Page 31 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

CHAPTER ONE

“Y OU DON ’ T HAVE to go.”

Rebecca fixed her mother with a calm, pointed look. “Yes, I do.” She surveyed herself in the mirror. She had spent more money than she should have on the dress, but she wasn’t about to be shown up and labeled as the help.

Her family had been invited to the wedding reception as guests . As friends of the family , even if they were employees. The Desmonds were loyal to the help , even if they didn’t want their son to marry one.

Rebecca was grateful she didn’t have to put on a brave face for the ceremony itself, and determined she would have fun at the party. She would not give anyone the satisfaction of thinking she’d miss it because Patrick had crushed what little had been left of her hopes and dreams.

She had her father’s pride and her mother’s stubbornness. That’s what everyone always said.

So she was going. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t run away. She had to be brave and strong.

Patrick was married. All her dreams were dead, and she’d struggled to find a new one in the months since. Maybe she wasn’t there yet, but she was going to get there…somehow.

She waltzed into the elegant, sprawling reception outside on the rolling lawn, the weather perfect, the sun setting like Patrick and Bridget had paid heaven itself.

She kept her head high, knowing that she looked damn good. She smiled. She greeted. She sipped the champagne offered on roaming trays.

And she avoided the receiving line like the plague. They would know she was there. She didn’t have to pretend to congratulate them. There were a couple of people from the stables here as guests, and she’d hunt down Hank or Sullivan to dance with, just to be seen. Just to prove she was fine .

She was doing just that when she found herself face-to-face with the second-to-last person she wanted to have to deal with.

“Mr. Desmond.” She tried to make herself smile.

She tried to relax her shoulders. She tried not to stare at him, wide-eyed and nearly hysterical.

He’d always been kind to her. He’d never made her think he’d disapprove of her with Patrick.

Disapprove so much that he’d find Patrick a new bride while she was off getting her hip surgically repaired and going through all the rehab that required.

“Rebecca,” he greeted with his usual warm smile. “I hope you’re enjoying yourself.”

“Of course,” she replied, as if by rote. “You put on quite the wedding.”

“Oh, that was the bride and her family’s doing, of course.” He cleared his throat, looking around them. Rebecca looked too, but no one seemed within reaching distance. It was like they were their own awkward island out here.

He didn’t excuse himself. Instead, he stepped a little closer, leaned in, making it impossible for Rebecca to escape.

“I know you and Patrick…” He trailed off, gruff and uncomfortable. “It’s best this way,” he said. Carefully. Like he was letting her down gently, when the past six months had been stab wound after stab wound.

And still she smiled, nodded at him, like she couldn’t agree more. “Of course, Mr. Desmond. The absolute best.”

She watched as his gaze momentarily fell to her hip. No doubt thinking about all the ways his investment in her hadn’t paid off. She should be grateful she still had a job.

“Enjoy yourself, Rebecca.” Then he moved away.

She wanted to hyperventilate, but she couldn’t. Maeve and her mother were both looking at her with sad, pitying eyes from where they stood next to each other. So she kept her brittle smile in place, carefully moved away from them and searched.

She couldn’t escape, not yet, but she could hide. She knew the places to hide, even out here. Out here was where she and Patrick had spent most of their time. She hadn’t seen it for what that was then. She’d been blinded by love.

But he’d never wanted her inside where her station might leave a stain.

There were trees, hedges, benches that would eventually be in shadow as the sun dipped below the horizon. She just had to find one and get ahold of herself.

Then she’d find some more champagne, and a rich, handsome stranger for a dance partner. God knew the reception was crawling with them. Someone to toss all her cares away on.

She never expected such a man to find her . But not half an hour later, tucked away on a little bench under an arbor, just in the falling shadows enough to hide her from anyone looking, a man approached, slid behind the same canopy, then came to a short stop when he saw her sitting there.

He was the opposite of Patrick. Tall and broad. Dark-haired and-eyed. Oh, he had that same moneyed look about his clothes, but there was an elegance to this man that Patrick could not have been taught. It was…innate, Rebecca decided.

And she liked it.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to find another hiding spot,” she said to the stranger with a wry smile. “This one is taken.”

His gaze moved over her. “You wouldn’t consider sharing?” His voice was dark, almost abrasive. Velvet, she would say, textured and not fully soft, but not rough. In an accent she couldn’t place. Certainly not from anywhere in the UK. And it had an interesting fissure of heat spreading through her.

God, she wanted some heat. Something to think about besides her poor, battered pride.

“That depends, I suppose.” She peered out at the guests milling about beyond the canopy. “What are you hiding from?”

He glanced back out at the grounds dusted in golden hour, perfect and beautiful. Dancing was off to one side, drinks and socializing off to another. “A woman with talons who thinks I’d be perfect for her daughter.” He sighed. “I am out of practice warding off preying mothers.”

Rebecca was really beginning to hate the word perfect .

But then his dark gaze returned to hers.

“What about you?” he asked, with enough interest she felt a strange and compelling warmth overtake her.

She didn’t want to think about Patrick or his wife . She didn’t want to think about anything except that exciting and unique pull to a dark, mysterious stranger. She tried out what she hoped might be an enigmatic smile. “I’m not sure I should be trading secrets with strangers in the dark.”

