Page 90 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

The answer was easy. There was no question about his feelings. He loved Ana and he’d work with everything he had, the persistence and dedication he used in his business and his mountaineering, to get her back. It didn’t matter how long it took, because he was sure now that she’d loved him too. He only hoped that the love and concern she’d shown him hadn’t died because of the things he’d said to her.

His father gave the smallest of smiles. ‘There’s no greater feeling, and sometimes bigger curse. And yet I wouldn’t pass up a single day of any of it with your mother. I regret nothing.’

Aston tried to imagine a life without Ana. All he saw was long, interminable years of loneliness. A sense of absence that no perilous climb or mountain peak would fill.

Now he knew. He’d never felt more alive than when he was with her. Aston wanted the adventure of the world seen through her eyes. He craved to show it all to her, if she’d allow him.

He looked at his father. The man’s gaze was fixed on a point over Aston’s shoulder. His eyes widened, then his face drained, pale. Aston whipped round, and there stood a surgeon in her scrubs, face neutral—not grim, but not happy either.

‘How is she?’ his father asked. His voice was quiet, weak, in a way Aston had never heard before.

‘Your wife is a very lucky woman. The surgery went well. A successful procedure.’

The relief was so intense, Aston could barely even thank the woman who had saved his mother’s life. His father’s shoulders sagged. He put his head in his hands. Aston walked to him and placed his hand on his shoulder. It shuddered under his touch.

Aston didn’t much believe in signs but something about today gave him hope. His father had his second chance. Now Aston had to find one for himself.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘YOUDON’THAVEto go home just because mother and father say so.’

Ana lounged on an outdoor chaise on a secluded terrace of Isolobello’s famed palace, with Cilla on a lounger next to her. Ahead of them a view of the vibrant sea glittered to the horizon with a colour which carried painful reminders...

She caught her thoughts, stopping them from leading to their inevitable conclusion. Instead, she sipped a fruity cocktail as she and her sister watched the world sail by. Ocean liners, super-yachts of the rich and famous and fishing boats. If she didn’t think too hard about it, Ana could almost pretend that she was on some holiday, rather than trying to escape what a wreck her life had become.

A cool breeze drifted over them, still fairly warm here on the Mediterranean, rather than with the crisp bite of early winter at her home in Halrovia. Or a rustic farmhouse in rural France... She shut her eyes, but she couldn’t escape the last ugly argument with Aston. His rejection of her. His seeming disdain.

How broken her heart was. All she could do was ignore it, because surely hearts mended, given time? Though it had been two months. She thought the pain would have blunted by now. It hadn’t. It still caught her unawares, slicing like a paper cut, as fresh as the moment she’d walked out of the door of Aston’s farmhouse and asked one of his security team to take her far, far away.

Cilla had offered her a soft place to land when Aston had simply let her go.

‘And you don’t need your sister here, getting in the way of wedding preparations.’

‘Since you’re part of the wedding party, and my maid of honour, it’s your duty.’

‘Since I failed so spectacularly at my own engagement, I wonder why you’d want me.’ Ana rubbed her ring finger, where her beautiful ring had once sat, still gripped by the constant sense that something was missing, something she doubted she’d ever find again.

Cilla sat up.

‘Don’t.Youdidn’t fail at anything. If I know you, you tried to do what was good and right and that...’ her sister flapped her hands about as if lost for words ‘...that man, if I can even call him that, didn’t deserve you.’

Her support meant everything to Ana. Once, her sister had been all uncertainty—the ‘plain princess’, as the press had unfairly dubbed her because she didn’t look like the rest of the family. Dark hair to their blonde. Petite to their height. Now she’d come into her own.

Ana peered over the rim of her glass filled with the fruity elixir and decorated with a jaunty pink paper umbrella, to glimpse her sister frowning. Priscilla pushed her glasses up her nose. Even through that look of disapproval, Cilla bloomed with a beauty that radiated from within. Love had transformed her, made her believe in herself. A kernel of warmth lit in Ana’s heart. Cilla had always been a gentle, studious soul, hard-working, underestimated. It had only taken the right man finally toseeher...

All that warmth was snuffed out. Ana had thought she’d found that man for herself, one who saw her, someone she could love and who would love her in return, but it had all been cold and calculated. All to protect an inheritance. Well, she deserved more, so much more, which was why she’d walked away. She hadn’t wanted to lose him, but if he didn’t appreciate her and couldn’t love her, what point was there?

In the end, she knew if she stayed she’d have become a shell, as she’d been before the accident, trying to be perfect. She would always have tried to be the woman he wanted, rather than woman she truly was. In the end, staying with him hadn’t been safe. Walking away had been.

‘Then why does it hurt so much?’ Ana’s voice cracked.

Cilla left her own sun lounger and came and sat next to her. ‘Because unrequited love is the worst. You do love him, don’t you?’

Ana feared she still did, irrevocably. Because she suspected that, no matter how cruel he’d been, he’d given Ana her life back, and for that she needed to be thankful. Whilst leaving him might have meant the end of her security, one of his personal protection officers still went wherever she did. Cilla had tried to shoo him away, but the man was resolute, so they let him follow her about, looming whenever anyone looked at Ana sideways.

Then there had been a letter from Count Hakkinen. She’d refused to read it but Cilla had. Apparently it was an apology and a promise that he’d never be even in the same country as her.

In her weaker moments she knew she had Aston to thank for this, for her safety, though she shouldn’t give a damn what he did ever again. He didn’t love her back, so there was no point.

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