Page 138 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

‘I’m so glad to have a chance to speak to you. I told Joaquin that we couldn’t just invite ourselves, but he tells me that you can’t wait to meet me and very much want me to be part of the family celebrations. How many years is it that you have been married? I just hope that Joaquin and I will be as blessed in our union. Also, you are right—I amverygood in bed.’

There was a choking sound from the other end of the line before Joaquin ended the call, picked up his phone and slid it back into his pocket.

Lacking a plan, Clemmie just stood there.

Joaquin’s face was unreadable; the light filtering through the half-closed window drapes cast his face half in shadow.

The adrenaline rush had receded, leaving her feeling shaky and anxious—probably with good reason, she decided, as she mentally reviewed her own words.

‘I don’t know what got into me...’ she said.

‘How long were you standing there?’ He arched an ebony brow. ‘Let me guess...long enough?’

She nodded. ‘I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but she made me so mad. I know she never liked us being friends when we were kids, but honestly...“The cleaner’s daughter?”’ she said, adopting a close approximation of the older woman’s voice.

There was amusement in his eyes as he watched her thumb her neat little nose and adopt his mother’s exaggerated hip-swaying sashay as she walked across the room, running her finger across a polished surface and tutting as she surveyed it for invisible dust.

There was a sardonic glint in his eyes as he watched her performance, which became something harder as his glance rested on her taut, rounded bottom.

‘I should have known we weren’t engaged. I’d need to be out of my mind to marry into your family.

‘So it’s no longer marriage you’re against, it’s marriage to me?’ he asked.

An image came to his mind of Clemmie floating up the aisle in white towards some faceless male waiting for her. The pain that centred in his chest, but was not limited to that area, caught him off guard. But reminding himself that his mother had probably been a beautiful bride, and before her his grandmother, helped soothe the pain.

Had she caught it, Clemmie might have wondered at the expression that flickered across his face, but she was still too furious to register much.

‘And the things she said about Mum! I just lost it.’ She heard her voice rising and made an effort to stop her temper going nuclear again.

‘She has that effect. The fact is, she’s jealous of Ruth.’

Clemmie’s eyes widened. ‘But she has all this!’

She allowed her gaze to trail round the room which, beneath the superficial change of décor, was still beautiful. The bones of the place had not been touched, and it still had the power to clutch at her heart, no matter how many times she told herself it was just a building.

‘Money can’t buy her class.’

Clemmie felt distinctly mollified by the compliment, but viewed him through narrowed, wary eyes. ‘You’re not angry?’ she asked, her attitude suggesting that if he was she could be too.

‘You defended your mum. Why should I be angry?’ The corners of his mouth lifted. ‘Join the family celebrations? That was brilliant—a direct hit. The irony of course, is that it’s a gig I’ve been trying to avoid for years. My mother has been trying to pull my strings all my life.’

‘You think she’d have learned by now.’ She could not imagine anyone believing that they could influence Joaquin.

‘It is beginning to become tiresome... I might have to exert myself to teach them a lesson.’

‘You could marry someone even worse than acleaner’s daughter.’

‘Is that even possible?’

She fought off a smile and pretended to swipe at him. ‘I’m not even sure if I’m talking to you.’

‘You are talking.’ And he liked the sound of her voice...always had. It had a husky, musical quality.

‘Look, I didn’t come to fight,’ she told him. ‘I just wanted to say that I understand why you did what you did—not that that makes it any easier.’

‘What is not easy?’

She shook her head, forgetting that she had spent ten minutes—as it turned out a wasted ten minutes—lecturing herself in the mirror on the dangers of blurting out what she was thinking without some serious censoring when she was talking to Joaquin.

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