His mouth curved, but just on one side, so that her gaze was caught there, which seemed to be the only spot of soft on him. A lovely little spark warmed inside her.

He held out his hand between them. “Theo,” he offered.

She decided then and there she did not want to be herself tonight. Not the gifted and dedicated athlete who thought of little else. Not the careful and studied woman who thought she’d one day be lady of the manor.

No, she wanted… Something else. Including a different name. “Becca.” Different-ish, anyway.

“See there? We are not strangers now.” He took her outstretched hand and brought it to his mouth, keeping his eyes on hers.

And she liked that . The way his mouth touched her skin, a chaste enough kiss no doubt people of his station exchanged all the time, but his eyes never left hers as his lips barely brushed her knuckles.

Excitement shivered through her, all physical reactions born of just that.

Physical. She had never had that kind of reaction to a man before, and it was like an antidote to all the horrible emotional poison that had been sitting inside her.

She wanted more of it. “Perhaps we could even solve each other’s problems,” she offered, allowing him to keep her hand in his.

“Oh? And how might we do that?” he returned, clearly interested. “Are you going to share your bench?”

“Maybe,” she offered, smiling as she stood. “But first, I think we should dance.”

Theodorou Nikolaou had not planned on enjoying himself at the Desmond wedding. He’d only come to appease his father, and perhaps get a break from his father’s disturbing new leaf .

This kind of event was usually Atlas Nikolaou’s purview. The rubbing elbows, the networking, that jolly way his father had about him, easily parting people from their money.

Theo tended to handle the details. His father had fondly called him katharistís , because Theo had spent most of his adult life cleaning up after his father’s messes.

But the heart attack last month had left Atlas more about hearth and home lately. Luckily wife number four—or was it five? It was hard to keep track since his mother was none of the wives—was happy to see to his every need.

Unluckily, Theo was now thrust into the obnoxious spotlight. Atlas wanted to spend time at home. He wanted to “discover himself.” Which meant Theo was now the face of Titan Banking, his father’s financial conglomerate.

Atlas liked being the face of things. He loved women being thrown at him, as his four or five wives could attest. Theo preferred to do the choosing rather than fend off the gold-digging horde.

He distrusted flattery, interest and pretty packages with little substance.

He preferred to be in control rather than in the spotlight.

He had spent most of his adult life avoiding just that and fashioning his life the way he liked, more or less.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise that Atlas would find a way to upend it. That the mess he would make would require a rearrangement of Theo’s carefully arranged life.

Theo looked down at his dance partner. He supposed he could find a way to make the best of it—he usually did.

Becca did not give the impression she knew who he was. No one he knew flagged her down or looked at her with even a flash of recognition. Only a kind of avarice, like an undiscovered jewel being brought out into the light.

He was not so unlike his father that he did not enjoy being the one who held out the jewel to shine. As long as it was his hands on her.

“How do you know the happy couple?” he asked. Perhaps if he could puzzle out how she fit into this tableau, he could determine whether she knew who he was or not.

He was not famous , exactly. His father held more of the renown, but because of Atlas’s money, his penchant for splashy marriages to famous women and his larger-than-life personality, there was interest in his bastard and only heir.

Theo preferred women who did not hold that interest.

His dance partner seemed to consider this question, her gaze darting to where the fair couple stood chatting with someone or another. “Do you think they’re happy?” she asked thoughtfully.

To him, the couple looked as though they could be brother and sister, but mostly they looked like any other couple on their wedding day. Smiles and excitement. Was it from happiness or just the moment? Theo did not know. Or care.

He shrugged. “They are rich and the center of attention as was likely the intention with an event such as this. Why shouldn’t they be happy about it?”

She laughed, the sound low and husky and like a shot of fine Irish whiskey in and of itself.

Because she was interesting. Not tall, exactly, but lithe anyway.

An athlete’s body, he’d characterize it as, though he couldn’t quite imagine what sport she’d fit into.

Her Irish lilt and coloring was soft and alluring, but didn’t speak of the grit and determination required of athleticism.

But there was something underneath all that external soft. A hint of something sharp. In that laugh, in the way she looked around the spectacle, in the way she moved in his arms, sure and certain.

Whereas his father preferred the soft and easy, Theo had always relished the sharp and complicated. A challenge to be met and prove that he was equipped to handle.

She looked up at him, that pretty lush mouth curved into a smile, her eyes dancing with possibilities.

He had not planned on a wedding tryst, but he was not one to reject such an interesting prospect. Particularly if she didn’t know who he was and wasn’t motivated by what kind of funds or fame she might be able to get her hands on.

So he pulled her closer in the dance, their bodies brushing, heat that slow unfurling creature inside his chest, deepening the pink in her cheeks. He slid a hand up from her hip to her back, where her dress was tantalizingly nonexistent.

He skimmed his fingers up her bare spine, then back down again. Smiled, when she leaned closer, teasing, inviting. He splayed his hand there on her bare back and enjoyed the little catch in her breath before she sighed.

They danced through three songs, closer and closer. Teasing, with brushes of bodies, hands, arch looks. Until he was hard and aching and ready for more than teasing .

He made sure his lips just barely skimmed her ear as he spoke quietly into it. “I have a rental in town.”

She considered this, not meeting his gaze. “Where?”

He told her.

She nodded, her blue eyes finally lifting to meet his. “I’ll meet you there.”