Page 149 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

He could see the same conflicting reactions playing across her face.

‘I did put it behind me,’ she said.

Her voice was low. Troubled. She wasn’t making eye contact with him, but looking down at the tablecloth.

‘It was the only way I could deal with it. Deal with what had happened. What I hadlethappen.’ Abruptly, her eyes flashed back up to him. ‘I made myself angry,’ she said. ‘I made myself angry about the way you walked out the next morning. Angry with you so that...’ She paused, her face working again. ‘So that I didn’t have to be angry with myself for what I’d done.’ She drew a breath. ‘Because what happened that night was something that hasneverhappened to me before. And...and it shocked me. Shocked me that I’d done it.’

Her face contorted suddenly and she squeezed her eyes shut, as if she were shutting out the world. Shutting him out with it.

Vincenzo’s hand moved again, and this time he did not draw it back. Instead, he very lightly—very briefly—touched her cheek. Then he took his hand away.

‘There is no need to beat yourself up about it,’ he said.

His voice sounded different—he could hear it—but didn’t know why. Didn’t know why he had made that impulsive gesture of...

Of what?

Comfort? Was that it? Or collusion. Maybe that was it.

‘And if it’s any consolation,’ he went on, ‘you’ve probably pretty much described my own reaction.’

His voice was dry, but it was not dry with the acerbic tone he’d used before. This was self-knowledge. Belated self-knowledge. He, too, had used his anger at her—anger whipped up when she’d come to his office to tell him she was pregnant—to disguise his own shock that he had fallen into bed with a woman within hours of meeting her.

She had unscrewed her eyes, unscrewed her face, and was looking across at him now. Something had changed in her face.

‘Men always think that it’s OK to slut-shame a woman,’ she said. ‘While they themselves stay squeaky-clean and fragrant...’

Her voice had an edge—and with cause, he acknowledged.

He gave half a smile...a twisted one. ‘Then they are hypocrites,’ he said. ‘And that applies just as much now, in the twenty-first century, as in any earlier period when women’s sexuality was used as a weapon against them.’

He took a breath—a heavy one, but a releasing one too. Looked across at her. There was an open expression on her face now, and her eyes were meeting his. For the first time there was neither hostility in them nor challenge, nor reserve or guardedness.

‘Siena,’ he said, and he used her given name for the first time that evening, ‘let’s just accept what happened, shall we? We acted out of character that night, both of us. For whatever reason, it happened. Let’s make peace with it.’ He moved on, because it seemed the natural thing to do now. ‘Just as we should make peace with your being pregnant and all that entails. We neither of us wished for it, but it happened. Let’s at least try to keep on with what we’ve been trying to do this evening.’

He held her eyes for a moment. Hers were not veiled, but what was in them he did not know. Maybe it was simply exhaustion at hearing him out.

Whatever it was, their waiter was now gliding up to their table again, bearing his cheese board and Siena’starte. He set them down, murmuring something about their coffee, and disappeared again.

‘That looks good,’ Vincenzo said, indicating her dessert.

It seemed a sufficiently neutral comment to make. He followed it with another one.

‘In Italy, it’s the custom to serve cheese before dessert, rather than after, as in England.’

She picked up her fork. ‘Yes, cheese usually rounds off a meal here—unless you count the petit fours or chocolate mints that come with coffee and liqueurs.’

She echoed his neutral, conversational tone, and Vincenzo was glad. He felt in need of it. In need of something simple...easy...

The waiter was approaching again, bearing down on them with their respective coffees. Vincenzo made a start on his cheese. The atmosphere between them had relaxed. Or if not relaxed exactly, it had eased, at least. And he was grateful for it.

For a while there was silence between them, yet it was not a strained one.

We’ve moved on.

To what, he didn’t know. But one thing he did know.

Wherever they’d moved on to, it had to be better than where they’d come from...

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