Page 170 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

After-Hours Proposal

Trish Morey

Mari laughed.

The sound started on a hiccup before swelling up from deep in her belly, long and loud and maybe even hysterical. Because the idea was hysterical. It had to be a joke. The man could not be serious. “Marry you?” she managed when finally she could breathe again. “I’m sorry, but now it seems you’re the one writing the comedy routines.”

There was a glimmer of steel in his dark eyes. He didn’t like being laughed at. “I assure you it wouldn’t be a permanent arrangement. I need a temporary wife for a few short weeks, that’s all.”

“I don’t care what you need. You’re asking the wrong woman.”

“I seem to recall that once, a long time ago, you might have been more amenable to the suggestion.”

Her spine stiffened. How dared he bring that up. It was almost like he was taunting her. “Like you said, Dom, we were both kids. And twenty years on, be it temporarily or otherwise, I wouldn’t marry you—”

“If I were the last man on earth?”

CHAPTER ONE

SUCCESS.

Dominico Estefan stared out at Melbourne’s skyline and basked in the glow of his latest acquisition. Whoever said success was sweet was way off the mark. Success was more fundamental than that. More elemental. Success was like sex. Intoxicating.

Addictive.

Dom Estefan was seriously addicted. He loved it when a plan came together. After weeks of circular negotiations and knockbacks, his bid had finally been accepted, and at a much lower price than he’d been prepared to pay. Cooper Industries, the small but promising private pharmaceutical company that he planned to transform into a global powerhouse, was his.

He glanced at his watch. Barely past nine a.m. and already it was shaping up to be a perfect day. And later, once all the dust had settled and he’d completed today’s meetings, there might be an opportunity to celebrate. He growled with satisfaction, and not without a modicum of anticipation. Because he might be in Melbourne, and half a world away from his home in San Sebastián, but he’d never had a problem finding willing, if not enthusiastic, company. In Dom’s world, there was never any shortage of enthusiastic company.

And he liked Australian women. Or he had, once, a long time ago.

What was her name?

Marianne.

The name came to him on a tendril of memory, drifting up from the darkest recesses of his mind, the name as fresh and newly minted as the girl had been, still a teenager, a free spirit with wild blonde hair tumbling over her shoulders and lights in her vivid green eyes. Their few months together had been the highlight of his time in Sydney. It had bent him out of shape when he’d had to return to Spain, not that he’d had a choice, and while there was still that lingering residue of guilt, he’d also had a sense he’d dodged a bullet.

He rested one hand against the window frame and gazed down at a tourist boat chugging along the ribbon of river far below until it disappeared under a road bridge.

What would she be doing now? No doubt she was married with a clutch of kids and living somewhere close to nature like she’d endlessly talked about. She’d been a novelty to him, a dreamer with her head in the clouds, and so different from the daughters and nieces the societyseñorasback in Spain had steered his way.

He snorted. Not that anything had changed there, except that now it was their granddaughters they were shepherding his way.

His phone buzzed and he pushed away from the window. He glanced at the screen and his spine turned to ice. His mother’s physician in San Sebastián calling? Now? One a.m. was far too late for a social call.

He swiped at the screen.‘Hola?’

‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ the doctor began.

‘My mother,’ Dom said, cutting to the chase. ‘How is she?’

‘I won’t sugarcoat it,’ the doctor said. ‘The latest treatments haven’t given us the results we hoped for. I’m sorry to tell you her condition is deteriorating. I’m going to recommend that her plan be changed to palliative care.’

Palliative care? But that meant…

‘How long—’ Dom began, his words turning to ash in his throat as he raked his fingers through his hair, mentally reckoning the time it would take to fly home. Forget about any kind of celebration. The last place he needed to be right now was the other side of the world when his mother needed him.

He’d known this moment was coming ever since her initial horrific diagnosis; known that it was inevitable that his mother would lose her battle with the inoperable cancer that was invading her cells and wasting her body. But that knowledge didn’t mean he was ready to lose her.

---