Page 218 of Modern Romance October 2025 5-8

But how could she?

The most important thing in her world was the acquisition of her father’s company. Righting a wrong that had been perpetuated against her, time and time again, and also against her mother. Wasn’t revenge worth almost any cost?

And if Dante were to become collateral damage? A voice in the back of her mind demanded.

Only, he wouldn’t. She’d make sure of it. After all, they’d been sleeping together for six months and had no difficulty in keeping things simple and easy—in making sure their feelings didn’t enter the equation. They’d just keep doing the same thing now.

‘Dante, we don’t need to talk. We don’t need to dig deeper, to share secrets. Remember? That’s our rule and it’s a good one. If this is going to work, and we’re both going to emerge unscathed, we need to keep things compartmentalised.’

‘And those compartments are?’

‘Well, I would like to think we can keep doing this,’ she said, lowering a hand and brushing it over his pants, dragging—somehow—a flirtatious smile up from the pits of her belly. No mean feat when she felt as though her insides were being shredded. ‘But as for the marriage, it’s really just a professional relationship. We struck a deal. We know what the requirements are. Neither of us want the lines to get blurred, right? We’ve said that before and we both still think it?’

‘Are you asking me, or telling me?’

She hesitated. Great question. Of course. ‘Telling you,’ she insisted, even though the insistence was more a case of bravado than anything else.

‘Okay.’ He took a step backwards, his expression totally unreadable. The second he put physical space between them, her whole body trembled with a deep and profound sense of loss. Of need. Of grief.

She spun away, terrified all of a sudden by whatever was happening. Because despite what she’d just said, Charlotte was not sure she could evenfindthe lines they’d initially drawn, let alone keep to them. Which was all the more reason topretend, she reminded herself. She had to pretend until it became second nature and everything felt normal again.

‘Why don’t you freshen up while I finish getting ready?’ she suggested, her voice almost totally normal seeming. ‘You grandmother will be expecting us.’

He left the room without another word.

If there was one thing Dante hated in this world above all others, it was a sense of having lost control. He had always been able to bend things—including people—to his will. Through hard work, determination, charm, intelligence and the fact he’d always had money at his disposal, he’d been able to make pretty much any situation work to his advantage. Of course, having lost his parents and grandfather the way he did had shown him that control was not always possible—or he would have somehow found a way to bring them back to life. He had no delusions of God-like grandeur, but for the most part, he exercised discipline over all aspects of his life.

His marriage had been a notable exception.

No matter what they’d tried, which doctors they’d consulted, they had never been able to conceive. It hadn’t mattered what reassurances he’d given Jamie, their lack of fertility had destroyed her and ultimately their marriage.

Though not on the same scale, a similar sense of spinning wildly off course was hurtling through him now and had been all evening.

He’d gone to the pool house with every intention of telling Charlotte about his marriage, the divorce and their reasons for it. But she’d stone-walled him straight off the bat, making him wonder if his instincts to confide in her—to enable them to play their roles more easily—was wide of the mark.

She’d seemed brittle, though. She said one thing, but hefeltsomething else coming from her, he just couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

And whatever it was, whether ambivalence or regret, or something else entirely, there was no sign of it now. From the moment Allegra had welcomed them back to the main house, Charlotte had sparkled. There was no other word for it. She’d smiled and laughed, amused and charmed. He found it impossible to look away from her. She simply shone.

Allegra saw it, too, he was certain of it.

His grandmother was someone else who shone, and always had, and it was like two bright, buzzing fireflies had found each other. They spoke of art and music, discovered a shared love of opera, swapped anecdotes about the performances they’d been to. Charlotte spoke about her work and the passion she felt for helping people—aware that she came from a privileged background and that she felt a duty to enrich the lives of people who were not so fortunate.

To look at her that night, he wouldn’t have possibly been able to guess that there was even a hint of doubt in her about what they were doing. Nor that she’d seemed somehow uncertain, earlier, in the pool house.

She was a total contradiction.

He was out of control.

And he hated it.

He hated it during the dinner—the more she sparkled, the more he glowered—and he hated it even after they’d left, when Charlotte’s performance slipped and she became herself again, and he sensed the same reservation in her he’d felt earlier, in the pool house.

They walked side by side, down the path to the cottage, in a silence that was not, in Dante’s opinion, companionable. In fact, each step they took only added to his sense of being out of control—and pissed off.

‘You know,’ she said, as they approached the pool house and the lights cast a soft golden glow on them. ‘I really don’t get you.’

He glanced at her, jaw clenched. In that moment, he didn’t get himself, either. ‘No?’