Page 62 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

CHAPTER TWO

H ALF AN HOUR ?

There was no time to have a shower and change, even though that was what Cassie would dearly like to have done. She could barely think straight but at least a shower and a change of clothes might have put her in a more composed frame of mind.

Leo! Here, back in the sleepy town he had vacated so hastily, leaving her alone with her misery, her guilt and her sadness.

She could remember that text she had sent him as though she’d sent it yesterday.

A final goodbye—after all the plans they’d made and the dreams they’d shared, she’d walked away because she’d had no choice.

Cassie rested her head on the steering wheel and closed her eyes as the winter cold seeped around her and settled.

She didn’t want to think about what had happened between them.

She had felt so confused and helpless at the time, torn in a thousand different directions.

Leo had been the one guy who could have given her the support she’d needed, her rock for eight of the sweetest months of her life—but of course he had been the problem, so confiding in him had been impossible. She had done what she’d had to do.

It would take twenty minutes to make it back to town and to the Imperial, which was the nicest hotel for miles. On the spur of the moment, she phoned her mother from the car, turning on the engine just to get a little warmth circulating.

‘You don’t sound yourself, Cassie,’ Mary said after she’d talked about how she had spent the day.

‘Mum…’ Cassie hesitated. She was an only child and had always been very close to her parents; she had always confided in her mother until she’d met Leo and discovered that there were limits to how much she could ever tell someone else, especially an over-protective parent.

Now, though, she would dearly have loved to tell her about Leo and the nightmare on her doorstep, but she had gone from child to protector the minute her dad had died.

Telling her mother about Leo would open up the can of worms that would lead to disclosing the disastrous state of the family finances, and that in turn would ratchet up her mother’s stress levels, and she didn’t need that.

‘Darling?’

‘It’s…it’s nothing.’

‘You sound exhausted. Was the catering job more complicated than you expected? I know Claudia Samson and she’s never been able to make her mind up about anything.’ Mary chuckled. ‘I’ll bet she made so many changes to the menu that you and Frankie were cooking up to the last minute.’

‘She asked after you. She really wants to come and see you.’

‘And she can, just as soon as I feel…my old self again.’

‘You keep saying that. Honestly, your friends know the situation. They’re all so sympathetic.’

‘I do see Martha and Elizabeth.’

‘Yes, you do. And that’s great.’

Cassie ended the call soon after. It was hard to tell the exact moment when she had become her mother’s protector, always careful to put her mental wellbeing ahead of her own and gradually giving up on ever returning to that place where again she might find her mother back able to provide support when she needed it.

When she looked at the clock on the dashboard, it was to see that she would at least not arrive early to meet Leo. Early would equal ‘desperate’. The call to her mother had, however, clarified the road she knew she had to take, whether she liked it or not.

Her mum was so proud that she had even retreated from the vibrant friendship group she’d had for over forty years.

Yes, she kept in touch with a couple of friends from childhood, but Cassie knew that she didn’t want to look feeble and reduced to too many others.

She had gone from the society belle of the ball to a woman who could no longer control her own movements, who forgot stuff and who had lost her confidence.

To lose the roof over her head would kill every last shred of pride she had left and Cassie wasn’t going to put her through that, not if there was the slightest chance she could prevent it.

So, whether it stuck in her throat or not, she was going to go and see Leo, and she was going to lower her eyes and beg.

There was no more any bank could do for her but Leo, a billionaire, now…

he could help without anything leaking into the public domain and, if he chose to make her pay in blood, then pay in blood she would.

‘Shall I keep the room clear for you, sir?’

Leo looked at the manager of the hotel and wondered whether the old man recognised him.

It had been a long time ago, but was there a vague recollection in that fuzzy brain somewhere of a young lad of twenty-one who had once asked for a glass of water from the kitchens?

He’d been told that he couldn’t enter through the main lobby, that he was to return to the extension the team were building and wait for refreshments to be sent out in due course.

