Page 104 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

She didn’t want to think about the instinct that had bypassed her brain and nearly pushed her into action.

Luckily it had passed.

Blame it on his mouth,she thought—and, yes, that worked, she decided as her eyes lingered on the sensual outline of his lips. That sinfully sexy curve had probably given rise to many a forbidden fantasy, and her relatively tame one was going to stay safely locked in her head.

So it was all good, she soothed herself.

Joaquin’s wide brow indented in an interrogative frown. ‘Everything okay?’

Her feathery brows lifted as she shrugged and smiled, allowing her gaze to float away from his stare. ‘Having a bad hair day. And if you sayeveryday is a bad hair day for me...’

The jokey warning drew his glance to the red-gold cloud of curls that surrounded her small face like a fiery nimbus, spilling down her slender back in a wild tangle of curls that looked bright against the black cotton top she wore underneath a green oversized shirt, unbuttoned, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

She withstood his scrutiny, the only hint that she was not relaxed the shadow of wariness reflected in her wide-spaced pale green eyes.

‘I didn’t like to text while you were driving, but parking is impossible.’ She held her hair back with one elbow and craned her neck to look down the street.

‘I found a space.’

She pulled her head back in and gave her hair an irritated pat. ‘Of course you did,’ she murmured drily.

Still standing on the step, he arched a questioning brow.

‘Sorry—come in,’ she said, moving to one side to allow him inside without a collision. It was a very narrow hallway, and he was not a narrow man—lean, definitely, but his shoulders took up quite a lot of space.

She made herself as small as possible.

Joaquin shrugged and walked past her—no point overthinking the unaccustomed awkwardness he’d picked up on. Eighteen months was a long time...

But despite his pragmatic attitude he still couldn’t shake the impression that there had been a shift—that some dynamic between them had changed.

He was still the same, which meant thatshehad changed?

He found he resented the possibility.

He had wanted to relax, and Clemmie was always uncomplicated good company.

‘I saw you from upstairs.’

She bit her lip and stopped speaking a sentence too late. But at least he couldn’t see her face, which she was sure must have guilt written across it.

Not that there was any need for guilt. It had just been a slightly over-the-top reaction to her first sight of the tall, unmistakably broad-shouldered and long-legged figure.

She blinked away the image floating in her head and dismissed the visceral surge of tangled emotions that for a split second had made her brain shut down.

As he had reached the path in front of the house and paused to look up, she had found herself quite stupidly ducking down, out of sight.

His dark lean face had looked hauntingly beautiful—not something that was open to debate, just a fact—and as she’d looked at it the inevitable tummy quiver had been there. But within normal levels. Because she was no longer a smitten eighteen-year-old and they had something much more precious than sex. They had something that lasted and she was not going to blow it.

Or make a fool of herself.

‘Yousureyou are all right?’ he asked.

‘Fine.’

And she was, she decided, cutting herself some slack. In eighteen months she had simply forgotten the sheer scale of his physical presence—but on purely aesthetic grounds alone he deserved a tummy-quiver and a dry mouth.

The idea of not having Joaquin in her life was something she was not willing to contemplate.

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