Page 227 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

But then she asked, ‘When do you fly home?’

Her words were like a body blow. He looked over at her, her eyes still closed. ‘You want me gone that badly?’

‘What is there to stay for?’

‘I can think of a couple of reasons.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that. We can share custody.’

She sounded so logical, as if this were a simple accounting problem involving numbers that she could find an easy solution to, the reconciliation of a problem, but one that didn’t involve any kind of reconciliation between Marianne and Dom at all.

‘And before they’re born? What if something happens and I’m not here?’

Her beautiful mouth pulled into a grimace. ‘The doctors say it shouldn’t happen again.’

‘And if it does?Dios, Marianne, do you hate me so much that you would exclude me from watching my babies develop and grow? What is this, some kind of payback for me not being here first time around? The first time I didn’t even know you were pregnant!’

She opened her eyes. Turned to him, her emerald eyes misty with tears. She looked sad. Desperately, achingly sad. ‘How else can we make it work?’

He looked away. ‘I don’t know.’

Marianne said goodbye when he walked her to the door. There was no invitation to come in, just a thank you for escorting her to the funeral.

He didn’t push it. Instead, he asked, ‘You’ll keep in touch? Keep me informed with what’s going on?’

She nodded. ‘I will.’

And Dom knew that he’d blown his chance with Marianne again.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MARI CLOSED THEdoor and leant her back against it, the action a trigger for her tears. She was exhausted, emotionally wrung out, first with the funeral and saying goodbye to Eric. Secondly by saying goodbye to Dom, the man she loved but who didn’t love her.

Oh, he wanted her, but as the mother of his twins, not as the woman he loved. She couldn’t bear having him within reach and yet not having him. It would kill her. It would eat her away inside until it destroyed her. Loving a man who didn’t want her had destroyed her before. Better to have him safely on the other side of the world or flying around the globe doing his deals. Better to have him as far away as possible.

They’d work something out about the babies. She was barely seven weeks pregnant. It wasn’t as if there was any rush.

She took a deep breath and pushed herself away from the door, throwing her keys on the table where her recently reclaimed peace lily sat, looking healthier than it had for months. Mari allowed herself a mocking smile. Maybe she should sign a contract to marry a billionaire more often.

* * *

Dom was halfway to the airport. There was no point staying any longer in Melbourne. His team had the Cooper Industries acquisition under control, and he was needed in Brazil, to finalise matters there. He tried to focus on the latest emails he’d received from his team there, tried to get his head back in the game, but something else kept on intruding, those few words that Helen Cooper had uttered that had snagged in his mind. That phrase—for the best—still grated.

More than grated. It wormed its way into Dom’s psyche, slicing into his memories, conversations tumbling and tumbling over each other until he recognised the words he’d voiced himself, opening the floodgates to everything he’d said—thinking he was doing right, when all he’d done was wrong. Time and again he’d done wrong.

Starting with that ill thought out, ill-timed phone call twenty years ago, when he’d decided it was unfair to keep stringing Marianne along month after month and that it was probably for the best that they called off their relationship. Being adult, he’d thought. Grown up.

Stupid.

He’d destroyed Marianne with that thoughtless call. She’d already lost her twins, and then he’d taken away her hope.

And then, yesterday at the cemetery, at the grave where their tiny babies were buried, he’d done it again. He’d told her that they shouldn’t divorce, that they should stay married because she was expecting their twins, that the babies needed them both, that it would be for the best.

And Marianne hadn’t just looked appalled, she’d looked stricken. She’d withdrawn into herself, like a tortoise retreating into its shell, leaving nothing but hard defences, impossible to breach, impossible to reason with.

Why couldn’t he have admitted to himself what was plain all along?

Why else would he not have posted the divorce papers or sent them by courier? For weeks they’d burned a hole in his desk. For those weeks they’d been the elephant in the room, glanced at only to ignore, another day, another week. Why had he felt the compulsion to deliver them in person when there was no earthly need? She wouldn’t have been offended by their arrival, she would have been expecting them. She would have signed them and got them back to him by return mail.

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