Page 203 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

The nurse invited Marianne into his mother’s room.

‘I’ll come too,’ said Dom.

But the nurse barred his way. Rosaria, she said, was insistent that she only wanted to talk to Marianne. And Dom had no choice but to cool his heels outside.

Marianne entered the room. This time she received Dom’s glower as she passed him. This time there were no gentle pleas. This time his eyes held a threat—Don’t get this wrong.

As if she would.

Rosaria was propped up in the bed on white lace-edged pillows, her hair newly washed and fluffed. She was still tiny, her eyes closed, but as Mari approached the bed those eyes opened clear and bright, brightening even more as she saw her visitor.

‘Oh, Marianne,’ she said, patting the bed beside her. ‘Come and sit here next to me on the bed. It’s high time I had some girl talk.

‘I’ve been so worried about Dominico,’ she continued. ‘I thought he would never settle down. I am so glad he’s found you again, Marianne. I am so happy for you both.’

Mari smiled, and gently patted the older lady on the hand. Tiny hands, skin like parchment blotched with bruises and stretched over bones and knuckles so tightly it looked like it would tear at the slightest touch.

And Mari knew that, however long it took, she would keep up this pretence of being Dom’s bride, because it made Rosaria so happy.

‘I was married to an Australian, you know. Well, an Australian of Spanish descent, but still an Australian.’

Mari nodded. ‘I do. I met him that time we all had dinner together in Sydney.’

‘Oh, of course you did. That was such a fun night. Roberto liked you, you know. He told me that he half suspected Dominico might ask you to marry him. Which is why he agreed for Dominico to stay another semester in Sydney. He didn’t want to set up a potential conflict with his son. He wanted him to enjoy his youth while he could.’

She sighed. ‘Of course, that was before he had his heart attack.’ She shook her head, her eyes misting over. ‘That changed everything.’

Mari reached over and took her hand, squeezing it gently.

‘Oh, listen to me, getting all maudlin. Silly, when I’ll be back with Roberto soon, but it’s Roberto I want to talk about. He had Spanish heritage, you see, and he was travelling through Spain, due to return home in a week when he came to San Sebastián and met me. And the rest, as they say, is history. It was a whirlwind romance. We were married in three months, and so, so happy. He was such a handsome man.’ She sighed. ‘So tall, broad-shouldered and handsome and so very sexy.’

Mari was startled. She had not been expecting that.

Rosaria chuckled. ‘Did I shock you, my dear? It’s not unusual, surely, that we find our husbands sexy? In fact, it makes marriage all the more pleasurable. Don’t you find your new husband sexy?’

Mari did so not want to go there. She didn’t want to think of Dominico and sex in the same conversation, let alone the same sentence. She wanted to keep the subjects far, far apart. But she couldn’t say that to Rosaria. But neither could she deny that what Rosaria said was true. Because there was no denying the appeal of the man, the intensity of his eyes, the strong lines of his nose and mouth and the hard-packed strength of his body. Even when he was glowering he was beautiful—devastatingly, masculinely beautiful.

The man was sexier than he’d ever been when she’d last known him as a young twenty-two-year-old. His shoulders had broadened, his body had filled out, his perfect features had been aged by experience that only accentuated them. That was the danger the man posed. Here she was trying to rid herself of the ghosts of her past and her ghost had just turned himself into a living and breathing reason why she should take notice of him all over again.

‘Oh, my dear,’ Rosaria said, ‘I can see I’ve put you on the spot and asked a question a mother shouldn’t ask. I don’t expect you to answer that. I just hope that you have a happy marriage, as Roberto and I did. For so long I’ve been worried about Dominico. For so long he seemed to reject any chance of becoming emotionally involved with any woman. I’m so glad that he’s finally decided to settle down. You will have a good marriage, I can see.’

Oh, please.Mari turned her gaze to the ceiling as guilt piled on guilt. She was pretending to be in love with this woman’s son and Rosaria was lapping it up. She should be congratulating herself that she and Dom were pulling this pretence off.

Except it was all so false. All so fake.

Except if Rosaria was happy, did it matter? Making Rosaria happy was the whole point of this farce.

‘Dominico is so important to me, I want him to be as happy as his father and I were. He was my only live birth, you see.’

‘Oh?’ Mari said, discombobulated by this sudden change in the conversation’s direction. The topic of losing babies was dangerous territory. She swallowed. ‘That’s entirely understandable.

‘You see, I lost three babies before I delivered our Dominico. He was our miracle baby. Our gift from God.’

Mari was blindsided, Rosaria’s tragedies bringing back the horror and despair of her own loss.

‘Three? I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. Dom never told me why he was the only child.’

‘It was so hard to bear,’ Rosaria said. ‘It was harder every time to go back and try again when I knew I had miscarried, but of course I wanted to try. I had to try. I was desperate to give my Roberto children. After Dominico was born, Roberto refused to let me try again. He said we had our miracle baby and we should be satisfied, but of course I knew it was because he couldn’t bear to see me suffer the anguish of losing another child.’ The bony shoulders under her fine cotton nightdress rose a fraction in a shrug. ‘Who knows if I would have miscarried again, but Roberto loved me too much to let it happen again.’ She sighed. ‘He was such a wonderful man.

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