Page 125 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

‘I’ll take you,’ he said, picking up the car keys from the table.

Clemmie shook her head, controlling her irritation with difficulty. ‘I don’t need you to take me. This is really overkill, you know. I feel perfectly well, and I wish you’d stop watching me as though I’m an unexploded bomb!’

‘Someone got out of bed the wrong side this morning.’

Your bed, she thought—and therein lay the issue. She had never allowed herself to imagine sleeping with Joaquin...having sex with him. Because she knew that even if she caught him in a weak moment, it would mean the end of their friendship as she knew it.

And now she had woken to a world where it seemed shehadslept with him—where they presumably had enjoyed wild and uninhibited sex. It was something she really found hard to imagine herself capable of, and she didn’t remember a thing about it.

But that hadn’t stopped her imagining last night—when at some point she had jerked herself into wakefulness, afraid of the nightmares she sensed were waiting for her—how nice it would have been to have him hold her. She had even imagined she could smell the scent of the elusive male fragrance that clung to him...

‘If Mum isn’t free, I’ll call a taxi.’ Well aware that she was behaving like a bit of brat, and yet unable to stop herself, she slid her eyes from his dark, knowing stare as she mumbled defensively, ‘This entire thing is stupid anyway.’

‘It was the deal we made. And if you call your mum she’ll think we have rowed.’

She fixed him with an irritated, narrow-eyed glare. ‘We haven’t doneanything! I mean... I didn’t mean that sort of anything.’

‘I feel frustrated, too,’ he said.

It was true that he enjoyed sex, but this was something else. Last night when he had held her, the tenderness he had felt had been on a cellular level. This morning his body was still humming with a sexual pulse.

‘You do?’ she said, mollified slightly. And then, ‘I won’t be admitted to a ward.’

Clemmie didn’t like the understanding that flickered in his dark eyes. His understanding made her feel vulnerable and exposed—especially as she didn’t understand herself.

‘When you get a clean bill of health your mum will back off.’

‘What if I don’t? What if they find something?’

She could still remember the school doctor, who had been doing routine school medical checks, pulling their mum to one side while she and Chrissie played. The expression on her mum’s face...the fear—even though at the time she hadn’t really understood what it was—was etched into Clemmie’s memory.

‘I think that is not very likely.’

‘So, you think there is some chance they’ll find something?’

A frustrated sigh whistled through his clenched teeth as he prayed for patience.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.

‘If there is an issue, we will deal with it.’

The way the‘we’had come so naturally sent a wave of unease through him.

This isn’t real, a dry voice in his head reminded him.

He dropped the car keys into her hand.

Clemmie looked down at them for a moment and then shook her head. ‘Actually, it might be better if you drove me.’

‘Fine,’ he said as she held out the keys. ‘Hurts more when the bruises start coming out, doesn’t it?’

She nodded, quite happy to encourage his assumption that her mood was totally attributable to her various bruises. Actually, she was more than happy to accept it herself.

‘You too...?’ she asked brightly. ‘Actually, it’s not just that. I haven’t actually been behind the wheel since I passed my test.’

A look of shock spread across his face. ‘You were seventeen! And wasn’t the idea to give you independence?’

‘I know. I always thought I’d have a little car by now. But it costs a lot to keep a car on the road, and I have been living in London. A car is not a priority...’

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