Page 82 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8
Leo’s eyebrows shot up and he grinned. ‘I’ll put in an appearance tomorrow and then leave you to it. I have meetings to get back to by the middle of next week and, in actual fact, they do involve me crossing a few time zones, so the workaholic angle can genuinely stand up in court.’
His phone buzzed and he stood up and looked down at her.
‘Clothes are here.’
‘I’ll get your room ready.’ Cassie leapt to her feet as he was spinning round on his heels, heading to the door so that he could fetch whatever he had ordered.
‘Don’t lock me out,’ he threw over his shoulder. ‘“Fiancé spending the night in the snow” would be on par with “fiancé spending the night in a hotel”. Both options would be open to question if anyone found out, the only difference being one could see me in hospital with hypothermia.’
‘I won’t,’ she flung back at him. ‘And, if I’m not around when you get back in, I’ll be in bed!’
She threw a towel on the bed in the guest room and hurried to her own room, locking the door behind her, and then leaning against it for a few seconds because she needed to catch her breath.
This situation felt intimate and she wondered whether it was because she was going to be presenting him to her mother, that in double-quick time most people in the town would know about their phoney relationship or because just the notion of being engaged to this man made her heart flutter.
Or because there was still that thing, that dangerous chemistry, simmering just below the surface, undermining the polite conversation.
Determined to not give it any more head space, Cassie made sure not to emerge when she heard the distant click of her apartment door opening and the sound of his footsteps when they eventually padded past her bedroom.
The snow had picked up pace overnight. Cassie headed to the kitchen at a little past eight the following morning to find Leo up and sitting at the kitchen counter in front of his laptop, with a mug of coffee and a plate with a half-eaten piece of toast on it next to him.
He was in a pair of black jogging bottoms and a black jumper, and he’d obviously had a shower, because his dark hair was still slightly damp.
She had her own en suite , and had never been more relieved about that, because she couldn’t imagine how embarrassing it would have been for them to bump into one another en route to the bathroom—even though they had been lovers recently.
It made no sense, but then neither did the tumult of her emotions.
He looked up as soon as she entered.
‘Hope you don’t mind…’
‘Making yourself at home?’ Cassie tilted her head to one side and folded her arms. ‘Not at all. I don’t suppose you’ve made yourself sufficiently at home to do the ironing, have you?’
Leo burst out laughing, which brought warm colour to her cheeks, and she turned away to make some breakfast for herself. The same as his—toast and coffee.
‘I try and avoid household chores like that.’
‘Why is that?’
‘When time is money, a guy can’t afford to let household chores get much of a look-in. Doesn’t make financial sense.’
‘Of course.’ Cassie sat next to him with a decent distance between them and was very conscious of him manoeuvring the bar stool so that he could look at her as she ate.
In turn, she grudgingly angled her own stool so that she felt less like a goldfish in a bowl, inspected while she munched her toast. ‘I’m guessing you rope girlfriends in to do it for you, while you lock yourself in your home office so that you can start work at six on a Sunday morning? ’
‘Is this in keeping with the “workaholic” storyline you had prepared as part of the reason for our unfortunate break-up?’ His expression was shuttered. ‘Just for the record, women and household chores don’t make good bedfellows, as far as I’m concerned.’
He thought of Aimee, who had done her utmost to move in with him, and who had conveniently forgotten personal possessions at his penthouse in Manhattan, as though marking territory she wanted to permanently occupy.
He had broken the news of his ‘engagement’ to her last night and, when she’d laughed and told him that she didn’t believe him, he hadn’t hesitated to tell her the story of the girl he had once loved and lost but who was now back in his life.
Even to his own ears, it had sounded like a cheesy tale.
‘I’m back in the little town in Canada I used to call home,’ he had said gently, but with steel in his voice and with the right level of wistfulness which, oddly, was a little like how he’d felt.
It had surprised him, because he wasn’t the sentimental sort.
‘And you know what they say about the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach?
Cassie Farraday, my fiancée, is the resident town chef, and she’s done the impossible and captured my heart.
