Page 102 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

It had been a purely spontaneous gesture when she had raised herself onto one elbow and pressed her mouth to his. He hadn’t moved, but she had, reacting to the wine or to something more basic as her lips moved across his.

She remembered feeling warm...and dizzy. Then her confusion had been followed by deep mortification as he’d removed her hands, which had found their way around his neck.

The rejection had felt like someone throwing a bucket of ice water over her. If she could have crawled out of her skin she would have.

‘Too much wine,’ he’d said, and his lazy, relaxed attitude had not lowered her embarrassment level, but at least he hadn’t laughed.

That was the day she had acknowledged her crush and it had died a death.

Joaquin sat in the lay-by he had pulled in to so he could answer a call. It didn’t require a long conversation, just a decision, and decision-making was not something he struggled with.

He took the opportunity to check in with his PA, Rose, to whom he had left the task of rearranging his calendar. He had planned to go down to Maplehurst tomorrow, but the shift in his diary was not too onerous, and his PA was excellent. She would not appreciate any attempt on his part to micro-manage her.

His confidence was rewarded. There were no issues, and there was nothing preventing him having an extra day at Maplehurst. He had always liked the place, but it was where his mother based herself for a portion of the year—not the perfect situation. He frequently wished that she was as distant and remote now as she had been when he was a child.

Of course he knew it wasn’t maternal love that made her so attentive these days. It was the fact that he could be appealed to for extra funds to supplement her position of‘near penury’.

He knew full well this wasn’t the case—she received a more than generous allowance from his father, and frequent top-ups when her errant husband was caught doing something embarrassing with one of his youthful social secretaries, physiotherapists or wellness gurus.

It had been a year since Joaquin had been to the manor, and that had been for a party his mother had thrown—some sort of charity thing. Clemmie had not been there, so he’d been bored out of his mind—especially as his mother had invited a few candidates to be the mother of the grandchildren she was longing for. He found the aforementioned‘longing’a bit strange, considering the fact that when he was a child having him in the same room as her for more than five minutes at a stretch had brought up the subject of her ‘delicate nerves’.

This time his mother wouldn’t be there. She, along with the rest of his extended family, would be gathered at thecastillo, the official reason being the annual dinner party they gave, which was meant to celebrate his parents’ and his grandparents’ joint wedding anniversaries—a celebration so embedded in family tradition that even his grandfather’s death had not stopped it happening.

He seemed to be the only person who appreciated the irony and the sheer hypocrisy of celebrating two marriages which, by anyone’s measure, were absolute disasters. And it wasn’t just a night. He could have coped with a single night of hypocrisy, but over the years the celebration had morphed into a fortnight of family togetherness, which translated as half of his February involving extended sniping and back-biting. Though on one subject the disparate sections of his extended family were all of one mind—it was time he got married. It was hisduty.

Duty was overrated, but it wasn’t even duty that made him turn up each February. There was a large element of sheer laziness involved. Bottom line:notgoing required more effort than turning up.

Over the years he had perfected the art of tuning out the nagging, and it actually amused him that they thought they could influence him, that they wielded any power at all over him. But that was his family, and their collective ego was vast.

However, his tolerance had limits, and his grandmother had recently pushed it beyond that limit.

Talk about insulting his intelligence!

Her manipulation hadn’t even been subtle. It had been about as subtle as the monster of an ugly engagement ring she had sent him, with the attached message that she was sending this‘precious ring’to him now because she wouldn’t live to see it on his bride’s finger. The ink had even been artistically smudged—presumably by her heartbroken tears falling on the paper.

He knew for a fact that the ring had sat in a bank vault for years, because it had belonged to his grandmother’s mother-in-law, whom she had loathed.

Remembering the damned thing was still in his pocket, he fished it out and put it in the glovebox before starting up the car.

Joaquin had no worries over his grandparent’s imminent demise—she had just returned from a sponsored trek up Kilimanjaro and left the film crew who had been recording the event for a TV show entitledEighty is the New Fiftyin her wake.

But her stunthadhad an effect—though not the one she had intended. It had brought home to him the hell he was voluntarily walking into.

He was an adult who wielded power, commanded respect and on occasion fear, and yet here he was, meekly submitting every year to a week of moral blackmail and nagging. His family had clearly taken his indifference for pliability.

But he had a professional reputation for being remote and inaccessible—a reputation that was pretty much well-earned. It was about time he lived up to that reputation. In no other aspect of his life would he have allowed such a situation to continue.

It was time he broke the cycle—and there was no time like the present.

He had responded to his grandmother by text.

I have made alternative plans for next week.

He had re-read the text, to make sure there was no hint of an excuse, and that no element of humouring could be read into the stark sentence, and pressed ‘send’.

It was only then that he’d wondered about the ‘alternative plans’ he had boasted of. For some reason he’d thought of Maplehurst. Although he spent every summer there, he’d never been there at this time of year. He remembered that one year Clemmie had sent him pictures of the manor covered in snow, and the image had stayed with him.

His mother spent large sections of the year at Maplehurst, playing lady of the manor and hosting charity events. It was a comfortable way to avoid her husband, who spent his time moving from one fashionable spot to another with a variety of nubile youthful‘assistants’in tow, to cater to all his needs. But she was never there during the winter months, and after Christmas she went straight from their ski lodge to thecastillo.After that she made the return trip, with a short detour for a detox at her favourite exclusive Swiss spa.

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