Page 106 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

The awkward silence stretched.

‘Good-sized kitchen.’

His attempt to say something nice about the room made the dimple in her right cheek appear.

‘It doesn’t seem that way when all ten of us are trying to cook a meal.’

His brows hit his hairline.‘Ten!’

‘More when you include girlfriends and boyfriends,’ she said, openly amused by his shock. ‘Think of it as a free lesson in how the other half live.’

Her amusement vanished when his dark eyes swivelled her way.

‘Including yours?’

‘Including my what?’ she said, feigning ignorance.

‘Boyfriend.’

‘Oh...’ She had frequently teased him about his well-documented love life, which he insisted was half fiction—that left an awful lot of non-fiction—but he had never once previously asked her if she was dating. It had been one of their unspoken no-go areas—not that she had realised it until now, as he ignored theKeep Outsigns.

For a brief moment she was tempted to invent a boyfriend, to make her life sound more interesting than it was, or more complicated. The thought brought a stab of shame. She was not her mum, who thought a woman needed a man—a mindset that had always struck Clemmie as weird, because her mum was a competent and together woman, who could turn her hand to anything. She had been a brilliant single parent and, thanks to her elegant French grandmother, could make a cheap outfit look designer just because of the casual confidence she wore it with. She ought to be the last woman to feel the sort of self-doubt she did after a love affair ended badly.

Clemmie could not imagine ever putting herself in that position...laying herself open to that sort of hurt.

‘Oh, I’m not planning on settling down for a long time yet.’

Which told him absolutely nothing and instantly made him curious.

‘But in the meantime you are enjoying yourself?’ he asked, then stopped, aware that he was starting to sound unhealthily interested in her sex life. ‘This place suits you?’ he added, changing the subject.

‘You mean I look at home against a backdrop of peeling wallpaper and flaking paint?’

He laughed, an attractive sound—but then everything about him was attractive. She searched his face, looking for some flaw, and found that he looked tired—well, you would if you spent your days making millions and your nights falling out of nightclubs. Not that she had ever seen photographic evidence of the falling.

The same could not be said of all his companions, she thought sourly.

She had never seen him the worse for drink—not even on her eighteenth birthday. He’d been glazed, she decided, thinking about the smoky hot look in his eyes before he had removed her hands from around his neck.

‘It was a question, not a statement. Imeantdo you like sharing? You wouldn’t prefer a place of your own?’

Clemmie laughed.

Looking bemused by her reaction, he pressed, ‘You don’t mind sharing?’

Rumour had it that some women did not mind sharing Joaquin... Clemmie gave her head a tiny shake, to banish the lurid images that rode the coat-tails of that thought.

‘It’s not about preference. With London rents and my salary I don’t really have an option,’ she responded, her heated cheeks the only clue to her mental gymnastics. ‘And there is always company. You’re never alone.’

‘That doesn’t mean you can’t be lonely.’

The idea of Clemmie being lonely in this place, with its peeling paint and, having noticed the tangle of exposed wires along the ceiling, what he suspected were botched electrics, brought a rush of furious anger quite out of proportion with the circumstances.

Oblivious to the anger he was experiencing, Clemmie grinned, treating the comment as a joke ‘Earplugs are a must, but when I need some “me time” there is a park within walking distance.’

‘You could always come and work for me, you know. There is always a place for someone smart who can think outside the box. You are capable of so much more...’

He realised it was way past the moment when he should have shut his mouth and stopped speaking. Clemmie never had disproved the ‘redheads and temper’ theory. Anger swelled over her like a dark cloud.

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