Page 123 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

‘What?’Megan’s voice sounded stunned.

‘You heard me! He pointed out that since I’d fallen into bed with him the same evening as meeting him for the first time, it showed there must surely be other candidates.’

‘Hesaidthat to you?’ Megan was aghast. ‘But...but what did you say?’

Siena stopped her striding and whirled round to face her friend.

‘Nothing. I got thrown out!’

‘Thrown out?’

‘Which was totally unnecessary as I’d have gone anyway—like a bat out of hell!’ Her face worked. ‘I wish to God I’d never gone there! I had to force myself to go, and that...that...was what I got!’

She felt her fists clench. Fury lashing through her.

Megan was still eyeing her warily. ‘So...so what are you going to do?’ she asked.

Siena stared. ‘What do you mean, “do”? You mean apart from storming back there and slugging him from here to Christmas!’

‘Well, yes, apart from that,’ Megan said. Her expression changed. ‘OK, so I’m not excusing him—’ a choking sound came from Siena’s throat, and Megan hurried on ‘—but to be honest it’s only to be expected he’d want some kind of proof, as in a paternity test. Any man would in those circumstances.’

Siena’s eyes flashed dangerously. ‘You mean the circumstances of a one-night stand?’

‘Well, yes. I mean—’

‘What you mean,’ Siena supplied, and her voice was as dangerous as the flash in her eyes, ‘is that I am, in fact, the kind of female who would drop into a different man’s bed every day of the week!’

Megan looked uneasy. ‘Obviously I know you’re not, but he doesn’t—’

Another noise escaped Siena’s throat.

Megan hurried on. ‘It’s just biology, Si—it can’t be helped. Have sex with more than one man in one month and how can you tell which one—?’ She held up her hands placatingly. ‘Don’t get mad at me, Si! You had one night together, and he walked out in the morning.’

Siena’s eyes burned with a brightness that was coruscating. ‘Thank you for reminding me—yes, he walked out in the morning—because he’d got all he’d wanted. So it wasWham, bam, Thank you, ma’am—except that he was conspicuously short on either the thank-you or any other politeness! He just told me he was off, and I could stay in the room and charge my breakfast to it—’

She broke off, her voice choking. Memory burned like acid, etching into her skin. Talk about the morning after the night bef—except she didn’t want to talk about it, or think about it, or remember it.

She threw herself down beside Megan on the sofa.

‘Oh, God, Megs, how could I have done what I did?’ Her voice was a toxic mix of rage and memory.

Megan patted her arm in an attempt to be comforting. She’d already had the post mortem weeks ago, when Siena had got back that morning, and had done her best to show Siena that having a scorching fling with a gorgeously irresistible Italian—even if one-night-only—was a well-deserved celebration of her new freedom.

OK, so the gorgeously irresistible Italian in question had been graceless in his leave-taking, and certainly had not followed through—which was a shame, because a slightly longer fling, even maybe a romantic escapade in Italy, was really just what Siena needed now, after the last grim years. But now it had all gone pear-shaped. All that was possible was damage limitation.

‘I don’t really know anything about how to get a paternity test organised,’ she began now, in a voice she hoped was encouraging, ‘but I guess you go to your doctor first and explain—’

Siena reared back. ‘You’re not serious!’ she shot out.

‘It’s the only way to—’

Siena cut straight across her. Voice vehement. ‘You don’t seriously think I am going to goanywherenear that vile, disgusting man ever,everagain, do you?’

‘Si, I know it’s galling, but it’s the only way—’

‘No. No, no, no, no andno! I forced myself to go there because I genuinely thought it was the right thing to do—that a man has the right to know if he is to be a father, even in circumstances like these! But I did have toforcemyself to do it. It was humiliating and mortifying and deeply, deeply embarrassing, damn it! Even before he looked at me like I was something the dog dragged in! And now, after the way he reacted, the way he treated me, I would stickpinsin my eyes before I’d goanywherenear him again. He can rot in hell—go down a hole in the ground—take a running jump—go and boil his head...’

She moved on to some explicit but anatomically impossible manoeuvres for him to contrive, and then, with gritted teeth, got to her feet. Her hands, she realised, were still clenched.

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