Page 215 of Modern Romance October 2025 5-8

Dante reached down and pressed a kiss to his grandmother’s cheeks.

‘I’m glad you came home, my darling. It never feels quite right without you.’ Then, turning to Charlotte, ‘And I am very pleased to meet you, Charlotte. You are quite lovely and I can see for myself how happy you make him. It has been a long time since he’s been happier. I’ve wondered, sometimes, if he’d ever—,’

Charlotte felt Dante bristle beside her.

‘But no matter. He is happy now and you must hurry up and get married, so I can once again feel a baby San Marino in my arms.’ She clapped her hands together, totally unaware of the way Dante seemed to have almost stopped breathing. But Charlotte was. She felt it. She saw it. She justknewthe throwaway line was wreaking havoc with his senses. ‘I’m not getting any younger, you know,’ she waggled a finger in their faces, laughed, and turned, leaving them alone on the terrace—Dante with a face that was ashen beneath his tan and eyes that swept shut just as soon as he could be sure his grandmother would not notice.

‘Dante?’ she moved to stand in front of him. ‘Are you okay?’

He almost seemed to sway. She wondered, briefly, if he might be about to faint and quickly did the calculations on how someone of her size and stature might save a falling Dante from cracking his head against the ground.

But a moment later, he opened his eyes and seemed to stare right through Charlotte, almost like she didn’t exist. ‘I’m fine.’ His smile was tight and dismissive, ice-cold and laced with rejection. It was in such stark contrast to the way he’d been looking at her whilst Allegra put them through their paces. Like the sun being rolled over by thick, grey storm clouds. She couldn’t help but shiver.

‘You don’t look—,’

‘I said, I’m fine. I just need a breather from all that fakery. I’ll get Rosaria to show you to the pool house. Excuse me.’

‘The pool house’ was a heck of a misnomer, if ever there’d been one, Charlotte thought, as the housekeeper—a woman in perhaps her late fifties—showed Charlotte through the grounds. It was a short walk from the main house, over a red brick path that was lined on either side by lushly overgrown lavender bushes, fragrant with their bristly purple flowers reaching towards the sky. She reached for one as she passed, lifting it to her lips and trying to take some kind of comfort from the familiar scent. Her mother had a line of bushes, not dissimilar to this, surrounding her potager.

In truth, she needed to stay completely focused on the moment to keep Dante’s harsh words from her mind. And the effect they’d had on her—acting like a lead weight so she was sucked ruthlessly quickly out of the lovely, warm, accepting bubble Allegra had so easily created for them on the sunlit terrace.

‘It is not locked,’ Rosaria said, her accent far thicker than Allegra’s. ‘There is no need. The estate is secure.’ Her smile beamed. ‘You can press this button,’ she gestured to a small white panel near the door. ‘Any time. It connects to the housekeeping team.’

‘Oh, good. So, it won’t just bother you?’

‘Not at all. There are a few of us, but Allegra prefers me above all else,’ Rosaria said, her cheeks flushing with pleasure.

‘How long have you worked here?’ She asked.

‘Oh, a very long time, now,’ she said, rocking back on her heels a little, as if considering that. ‘About a summer before—,’ she glanced towards the house and lowered her voice. ‘The accident.’

Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. ‘So you knew Dante back then.’

Rosaria nodded.

‘So very sad,’ she murmured, not meaning to pry, even when she totally did want to pry.

‘A great tragedy. Allegra has never really been the same. Only with Dante does she light up, again. And for a while, with—,’

‘Jamie,’ Charlotte supplied, to save the other woman’s obvious reluctance to mention Dante’s ex-wife. ‘It’s okay,’ she reassured her. ‘I know how much she meant to Allegra. And Dante, come to think of it,’ she said, glad that the words emerged without any hint of jealousy—as was appropriate, given that this was a fake relationship, admittedly with a serving of sex on the side.

‘Yes, but now they have you,’ Rosaria smiled brightly. ‘Such wonderful news.’ She glanced over Charlotte’s shoulder. ‘Should you need anything, just press the button.’

And with that, the housekeeper was gone.

Dante wasn’t proud of himself for running away, but that was, nonetheless, exactly what he did. Despite the heat of the day, he set off from the villa in a long-legged stride that carried him through the rose garden, past the koi pond and the potager, over a large field that sometimes housed goats and, finally, to the olive grove, with the lines and lines of thick-trunked trees and their silver leaved foliage.

There was something so familiar about this part of the estate, from the trees themselves to the way they smelt, to the sound of the leaves, rustling in the last afternoon breeze. He strode between their trunks, memories of his childhood particularly thick here, dousing him with a sense of history he wanted to fight.

He hadn’t hesitated to bring Charlotte here. Obviously, it was the only way to convince his grandmother he was happy, that she could finally stop worrying about him. To give her the gift of complacency at the end of her life. But then, he hadn’t really properly prepared for the reality of Charlotte being at his family home. Of seeing her dazzle his grandmother with her charm and quick wit. Of seeing her wrap the older woman around her finger, so to speak. He hadn’t been prepared for how completely at home she’d seem here, how much she’d almost seem to belong.

In a way Jamie never really had.

Jamie had always been so nervous, like a meek little mouse, scared to break anything, scared to say the wrong thing, even when Allegra had blunted all her more forthright instincts and been gentle and soft.

No, Jamie was very different to Charlotte. But she’d still belonged, Dante reassured himself, with a slick of unpleasant disloyalty making him remember the past properly. Jamie had been his wife, his other half. And as such, she’d become a part of the family.

Why hadn’t that been enough for her? Why couldn’t she just accept that they weren’t able to have children and move on?