Page 194 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

His loins stirred. Dom had to force himself to remember why he was here. They were landing soon. He’d come to wake her up.

He should wake her up.

But he was transfixed by the beauty in the bed. She looked younger as she slept. She looked like the Marianne he remembered waking up to.

His Marianne.

And it hurled him back two decades—to when he’d wake up and watch her sleep beside him. Of waking her with a kiss, of feeling her smile under his lips and wrapping her arms around him and pulling him to her.

He remembered—and he ached.

She stirred in her sleep, murmuring something indecipherable. She was dreaming.

‘Marianne,’ he said softly. ‘Wake up, we’re landing soon.’

Still, she slept on.

There was nothing else for it. He sat down on the side of the bed, reached out a hand and tapped her gently on the shoulder. ‘Marianne.’

She smiled and stretched out her arms and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, ‘Dom…’ Then her eyes snapped open and she saw him and sat bolt upright in the bed, pulling the duvet up to cover her chest.

‘What is it?’ she said, brushing hair out of her eyes.

‘We’re landing soon. You’ve probably got ten minutes if you want to take a shower before we need to buckle up again.’

‘Oh, thank you. I was dreaming.’

I know, he thought. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said in a gravelly voice, and closed the door behind him. Once upon a time he would have stayed and watched her rise from the bed, slim-waisted and long-legged. Once upon a time he would have showered with her, lathering her sweet curves. Once upon a time he wouldn’t have stopped there.

But those days were in the past.

She wasn’t his Marianne anymore.

CHAPTER NINE

‘LOOK,’ MARI SAIDas they made their way along the Las Vegas strip, pointing out yet another wedding chapel in a city that boasted dozens, this one a squat white building with a sign out front, ‘there’s another one. “Heavenly Wedding Chapel. Where happy new beginnings are guaranteed.”’

She regarded it critically. ‘I see they’re not so confident about the happy-ever-afters.’ Her head swung around. ‘Maybe you should have booked that one.’

Dom bristled. Clearly, she’d slept a lot better than he had. And okay, so this wedding might be fake, but he really didn’t need Marianne joking about it. Right now, he was wound tighter than a coiled spring. He was so close to achieving what he’d set out to do, but he was wondering if he’d made a huge mistake. Why had he ever imagined this plan would work? It had seemed so simple at the outset. Find someone to marry, preferably someone who would be all too happy to get divorced in short order. Someone who had no expectation or desire to stay married.

Enter Mari. The perfect candidate, he’d thought, with her grievance dial turned up to ten and her professed hatred of him off the scale. And she’d agreed to marry him, even if he was paying mightily for the privilege.

But something supposedly so simple was turning out to be a whole lot more complicated. Being anywhere near her was like wrestling with sandpaper. She was aggravating, uncompromising and prickly as hell. And all because of what? Because of something he’d done—or rather not done—half a lifetime ago. Because their relationship had fizzled out, the geographical separation and the business and family responsibilities he’d assumed on the death of his father making the continuation of their relationship an impossibility. There was no way he could have left his grieving mother.

He’d explained all that to Mari at the time. And no, it hadn’t been easy, it had just about torn him in two, but it would have been unfair to keep her hanging on for his return when he didn’t know when that might be possible. She was better off finishing her university degree and getting on with her life.

It was the only sensible thing to be done. It was the grown-up thing to do.

He’d thought she’d understood. She’d voiced no protest or argued that she’d wait for him, however long it might be. There were no tearful pleas for him to reconsider. Instead, she’d quietly agreed that it was probably for the best. And it was, but it had hurt like hell that she’d so readily agreed.

So quiet, so self-contained that he’d half wondered after he’d hung up whether she’d already found somebody else.

Something that he’d subsequently learned to be true.

And yet she was mad at him? The woman he’d once thought such a free spirit sure could hold a grudge.

It was infuriating.

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