Page 145 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

Slowly, the lights flickered on in every window, on every street, and the city was ablaze with artificial rainbow light, the mountain hidden until tomorrow. But she knew it was there. Even in the shadows. An impenetrable force of nature. Just like Dante.There even when he wasn’t. In her mind. Intruding on her every thought...

She forced herself to relax.

‘Was it always this way for you?’

‘What do you mean?’ he asked as she fought the urge to move close, to allow their elbows to meet, to allow the electric current to flow from her body into his.

No. Desire and discussion were to be separated.

‘I mean with your dad. His job. Your grandfather’s. Was life—’ she waved at the cityscape ‘—always so spectacular?’

‘It was,’ he answered. ‘It is.’

‘Did you ever crave something simple?’ She swallowed. ‘Something less... Something more normal?’

‘I have never known...normal.’ He spoke softly, but his voice was laced with something heavy.

‘I’m normal,’ she countered, because she was. And she wanted to know why this extraordinary billionaire had married her.

What did they have in common?

She didn’t know what she’d told him about her past or what he’d told her. But she’d start at the beginning, as he had when he’d told of their first meeting. She’d tell him the beginning ofher.

‘My life isn’t unsimilar to many others,’ she started. She didn’t look at him, because it was easier to have this conversation without the intensity of his gaze boring into hers.

‘I grew up hating my father and making sure I was always there for my mother, because he never was. I didn’t grow up watching sunsets in penthouses made for the ultrarich and royalty. I grew up taking care of my mother. Supporting her so she could look after me. I helped her clean for her agency work before school. I’m the definition of normal. A city girl from a council estate, yet now—’

‘You are here,’ he interjected softly.

The rational part of her mind told her to tread carefully, not push too hard too soon, but she needed to know more.

‘Did you hate your dad too?’

‘What gives you the impression I hate my father?’ he asked, and still, she didn’t look at him. Didn’t acknowledge the closeness of him, or the pull inside her to be closer.

‘On the plane,’ she confessed, ‘there was a hesitancy when you spoke about him. A hesitancy I recognised because I feel it too. This conflict inside me when I think of him. That I owe him something because of his biological contribution to my life, all while hating him,’ she hissed. And she waited, for the gasp. For his shock at how she felt about the man who gave her life.

Emma and her mum had had so many arguments about it. His behaviour. His treatment of her. And her mother had told her to accept that he still loved them.

But nothing came from Dante. Only silence and an invitation for her to continue. So she did.

‘I know it sounds violent,’ she confessed, ‘but he makes me feel violent. Because I hate how she accepted his lies as truth. I hate what he did to her. Whathe turned her into. My mum—’

His hand moved then, atop hers, and she couldn’t continue. Couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the feel of his palm on her skin. His offer of comfort was given without her having to ask for it.

‘What did he turn her into?’ he asked, and this time she didn’t look, because she didn’t want to see pity in his eyes.

Had she ever told him what her dad had done? Whyhewas the reason she never wanted to marry? Why she found it hard to accept that someone would want to make her life easier?

‘A doormat,’ she rasped the truth of it. ‘And however, many times I wanted to tell him to be gentle, to at least wipe his boots before he stomped on her again, she hushed me. Told me to be quiet. To accept that my...father,’she said, even though he was no such thing to her, ‘would never be the man either she or I wanted him to be. That he would continue to break every promise he should have held dear.’

Emma tried and failed to keep the venom out of her voice. ‘He seduced my mother when she was sixteen, promised he’d marry her but never did. He lied. And still, for all the years afterwards, she believed one day he would.’

Her heart ached for her mother. For that teenage girl who believed in the fairy tale, believed love would conquer all. Regardless of how much time passed, how many lies he told her, she believed in their love, in him.

‘He abandoned her when she fell pregnant with me. He didn’t come back even when she begged him to, even when she was kicked out by my grandparents. Even when I was born...’ It was Emma who was hurting now, remembering that little girl who couldn’t understand why her father didn’t want her. ‘He didn’t come for a year. And then he only stayed for two days before leaving us. I have seen the pictures of him holding a one-year-old, his daughter, a daughter he’d only just met.’

She was breathing so hard, so fast, her words tumbled out of her. Out of a place she’d hidden them for so long it hurt to speak them. But she needed him to understand her hesitancy to accept their marriage at face value.