Page 117 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

There were only three secret gardens in London. Emma and Dante had visited all of them before they settled on this one. On this view from their bedroom. On this house.

He’d never promised her a home. He’d promised her a year. One year to allow the chemistry that raged between them to burn itself out.

And she hadn’t been able to say no.

She’d agreed to the terms of this marriage because she’d wanted what her mother had never had.Security. Financially and emotionally.

When had it changed? she wondered. When had she started to want...more? More of Dante’s time? His friendship? Companionship? Support?

Because she wanted all those things, didn’t she? Had needed them today and felt their absence when he hadn’t been at her side.

She couldn’t really be mad; she hadn’t directly asked him to be there. But she’d told him the day and the time of the funeral service.

Emma wanted to wail as the truth assaulted her.

When had she got in so deep that his absence hurt?

She twisted the gold band on her finger.

It meant nothing. It was nothing more than a certificate of purchase. A twelve-month rental plan that she’d willingly agreed to.

And she hated it. Hated herself for how attached she’d become to a man.

For nearly twelve months, she’d waited for him, been ready for him. For him to visit her bed. A bed they shared when he returned from his endless business trips abroad that he’d never taken her, his wife, on. And those trips had got longer. And longer.

Marriage was the lie she’d always believed it was, wasn’t it?

Her relationship with Dante was no different from the relationship her parents shared. A relationship where her mother was always waiting for her father to come back to her.

Emma believed she’d created something different. That she’d been in control in a way her mother never had been.

She sighed.Heavily.

She was still lying to herself, wasn’t she?

It wasn’t the marriage that was the lie. The marriage was everything Dante had promised it would be.

She’dchanged. She wanted more. More than she knew Dante could ever give. And knowing that would kill her.

Emma padded back across the room and threw open her walk-in wardrobe. So many clothes. So many gifts he’d given her. So manythings.

And he could keep them all.

These things meant nothing, not to her, not to him.

Even she was a possession he kept shiny and clean, in preparation for the time he’d take her out of her box and display her for his pleasure.

She was only an extension of his collection.

She wasn’t part of the elite. This wasn’t her home, and what she’d agreed to wasn’t a marriage.

Not the marriagesheneeded anyway.

Not anymore.

She opened the drawers and withdrew every velvet box and bag, lined them up on the bed in an array of colours and sizes. Over two dozen gifts he’d presented her with every time he returned to her, right before he’d seduced her. Bedded her. And then left. Over and over again.

She gazed at her left hand, at her engagement ring, the blue stone in its centre. Her birthstone. Then her gaze moved to the plain gold band. Her wedding ring.

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