumb her neat little nose and adopt his mother’s exaggerated hip-swaying sashay as she walked across the room, running her finger across a polished surface and tutting as she surveyed it for invisible dust.

There was a sardonic glint in his eyes as he watched her performance, which became something harder as his glance rested on her taut, rounded bottom.

‘I should have known we weren’t engaged. I’d need to be out of my mind to marry into your family.

‘So it’s no longer marriage you’re against, it’s marriage to me?’ he asked.

An image came to his mind of Clemmie floating up the aisle in white towards some faceless male waiting for her. The pain that centred in his chest, but was not limited to that area, caught him off guard. But reminding himself that his mother had probably been a beautiful bride, and before her his grandmother, helped soothe the pain.

Had she caught it, Clemmie might have wondered at the expression that flickered across his face, but she was still too furious to register much.

‘And the things she said about Mum! I just lost it.’ She heard her voice rising and made an effort to stop her temper going nuclear again.

‘She has that effect. The fact is, she’s jealous of Ruth.’

Clemmie’s eyes widened. ‘But she has all this!’

She allowed her gaze to trail round the room which, beneath the superficial change of décor, was still beautiful. The bones of the place had not been touched, and it still had the power to clutch at her heart, no matter how many times she told herself it was just a building.

‘Money can’t buy her class.’

Clemmie felt distinctly mollified by the compliment, but viewed him through narrowed, wary eyes. ‘You’re not angry?’ she asked, her attitude suggesting that if he was she could be too.

‘You defended your mum. Why should I be angry?’ The corners of his mouth lifted. ‘Join the family celebrations? That was brilliant—a direct hit. The irony of course, is that it’s a gig I’ve been trying to avoid for years. My mother has been trying to pull my strings all my life.’

‘You think she’d have learned by now.’ She could not imagine anyone believing that they could influence Joaquin.

‘It is beginning to become tiresome... I might have to exert myself to teach them a lesson.’

‘You could marry someone even worse than a cleaner’s daughter .’

‘Is that even possible?’

She fought off a smile and pretended to swipe at him. ‘I’m not even sure if I’m talking to you.’

‘You are talking.’ And he liked the sound of her voice...always had. It had a husky, musical quality.

‘Look, I didn’t come to fight,’ she told him. ‘I just wanted to say that I understand why you did what you did—not that that makes it any easier.’

‘What is not easy?’

She shook her head, forgetting that she had spent ten minutes—as it turned out a wasted ten minutes—lecturing herself in the mirror on the dangers of blurting out what she was thinking without some serious censoring when she was talking to Joaquin.

‘It’s never nice, making a total fool of yourself. When I think back to the things I said...’ She screwed up her eyes and winced. ‘You know that nightmare about being in a supermarket in your undies and not the good set, the mismatched greying bra and knickers? Times that by a billion.’

‘I have no matching set of any colour, and I see no reason you should feel...vulnerable.’

‘You are joking!’ She snorted. ‘How did things get so complicated?’ she despaired.

She lifted a hand to her lips, which still hadn’t lost the tingle left by his mouth.

‘Sex,’ she said.

‘I’m not talking about sex.’

The patronising edge to his smile made her want to swat at him for real.

‘Sex is not complicated, it is as basic as breathing,’ he observed, staring at her mouth.

‘Don’t look at me like that.’

‘I can’t not look at you like that,’ he said.

The devastatingly simple statement drew a sound of protest from her lips.

‘You wanted the truth,’ he reminded her. ‘Doesn’t mean you’ll like it.’

It was beyond disorientating to have Joaquin talking about sex in this way to her.

‘I wish I could go back.’ She paused, took a breath, and lifted her eyes to his. ‘I wish everything could go back to normal.’

With a despairing shake of her head, she threw herself down into one of the very uncomfortable armchairs that were set beside the window embrasure. She let her head drop and her hair fell like a flaming curtain against the ugly tapestry upholstery.

‘To when, precisely?’ he asked, staring at the exposed length of her pale throat, remembering how she had tasted. How she had smelt.

The strength of primal need to possess her was something he had never experienced in his life before. It was insane—a form of insanity that was pure Clemmie—but maybe that was why? He’d spent years thinking of her as just Clemmie, and now she had stepped outside the box in his head and become not ‘just Clemmie’ but a warm and incredibly desirable sexual woman.

He thought of the untapped passion in her.

Playing the part of her fiancé had felt a good fit, and he had found himself envying the man who would truly earn that title. The idea of anyone but him unlocking that passion felt like a dark cloud over his head.

His stare had the hallmarks of compulsion as he watched her shake her head, before straightening with a little wince. She drew her knees up, rocking on her behind as she pushed her fingers into her hair, cautious around the wound. Slim and pale, they instantly vanished into the fiery mesh.