Although, I might add, she’s managed that through more than just her cooking. ’
The conversation had lasted fifteen minutes.
Finally, he’d had enough and had abruptly told her that it was time for her to let go.
‘I can’t keep telling you to step out of my life, Aimee,’ he’d said flatly.
‘You need to stop obsessing over me. I’m more than happy to pay for therapy for you but, in the meantime, any more texts, phone calls, emails or showing up at my place is going to be met a lot more robustly.
‘Put it this way—I don’t want to have to get a court order to keep you at bay.
If you imagine damaging my reputation for the sake of payback would make me lose any sleep, then you’re way off the mark.
But consider what you might lose if word got out that I had to take out a restraining order against you. ’
Leo surfaced with a frown from his internal meanderings and reverted to what he’d been talking about. ‘If I want home-cooked food, I’m very happy to pay for someone to prepare it in their own home or kitchens and deliver it to me.’
‘Mum’s going to be very surprised at the guy you’ve become,’ Cassie mused lightly.
Leo purred with silky confidence. ‘Oh, she will be, when I lay on the charm.’
‘Which you won’t be doing.’
‘The opposite of being low key isn’t being an arrogant bore,’ Leo returned smoothly. ‘I don’t think your mother will buy you falling for some guy who dominates the conversation by shouting everyone else down.’
Cassie felt that familiar, warm tug of shared humour, something that had always been there between them.
‘You’re impossible, Leo. Just, please try and be as invisible as you can and leave all the talking to me, or at least most of it.
I’ll signal when you can chip in. We don’t want to… What we don’t want is…’
‘Don’t worry. We’ll find the right balance and maintain the charade until it quietly fizzles out. Now, what time are we going? The snow’s not abating.’
‘Mum’s invited me over for lunch but we can get there earlier. Then we can leave as soon as we’ve eaten. She’ll understand; you remember how much the weather here in winter dictates what people do.’
‘In which case, if you could let me have your Wi-Fi password, I can get some work done. Time waits for no man.’
‘It actually waits for quite a few of them who don’t live life in the fast lane,’ Cassie retorted, standing up to fetch the card with her Internet details that she kept on her fridge door. ‘You can use my office—it’s at the end of the hall—and then maybe we could leave by eleven?’
Leo stood up, reached out and circled her arm with his fingers, pulling her ever so slightly towards him,
‘And are those the types you like?’ he drawled in a low, husky voice.
Cassie blinked. Her brain was suddenly addled at the red-hot touch of his fingers on her, burning through her top and lighting her up from the inside out.
‘The types I like…?’
‘The ones who don’t live life in the fast lane.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Liar.’ Leo’s voice was soft and amused, and his eyes burnt into her, dark, intense and penetrating through the mask she was wearing so that she felt suddenly exposed with nowhere to hide her feelings.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You’re way too outspoken to settle for Mr Nice Guy. Learn from the last one you dispatched—you’d eat him alive. Even as a girl you knew how to keep me on my toes, and I have never been nice .’
‘You enjoyed me keeping you on your toes, Leo,’ she riposted without skipping a beat. ‘If your advice is to steer clear from nice guys like my ex, does that mean you’re volunteering for the role of the bad boy in my life, Leo?’
In a rush, Leo was catapulted back through time to when marrying this woman was all he’d been able to think about—having her to himself and doing all the stuff he’d never thought he’d have time for, such as having kids and settling down…becoming house-trained.
Those plans had crashed and burned, and lessons had been learnt.
So why was he standing here now, wondering ?
He shifted, raked his fingers through his hair and reminded himself that this charade was a convenient ploy to get rid of his ex once and for all.
He wasn’t going to drift back into any situation that would make him vulnerable.
He was well beyond any weakness like that, even though there were times when the past felt perilously hypnotic and the present woefully empty.
‘I don’t do the happy-ever-after, story-book romance,’ he said, abruptly releasing her arm and turning away. ‘Let’s park that particular notion and I’ll see you in a few hours when we’re ready to leave.’