Page 232 of Modern Romance March 2025 (5-8)

She didn’t know what to say.

“Iam the reason my father was on that plane,” he said. “Ikilled him, as surely as if I’d done it with my own hands. The least I can do is carry on the legacy he left behind. Make sure it isn’t lost the way he was.”

“Desmond—”

“I have to tell it all at once, or I won’t tell it at all,” he warned.

His voice was clipped, though not dispassionate; he was clear he was forcing out every word. “It was a budget airline. We took them over, to manage in-house. It was my first big project, right out of uni. Baba was so proud of me, his smartass son. I led advertising for that campaign. The flight was packed that day because of a promotionIran.Noneof those people would have been there if it wasn’t for me.”

“Oh, Desmond,” she whispered, her hand creeping up to her mouth.

His mouth had compressed into a thin line. “At least I can talk about it without throwing up now. That’s progress, I guess. That memorial service? I go every year. No one’s made the connection between me and that flight, not yet. People pointed fingers at the owners accusing them of corporate manslaughter and they got sued into the ground. But—”

“Desmond, it was an accident. How could you possibly think—?”

“The promotion I designed was a marketing stunt.” He carried on speaking as if he hadn’t heard her. “I called it Flight Forward Live. I recruited a ton of people to film their experiences, documentary style, on different flights that year, on their phones, and put it on our social media channels as well as their own. Influencers. Couple of sports stars. Our owners, even. The flight that went down was the one I’d assigned my father to film on. He was so nervous, you know? About the technology, about getting everything just right for me—”

“Desmond, you couldn’t have known—”

Desmond gestured upward. There was a look of such desperate hopelessness on his face.

“He’s gone,” he said, as if relaying something that had happened last week and not almost a decade ago. A cry escaped Val’s throat, and before she knew what she was doing, she threw her arms round him and held him as tightly as she could.

“I miss him so damnedmuch,” Desmond said, his voice rough and thick. “I couldn’t live with myself. Ican’tlive with myself. It consumes me, Val, every single damned day I have to wake up on this earth. Sometimes I sleep, and I wake up and I’m happy for a moment, and then I remember. My uncles, they blamed me, too. They put up a front for a while, but the bickering was too much, and they all left. I haven’t talked to them since, but to hell with them. I’ve got this. I’ve managed without them for years.”

“They left you,” she whispered, and even she could feel the constriction deep inside his chest. “You were mourning, and they left you!”

“They were right to do so,” he said bitterly. “I concocted the stunt. He wouldn’t have been on that flight if it wasn’t that stupid campaign I designed—”

Val tightened her arms around him and squeezed. She buried her face into the place where his shoulder met his neck. He didn’t respond but neither did he push her away. When she finally pulled away, his face was as calm as if he’d never told the story; then, he cradled her face roughly with his palm.

“Don’t you see, Valentina? Don’t you get it? Fine, I’ll say it. I can’t love you the way I…the way I might have. Not when—Not when I’m like this.”

I can’t love you the way I might have.

Was he saying what she thought he was? She couldn’t fathom it, couldn’t breathe even, because he was looking at her with so much longing in his face that it twisted deep inside her chest.

“I hope you know how badly I want you,” he said, his voice hoarse. “But I can’t. Valentina, do you understand? It simply isn’t fair to you.”

She found her breath. “Who says you get to decide that for me?” she demanded. ‘This is exactly why I can’t say yes. You’ll never give us a chance for anything more.’

“Valentina—!”

And yet— she wanted him. And in this close proximity, she couldn’t pull back. She stood on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck. And then, yes, oh, yes, he was pulling her against him and kissing her with slow, hot lips. He was murmuring things she could only half understand, and holding her trembling frame the way she’d been longing for. She was helpless beneath him. Well, maybe not so helpless. After all, it was she who stumbled back into her room, pulling him with her. It was she who tipped her head backward so he would have access to that soft, sensitive place on her neck that they both loved. And it was she who yanked down the neck of her camisole, freeing her aching breasts. She who whimpered “please” against his mouth. She who placed his hands on her burning skin.

Val didn’t know how to comfort him, or what would help him accept it from her. All she knew was that the aftermath of making love to Desmond Tesfay always felt intimate, safe, familiar.

She wanted to grant him that intimacy now, and she knew instinctively that if he left the room now that wall would go up—and go up forever. She couldn’t offer him more than this, but she could at least offer him this.

She likely would come to regret the impulsive, heated decision, but that was tomorrow’s problem.

When her silken sleeping shorts and camisole had been removed and he was finally, finally inside her, she rocked her hips back and forth, trying to drive him deeper. Harder. Faster. She was so slick that it was hard for either of them to maintain control. He was groaning and growling in her ear, making sounds that might have been sobs were his eyes not bone-dry. And after, when he slipped from her and lay panting beside her, staring at the ceiling, she turned into him, looped her arms round his neck and did the weeping for him.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE NIGHT OFDesmond and Val’s marriage celebration party—spearheaded mostly by Hind—drove Val into unprecedented waves of anxiety. She was going to have to lie to potentially thousands on a public stage.

Seeing their faces definitely made it all the more real. And now, when she was supposed to be getting ready for the lavish party Hind and Sheikh Rashid were hosting for her and Desmond, she was sitting on the bed in her room in the staff quarters of the sheikh’s estate, lost in a doom-scrolling session from hell. It’d been easy enough to find the story; one article led to another, which led to another, which led to yet another. Dreadful articles, with titles that grew all the more accusatory as the story moved from the investigation phase, to blame, to backlash. Desmond wasn’t actually named in more than one or two, but the story and the airline’s subsequent collapse were heartbreaking.

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