Page 88 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8
His father had described a woman who had been immature, selfish and narcissistic—the polar opposite of Cassie. Leo had turned his back on the woman who loved him because he had put her in the same category as his mother instead of seeing her as the wonderful individual she was.
He was the last person she wanted to see standing here now and he couldn’t blame her.
The little carrier bag in his hand felt incredibly weighty.
This was the second time in his life he had felt helpless in the face of something overwhelming.
The first time had been eight years ago when they’d broken up.
He’d closed himself off then, determined never to feel that way again, but now he knew that feeling this way wasn’t dangerous.
Feeling this way, vulnerable and exposed, didn’t make him weak.
He’d spent years shutting away his emotions and that had made him empty and dead inside.
Cassie had come back to him and she had turned a key and opened him up but, instead of embracing the feeling of being alive, he had been so damn scared that he had turned his back on it.
He had told himself that he couldn’t allow anything to have the potential to hurt him the way he had been hurt as a child.
He’d been a blind fool. He had ignored all the signposts telling him what he should have known a while back because he had known it for what it was: love.
Love that had never gone away. Love that had lain dormant, just waiting for the only woman he had ever given his heart to to return and reclaim it.
‘You’re staring at me.’
‘Where’s your mum?’
‘She’s right behind you.’
Leo turned around and, sure enough, Mary Farraday had come out to see what was going on. She was smiling broadly, walking towards him with her arms outstretched in warm greeting.
Behind him, Leo could almost hear Cassie’s soft, despairing intake of breath.
He heard himself chatting, explaining away whatever important work situation Cassie had come up with that had supposedly demanded his immediate attention, telling her that he realised that there was no work situation as important as being here.
Mary bustled ahead of them and he turned when Cassie tugged him back and, coldly and furiously, demanded, ‘What are you playing at?’
Their eyes clashed, hers bright and angry, his tentative, measured, determined and tender.
Cassie breathed in sharply and stumbled back.
‘You’re…you’re not meant to be here, screwing up my plans,’ she began, suddenly thrown by something in his eyes she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but refusing to trust instincts that had previously let her down.
She could feel the heat emanating from him.
Where had he spent the past few nights? What had he been doing—seeing who else was out there, what other fish there were in the sea?
‘If you’ve come for your precious laptop,’ she snapped, suddenly remembering that it was still in her apartment, ‘Then you can have the keys to my place. Feel free to let yourself in, get it and then disappear. Mum has a spare.’
‘I don’t care about my laptop.’
‘Then what…?’
‘Please, Cass. Let’s go through with your mother. She’ll only come back out in a minute if we don’t.’
‘Only,’ she returned tightly, ‘If you can promise that you’ll let me do this my way.’
‘I will on the proviso that you look, just look , at what I’ve brought with me and hear me out.’
‘You’re not in a position to make any provisos, Leo.’ She sucked in a painful breath.
‘I know and I’m… Well, Cassie, you could say I’m begging you to just give me ten minutes of your time.’
Cassie felt it again—a stupid, stupid urge to trust what her gut was telling her. To soften and open up to the same guy who had rejected her and then headed out into the snow because it had been better than being with her after what she’d said to him.
She stormed off towards the sitting room but she could feel his presence right behind her.
If he carried on with the charm offensive, then where was that going to leave her?
She wondered whether his ex was demanding proof of his engagement.
Was that it? Was that why he’d come back here—because it suited him to prolong the narrative?
Just the thought of it flung her right back into a righteous fury. But, still, she managed to pin a smile to her face as she led Leo through to where her mother waited and politely offered him coffee.
He declined. Instead, he sat forward with his arms resting loosely on his thighs and looked at them. Cassie cleared her throat while her mother watched in expectant silence…deafening silence…
Heart beating like a sledgehammer, she watched him reach into the carrier bag he had brought with him with hands just a little unsteady and pull out a little black box. He stretched out to where Cassie was sitting and handed it to her.
‘What’s this?’ Cassie asked suspiciously, even though she still had that frozen smile pinned to her face for her mother’s sake.
‘Open it.’
Her mother glanced at the box with a beaming smile.
‘You know what it is, Cassie, darling!’
She knew what it was. She just didn’t know why he had given it to her. Was this some kind of joke? Fingers trembling, she opened the box and stared down at the perfect engagement ring. It was unfussy, unpretentious, just like her. The solitaire diamond glittered.
Cassie looked at him sitting there looking anxious, perspiring, and then she did give in to her gut instinct, which was telling her that this was the real deal, that what he felt was the real deal.
It was there on his tense face, in the love she could see in his eyes, and she allowed herself a tremulous smile.
Leo moved forward and went down on one knee.
‘I don’t think I did this properly, did I, Cass, when it came to this engagement of ours?
’ He smiled crookedly and the look that passed between them was for her eyes only.
‘So I’m going to try and set the record straight now and do it right, from the very bottom of my heart.
Will you marry me? Because I’m in love with you and I can’t think of life without you.
The sooner you’re my wife, the happier I’ll be. ’
The world disappeared as he waited for her to speak but he knew that she would be his because of the smile on her face, a smile that mirrored his. The touch of her hand on his cheek made him tremble and he clasped it and kissed her palm.
‘I love you so much, Leo,’ Cassie whispered, still smiling as he tenderly slipped the ring on her finger. ‘And I can’t wait to be your wife…at last.’
Lucia Mary Cruz was born nearly a year later. Leo had looked at his daughter, plump at a little over eight pounds with her mop of dark, curly hair, hands balled into fists and lashes that Cassie told him definitely came from him, and his heart had wanted to burst.
He had never thought about fatherhood but, then again, he had never thought about a lot of things being within his grasp until he’d met Cassie, first as a kid and then as a man who’d thought he had it all figured out: having a fling to finally kill feelings that hadn’t been snuffed out, to forget the one woman who had meant everything to him once upon a time.
He hadn’t banked on lust camouflaging a love that had never died.
He’d never seen himself as capable of handing his heart over to someone else, but he had, and now…
Lucia was three months old and as beautiful and as laid back as her mother. Cassie was curled up on the sofa watching television with their baby breastfeeding lustily, little chubby legs kicking. Her head was resting on his shoulder and he nuzzled into her hair and felt her smile.
‘Have I ever told you how happy you make me?’ he murmured. ‘You and Lucia?’
‘I think you may have done, just once or twice.’
‘I can’t say it often enough, my darling.’ He felt the sting of tears behind his eyes as he gazed at his daughter’s head bobbing as she fed. ‘You’ve made my life worth living and I would be no one without the two of you.’
Cassie gently manoeuvred herself so that she could angle her eyes to meet his.
‘Leo, my darling…it’s the same for me. It feels as though we’re here now because of a series of unexpected events but…’
‘But…’ he finished the sentence for her ‘…we were always meant to be, and we would always have found one another just the way we did, because we belong together. Now and for ever.’