Page 150 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

She was a vision.

The dress was everything he knew it would be. Decadent. Made of silver sequins hand sewn into a delicate blood-red silk overlaid with purple-and-black lace. Her shoulders and back were bare. A tight bodice nipped in at the waist and flared out in a fishtail.

Dante watched her from the shadows. Watched the sway of her feminine curves as she walked the white stone path snaking beneath her feet.

Her eyes rose to the treetops, her heavy blond hair swishing between her shoulder blades, and he caught the glints of the sliver clasp containing her hair into a high ponytail. And his fingers itched to touch it. To release it. To watch her hair fall to her naked shoulders before he gripped it between his fingers.

But still, he didn’t move.

Still, he watched.

Her gaze moved along every tree, every overarching branch that created a shelter overhead. She scanned the petals. The most vivid pinks to the purest whites.

Her eyes dipped to the flowerbeds. To the wild flowers of pink and yellow. To the orange blooms with stained red tips.

And she was iridescent, glowing beneath the soft amber glow of the lanterns hanging from the intermittent branches of every tree.

She looked like she belonged here. Some mythical creature sent to command the trees. The flowers.

Dante flinched, an imperceptible jolt of his body beneath his suit as the memory assaulted him.

The memory of a basket overflowing with delicacies, overturned. Their clothes strewn on each step towards the bedroom.

Her surprise picnic forgotten.

He’d forgotten her love of gardens that night.

Forgotten the reason they’d chosen the house in Mayfair.

Dante remembered now.

He’d picked her up from work and driven them to the viewing. But instead of going inside, he’d taken her into the garden. The secret garden. And she’d lit up. Something inside her glowing at this secret world, living and alive, within the concrete jungle of London.

So he’d taken her to every house with a secret garden and he’d bought her the first one she adored.

He hadn’t been able to convince her to give up any of her three jobs initially after the move into the Mayfair house, after their engagement. None of them. Thankless jobs. A silver service waitress at night, a cafe catering assistant in the day and an agency cleaner on the side...

Somewhere inside her she’d been afraid, even then, that he wouldn’t take care of her, hadn’t she? That his promise of marriage was a lie until he slipped the ring on her finger and they both signed on the dotted line.

But he had taken care of her, met her needs.

Then why did she leave you?

Something heavy shifted inside him. He ignored it.

She was herenow. That was what mattered, what he was focused on.

She had arrived at the table, stood next to it now, fingering the candlesticks, the crystal glasses, the silverware—

Dante moved towards her now, through the trees on silent feet.

He stepped into her space behind her, and it hit him in the solar plexus. The presence of her. Her scent.

She turned, eyes wide. ‘Dante!’ She placed a hand to his chest, to steady herself. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and her eyes glittered. ‘I adorethis. Gardens...’ Her eyes moved from his to the trees—to the flowers. ‘Me and Mum moved around a lot, inner city estate to inner city estate. Flats to maisonettes to houses. But there was always a garden,’ she said.

He felt her heavy swallow.

‘Whether it was potted plants on a windowsill or a shared communal garden. I used to steal Mum’s library books and sneak out in the dead of night to read them beneath the lights I’d threaded between the trees. To escape for a while. Just for a time where I could forget the hardness. Mum’s tears... The garden was a safe place where all was quiet. All was still.’

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