Dani Collins - Modern Romance March 2019 5-8

Not gratitude, but the last thing he had expected was her spitting fury!

Flora compressed her lips. ‘No harm at all if you live in the nineteenth century,’ she agreed with a smile that aimed for provocation, and if the tightening of the muscles around his mouth was any indication she succeeded.

‘Ever heard of delegation?’

‘Ever heard of consultation?’ she retorted, planting her hands on her hips as her chin lifted another defiant notch. ‘Ground rules, Ivo, where Jamie is concerned I make the decisions. Is that clear?’

The look of astonishment that flickered across his incredibly handsome face might have been funny in other, less fraught, circumstances.

‘Was that an ultimatum ?’ he grated, clinging to his temper.

‘Excellent,’ she approved. ‘You’re catching on. It’s possible you’re not as stupid as you look.’ About halfway through she sort of knew she’d gone too far, but she was on a roll and couldn’t stop. She knew she was shaking; it was always that way when she let her anger get the better of her.

He didn’t say a word, he just looked down at her. The colour that had flamed in her face had faded, leaving it washed pale; her eyes were blue pools, the defiance in them now tinged with wariness. With no warning his anger snuffed out.

She looked so tired but she was so stubborn. In his head an image materialised of him holding her until the stiff rigidity in her shoulders dissolved, she dissolved against him, warm and... He gave his head a sharp jarring shake to dislodge the image and the emotions that went with it.

‘I was trying to help, but if you enjoy being in a state of permanent exhaustion—fine!’ he said, wrapping up his misplaced concern in irritation. ‘Your choice. But for God’s sake sit down before you fall down!’

Flora did, not because she was grateful for his reminder that she looked awful, but because her knees were shaking in reaction to the emotional confrontation. Probably the first of many, Flora girl, so you need to toughen up.

‘I should have discussed it with you.’

The concession made her eyes widen.

‘But I just assumed...’

‘What, that babies have an army of nannies and live in nurseries?’

‘I did,’ he said.

‘And look how well that turned out!’

He responded to her soft taunt with a grin that literally took her breath away. Wow, if Ivo Greco decided to seduce a girl she’d be seduced, Flora realised, no if, but or even maybe.

In her anxiety to push away the thoughts and the insidious warmth unfurling low in her belly and confusing rush of feeling that came with it, she said the first thing that came into her head, a question that was already there but she’d never intended actually to ask.

‘How old were you when your parents died?’

His smile vanished to be replaced by a more familiar hauteur. She bent her head, waiting; she could almost smell the chilly put-down coming her way.

It didn’t come.

‘I was a few months old when my mother died.’ Her head came up with a snap. ‘She was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was pregnant, but she delayed treatment until after I was born... So you could say I killed her.’

His father had.

He’d apologised the next day, tears streaming down his face as he’d said over and over, ‘I didn’t mean it.’

It was not a memory he accessed voluntarily, though the smell of stale alcohol on someone’s breath always brought the moment back.

‘Only if you were a total idiot!’ she retorted, hotly indignant—furious! Surely no one would allow a child to think that? To potentially carry that sort of guilt through life and into adulthood?

Eyes misted, she turned her head sharply, embarrassed by the emotions that threatened to find release in tears, emotions that only intensified as her eyes drifted towards the figure of the sleeping baby.

She might never know what it felt like to hold her own baby but she could imagine—imagine being willing to give anything for the life you had created.

‘I remember my dad,’ she said to fill the silence that was growing. ‘Though it’s hard to know when the memories are mine and when they are stories mum and Sami told me, if you know what I mean.’

‘Our father didn’t tell us stories. He drank and he wept, spent weeks in bed and then he killed himself because he couldn’t live without her.’ And you are telling her this why , Ivo?

The fact that this tragic information was delivered in a tone that was totally devoid of any emotion made it all the more shocking.

Flora’s tender heart ached in her chest; she hurt for the boy he’d been, the pain real.

‘Poor man,’ she whispered, thinking of poor boys left to be brought up by an army of nannies and a grandfather who, if the Internet opinion of him was even half true, was not exactly warm and cuddly. Flora was really trying hard to reserve judgement, but it wasn’t easy.

‘Poor man...’ Ivo ground out the words as he surged to his feet.

Flora sat still and silent. His intimidating height advantage was emphasised even more than normal by the confined environment. ‘I just meant—’

‘ Weak man,’ he bit back in a clear, cold, contemptuous voice before dark lashes veiled the anger and pain she had glimpsed in his eyes and he delivered the abrupt addition. ‘To allow a child to find him—’ He stopped, an arrested expression stealing across his face as if he had just realised what he had said.

‘You... you found him?’

His face was wiped clean of all emotion as he met her tear-filled gaze; everything inside him rejected the one thing he hated above all else: pity. ‘I have work. Anything you want...’

And he was gone, striding into the next compartment of the private jet, leaving Flora wondering about the revealing moment and the little boy scared by seeing something no child should.

‘WOULD AN OFFER of help get my head bitten off?’ Ivo was all for self-sufficiency, but she took it into the realm of the ridiculous.

Flora, who hadn’t heard him come up behind her as she tucked the baby into his buggy and adjusted his sun hat, gave a startled jump at the sound of his voice at her shoulder.

She didn’t realise how disturbingly close he was until she straightened up and half turned, finding they were standing almost touching. The sensation that made her head spin sizzled along her nerve endings and sent her stomach into a violent dip.

Her eyes made the slow journey from mid-chest level up to his lean, dark face. There was no trace of the emotions that had blazed earlier in his enigmatic stare; his expression was inscrutable.

But now she had glimpsed past the mask she couldn’t help but wonder what else his impregnable shell of control hid besides a toxic relationship with his late father.

None of your business, Flora girl. He’s not your business. The romance is fake. It’s not your job to understand him or heal him. He’d laugh in your face at the idea he needs healing .

And maybe, she mused, he was right.

His voice cut across her internal dialogue.

‘Well, are you?’

She looked at him blankly. ‘Nervous?’

It wasn’t what he’d asked and if he was honest not something he had even considered. The acknowledgement came with a stab of guilt tinged with irritation. He didn’t need to change. He didn’t want to change. Any changing and compromise would be hers to do. Dio , why the hell did she have to be so in touch with her feelings about everything anyway? he wondered, ignoring the fact that it was this aspect of her personality—the soft heart, the desire to put the needs of others above her own—that he was relying on to deliver his nephew into his care.