Page 141 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

‘Could you give me a lift down to the gatehouse?’

‘Look, Clemmie, there is no reason for you to leave.’

‘Seriously...?’

‘I agree this has all happened the wrong way around, and I take responsibility for that.’

‘Big of you,’ she snapped out, not having a clue what he was talking about.

‘I should have explained about that ring straight off andthenmade love to you.’

She had always known his arrogance was eye-wateringly off the scale, but she had accepted it asjust Joaquin being Joaquinbecause it didn’t affect her directly.

She folded her arms tight across her chest. The affect felt pretty direct now—at least to her tingling nipples.

‘Is that how it usually works for you, Joaquin? You say “I want you” and women throw their knickers in the air?’

His devil-on-steroids grin blazed out. ‘They more slide them slowly and sexily down their thighs.’

She felt her cheeks burn. ‘Well, I’m not doing a striptease for you!’

For starters she wouldn’t know where to begin.

You could learn, suggested the voice in her head.

Joaquin’s expression blanked as he breathed through the images her words had planted in his head.

Images he would have liked to explore.

He would like to explore Clemmie...

Allowing himself to think of the details as his gaze slid over her slim, supple body proved to a masochistic indulgence too far. He felt a groan swell in his chest and fought to contain it. He hadn’t felt this out of control for... Not ever, he realised. Not even in his teens, when he had been all hormones.

He had fancied her back then, but then his hormones had not been exactly discriminating. When you were eighteen a two-year age gap put her out of reach. And by the time she was eighteen he’d had more sense than to mess up their friendship.

There were plenty more fish in the sea that weren’t Clemmie. Fish he could throw back in. Once a man had Clemmie there would be no throwing her away—maybe that was what had made him back away?

She was a keeper.

She watched as his dark lashes lowered leaving just the glitter of his eyes showing as he shrugged, as if it didn’t really matter to him one way or the other. Anger cooled her shameful level of arousal, and in the cooling her mood made a mercurial shift.

‘You do that with everything!’ she charged, her voice rising.

‘I do what?’

‘You act like nothing means anything to you. You could stop your family being total painsthateasily.’ She snapped her fingers to illustrate her point. ‘But you’re just not bothered enough to make the effort. If you had to exert yourself to get a woman you couldn’t be bothered, because there would be ten more ready and more than willing to take her place. The only thing you put any effort into is making money, and I don’t believe you actually care about that! Your entire life you’ve never had to make an effort to achieve anything. You were always the fastest on the track, the smartest in the room and too good-looking—and don’t you know it!’

During her outburst Joaquin’s expression had shifted from astonishment to anger, landing on fascination as she came to a gasping halt.

No woman—nobody—had ever called him out that way.

‘Is that genuinely how you see me?’ He arched a brow, sounding more curious than crushed by her no-holds-barred analysis.

‘I don’t think you’re vain.’

The grudging concession drew a laugh from him.

He stopped laughing. It shouldn’t be possible to feel both fiercely possessive and tenderly protective, but when he met those aquamarine eyes he felt those things and more.

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