Page 181 of Modern Romance December 2025 5-8

Katherine never had a reason to doubt Jennifer Harrison, but somehow, she didn’t feel reassured. Maybe she had grown a little protective of Lukas, but all she could do was hope Jennifer kept her word.

To distract herself, Katherine opened her socials. Going a week without checking in was alien to her and she needed to know what was going on. As soon as she opened the first app, she was greeted by thousands of notifications all tagging her and Lukas.

‘What the…’ She looked at a few of them, closed the app, opened another but it was the same. Another app…the same result. Thousands of posts covering her and Lukas missing in Lapland. That she’d expected, because Lukas had been right. With the way she had run off, that was what the crew would have reported. What she hadn’t expected was the explosion of speculation about her relationship with Lukas. There were always posts like that, but this was different. #Lukat was trending on several sites. Theories ranged from the believable—that they got caught in a snowstorm—to the absurd—they’d deliberately run off before the storm to have a secret affair and being missing gave them uninterrupted time alone.

Would Lukas see this? How would he react?

She was still scrolling, unsure of how she felt about being the subject of internet speculation, when her phone rang.

‘Hi, Robert,’ she answered.

‘It’s good to know that you survived. Did Jäger?’

‘If you’re asking if I murdered him, I did not.’ But it was a miracle she was alive with the number of times he’d robbed her of breath. Stopped her heart. Had her writhing and panting and begging.

‘I’m very proud of you. The reason I called is that there’s going to be a meeting tomorrow, at 10 a.m. Make sure you’re there.’

‘Shouldn’t I be getting recovery time?’ Recovery from her and Lukas’s explosive fling. They shared so much in common but all they could ever have was years of hate followed by a week so unforgettable her last thought in this world would be of him.

‘Kat, you’ve done nothing in that tundra. That’s enough vacation time for you,’ he joked. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘I’ll be there.’

She ended the call with unease in her belly. Robert hadn’t said what the meeting was about or who would be there. All she could do was turn up and hope nothing horrible had happened while she was gone.

Katherine walked into the glass-panelled conference room at the Aero offices with nothing but her computer, which she placed on the table, and took her seat. The same seat she always sat at. Back to the window that overlooked London with its steel-grey skies, old and new buildings standing proud on the banks of the Thames. It was a lovely view. A distracting one, which was why she never gave herself any other option than paying complete attention to the meeting. It also allowed her to see what was happening on the floor. Who entered the room even when the blinds were drawn. They weren’t used often, only when absolute privacy was required. The room let out little to no sound and today, the blindsweredrawn. Not an oversight from a previous meeting. She knew how this place operated.

It made her anxious.

Katherine had replayed Robert’s short call in her mind repeatedly but there was nothing to analyse. He had given her nothing to go on so she gave up. Instead, she’d lain on her bed, staring at the ceiling…missing Lukas.

Why didn’t I say goodbye? Why didn’t I take one last kiss?

She had eventually fallen asleep, curled around the pillow, wishing it was his body. Regret her only companion.

Now she tried to push away thoughts of Lukas but there was no getting rid of them. Even as she watched Robert enter with Jennifer and Scott Courteney, a network executive she hadn’t ever met. Though she was the on-air talent, he operated at a much higher level than her. So what was he doing here?

Suddenly that knot of anxiety grew into an entire noose.

‘Katherine!’ Robert greeted, coming around the table to give her shoulder a squeeze. ‘It really is good to see you. I wasn’t joking when I said you had us all worried.’

‘It’s a good thing I wasn’t alone,’ she replied, wincing internally at the stab of pain that thinking about Lukas brought about.

A look crossed her producer’s face that she couldn’t decipher. None of this was making her feel better.

‘Absolutely. Have you met Scott before?’

‘No, can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.’ She held out her hand, which Scott shook firmly but there was a glint in his eye that didn’t sit well with her.

‘Shall we take our seats?’ Scott gestured at the table as he placed himself at the head. Robert took the seat next to her, closest to Scott and Jennifer sat on her other side, sandwiching her in. She didn’t like it.

‘Is anyone else coming?’ Katherine asked.

‘Yes, they should be along shortly,’ Robert said.

That wasn’t much information.

‘What’s this meeting about?’ She tried a different tack.