Page 110 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

CHAPTER TEN

O N S UNDAY MORNING , Carmel woke in the predawn hours, instantly melancholy as she realized this would be her last day with Damian.

She skimmed her hand across the sheet and found the warm satin of his back.

He stirred and she slithered closer, rubbing the inside of her thigh over the firm shape of his buttocks.

“What time is it?” he asked into his pillow.

“Early. Do you want to…?” She pressed a kiss to his shoulder.

“Always.” He looped his arm around her and pulled her half beneath him as he buried his seeking lips in her throat.

They didn’t have “always.” They had today. One last time. It was enough to bring a sting of poignant heartache to her closed eyes, but she refused to let sadness infuse this moment. Her time here with him was a gift. It had allowed them to mend and learn to trust and, in her case, love .

She loved him. She knew it without a doubt and poured her love over him as they kissed and caressed and moved with languid friction against each other.

She revered him, celebrating the feel of his hair between her fingers and the taste of his skin and the way they communicated without words.

She welcomed him into her body and into her heart.

Time stopped as they made love. There was no urgency, simply closeness and incredible pleasure. Affinity.

And when climax approached, he was with her, knotting his fist in the sheet as he surged into her and cried out as helplessly as she did.

It was only as his shaking arms gave way and he let his weight settle on her, when his damp skin adhered to hers and his heart pounded against her breast that she realized what she had said in her moment of crisis.

Her heart felt as though it fell down a flight of stairs.

“Carmel,” he whispered. It was more a protest. A prayer that he hadn’t heard what he’d heard.

“It’s okay,” she said, because it was. “I don’t want you to say it back. I just wanted you to know.” She did. She loved him and she wanted him to know it.

He shifted off her, and she could feel how he was still trembling from exertion. Maybe that was her, shaking in reaction.

He pressed his mouth to her brow, holding her as though she was precious. She closed her eyes against his silence, though, trying not to feel tragic and forsaken.

He wanted her to be lying. That was the hellish part. Because her loving him put a daunting level of responsibility on him.

That doesn’t mean she can’t be knocked off her stride, especially if she’s hurt.

Carmel relaxed in his arms and her breath evened out, telling him she’d fallen back asleep. He kept his arms around her, assimilating her words, weighing his own feelings.

He cared about her. Very much. Far more than he would have expected or admitted to when she had turned up in Athens two short weeks ago. He would have sworn then that he felt only hatred toward her.

But he couldn’t have hated her that intensely without feeling something more in the first place.

He couldn’t call it “love.” They had barely known each other then, and how well did they really know each other now?

As much as he believed he could trust her these days, he was still cautious about fully letting his guard down with her.

He’d been toying with the idea of asking her to stay in their marriage, though, since it was working so well. Could he ask her to stay when she was more emotionally invested than he was? Or would that be taking advantage of her?

He had wanted to wait until he knew Zoia’s future before considering his own with Carmel. Today was the day he was taking her to Athens and now he was thinking about it, he was fully awake.

He eased away from Carmel and pulled on a pair of shorts, then crossed the hall to pick up his phone off the charger. He checked his email out of habit, even though it was the weekend, and stopped midway down the stairs.

DNA Results , the subject line from his lawyer read.

Holding his breath, he opened it. His scanning eyes picked up the line in bold:

Probability of paternity: 99.99%.

He had found his father.

Carmel woke alone and felt robbed by Damian’s absence, but also a little grateful. She wasn’t ready to face him after she had told him she loved him.

She didn’t regret it. Not really. She wasn’t ashamed of her feelings, and telling him was only part of being as open and honest with him as she could be.

But she was very aware he hadn’t said it back.

The hollow sensation that cold reality put in her chest was a preview of the loss she would soon experience unrelentingly.

She had already packed and Damian had gone over to Zoia’s, so Carmel sat in the kitchen drinking coffee with Lethe until Pirro turned up looking for her luggage.

Two goodbye hugs later, Carmel boarded the helicopter where Damian was helping Zoia buckle in and get comfortable. Zoia’s caregiver, Renita, was coming along to keep things familiar for Zoia and receive instructions about her recovery when she was cleared to come home.