Clemmie held her tongue. But she knew exactly when she wanted to go back to—the moment in the car when she had related her retrieved memories, the ones that revealed she had lusted after him.

She sighed. She did lust after him.

That was the moment it had all started to unravel and the nice, neat lines around their relationship had become a maze where one misstep could take you off the edge of a cliff.

‘What a mess,’ she said.

His broad shoulders lifted in an expressive shrug as he studied her downcast features. ‘Looking backwards and wishing is not a very practical use of our time. How about we move forward? Accept this as the new normal?’

He made it sound so easy—but then it probably was for him, she thought, refreshing her resentment as she thought of the way he had just switched off the heat of that kiss like flicking a switch, while she had been left a bundle of frustrated, lustful longing.

‘Do you want me to ring your mother back and tell her the truth?’

‘She started it—you finished it. You wanted to teach her a lesson.’

She grimaced, but felt relieved. ‘I suppose so.’

‘I’ve frequently felt that way, but I’ve never quite... That was inspired,’ he observed as he savoured the memory, Clemmie mad and fired up was better than any firework display. ‘I’d love to see the family’s faces if we did rock up for real, all loved up.’

She did not share his delight at this image. ‘I’m glad you find this funny,’ she said, directing a glare of simmering resentment at him. ‘This new “normal” does not feel normal. Are we meant to forget what happened?’

‘Who said anything about forgetting?’

Their eyes connected, smouldering brown on brilliant green, and she felt her heart try to climb its way out of her chest.

She shook her head, moistened her dry lips and decided to skip the What do you mean? section of this conversation. She was not sure she really wanted or needed to know, so she went straight to the practical details.

‘Look, after what’s happened I can’t stay here—obviously. I’ll move in with Mum. I’ll have to tell her the truth...although not all of it.’ She frowned, trying to work through an expurgated version that left her with a bit of pride intact. ‘God, this is going to be a terrible holiday.’

‘Probably.’

His rapid agreement earned him a glare.

‘This time of year is usually terrible for me,’ he told her. ‘Celebrating not one but two toxic unions. Celebrating not just one but two unhappy marriages. It’s kind of a given that things will go wrong. I reckon that marrying on the same day was not a good omen.’

‘Will they expect you to get married on the same day and carry on the tradition?’

He mouthed the first Spanish swear word he had taught her when they were kids. He had told her it meant have a good day—it didn’t, of course. Something she’d realised when she had said it in front of the Spanish-speaking wife of her deputy head teacher.

‘Your grandparents’ marriage was unhappy too?’ she asked.

‘Oh, their mutual loathing was much more civilised than my parents’. There was no swearing or smashed crockery, no hushed-up abortions arranged for girlfriends and then arriving the next day at Mass hand in hand. For my grandparents’ generation it was all about never forgetting what was owed to the family name. They communicated in a civilised manner through intermediaries for at least thirty years before my grandfather died.’

Her eyes grew round. ‘They didn’t ever talk?’

‘Not a word—which made family dinners quite interesting. Since my grandfather died, get-togethers are less entertaining as a spectator sport, but equally awful.’

‘Why did they hate each other that much?’

‘Who knows? I doubt if even they remembered.’

‘But you still go?’

‘Maybe I’m an optimist? Maybe I think one day we will play happy families?’

She snorted at the idea; Joaquin’s cynicism went cell-deep. ‘No, you don’t.’

‘True, I don’t. But sometimes it takes more effort to break a bad habit than to go along with it. One week in a year...a few hours of my life... I suppose that was my mindset, but this year I decided to exert myself to break the habit.’

‘Which is why you are here?’

He nodded.

‘Actually,’ he admitted, ‘when my grandfather was alive, I went just to see him. He was an old curmudgeon, but I kind of liked him. He would have liked you,’ he added unexpectedly.

She laughed, not hiding her scepticism. ‘I find that hard to believe,’ she retorted, thinking of all the up themselves, snobby members of the Perez family she had met, or rather encountered, over the years.

‘That’s why he would have liked you.’

She blinked. ‘What do you mean?’

‘That bolshy “screw you” attitude.’

‘I do not have a—’ She broke off, actually liking the idea that she might be an empowered in-your-face woman, but as her eyes drifted to Joaquin’s mouth her sense of self-satisfaction took a hit.

The fact was her hormones must be desperately unliberated, or she wouldn’t be thinking the thoughts she was.

But that was okay. Because she was in charge and not her thoughts.

‘Could you give me a lift down to the gatehouse?’

‘Look, Clemmie, there is no reason for you to leave.’

‘Seriously...?’

‘I agree this has all happened the wrong way around, and I take responsibility for that.’

‘Big of you,’ she snapped out, not having a clue what he was talking about.

