Page 172 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

He moved again. One step after another, and he placed the bowls on the table. Set the cutlery aside each bowl and moved to a machine. Lifted his hand and pressed a button.

The machine whirled.

Emma didn’t speak. Didn’t move. She pretended to be invisible. A fly on the wall in a moment of Dante’s life, his world, a place he had found where he could be alone. Wanted to be alone. And yet he’d invited her inside. It felt precious to be here. She felt precious.Wanted.

The aroma of ginger filled the air as the machine delivered a cup. He repeated the procedure until Dante retrieved two cups. He moved back to the bowls he’d prepared and poured the liquid inside each bowl.

‘Chicken and ginger soup,’ he said. He exhaled heavily. Pulled out the ordinary wooden chair, with a high back and no arms.

‘Sit down, Emma.’ She did, and he took his seat in front of her. Their eyes met. ‘Eat.’

Together they picked up their spoons, dipped them into the soup and in sync, brought them to their lips.

It was a togetherness she’d never experienced, but her mother had craved it. Simple meals enjoyed by two. In companionable silence. In mutual understanding—the world outside could wait. Because the world outside was cold. Lonely.

The silence ricocheted in her ears. The comfortableness of it. The warmth. The realisation formed as clear as the broth before her. She could be anywhere in the world, anywhere she desired with a press of a button. And yet, she desired only to be with him. In this place. Safe in his company. Safe in their marriage. Safe with him.

Dante placed his spoon down on the worn table. ‘My father employed an army to raise me. A high turnover of staff to feed me from the moment I was pulled from my mother’s womb,’ he told her. And she felt the pull of emotion in his words. The way he had to drag them from deep inside him. And she understood how hard that was. Understood because she had felt that way on the terrace of their hotel, when she had told him her story. Her story that she’d told no one else. But him. And so she didn’t speak. She opened her ears and listened to his story.

‘Nannies. Teachers.Staff,’ he continued, his voice dark and heavy And it pushed itself through her consciousness. ‘They were always around. Always talking. Always...there.’ His face twisted into something ugly. ‘And yet they were also not really there. At least not for me. They did not care for the boy in their charge, or for the teenager, the young man I became. Over the years, one face blended into several others. A name didn’t matter because they all answered to one man. They answered to my father. To the rules he had set out for how to raise me.

‘Whether I was in Italy, Switzerland or Nepal, they followed. Whether it was in a country estate in England, a castle in Sicily, a penthouse suite in Japan... I was surrounded by people. I was never alone. Never away from the noise—’

‘So, you found your own garden?’

‘I found a place,’ he corrected. ‘A room where I could choose to be. Not a place where my father ordered other people to take me. It was a different place in each city, each town. Whether it was a cafe in the village. A bookstore in a cobbled street. A room on a street no map knew. I entered it because I chose to be there. I paid them to close the door behind me. I—’

‘You sneaked out in the dead of night to escape.’

Her heart pounded. They were the same. Him and her. And for him to confess that was big, she knew. They’d both been abandoned, in one form or another. Left to fend for themselves. But they had found each other. Created something...something that was theirs. Normal.Unique.

‘You escaped,’ she said and exhaled unsteadily,‘being alone in a house full of people who didn’t care while your father conquered the world. Just for a while. Just for a time, you forgot the hardness. The loneliness. You created a world where all was quiet. Where all was still. A safe place whereyouwanted to be. You ruled over it, not your father, and you dictated who could enter. Who—’

‘And I chose you,’ he said. ‘We chose this marriage. Because we wanted the same things.Wantthe same things. No borrowed beds. No temporary places to find respite. We share a house where we understand—’

‘Each other?’ she asked.

‘I know you, and you know me,’ he said and never had anyone known her.

He was on her side, wasn’t he? They wanted the same things.Neededthem. A safe place they could share together where love had no home, but she did. She had a home.

She wanted this. This marriage. She wanted to stay. Stay where she had someone. Had him on her side.

‘I brought you here to show you, prove to you that I didn’t need our marriage to be a safe haven, that I had places I could come for that. But I have realised that although our marriage has never required it, although we have never wanted it before, we can be each other’s safe place.

‘It was safer before to leave the noise and other people outside. Because if I let them inside, if I learned their faces, learned their names, then they could leave. And them leaving would be too much. It was safer to not get attached. To keep them at arm’s length. I keptyouat arm’s length,’ he admitted.

‘You kept me at arm’s length?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, and I was wrong.’

‘Wrong?’

‘To shut you out,’ he confessed. ‘We are the same. Our needs are the same. We are no risk to each other. I can be your garden, Emma.’

He scowled. A thousand emotions flashed on his tightly drawn features. And she couldn’t read a single one.

‘Iamyour garden,’ he corrected, ‘and you are mine. Our marriage is the safe place. Our marriage is a safeguard against all we do not want. Love. Emotional attachment. We are each other’s safe place, Emma.’