Page 140 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

She did not share his delight at this image. ‘I’m glad you find this funny,’ she said, directing a glare of simmering resentment at him. ‘This new “normal” does not feel normal. Are we meant to forget what happened?’

‘Who said anything about forgetting?’

Their eyes connected, smouldering brown on brilliant green, and she felt her heart try to climb its way out of her chest.

She shook her head, moistened her dry lips and decided to skip theWhat do you mean?section of this conversation. She was not sure she really wanted or needed to know, so she went straight to the practical details.

‘Look, after what’s happened I can’t stay here—obviously. I’ll move in with Mum. I’ll have to tell her the truth...although not all of it.’ She frowned, trying to work through an expurgated version that left her with a bit of pride intact. ‘God, this is going to be a terrible holiday.’

‘Probably.’

His rapid agreement earned him a glare.

‘This time of year is usually terrible for me,’ he told her. ‘Celebrating not one but two toxic unions. Celebrating not just one but two unhappy marriages. It’s kind of a given that things will go wrong. I reckon that marrying on the same day was not a good omen.’

‘Will they expect you to get married on the same day and carry on the tradition?’

He mouthed the first Spanish swear word he had taught her when they were kids. He had told her it meant have a good day—it didn’t, of course. Something she’d realised when she had said it in front of the Spanish-speaking wife of her deputy head teacher.

‘Your grandparents’ marriage was unhappy too?’ she asked.

‘Oh, their mutual loathing was much more civilised than my parents’. There was no swearing or smashed crockery, no hushed-up abortions arranged for girlfriends and then arriving the next day at Mass hand in hand. For my grandparents’ generation it was all about never forgetting what was owed to the family name. They communicated in a civilised manner through intermediaries for at least thirty years before my grandfather died.’

Her eyes grew round. ‘They didn’t ever talk?’

‘Not a word—which made family dinners quite interesting. Since my grandfather died, get-togethers are less entertaining as a spectator sport, but equally awful.’

‘Why did they hate each other that much?’

‘Who knows? I doubt if even they remembered.’

‘But you still go?’

‘Maybe I’m an optimist? Maybe I think one day we will play happy families?’

She snorted at the idea; Joaquin’s cynicism went cell-deep. ‘No, you don’t.’

‘True, I don’t. But sometimes it takes more effort to break a bad habit than to go along with it. One week in a year...a few hours of my life... I suppose that was my mindset, but this year I decided to exert myself to break the habit.’

‘Which is why you are here?’

He nodded.

‘Actually,’ he admitted, ‘when my grandfather was alive, I went just to see him. He was an old curmudgeon, but I kind of liked him. He would have liked you,’ he added unexpectedly.

She laughed, not hiding her scepticism. ‘I find that hard to believe,’ she retorted, thinking of all the up themselves, snobby members of the Perez family she had met, or rather encountered, over the years.

‘That’s why he would have liked you.’

She blinked. ‘What do you mean?’

‘That bolshy “screw you” attitude.’

‘I do not have a—’ She broke off, actually liking the idea that she might be an empowered in-your-face woman, but as her eyes drifted to Joaquin’s mouth her sense of self-satisfaction took a hit.

The fact was her hormones must be desperately unliberated, or she wouldn’t be thinking the thoughts she was.

But that was okay. Because she was in charge and not her thoughts.

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