Page 147 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

‘Why would I hate him, Emma?’ He stepped closer to her, because how could he not? ‘Everything I have. Everything I am, is because of him.’

And she looked at him now as if he was the source of her pain. And his feet halted. And he didn’t like it. Didn’t want it.

The story she’d shared with him, the relationship between her parents, it was everything they weren’t.

In the past, he would have reached for her. Placed his hands to her waist, allowed them to slide down the cotton of her blue polka dot dress. Over her hips. Down her thighs. Seeking the hem at her knees. And he’d have taken her with her back pressed into him as she looked out at the view. Thrust inside her again and again, until all she could think, all she could say, was his name as she screamed it into the night. He would have turned pain into passion.

He fisted his hands.

He couldn’t do that. Not yet, not with this Emma.

‘Is that why you resent him?’ she asked quietly.

‘Why would I resent him?’ he asked. Because it wasn’t true, was it? ‘You are looking for a common ground between us where there is none,’ he growled. ‘I am very much who I am because of my father. Because of the way he lived.’

‘I loved my mother. She was there for me unconditionally, but I resented her too, for the way she lived,’ she confessed, and he heard the crack in her voice. Heard how hard it was for her to admit. ‘Her inability to let my dad go. It wasn’t just my dad who changed my relationships with people, it washer. She made me so afraid, I’d...’ She looked away from him and into the night. ‘I’d let someone I—’ she turned to him and her gaze was shuttered ‘—loved, take and take, until I was nothing more than a shell.’

Love?Did she think she’d loved him? That he’d loved her? That their marriage was based on all those emotions he didn’t want and didn’t know how to feel? She was no different; that was one thing he did know. That was why they were perfect for one another. No emotional attachments. Only physical desire.Only want.

Was that what she was afraid of? Was that why she had needed him to tell her that divorce was an option? That if she wanted to leave, she could? She needed an out in case the reason she had left before was because she had become emotionally invested in their relationship.

She wrapped her arms around her waist. ‘Do you think all children grow up to be replicas of their parents?’

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘After all those vows and promises I made to myself, I wonder if I was always destined to...’

‘Continue her legacy?’

‘Yes.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Was it something in my DNA that I couldn’t run from? Hide from...? The same way youcouldn’t hide from your destiny to continue your father’s legacy.’

He didn’t contradict her. DNA was undeniable. He was his father’s son, after all. He knew the pressure of living up to a legend. He knew the worry of not being good enough.

For Emma, he supposed, it was the opposite. She didn’t want to live up to the legacy.

‘My father’s dead, Emma,’ he said, wanting this to end. ‘I think of him little.’ He shrugged off his suit jacket and took another step towards her. ‘He was an uncomplicated man. He lived to live, took what he wanted from life, until he died.’

‘He died?’ she whispered.

He moved closer. ‘He did.’

‘How did he die?’

‘A solo adventure on the high seas,’ he told her. ‘His boat returned—’ he splayed his empty hand, palm side up ‘—empty.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He moved closer still.‘Don’t be. It was a death my father would have applauded.’

She gasped. ‘Applauded?’

‘An adventurer dies adventurously.’ He shrugged. ‘It would have been the way he’d have wanted to go.’

‘On his terms?’ she grated.

‘Is that not the best way to live?’ he countered. ‘And to die?’ And he watched the flare of her nostrils. The tightening of her bare shoulders. In her mind all men were the same, weren’t they? Selfish even in death.

Was Dante selfish? Was she right to think so? Had he only kept her, kept coming back to her, for his own needs?

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