‘I should have explained about that ring straight off and then made love to you.’

She had always known his arrogance was eye-wateringly off the scale, but she had accepted it as just Joaquin being Joaquin because it didn’t affect her directly.

She folded her arms tight across her chest. The affect felt pretty direct now—at least to her tingling nipples.

‘Is that how it usually works for you, Joaquin? You say “I want you” and women throw their knickers in the air?’

His devil-on-steroids grin blazed out. ‘They more slide them slowly and sexily down their thighs.’

She felt her cheeks burn. ‘Well, I’m not doing a striptease for you!’

For starters she wouldn’t know where to begin.

You could learn , suggested the voice in her head.

Joaquin’s expression blanked as he breathed through the images her words had planted in his head.

Images he would have liked to explore.

He would like to explore Clemmie...

Allowing himself to think of the details as his gaze slid over her slim, supple body proved to a masochistic indulgence too far. He felt a groan swell in his chest and fought to contain it. He hadn’t felt this out of control for... Not ever, he realised. Not even in his teens, when he had been all hormones.

He had fancied her back then, but then his hormones had not been exactly discriminating. When you were eighteen a two-year age gap put her out of reach. And by the time she was eighteen he’d had more sense than to mess up their friendship.

There were plenty more fish in the sea that weren’t Clemmie. Fish he could throw back in. Once a man had Clemmie there would be no throwing her away—maybe that was what had made him back away?

She was a keeper.

She watched as his dark lashes lowered leaving just the glitter of his eyes showing as he shrugged, as if it didn’t really matter to him one way or the other. Anger cooled her shameful level of arousal, and in the cooling her mood made a mercurial shift.

‘You do that with everything!’ she charged, her voice rising.

‘I do what?’

‘You act like nothing means anything to you. You could stop your family being total pains that easily.’ She snapped her fingers to illustrate her point. ‘But you’re just not bothered enough to make the effort. If you had to exert yourself to get a woman you couldn’t be bothered, because there would be ten more ready and more than willing to take her place. The only thing you put any effort into is making money, and I don’t believe you actually care about that! Your entire life you’ve never had to make an effort to achieve anything. You were always the fastest on the track, the smartest in the room and too good-looking—and don’t you know it!’

During her outburst Joaquin’s expression had shifted from astonishment to anger, landing on fascination as she came to a gasping halt.

No woman— nobody —had ever called him out that way.

‘Is that genuinely how you see me?’ He arched a brow, sounding more curious than crushed by her no-holds-barred analysis.

‘I don’t think you’re vain.’

The grudging concession drew a laugh from him.

He stopped laughing. It shouldn’t be possible to feel both fiercely possessive and tenderly protective, but when he met those aquamarine eyes he felt those things and more.

‘Do I not have any redeeming features?’

‘Does being the best person to have around in an emergency count?’

‘Am I?’

‘You did save my life.’

‘Which time?’

‘I would have got out of that tree on my own!’ Her expression sobered. ‘No, this time you really did save my life.’

His discomfort was palpable.

‘Sure, I’m a hero,’ he returned, self-mockery in his voice. ‘They are minutes I would not like to relive,’ he admitted, his eyes clouding as the chaos of the crash flickered frame by frame through his head. Those seconds when he’d thought he would not be able to free Clemmie would stay with him for ever. Followed by the dread that his split-second decision to drag her out had inflicted upon her irreparable damage.

‘Why are you so scared of change, Clemmie?’

‘I’m not,’ she countered. ‘I’d just miss you as a friend.’

‘Sex doesn’t have to change that,’ he said.

He was not sure he believed his claim but, set against the fact he had never wanted anything more in his life than to take this new shrewish, sexy Clemmie into his bed, truth was a secondary importance.

‘But it always does—and don’t ask how I would know, because I know.’

‘ So, what is the alternative? You’d actually want marriage with some guy you’d gift your innocence to?’

His contemptuous mockery stung as she thought, No, I want love!

‘I do still think marriage is a mug’s game,’ she said, ‘but that doesn’t mean I’ll settle for casual sex. I want an emotionally satisfying relationship and great sex. Is that too big an ask? I don’t know...?’

‘You are making this more complicated than it needs to be. Do you really think we could go back to being platonic now and pretend none of this ever happened?’

‘Casual sex—’

‘I’m not a stranger you just met in a bar.’ Dark stains of frustrated anger appeared across the slashing angle of his cheekbones, emphasising the knife-edge, the sybaritic carved slant.

‘It would be casual because that is the only sex you do. I happen to want sex with a person who doesn’t just have a convenient gap in his diary. I want him to be...’

The feelings she kept boxed up inside her beat against the protective self-restraint she had built up.

‘To be what?’

She wanted so much to say not you , but she knew that it wouldn’t be true. This was definitely an insight she could have done without at that moment.

