Page 182 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

That, at least, made sense. She was here, wasn’t she, at the behest of her mentor, Eric Cooper, promising to meet the man she’d least wanted to meet. You’d do such a thing for family or a good friend.

And this was Dom, who’d taken off from Sydney the moment he’d heard his father had suffered a heart attack. Family was important to them both. Except, it seemed, for the family they’d been growing together…

The family he’d been all too ready to discard.

She couldn’t do it. There was too much pain in going back. Too much pain in being anywhere in the orbit of this man. There was too much raw hurt. There was no way she could turn a blind eye to what he’d done and—what? Marry him?

What a joke. She’d dreamed of marrying him back then. She’d dreamed of making a family with the man she’d loved.

And what had happened to those dreams?

They’d turned to dust.

The man before her was still waiting for her answer.

‘No,’ she said, resolute. ‘I can’t be the only woman on the planet who wants nothing to do with you. I’m sure there’s quite the queue. Find somebody else who doesn’t want to have anything to do with you.’

‘Two million dollars isn’t enough? Then what about three?’

‘You’d pay someone that much money to pretend to be your wife? Notwithstanding the fact that you’ll be deceiving your mother. Lying to her in her final weeks or months. Expecting me to lie to her too. What if she finds out? What if she learns that her duplicitous son was trying to trick her? How do you think she’ll feel?’

His jaw tightened. ‘She won’t find out.’

She shrugged and turned, reaching for the door handle. So close to escape that she could taste it. ‘Good luck with that. But you’re going to need a better actor than me.’

‘Five million,’ he said.

Her hand hovered over the door handle. Could this day get any weirder? Bad news, a late train, even worse news, a lost job and then a ridiculous offer for her to marry the man she least wanted to. Surely this must be some kind ofAlice in Wonderlanddream? What the hell had she eaten last night?

‘Well,’ he said, ‘is five million dollars enough to convince you to marry me?’

She heard the hum of a vacuum cleaner in the corridor outside. She heard a helicopter returning joy flight tourists to the helipad on the river. That signature ginger flower Langham scent was still there with every breath she took. So no, she wasn’t dreaming, but it was clear the power was firmly in her hands. She abandoned the door handle and turned back to face him.

Mentally, she totted up the yearly costs of Suzanne’s care, costs that would escalate year on year. Costs that she’d find near impossible to cover on even a decent salary. It was a lot. And then she added a margin for error. A fat margin.

‘All right. You want my price to faux marry you? I’ll do it. But it will cost you. I want ten million dollars.’ She waited a moment. ‘Or no deal.’

A nerve in his jaw popped. His eyes bored into her. ‘I never figured you for a gold-digger, Marianne.’

‘I never figured you for a ditherer. Do you want to cement this deal, Señor Estefan, or should I just leave now? I’m perfectly happy to leave right now.’

She reached a hand for the door handle again.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Ten million dollars it is.’

CHAPTER SIX

‘HOW SOON CANyou be ready to fly?’

Mari was still reeling from his easy acceptance and his question didn’t register. What had just happened? She’d half expected him to flatly turn down her request. Ten million dollars was a ridiculous amount of money to pay anyone to pretend to be their wife. But clearly ten million dollars was not ridiculous enough because he’d agreed. And maybe she’d secured a great pay day, but she had a gut-churning feeling that she’d just made a deal with the devil.

‘Fly?’ she said, as his words filtered through. ‘Fly where?’

‘San Sebastián,’ he said, back at his desk and busily barking instructions to whichever poor soul was at the other end of his phone. He looked up. ‘Oh, hell, you do have a passport, don’t you?’

She thought about lying. If she didn’t have a passport, she couldn’t fly internationally. But already the prospect of being paid ten million dollars to temporarily marry Dominico was worming its way into her brain, boring holes in her reservations.

Ten million dollars.

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