It meant Carmel barely got a moment of eye contact with Damian, let alone room for a private conversation. She wasn’t sure he wanted one. He seemed to have retreated into himself, and she tried not to feel responsible. Taking Zoia to Athens for this surgery had been weighing on him a long time.

The travel was uneventful. By lunchtime, Zoia was tucked into her room, urging them to leave so she could eat and rest.

Damian promised to come by in the evening and they dropped Renita at a nearby hotel on their way to his penthouse.

It was only a few blocks from Atlas’s and was comparably luxurious with its tasteful, airy space, marble floors and a unified decor that created a sense of flow from one room into another.

The furniture was modern in shades of blue and slate gray, and they had a beautiful view of the Acropolis off the terrace, but it wasn’t “home” in the way the villa was.

She already missed being there.

As the silence between them thickened, she decided to bring up what they were both avoiding talking about.

“I didn’t—”

“Will you do something for me?” he asked abruptly.

She blinked in surprise. “What’s that?”

He took out his phone and tapped, then handed it to her. “Read that email and tell me what you think.”

Her pulse skipped. “Your father?”

“Yes.”

“This is why you’ve been so quiet today?” So it wasn’t Zoia or her blurted words in the middle of the night that had him so preoccupied.

“The confirmation was waiting for me when I got up this morning. This came through while we were at the hospital.”

She didn’t ask him why he hadn’t told her that Nicholas was his father. He hadn’t had a chance.

“Have you read it?” she asked.

“More than once. I just…” He ran his hand down his face, seeming to work at keeping his emotions in check.

Warily, she sat down on the sofa and began to read aloud.

“‘Hi Damian, I’m Nick. It’s been a shock to learn I have another son, but a pleasant one.’” She liked him already.

“‘I’ll keep this short because I understand your granny is unwell. That’s rough, mate.

I’m sorry to hear that. Your lawyer said you were hoping I would have some memories of your mother that might bring her some comfort.

I don’t have much, I’m afraid. I only knew Hestia for a weekend.

I was at the end of my gap year when we met in Athens.

The first night we slept together in the literal sense.

No naughty business, if you catch my drift.

The next morning, I sat in the café while she worked her shift, then we spent the rest of the day together.

That night was less innocent and I’d like you to know I asked her to marry me.

Twice.’” Carmel couldn’t help smiling at that.

Damian stood with his hands in his pockets, profile tense.

“‘She called me foolish for proposing. I suppose I was. Twenty-year-old men usually are.’” Carmel really liked him.

“‘I was smitten and very serious about wanting to see more of her, but I was meeting friends in Thailand and due to start back at school. I begged Hestia to visit me in Australia. She didn’t want to carry on a romance with someone who lived so far away, though. She said her parents would never leave their island and her being in Athens was already hard for them.’”

That was sweet, Carmel thought. No matter her disagreements with Zoia’s husband, Damian’s mother had loved her parents and wanted to be near them.

“‘I gave her my mother’s number, hoping she would change her mind,’” Carmel continued reading.

“‘But not long after I arrived home, my mother moved to live with my sister, so that number was disconnected. I left a message at the café once, but Hestia never returned my call. By Easter that year, I had met my wife. We’ve been together ever since, but I’ve never forgotten my first love.

It never occurred to me that Hestia could have been pregnant.

We used protection. I understand she’s been gone a long time, but this is fresh for me and it hurts a lot.

I’m very sorry for your loss, Damian. Very. ’”

She let that sit a moment before reading the rest.

“‘Please tell your granny that we were a pair of silly young lovers who went dancing at a night club and ate street food at the flea market and that I hope I can meet her soon to thank her for raising my son.’”

Oh. She was going to cry. Carmel covered her mouth and scanned the rest. It was Nicholas’s phone number and an invitation to call. We’re all very keen to meet you when you’re ready.

With her heart mangled in her chest, she rose and walked over to hug Damian’s stiff body, setting her head against his heart.

Slowly, his arms came around her. They were angular and twitching. She had the sense he was staving off great emotion.

“He seems like a very nice man,” she said through the thickness that had gathered in her throat.

“I wanted to hate him. To be right about not trying to find him.” He swallowed.

“Now you want to meet him?”

“I do.”