Page 99 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

‘Are you back from New York?’

She knew that he’d been based there for the last four months, although why remained a little vague to her, but she imagined that it involved him becoming even more wealthy than he already was.

How rich did a person need to be?

Clemmie answered her own question, because she suspected that Joaquin didn’t need to be rich. Oh, he spoke about the freedom that money gave him, but money was not a goal in itself. He enjoyed, perhapsneededthe challenge of pitting himself against the odds and winning.

An image of him climbing a seemingly smooth rock face and punching the air in triumph when he reached the top flashed into her head. She had chickened out before she’d gone a few feet and slithered clumsily back to the ground. Chrissie had always been the brave one. Like Joaquin, her twin had been hooked on the adrenalin rush.

If her twin had lived, would she have ended up being Joaquin’s best friend?

Feeling immediately guilty for the thought, she gave a shamed grimace.

‘Got back last night,’ he said.

‘Your text...’

‘The one you never replied to?’

She ignored the wry interruption and passed on an explanation. ‘Are you still going to Maplehurst this weekend?’

‘I am.’

‘Me too—and I’m a bit stranded.’

‘You need a lift?’ He spoke into the pause. ‘You just nodded, didn’t you?’

She laughed. ‘I noddedenthusiastically.’ She paused. ‘And you just smiled, didn’t you?’

His short burst of laughter was warm and deep.

‘I had planned to go back tonight, or tomorrow morning,’ she said. ‘But obviously I can fit in with you.’

‘I’ll pick you up in...an hour and a half?’

‘Am I being a nuisance?’

‘Why change the habit of a lifetime? Address?’

As soon as she had given it he hung up, and her phone immediately began to shrill again. She glanced at the caller ID.

‘Hello, Mum.’

‘The trains! So when will you get home? You will be here to meet Harry?’

Clemmie pictured her parent, looking effortlessly chic in something she had just thrown on, rubbing fretfully at the gold locket she always wore—the one that had a photo of herself as a baby in one half and her sister in the other.

‘Calm down, Mum, I’ve got it sorted,’ she said, ignoring the voice in her head that pointed out the benefits ofnotgetting home. ‘I’ve got a lift.’

It wasn’t that she didn’t love visits home—she did. But this time it would not just be her and her mum. It would be her, her mum and her mum’s new boyfriend, the latest in a long line of losers that had followed the biggest loser of all—her dad.

The difference was that her mum was engaged to this one, and she couldn’t wait for Clemmie to meet the man who, according to her mum, was ‘perfect’. But then all the men in her mother’s life had at some stage been perfect—until they were revealed as not!

Her mum, capable and sensible in all other ways, had a blind spot when it came to men and their faults. To make things worse, she fell in love so easily—but maybe that was because she was falling in love for two, because Clemmie didn’t fall in love at all.

She didn’t believe it was aboutfalling. That made it seem accidental, and Clemmie was always in control of her decisions and her hormones. She had no intention offallingfor someone who would swear eternal devotion one minute and betray her the next.

‘Someone I know...a boyfriend?’ Ruth Leith continued, not giving her daughter a chance to interrupt. ‘Would he like to stay over? We could...’

---