Page 60 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

Leo planned to deliver what he had to say to Cassie in record time. He could have said what he wanted to say via email but curiosity had been too persistent.

What did she look like now? What was she doing?

Was she seeing anyone? Presumably not, because if she was she surely wouldn’t have come to him with her begging bowl.

What self-respecting man would allow his woman to ask favours from an old flame?

He would take his private plane to Vancouver and get a driver from there.

She had emailed him with every possible contact detail he could ask for, from her telephone numbers to her address.

Leo had thought long and hard about calling her but he wanted the element of surprise.

Why? It had been eight years, a lifetime ago, and during those years he had become a different man—tough, hard and, more to the point, successful beyond his wildest dreams.

He was complete and, if mistakes had been made in his youth, then surely he was over them by now?

Surely the pain and searing disillusionment had scarred over?

But, if that was the case, then why had that email from her, the first contact since he’d turned his back and walked away, had such an effect on him?

Why hadn’t he laughed and deleted it? Or replied with some casual, dismissive response?

Instead he’d sat on it for a week and allowed memories to infiltrate his mind and take him back to a time when he’d been a very different person from the one he was now.

They’d been so damned young when they’d first met.

She, only eighteen, the beauty queen born with a silver spoon in her mouth…

.and he, twenty-two, from the wrong side of the tracks with an immigrant father who could just about manage to make himself understood in English.

An immigrant father who’d worked all the hours under the sun so to make sure his one and only kid could have the new trainers, the new school uniform and the new backpack.

An immigrant who’d done his best to make up for the absence of a mother because his wife had upped and left him when Leo had barely been out of nappies.

Leo had grown up looking at the rich kids who went to the exclusive school by the lake, little knowing that, as the clocked ticked past, he would meet and fall for the richest girl there. The girl whose father had practically owned the small town where everybody knew everybody else.

Except no one had known about them. No one had known how they had met at one of her father’s construction sites where she’d been doing a something-and-nothing job during the long summer holidays.

He’d already been there, working with all the other builders, earning money because he’d had no choice but to study at night until he couldn’t keep his eyes open.

No one had known about that whirlwind eight-month courtship. Six-three, with killer looks and the hard body of someone used to heavy manual labour, Leo had already been experienced when it came to the opposite sex, but then he’d met Cassie and…

God, he’d fallen hook, line and sinker. He’d already had one foot in MIT.

He’d been accepted on a generous scholarship, had finally saved enough to cover his accommodation for at least a year and he had just…

stopped. For the first time in his life, he had heard the beating of his heart and he had listened to it.

He’d put drive and ambition on hold because he’d let her into his soul and had wanted to wait until she left high school.

They’d already made plans. Where she would go: somewhere close to MIT where she could go to culinary school.

What they would do together while they both studied…

He had let himself peer into a future that had never been on his radar.

He had forgotten the hurt he’d carried inside and the painful legacy of abandonment by his mother, never discussed but always felt.

He’d actually allowed himself to be vulnerable.

She’d enchanted him. She was tall with that dark, dark hair, blue, blue eyes, dimples whenever she laughed and that expression of delight, innocence and absolute joy and trust whenever she looked at him. For the first time in for ever, he had felt at peace with himself.

That brought bitter memories because even then, with all that adoration shining in her eyes and the soft words of love and devotion, she had known where she belonged—and it hadn’t been with a guy like him. All those thoughts had slammed into Leo as he had sat on that email and processed it.

From the luxury of his mansion in East Hampton, a glorious place sitting in twenty acres of prime land overlooking the Atlantic ocean, Leo had finally come to the conclusion that, while he was no fan of the unexpected, there was no denying that sometimes the unexpected could hold all sorts of appeal.

Such as now. For the first time in eight years, Leo was going to temporarily park the predictability of his highly organised, ordered, controlled life and take a little walk on the wild side, back into the past. If it hadn’t been buried properly, then this was surely going to be the opportunity to put the final shovels of earth on the grave and seal it up for good…

It was after five in the afternoon by the time Cassie and Frankie finished delivery to the Samsons and setting up the meal which Claudia Samson’s own staff would take over as soon as they left.

Cassie knew the couple well and so did Frankie.

They’d been to school with one of their kids who was now living in Europe and working in finance.

She’d phoned her mother, all prepped to head there straight from their job. She would spend a couple of hours, prepare one of the meals she had batch-cooked the week before and then head back home but, as it turned out, Mary Farraday was tired.

‘Darling, you should go out and have some fun,’ she had said. ‘It’s Saturday. You should be having a good time and not trekking over here to see me.’

‘Oh, I’m way too tired to go out with my can of red paint,’ Cassie had said airily. ‘The town will have to wait another week for me to decorate it.’

But, as she walked to her car, mobile phone pressed against her cheek while she fiddled in her bag for her car keys, Cassie couldn’t help but feel a certain amount of relief.

She was tired—one-achingly, brain-achingly tired.

Tired of the steady drag of financial worries as the house of cards continued to topple down around them at pace.

Tired of pretending to her mother that things were really not half as bad as they seemed and that every cloud had a silver lining.

Tired of trying to find ways and means of getting them out of the hole they were in.

How on earth would her mother cope if they lost the house?

As it was, Mary Farraday was becoming more and more anxious and panicked as she saw things being sold off to clear debts neither of them had known anything about.

It was heart-breaking. Just thinking about her mother was heart-breaking, come to think of it.

It was heart-breaking that her once proud parent—who only twelve years ago had set up the thriving animal shelter that had twice been featured on national television, had lectured at the nearby university and given dinner parties that had been the talk of the town—had been reduced to a shadow of herself.

Her multiple sclerosis, diagnosed all that time ago, was now so much worse. More often than not, she was so fatigued that she could barely walk for more than minutes at a time and the muscle spasms and stiffness which had come and gone were now mostly present, making a mockery of normal life.

The stress didn’t help.

‘Sure,’ Dr Lewis had said several weeks before, ‘A little low-level stress does no harm, but long-term or excessive stress… Well, you’d be surprised how much that can impact on your mother’s overall wellbeing.

Pain, fatigue and anxiety are all going to make everything seem and feel a lot worse.

I understand if I were you I would consider taking her on a little holiday—somewhere warm, perhaps.

You can take a couple of weeks away from catering, can’t you? ’

He’d patted her arm and smiled. ‘Let some of us slightly overweight residents do without your excellent food so that we can make way for the full Christmas onslaught.’ He’d looked at her thoughtfully. ‘And you look as though you could do with the break as well, Cassie.’

A little holiday somewhere warm could not be further out of her reach financially. However, Rob Lewis had no idea what was going on within the Farraday household, like everyone else in the town with the exception of Phil, the bank manager, who could be counted on to keep a secret.

She got into her car with her thoughts still messy and depressing.

It was busy. Christmas beckoned and it was the sort of town where every single person celebrated the festive season in flamboyant style.

In a week’s time, the big houses in the suburbs would be groaning under the weight of decorations, and no tree in any public place would be safe from a display of Christmas lights that would probably be visible from space.

The shops were now open for longer hours to cope with the start of the crazy spending season and, although it was freezing cold and dark, everywhere was buzzing.

It was a small town, a former logging and mining place, one of many such communities that were scattered across the vast lake which was the beating heart of the region.

In summer, the lake was a deep, dark blue of calm and the towns circling it were like a child’s drawings of pastel-coloured houses with green gardens sloping down to wide streets and trees everywhere.