Page 29 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 1-4
Just as she was determining to change out of it, there was a knock on the dressing room door followed by Domenico’s voice. ‘Are you okay in there?’
Injecting some lightness into her voice, she called back, ‘I’m fine. Just took a while to get into the dress.’
‘Are you going to let me see?’
‘No point. It isn’t right for me.’
There was something in the way Marnie saidit isn’t right for methat made Domenico pause. Wistful. That’s how she sounded.
So far, she’d tried on eight dresses. To his eyes, she’d looked beautiful in all of them, but he’d understood her objections. Growing up with a fashion-conscious mother and sister had made him aware of the necessity for a woman to not just look good in an outfit but to feel good in it. Marnie’sit isn’t right for medidn’t sound like one of the usual objections of a dress being too long or too short or too old or too young for her.
‘Can I see anyway?’ he asked steadily.
The answer came via the door unlocking. She pulled it open and stepped back with the same wistful expression on her face as had been in her voice.
Domenico’s heart rose and caught in his throat, and it took a long moment before he could clear it enough to say, ‘Marnie, this dress looks beautiful on you.’
Colour slashed her cheeks, and she rubbed her arms. ‘I love the dress, but…’ She shook her head, the colour on her face darkening even more. ‘It’s too sparkly. It needs to be worn by someone beautiful and vivacious who can carry it off.’
Dumbfounded that she could say that and, worse, mean it, it took another long moment before he spurred himself into action. Stepping into the dressing room, he closed the door. ‘Turn around.’
Her eyebrows drew together in question.
Gently gripping her shoulders, he manoeuvred her until she was facing the mirror and stood behind her.
Putting his hands on her hips, he looked over her head to catch her stare in the mirror’s reflection. ‘Do you know what I see?’
Her eyebrows drew together again.
‘I see a vision of beauty.’ He wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his chin on the top of her head. She was wearing perfume, and it had mingled with her shampoo to create a scent so divine it was all he could do to stop himself burying his face in her neck and greedily inhaling it deep into her lungs. Holding her like this was the most he could allow himself. The most he dared. ‘The dress sparkles, but you,fiore mio, dazzle in it. This dress was made for you, and I don’t understand why you can’t see it.’
After a long beat, her shoulders rose before she sighed and leaned back into him. Quietly, she said, ‘I just see me.’
‘Then the me you see is different to the me I see. You’re beautiful, Marnie, and you deserve to sparkle.’ Soon, he was determined to understand why she couldn’t see it.
Her eyes glistened, sparkling as much as her dress, but she delicately sniffed the tears back before they could fall. ‘You think I should get it?’
He shook his head. ‘Iknowyou should get it.’
More aware than he’d been when he entered the room of the intimacy of its confines and with the heat of Marnie’s body and her scent all swirling inside him to heat the arousal he was determined to keep under lock and key while she was so fragile, Domenico knew it was time to leave the room. It was bad enough that he was already torturing himself with his need to hold her the whole night through…holding her without touching her. Keeping her at a distance that was the opposite of the distance he’d put her through during their marriage. This physical distance…Dio, he mustn’t think about it. While Marnie was still recovering from those months of illness, he must keep his desire controlled. She was too fragile.
But he could allow his hands to stroke the length of her bare arms, and he could drop a kiss into the irresistible arch of her neck…Dio, how had he been so blind for all those years?
His blindness had been wilful. That was becoming clearer by the day. By the minute. Blind not only to Marnie’s luminescent beauty but to his feelings for her. Too blind to notice she’d slipped beneath the wall he’d built in the wake of his father’s death and the breakdown of his first marriage…
Clearing his throat, he stepped away from her. ‘I will leave you to change.’
Her eye caught his again in the mirror’s reflection. Her hand rose to her throat. She lifted her chin and nodded.
Feeling as if his heart was trying to punch its way out of his ribs, Domenico closed the door behind him.
The party itself was everything Marnie had expected. Held in the grounds of Matteo and Isla’s magnificent two-storey apartment, barely a five-minute walk from the boutique she’d chosen her dress in, it was filled with more faces that were familiar than unfamiliar.
When Domenico had thrown his parties when she’d been his PA and expected to attend them in that still undefined supervisory capacity, she’d hidden behind her job title, using it as a mask to conceal how intimidated she felt amongst all his glamorous and successful friends. When she was his wife, she’d been pushed forward, into the throng of the glamorous and successful friends, and it had been excruciating for her. She’d wanted to cling to Domenico’s coattails the way she’d done since she was eighteen, but this time for real rather than as a metaphorical thing. Who was she, she’d always fretted, no matter how kindly she was treated, to even think of standing tall amongst these people?
This time, it had all changed again. She didn’t know if it was the genuine warmth she found in his friends’ eyes or the tightness of the embraces she was given, or the genuine gushes of congratulations about them and the baby, or even if it was the beautiful dress she was wearing, but she didn’t feel the need to hide behind Domenico, nor cringe inwardly when approached by anyone. She felt different in herself. Stronger.
The biggest change was in how Domenico was with her. He’d been attentive and solicitous since their agreement to try again, but this was their first time together in their new incarnation out in society. The changes were subtle, but it was the impact they had on Marnie that made them feel so big.
