Page 99 of Modern Romance December 2025 5-8

‘Most people would say you do sincerity very well.’

‘Did you hurt them, those youths?’ She needed a moment’s reprieve from thinking about the past and Leo’s clear scorn for her.

‘We had a civilised conversation and they left. There’s no need to thank me.’

His devil-may-care wide white grin did not extend to his eyes, framed by the dark, dense, curling lashes.

‘I won’t. I had it under control.’ She saw something that could have been surprise flicker in the inky blackness of his eyes and lifted her chin a little higher.

‘Yes, I saw that.’

She ignored the sarcastic jibe. ‘Well, I don’t know why you are here, but I don’t believe in coincidences, so…?’

‘Then you have changed, because you used to believe in the Easter bunny,’ he ground out, his hard expression countering the pretend amazement in his voice.

‘It’s been nine years. Of course I’ve changed, Leo.’ She had not let herself say or even think his name in that time. Excluding her dreams; she’d had to cut herself some slack where her subconscious was involved.

She would have known him, his voice, in pitch darkness, but he had changed too, she realised as she took in the minute details, looking up at him through her lashes and noting the power in his broader leather-covered shoulders.

The fact he looked slick, polished and expensive, attired head-to-toe in designer labels, did nothing to lessen the sheer force of him that had captivated her the first time she’d seen him all those years ago. Now there was an additional layer, an overall hardness to everything about him. Not just the planes of his superbly,austerelybeautiful face, but in his stance. He carried himself with an arrogance that had not been there nine years ago. He exuded the absolute confidence of a male in the prime of his life who knew he was right at the top of the food chain.

The illicit shudders that shamefully ripped through her body as she stared up at him were no less primal than they had been that very first time she’d set eyes on Leo. She acknowledged the fact with a stab of self-disgust, but took comfort from the fact she was no longer running recklessly towards the excitement he represented. Despite the shameful heat between her legs,shehad changed.

She knew about consequences.

Giving him up had been the hardest, most painful thing she’d ever had to do. Watching him walk away from her, thinking that she had betrayed him, had added an extra layer to that pain.

And now she had no idea what was in his head. His blank expression left her totally off-balance and in the dark. He had become an unknown entity.

He had always been, and still was, beautiful—the most beautiful thing she had ever seen—but the lanky, coltish quality he’d possessed at twenty had hardened.

Exciting.

The word popped into her head unbidden and she lowered her lashes in a silky screen while she fought for composure, or something that passed for it.

His presence was more disturbing than the young thugs he had seen off, but in a very different way.

Leo watched as she straightened her spine and lifted her head, cloaked in a coolness that didn’t fool him. It amused him to think she imagined he couldn’t see it for what it was—barely even skin-deep.

Amy was reacting to him the way she always had. Nine years was a long time, but it hadn’t taught her how to conceal the fact that she was lusting after him.

‘You should have given them your phone!’

For a split second his cloaked expression fell away and she could see his anger, hot enough to make her take an involuntary step backwards.

He clamped his lips tightly, as if to hold back further remonstrations, but his gaze continued to move over her face, studying each feature with disturbing intensity, travelling from her neck to her chin and lingering on her mouth before finally settling on her eyes.

She didn’t react; indeed, she barely registered his words. The impact, the impossibility of him being there, the stream of questions tumbling through her head, made it a struggle to maintain a façade of anything even approaching calm.

Her tongue flickered across her dry lips, drawing his eyes and an inarticulate sound from his throat.

The noise jolted her free of her trance as her gaze shifted from his face to the phone he’d picked up, which he was now holding out to her.

‘You were willing to fight for it, so take it.’

She ignored the sarcastic reminder and reached out, a deep shudder running though her body as their fingers grazed for a split second. Her eyes darted everywhere but at the face of the man she had once loved as she closed her fingers over the phone and brought it up tight against her chest.

Loved and left.