Their clientele wouldn’t take kindly to a sweaty labourer in the foyer. He should know better …

‘Until I say otherwise,’ Leo murmured. ‘It’s Jenkins, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir.’ The old guy reddened and smiled, clearly in awe of the mega-rich guy who was sitting in the chair by the bay window, his long legs extended and loosely crossed at the ankles.

‘Do you remember me?’

‘Should I sir?’

Leo hesitated.

‘No.’ He smiled. ‘It was a long time ago and I was just passing through. I realise this might be an inconvenience for you, but I want privacy and, like I said, you’ll be more than adequately compensated for your trouble.

By the way, arrange for another bottle of wine to be brought along with the best you have to offer by way of something to snack on.

Lobster and crayfish would work for me.’

‘Of course, sir.’

Leo remained where he was as the old guy shuffled his way out of the room.

Hearing Cassie’s voice again… He couldn’t believe that he was still affected by it. He presumed that that was a simple case of the past colliding with the present, creating rose-tinted glass with a prism through which everything seemed distorted.

He knew that the minute he saw her reality would kick in hard because she wouldn’t be the young girl he’d fallen for.

The young girl who had given her virginity to him and at the same time bestowed on him the most earth-shattering sex he had ever experienced.

That was a joke, really, when it had been followed up by her walking away without a backward glance.

He was sipping his wine, half-looking at the door, half-gazing out at the spectacular view, when he heard the faintest sound of approaching footsteps and every muscle in his body tensed in automatic anticipation.

He shifted, watching as the door was gently pushed open and then…there she was.

She was still leggy, that hair longer now than it had been, but just as dark… He saw that intensely pretty face and those eyes with the long, long sooty lashes…eyes that used to slide sideways at him, giving small, shy glances that had stoked his libido to fever-pitch.

For everything he had gone through as a child; for all the sadness he had endured at his mother’s abandonment, the questions he’d asked his dad when he’d been five, six and seven…

For all the hardness that had settled inside him as he had come to understand just how badly his father had been affected by his mother leaving him…

For all that, it was the woman hovering in the doorway now who had made him the man he was today.

She’d taught him the most valuable lesson he’d ever learned, one he should have learned from his own fractured background: that control was everything. She had been the final nail in the coffin when it came to his view of people, the world and life in general.

He’d broken his own rule and had dared to love and open up to someone and in return…?

‘So you made it.’ He looked at her, not moving a muscle, his arms hanging loosely over the arms of the chair, his body language advertising someone utterly relaxed.

‘And on time, as well. Come in, Cassie. Don’t stand there hovering in the doorway—close the door behind you.

I thought that, as this was the grand meeting after eight years, I’d make sure the room was cleared for us.

If memory serves me right about this place, nothing ever gets past the gossip-spreading grapevine for very long. ’

She was wearing a pair of faded jeans, trainers, a worn striped jumper and a thick coat which she had removed but was hanging onto for dear life, along with a backpack that could have accommodated the kitchen sink and then some.

She’d tugged her long hair over one shoulder and it hung in a tangled dark mass over her breasts, reaching almost to her waist.

She looked older, more careworn, and yet somehow just as fresh-faced and young as he remembered her. Just as impossibly sexy, and he’d dated enough catwalk models to be an efficient judge of female beauty.

There had always been something about her that went beyond bone structure and body type. It was something about the expression on her face, the timbre of her husky voice and the way she smiled that could make a person feel a thousand feet tall.

Not that he needed any of those attributes now.

Too much water had flowed under that bridge.

If he wanted to feel a thousand feet tall, he had the proverbial little black book stuffed with candidates who would fall over each other to audition for the role of companion for the night.

He would never need any such thing, though, because he was emotionally impregnable.

He would hear her out and bid his goodbyes, having put his curiosity to rest.

Yet, for all that, Leo could still feel the unwilling drift of his eyes over her lithe body, the full breasts pushing against her jumper and the length of her legs. He could remember the feel of her as though he’d touched her only minutes ago.

‘Sit or go, Cassie,’ he said, shifting to adjust to the alarming physical response.