Page 78 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

She groaned and walked towards the door on the third ring of her buzzer.

Whoever it was wasn’t going away. Outside the flurries were picking up pace, which made her think that she would need more time to deliver two catering jobs in two days than she and Frankie had factored in, not to mention also needing a minor miracle on the weather front.

Driving was difficult in poor conditions, and the snow in this part of the world tended to pile up in great white mounds which meant that there were many times when there was just too much to clear.

Cassie pressed her intercom and then froze when she heard a familiar dark, sexy voice telling her to open up and let him in.

Leo was the last man she’d expected to be standing outside.

The last man she’d expected and also the very last man she wanted to see.

Her heartbeat quickened and a wave of panic and nausea washed over her.

Her thoughts raced, becoming a tangled mess that made her feel faint.

‘Leo…’

‘Open up, Cassie. It’s snowing outside and I’m not dressed for it.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘What do you think I’m doing? Here’s a clue: I’m not passing through and just deciding to drop in and say hi. Now, open up.’

‘Leo…’

‘I’m not going until you let me in, Cass. We need to talk and I’m guessing by your prevarication that you know exactly what we need to talk about.’

Cassie sucked in a shaky breath and buzzed him in.

It was nearly seven in the evening. She was dressed in thick tracksuit bottoms and a long-sleeved tee-shirt and, frankly, it couldn’t have been a worse time for him to have showed up on her doorstep. She felt under-dressed and under-prepared for what she knew was coming.

But he’d been knocking on her door before she’d had time to do anything about either of those worries. She drew in a long breath, counted to ten and then pulled open the door with a rictus grin that wouldn’t have fooled anyone.

‘Cassie.’

‘Hi, Leo.’ It was as if she was seeing him for the first time in all his sinful, devastating beauty, as tall, as dark and as mesmerising as she remembered—more, if anything. ‘This is a surprise. I wasn’t expecting to see you…er…’

‘I know,’ Leo murmured soothingly. ‘But life is full of unexpected surprises, or at least it certainly seems that way ever since you re-entered my life. Can I come in or shall we have this conversation with me standing on the threshold?’

Leo didn’t take his eyes off her flushed face.

He could all but see the word guilt writ large on her forehead in bright neon lettering. He’d actually debated whether to show up on her doorstep or phone her to discuss the very interesting piece of information that had landed in his lap but it had been a very quick inner debate.

He’d wanted to see her. In fact, for the entire trip back here, his mind had been exclusively occupied with thoughts of her and he had to admit that he hadn’t exactly complained at the prospect of showing up unannounced.

It also helped that his ex had demanded a meeting with him to ‘talk things through’.

Coming here had been very handy, given the fact that talking to Aimee was the last thing he wanted to do.

He’d already had two conversations with her, being polite but firm, and he might as well have talked to a brick wall.

Under any other circumstances, he wouldn’t have dreamt of showing up unannounced on a woman’s doorstep at night, in the depths of winter, but Cassie…

She’d been his lover not so long ago and, as things stood, well, this was definitely a conversation to have face to face, where he could see exactly what she was thinking.

She was wearing some old clothes—grey jogging bottoms in some kind of fleecy material and a long-sleeved tee-shirt that reminded him very forcibly of just how beautiful her breasts were and just how much he could lose himself in them with agonising speed.

Leo shifted.

‘I suppose you should come in, but I wish you’d called in advance, Leo.’ Her voice was grudging and wary.

‘Is that what we are now, Cass—strangers making appointments to see one another? I’m disappointed.’

He briefly noted the heightened colour in her cheeks and brushed past her into a light, airy space that was bigger than he’d expected, and perfectly proportioned.

It was a modern apartment, tastefully done on two levels with airy rooms and an open-plan layout.

The block was horizontal rather than vertical and fronted with a generous circular courtyard that was currently turning white under the snow.

‘Terrible weather outside.’ He strolled around the apartment, unashamedly taking in the framed family photos on the modern bookshelf with its pale unevenly spaced shelves, the paintings and the rich colours of the comfortable seating.

As he walked, he divested himself of his charcoal-grey cashmere overcoat, dropping it over the back of one of the chairs, before ambling to the living room window to stare outside at the now thickly falling snow.

When he eventually turned around to look at her, she was standing in the same position with her arms folded.