‘You say we’re not strangers? Well isn’t that the point? The sort of sex you are talking about would only work if I didn’t care about you.’ She swallowed. ‘And I do.’

There was a short static silence.

‘Some things don’t need to be said.’

‘Actually, they do. But do you know something? I think you care about me, but not in the right way.’

She stopped, her expression going blank. Those words had acted like a key opening a closed door, releasing all the memories trapped inside.

It hurt in a way that bruises and cuts never hurt.

How happy the doctors would feel to be proved right. She was one for the textbooks, a classic case, burying a painful memory, a painful truth she didn’t want to own.

The truth that had been revealed when she had looked at the ring on her finger and thought about it belonging to someone else...about someone else belonging to Joaquin.

The intense sense of loss that had engulfed her had made it impossible for her to dodge the truth. This wasn’t a sudden shift between friendship and love. She had always loved him. But she had buried the feeling deep, because she didn’t want to spend her life longing for something that would be out of reach for ever.

She loved Joaquin.

Joaquin, who was so emotionally inarticulate that he couldn’t even say he cared for her.

‘Damn ring!’ she cursed, tears starting in her eyes as she gave it another vicious tug.

He watched her struggle to pull the ring off her finger. ‘Stop that—you’ll hurt yourself.’ He caught both her wrists, his eyes dropping to her hands, so small and delicate between his, and he felt the now familiar kick of guilt, mingled in with lust and protectiveness.

It was a tangle of emotions he had never experienced before.

Hurt myself? she thought despairingly. That ship has already sailed.

Her cynical little laugh brought his dark eyes to her face.

‘So if we end up in bed, Joaquin, what would it mean? Would we both have other relationships and just hook up occasionally?’

A spasm of frustration crossed his lean face as he released her hands. ‘Clemmie—’

Refusing to be diverted, she cut across him, grabbing his arm. ‘Would it be a secret thing? Or would we laugh about it in company? And when one of us found someone else would—?’

She stopped, catching her full lower lip in her teeth. Suddenly tired of being logical, tired of fighting herself.

She wouldn’t be finding anyone else, because she wouldn’t be looking. She didn’t want anyone else.

He saw her expression change and, recognising the shift in her mood, opened his mouth to push his advantage. He closed it again.

She was totally inexperienced, and he was a man who thought of sex as a pleasurable pastime that he happened to be good at. She was a virgin who was looking for a romantic partnership.

He could rationalise it as much as he liked, but the end would not be pretty.

‘You’re right,’ he said.

Shock skittered across her face. ‘I am?’

He nodded. ‘Let’s draw a line under it. Sex is... Well, readily available. A conversation with a woman isn’t—for me.’

He was agreeing. He wasn’t fighting. He was saying he preferred chatting to her.

‘That makes me feel so special.’

Joaquin scowled darkly in response to her sarcasm. It would seem that no good deed went unpunished—though personally he considered the ache in his groin was punishment enough.

‘So you don’t want to talk and you don’t want sex? When am I going to be able to do something right?’

To hell with being noble! She was not a violent person, but the fact that he had the cheek to feel let down made her want to hit him. But while she was rising above this base instinct she was uncomfortably aware of how irrational her response was.

He was acting the way she had wanted him to.

And she was acting out.

It would be irrational not to feel relieved—and she was not irrational.

The silence stretched and Joaquin breathed through flared nostrils as he tried to lower the emotional temperature in recognition of her fragile status.

There was a limit to how many allowances he would or could make.

Where was your concern for her fragile status a few minutes ago?

Ignoring the sarcasm of his internal critic, he made an attempt to return a little normality to the situation.

‘Your mum texted earlier, to say she’s left some food. I’m sure it’s a banquet, knowing your mum. It’s in the fridge and just needs heating up. We could sit in the kitchen.’

They had shared many meals at that table, or at least its predecessor, over the years.

‘We could open a bottle of...’

He paused and backtracked, thinking, Skip the wine . He suspected his nobility would not withstand alcohol—or for that matter, her smile.

But she wasn’t smiling at him.

The sparkling contempt glowing in her wide green eyes was sending a very different message.

‘Wine might not mix with your painkillers,’ he said.

‘I’m not taking any painkillers.’

His rejection felt like the ultimate gut-punch.

He was talking about food.

Metaphorically, he had swatted her away like a bug.

‘I’m not hungry,’ she said coldly.

Actually, she was. But it was the principle of the thing. He’d seduced her with... Well, without doing much at all. And now he had turned off the sexy seductive stuff like a tap.

‘Where are you going?’ he demanded.

She turned, her eloquent brows swishing upwards. ‘Upstairs—do I need to ask permission?’

He gave a weary sigh.

‘Fine. I’ll heat up the food.’