Page 42 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 1-4
But she’d been so distraught.
Dio, how could she believe he didn’t love her? Didn’t she know by now that he couldn’t live without her? He’d thought letting her go was the best thing for her, the one act of love he could give the woman who’d been through so much, and so much of it at his selfish hands.
A memory floated in his frantic mind of the wine she’d been drinking when he’d arrived at her door the night they conceived their child. The woman with alcoholic parents who never drank, not even a glass of champagne on their wedding day. He could not begin to the imagine the depth of her misery for her to have taken that step…
Her misery had been of the same depth as his own, although whether it was because she’d still held residual love for him or because the decree nisi had made the termination of them so final, he didn’t know.
But her beautiful, damaged heart had fallen in love with him again, that much he did know, and she was out there somewhere believing he’d rejected it.
The panic he’d been barely containing set in.
Where was she? Her phone was in the bedroom, and as far as he knew, she had no food or water.
It suddenly came to him. The one place they hadn’t looked. The place she’d mentioned when she’d come so happily into his office. He’d been so full of anguish at what he was about to do that he’d barely heard her.
If you can drag yourself away from your desktop, do you fancy exploring the secret garden with me?
Snatching at the bottle of water he’d been carrying around for when he found her, Domenico headed back into the grounds and ran past the maze at the fastest pace of his life.
Marnie was all cried out. She’d heard the voices calling her name, but they hadn’t got close enough to her to hear her shouts back, not with all the thick foliage surrounding her muffling her voice. That’s what had set the tears off. More frustration than fear.
The autumn air was getting chilly, and she tried not to think about it, just as she tried not to think that she hadn’t drunk anything since the glass of water when she’d woken. If she didn’t have such personal experience of how long a pregnant woman could go without water before it affected her baby, that would be the one thing to get her panicking.
Domenico would find her. Of that, she had absolute faith.
It was just that as her thirst and the chill in the air increased and the sun began to set, the thought of being trapped in here for any length of time in the dark…
She concentrated on breathing.
If she let the fear out, then panic would set in.
The shadows were getting very long, though. Frighteningly long. There was a tree a short distance away from her that had to be fifty feet high. The shadows of its branches danced in front of her like groping fingers.
She drew her knees to her chest and hugged herself. Her bottom was numb from the cold of the stone bench, and her feet were freezing.
The shadows were coming even closer.
‘Marnie!’
Her heart thumped. She lifted her head, hardly daring to believe she’d just heard her name, and so close too, and then she heard a loud slam and a door swinging open and footsteps crunching.
‘Marnie! Where are you?’
‘I’m right here!’ she called back, although her throat was so dry and hoarse from thirst and shouting that it was more of a croak than words. She’d barely made it to her feet when he emerged from the shadows.
There was no hesitation. One moment he was five feet away from her; the next he’d lifted her into his arms and was carrying her out of the secret garden’s door.
Only when he reached the chapel did he speak, sitting down on a wooden bench beside it and keeping her firmly on his lap while thrusting a bottle of water in her hand. ‘Drink.’
She obeyed. Drinking slowly, she gazed through the romantic night lights that glowed around them at the beautiful face of the only man she would ever love, her heart filled with an emotion so true and pure that all she could do was carry on staring.
And he was staring right back with the same expression she knew was ringing from her eyes.
When she passed the bottle to him to share, their fingers brushed.
His eyes widened. ‘Dio, you’re freezing.’ In moments, he’d stripped his shirt off and draped it over her, all the while not letting her move an inch off his lap. Once satisfied he’d wrapped the shirt around every available inch of her body, he pulled his phone out of his back pocket and made a quick call, and then she was swooping back through the air as he stood back up, carrying her up with him.
Adjusting his hold to secure her to him, he glowered down at her. ‘Don’t you ever put me through that again.’
