Page 163 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

He had used her.

Perhaps she was leaping to conclusions...

Leaping to conclusions?How much more proof do you need?she asked herself contemptuously.When are you going to wake up to the fact that people lie, that they betray?

As she passed down the endless corridors her thoughts continued to tread endless corridors of their own, many with dead ends and many looping back in circles.

People nodded and smiled, but nobody questioned her right to be there—and then, when she wasn’t even looking, she saw a landmark: a massive oil painting of a luminous Madonna and child. Surely she had seen it before?

Joaquin paced the salon of his suite. This wasn’t the way he had planned for this evening to end.

Where the hell was she?

He had already retraced the route back to the dining room and there had been no sign of her.

He felt his panic rise even as he recognised there was no logic to it.

He had almost lost her once before; he had even recognised what he would be losing.

It couldn’t happen again.

On one level he knew that he was overreacting—that she would be sitting in a corner somewhere, nursing a glass of wine and chatting, or else wandering down a corridor, totally lost. Neither scenario was life-threatening.

The knowledge didn’t lessen the feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach.

‘You lost your fiancée? Man, that was careless,’ Rob, mellow after an after-dinner brandy, had joked when Joaquin had come across him with a group of guests.

It was a joke that had not made Joaquin smile, and he’d voiced his lack of appreciation—maybe not so politely. Not that Rob had seemed offended. And Allie had chased after him, telling how much they loved Clemmie.

‘Me too,’ he’d said.

Allie had squeezed his arm. ‘Might be an idea to tell her that?’

He would, he decided, as he contemplated retracing his steps again, unable to rid himself of the idea that his mother had got to her.

He was tired of games. He’d been so proud of her tonight...of her dignity and humour in the face of his mother’s snide comments.

He should have been there to protect her.

At last, he faced his biggest fear.

Could she have left him?

The door opened and she appeared, and his initial relief immediately switched to anger. ‘Where the hell did you vanish to?’

When her green eyes lifted to him, his mood made another ninety-degree turn.

‘I was worried. It’s been an hour. People are looking for you... I was looking for you. Where have you been?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You got lost?’ he said, struggling to moderate his tone. ‘It’s easily done. You should have waited for me.’

As he approached she raised her hands, as if to fend him off.

He stopped dead. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Is it true?’ she asked, amazed that she sounded totally normal.

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