Page 5 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 5-8
And then, as now, every single person had turned to look at him.
Because he was beautiful. Tall, with dark, unkempt hair and a soft, shimmering bedroom gaze that was at odds with his calm, unswerving certainty.
A calm that was nothing like the volatile, emotional tinderbox of her childhood.
She was captivated. As powerless to resist as a moth to the phototactic pull of a flame. Which was why she was still standing there, frozen, mesmerised as he stopped in front of her, his dark coat flecked with glittering droplets of water, a cup of coffee in his outstretched hand.
She should have run a mile. An ultramarathon.
But instead, she had shared a taxi with him to a hotel in the South Pigalle. They had booked into separate rooms but by the following morning she had given him the ultimate power to hurt her. She had given him her heart.
And now, after years of silence and attrition, Ettore was back.
She breathed in sharply, and the jarring improbability of meeting him here, now, was as shocking as if he had upended a bucket of ice-cold water over her head.
She wasn’t expecting this. Him. Ettore.
More disconcertingly she wasn’t expecting to feel a sudden and disconcertingly fierce flicker of heat flare up inside her as if she were a match striking against powdered glass.
Which was why she was still forming sentences in her head when he stopped in front of her, his striking light-coloured eyes resting on her face. Except that now there was a coolness there that jarred almost as much as the handmade leather shoes and the gold signet ring on his pinkie finger.
He had always dressed well. She had teased him about it when they were together. But back then they were equals. Now, she was working as a lab technician and a cleaner to pay her bills, and he had clearly moved up a level.
‘Hello, Dulcie.’
She flinched inside. Hello, Dulcie? Seriously? Her heart jerked against her ribs as his words reverberated inside her head.
The last time he had spoken to her had been to ask her to choose between himself and her brother. Correction: he had made her choose. Even though she had begged him not to. But he had been insistent, a cold-eyed stranger.
So, she had chosen Oscar. How could she not?
Ettore hadn’t tried to change her mind. He had simply turned and walked away. Because he could. Because he was looking for a reason to walk away. Because what they shared was not, as she’d thought, the real thing, but a mistake. He hadn’t thought it worth his time to elaborate as to which of those explanations was correct. Hadn’t thought Dulcie worthy of an explanation. He was too busy rewriting history, assigning the responsibility for their failed relationship to her.
And then he was gone. Because men like Ettore Marchesi and her father didn’t own their failures. They lied and twisted the situation so that up was down. Black was white. Look at how her father had twisted the facts about her mum not wanting her. By the time she had learned the truth her mum was dead and Oscar was on a path to chaos and addiction.
‘Her situation has changed,’ he’d said. ‘There’s no place for you in her life any more.’
She had thought her mum had remarried. And her dad had never contradicted her. The truth was that her mum had been drying out in a clinic. But her father hadn’t wanted to tell her that because then he would have had to tell her that Oscar was in care, and she would have wanted her brother to come and live with them instead.
Finding that out, she had felt like a bird hitting a window. She had been stunned, confused, scared.
Watching Ettore leave, she had felt like that same bird having its wings torn off. She had been stunned, wounded. Terrified of losing him for ever. But she hadn’t gone after him. Then again, he hadn’t returned. So, they were even, kind of.
No, they weren’t, she thought savagely a moment later. They weren’t even close.
Tilting up her chin, she met his gaze. ‘What are you doing here?’
His light brown eyes glinted beneath the overhead lights but there was no softness there as he stared down at her.
‘What, no “hi, there”, no “how have you been?” or “it’s good to see you”?’ he said slowly. ‘That’s not much of a welcome.’
She glared at him. ‘If you wanted a parade, you should have called me. Oh, but you haven’t called, have you? Not once in two years. Not ever.’
‘To be fair, you changed your number. And your name. Whose name is it, by the way?’
His expression didn’t alter but there was a husky softness to his voice that made her shiver. He was annoyed, confused, angry even. And she could see why he would feel all and any of those emotions. When she and Ettore met, she was called Turner, but after he walked out on her she was done with taking the name of yet another man with a twisted world view of what love and loyalty should look like. She and Oscar had chosen the name Shaw together because she wanted there to be a connection that was theirs alone. To reassure him that she wasn’t going anywhere.
Although she’d rather gouge out her own eyes than share those facts with Ettore.