‘You’re not exactly giving me a warm welcome here, Cass.’

‘I’m just curious as to why you’ve shown up.’

‘Nice try.’ He raised his eyebrows and grinned. ‘I would have enjoyed a little more small talk before cutting to the chase, especially given our new-found relationship…’

‘We don’t have a new-found relationship .’

‘That’s very hurtful after our many lazy, hot, passionate encounters in my villa.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Admittedly, at the agreed time our week came to an end, but I would still say that it’s a lot more of a relationship than we had eight-odd years before that.

’ But there was something under her bravado; Leo could sense it in the way she couldn’t quite meet his gaze and how her fingers were biting into the soft flesh of her arms—no surprise there.

‘And,’ he continued, heading towards the living area which occupied a pleasant spot next to a bank of windows that overlooked the area at the back, ‘It seems that our new-found relationship isn’t quite as dead as I’d thought.’

He sat on the sofa and patted the space next to him.

‘In fact, it seems that it’s very much alive and kicking, although I’m disappointed that my wife-to-be hasn’t seen fit to tell me about our engagement herself…’

Of course, the second she’d heard his disembodied voice on the other end of her intercom, she’d known exactly why he’d shown up.

‘So you found out. You weren’t meant to,’ she muttered.

‘Really? Pretty major situation to keep under wraps, wouldn’t you say?’

‘How did you find out, anyway? And really, considering you live a million miles away, I thought… I assumed, naturally, that…’

‘That I would be none the wiser?’

‘Something like that.’

‘It’s been a long day for me. Actually, a long and restless night as well, bearing in mind that I couldn’t remember for the life of me when I was supposed to have proposed to you. Care to bring me up to speed?’

‘I know you must be furious,’ Cassie managed with as much defiance as she could muster. She shuffled to one of the chairs facing him because the last place she fancied sitting was right next to him on the sofa.

‘I’m too shell-shocked to be furious.’

‘I suppose I should get you something to drink,’ Cassie said, resigned now to the inevitable and without the faintest notion of where things were going to end up—not in a happy place, was her prediction.

‘Excellent idea. Let’s skip the tea or coffee, though. I think something a little stronger would work, at least for me.’

‘I have some wine.’

‘Why not? Great apartment, by the way. Was this also on the chopping block before I came to your financial rescue?’

‘Can you please stop being sarcastic?’

‘I’m finding it hard to be casual and amiable in a situation like this. It’s not every day I find out that I’m about to become a married man. Okay, Cass, tell me how all of this happened.’

He followed her into the kitchen, which was separated from the main area by a long island under which three bar stools were neatly tucked.

He pulled one out, sat down and looked at her as she went to the fridge, opened it, took her time fetching the wine and then pouring them a glass each.

‘I haven’t eaten,’ she prevaricated.

‘Nor have I.’

‘I have some leftovers from the last catering job. Nothing fancy—finger food that wasn’t quite perfect enough to be presented.’

‘Suits me. Cassie, look at me for a minute.’

Cassie looked at him reluctantly. On the one hand, he hadn’t hit the roof.

On the other hand, maybe it was a slow burn and he was building up to it.

He certainly wasn’t going to be overjoyed with what she’d thrown at him, considering he’d been more than happy to see the back of her when their week had come to an end.

She paused and looked at him as instructed, but with cautious, narrowed eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, clearing her throat. ‘Like I said, you weren’t meant to find out.’

‘What I’m hearing is not that you’re sorry you dragged me unwittingly into a deception of which I was completely unaware but that you’re just sorry I happened to find out about it.’

‘Maybe.’

‘I’m not going to explode, so you don’t have to look as though you need to be dodging bullets,’ Leo told her wryly. ‘It is what it is and now it’s a case of what happens next. So, first and foremost, what happened?’

Cassie sighed in painful, grudging resignation.

‘Mum found out about us. Your name was on the bank transfer. Lord knows, she must have been eagle eyed to have spotted it. So she put two and two together and came to exactly the right conclusion, which was that my week away “sorting out the finances” was a deal I’d done with you that involved… involved…’

‘Lazy nights and even lazier mornings and a lot of hot sex?’

‘She was absolutely horrified.’

Cassie could feel tears welling up when she remembered her mother’s crushed, shocked and disappointed expression.