Page 185 of Modern Romance December 2025 5-8

He needed to get home. Needed a moment with her in private to kiss her. To talk to her. To find a boundary he could work with, because right now he couldn’t think clearly.

As soon as they stepped into his apartment Lukas could breathe again. Tension that had bunched his muscles from the moment they were rescued ebbed away. Here, he could be himself. There was no one watching, no one to judge him.

No one to support you. No one to be happy you’ve returned.

He was always greeted with silence.

‘Lukas?’

Except today.

‘I’ll show you to your room. We can talk after,’ he said, leading her through the entrance to his three-storey apartment. An apartment that was filled with so much light even though the sky was overcast and a drizzle fell as far as the eye could see.

‘No,’ Katherine refused, halting her steps and bringing her bag to a stop beside her. ‘I want to talk first.’

‘Fine. Come with me,’ he said, placing his hand on the small of her back and leading her forward. ‘Leave your bag. I’ll take it up to your room.’

He took her into a lounge area with large overstuffed couches and a double height ceiling. A balcony to another floor wrapped around the square with tall narrow gold square poles placed in irregular intervals like a crown if a room could ever have one.

‘We’re just over two weeks into December and you have no Christmas decorations up.’

‘I don’t see the point of celebrating a holiday that does nothing but show me that I have no family to spend it with.’ Lukas tried to keep his voice as emotionless as possible. He missed his father every day; he didn’t need a holiday to make that worse. And his mother? Well, he understood her not wanting to see the reason her marriage failed.

‘Have a seat.’ When she obeyed, he sat on the coffee table in front of her. ‘Do you want to go first?’

She didn’t hesitate. ‘Why did you bring me here? I’m still a journalist, Lukas. Nothing’s changed.’

‘You’re right, nothing has changed and yet everything has.’ Lukas leaned forward, clasping his hands between his knees to stop himself reaching for Katherine. They needed to establish rules before he allowed himself the pleasure. A pleasure he’d been robbed of since their rescue. One that he craved so badly he was currently leaving crescent-shaped indents on the back of his hands. ‘I don’t want to invite the media into my home and I’mnotdoing so. Understand that, Katherine. Whatever happens within these walls is not for a report.Butit was best to come here. It’s where I am comfortable. Where we can both be comfortable and have space should we need it. It’s a place where we don’t have to pretend, but when we step outside…’

‘The cameras will go off,’ Katherine finished for him. ‘Monaco is small enough that it would take minutes to come back here should we need sanctuary.’

Lukas nodded, glad that she understood. ‘There’s enough space for you to work and you’re free to use all the facilities in my home.’

‘Thank you. But you still haven’t addressedus.’

That’s when Lukas noticed her hands. Fingers fidgeting with a ring. She needed to know where they stood just as much as he did.

He placed his large hand over hers. ‘We’re in this position because we had very few options and if it wasn’t for that meeting we would have been over.’

‘Does that mean you want us to remain that way? Over?’ Katherine asked, her hands wrapping around his.

‘We don’t have a future. We’re too different in the ways that matter.’ Katherine slowly pulled her hands from his but he wouldn’t let her. ‘But I would be lying if I said that I want us to be a thing of the past. I’m giving you the choice, Katherine, because if it were up to me, you would be in my bed already. You would have barely made it into this apartment before I ravaged your lips and had your body against mine. Any second now you would have been screaming out my name but no one would have heard you. No one would have seen you and not because we were forced into a cabin in the middle of nowhere, but because we chose to take the privacy we’re owed.’

‘So you still want me.’

‘I wanted you the very first time I saw you. That’s never changed.’ Lukas pulled Katherine off the couch to straddle his lap. She ran her fingers through his hair, tugging it back; he looked into the depths of her blue eyes made all the more vivid by her red lashes. ‘Do you know how frustrating it is to be so attracted to the person you hate. Who you know hates you?’

‘Do you still hate me?’ she whispered so close to his lips that her breath tickled his skin.

‘No.’

She smiled. ‘I don’t hate you either.’

And then he kissed her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Katherine awoke tobright sunshine in a large, spectacularly appointed room with gold and marble accents. Monaco and the Mediterranean Sea lay beyond the windows, which had no treatments to distract from the view. She levered herself onto her elbows. Despite it being December, she saw plenty of people on the water in their yachts.