Page 180 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

‘Marianne?’ He was on his feet now, making short work of dispensing with the barrier that was his desk, his eyes intent on her face. Searching. Seeking. ‘Is it really you?’

Mari swallowed. His voice until now had been just the same as she remembered. Caramel over granite, with a barrel-load of the gravel of irritation underlying it. Now there was almost an element of wonderment to it. Something that she remembered was a part of him. Something that maybe his arrogance and ruthlessness hadn’t stamped out completely. Not that it helped to soften her attitude towards him.

‘Is it so unlikely?’ Once again, her heart was pounding. It had been bad enough when Dom was sitting behind the desk ignoring her, but now he was standing in front of her a mere metre away, all tall, dark and unbearable.

His features were still compelling, maybe more so with the passage of time. She’d thought his twenty-two-year-old self a man then, but that had been her teenage view. This was the real man before her—a man in his prime. She could feel the heat emanating from his body along with his signature scent that she recognised as uniquely his. It hurtled her back through the decades, to a time when he’d lied and told her that he loved her. She pressed her eyes closed to try to block out the memories, but they kept rushing back. Of picnic lunches in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens, of falling asleep in Dom’s arms after making love, of waking up to his kisses and making love with him all over again.

‘But you,’ he said, looking her over. ‘You became an accountant? You, who was the original earth mother.’

Her flush of courage suddenly felt over-egged. He was too close. He was before her. A full head above her, overwhelming her. He was so close that every cell in her body hummed with his proximity, drawn to him, just like they always had been. Twenty years after his betrayal and abandonment and, curse them, still her cells betrayed her.

‘Somebody has to pay the bills. You’re probably not familiar with that concept.’

‘I pay the bills in my family.’

Her chin hitched. ‘Slightly different circumstances, I’m sure.’

‘Exactly. Which is why I’m wondering why you can afford to throw this job opportunity in.’

‘I’ll manage. I’ll look after myself. I always have.’ Like when he’d abandoned her twenty years ago and she’d had no one to fall back on but herself. There was no way she’d take a job from this man. There was no way she’d ever rely on this man again. She’d well and truly learned her lesson. ‘Goodbye, Dom.’

Where was the invisible butler to let her out? Never mind, the door was at her back. All she had to do was take the handle and let herself out.

‘You can’t just disappear,’ he said. ‘We haven’t seen each other in what, twenty years.’

‘You’re missing the point,’ she breathed. ‘Why would I want to stay with you a moment longer than I already have?’

‘Why?’ he said. ‘Because I took over Cooper Industries? Or because of what happened twenty years ago?’

She didn’t answer and he knew which it was.

‘We were kids, Marianne. Little more than kids. You can’t still be holding a grudge after all this time.’

A grudge? He thought she was harbouring a mere grudge? It was like rubbing salt into wounds he’d just scraped clean of their scars. It was almost as if he looked back on those days with a degree of nostalgia and was looking to reconnect as if they were meeting at a class reunion.

He paused. ‘It wasn’t like it meant anything.’

His words sent shards of glass into her heart. She shook her head. Because no, it meant nothing. Nothing at all.

‘Do you really hate me that much?’

What kind of question was that? Memories overwhelmed her. Of loss. Of betrayal. Of a lover who’d turned his back on her when she was at her most vulnerable.

She untwisted her lips long enough to speak. ‘You have no concept of how much I hate you.’

Dom considered her outburst dispassionately. He was still coming to terms with stumbling across Marianne again—what were the chances when they’d met in Sydney and here they both were, twenty years later, in Melbourne?—but something else occurred to him then. Something else that could provide a convenient solution to his problem.

‘Then I have one question.’ In spite of her professed hatred for him—or rather, because of it—he raised one eyebrow and allowed himself a smile. ‘Are you married?’

CHAPTER FIVE

‘WHAT?’ WHAT KINDof a question was that? The man was mad. Whatever else had happened in the last twenty years, and however successful he’d become, it was clear that he was losing his marbles.

‘It’s a perfectly simple question. All it requires is a yes or no answer. If it’s yes—your name would suggest you could be—you were Marianne Wheeler back then, if I remember correctly—and then, as much as I’d love to catch up with you and talk over old times, you’re free to leave.’

Mari licked her lips. ‘And if it’s a no?’

‘Then I have a proposition for you. One that you might want to hear. One that will profit you generously.’

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