Page 33 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

CHAPTER THREE

Four months later

R EBECCA DID NOT forget about Theo. She tried, but her recovery still kept her off horses, and Patrick’s happy marriage loomed over the estate like a ghost. Bridget Desmond was now the head of the house, and she was making changes .

Rebecca couldn’t quite shake it whether she was dealing with the Desmonds’ horses alongside her father or running into a friend in town. Everyone wanted to talk about the sweet, glamorous Bridget.

And that was the worst part. She was sweet and kind and glamorous. She fit in the Desmond House like she’d been born to be its mistress.

It sat in Rebecca like a sickly thing. Sometimes Rebecca was almost certain she’d come down with some kind of virus, then she’d simply feel better for a few days and be certain she was moving on with her life.

Only to wake up back in the sickly pits again for a few days. So she tried to think of Theo, of their remarkable night—because it had been remarkable. So much so, though, that it felt like…some fairy tale. A dream that wasn’t real.

Everything around her right now was far too real. But if that night had been possible, there was more possible for her out there. She did not have to stay hung up on stuffy Patrick Desmond.

She wished she’d had the presence of mind to hook up with a local. Someone who could continue to take her mind off things. And at least make it appear as though she’d moved on.

But what local could have made her feel what Theo had? That had been…revelatory.

She supposed she could make a casual inquiry into the guest list. Figure out who he was.

And then what? her inner critic demanded. You’d just ring him?

He clearly wasn’t residing in Ireland.

Miserable, and frustrated with her own misery, Rebecca sat on the floor of the bathroom not sure whether she should attempt to get up or not. The roiling nausea really liked to play its little games with her.

She supposed she was going to have to go to the doctor like her mother had been pushing for. Of course, she half expected to be recommended to a psychiatrist for simply being pathetic and incapable of getting over her heartbreaks.

It didn’t feel like heartbreak. Not over Patrick, not even over the Olympics. It was more like being stuck. Sunk into a quagmire she couldn’t quite claw her way out of. There was sadness, regret, some anger, but mostly she understood life was not fair and she needed to move on.

And she couldn’t.

Because she had no goal. No focus. She needed one. She needed—

“Rebecca.”

She looked up at her worried mother standing in the doorway but waved her off. “I’m all right, Mam. I must be coming down with the flu or something. I’ll go to the doctor, like you asked, but I’m sure it’s fine.”

Her mother’s expression went very grim as she stepped forward. “I don’t think it’s a flu, a stór .” And then her mother did something that felt completely insane in the moment.

Held out a pregnancy test.

“Mr. Nikolaou.”

Theo didn’t look up from his spreadsheet. His assistant, Dmitra, would hopefully get the hint that now was not the time unless she had something urgent.

She did not get the hint. “Do you recall those…strange messages we’ve been getting and ignoring?”

Theo stared at his assistant, working through the heaps and heaps of work he’d been attending to.

Strange was just a way of life as his father attempted to upend everything.

Atlas’s natural greed and business savvy had turned into a deep and abiding need to be charitable and good , like he could buy his way into heaven now that he knew he had a faulty heart.

Theo rubbed his temple. He preferred it when his father had been a careless rogue. Not because he enjoyed his father’s recklessness, but because he had been in control of Titan. As long as their profits climbed, Atlas left him be to do his work of organizing the company while Atlas played.

Now, his father was dialing into meetings, starting a million fires Theo had to try and put out.

“No, I don’t remember any messages,” Theo said irritably, because he remembered everything . Had to in order to keep up with the promises his father was making that might bankrupt them all if Theo didn’t find a way to smooth things over.

“Ah. The personal ones,” Dmitra replied, clearly uncomfortable, which was not her usual way.

Theo frowned. He hadn’t had time for personal in something like four months, and the memory of that was still too deeply stamped on his mind and he did not have time for that.

But now that she mentioned strange messages, he did recall. “Yes. Right.” He snorted. “The cryptic need to get in touch. What about it?”

“Apparently she has decided to get in touch…in person.”

“She?” The last thing he had time for was some woman wanting to get in touch. The last thing he had time for was—

A woman stepped into his office. A woman with that reddish hair, snapping blue eyes and fair skin. A woman he recognized immediately. So immediately he felt struck dumb for a moment, completely frozen still.

“Becca.”

She stood there in his office, the Irish siren he hadn’t been able to fully forget. So much so that, even though he’d blamed it on the influx of work, he hadn’t been with another woman since.

She moved forward. “You see, when you told me your name was Theo, it did not occur to me that it was short for Theodorou Nikolaou, heir to the Nikolaou fortune.”

He wanted to believe that, particularly since she seemed irritated about it, but the usual chill spread through him. “And yet here you are.”

“Yes. Indeed. Greece.” She laughed, and it sounded strangely bitter. “Who knew this would finally get me here?”

Theo did not know what to make of this, of her, of the wild, twisting thing inside him that wanted to reach out and touch, but whatever it was, he did not want to do it in front of his assistant.

“Dmitra, I will see to Ms.…” It occurred to him then he hadn’t a clue what her last name was. “I will handle this.”

“Of course.” Dmitra beat a hasty retreat.

Theo studied the woman he had not quite been able to forget.

That he had drowned himself in work to pretend he had.

She was dressed in a kind of oversize sweater that no doubt suited the weather in Ireland more than here in Greece.

Her hair was piled up on her head, and he remembered all too well his hands tangled in it.

She had haunted him, he had to admit now with her standing in front of him, with that damnable heat curling through his bloodstream like an expensive liquor. Even knowing this could not bode well for either of them, her sudden appearance all these months later.

The oddly potent pull of a woman he’d spent one night with months ago frustrated him, so he did what he did best. Focused on the problem at hand and pushed away his own wants, needs or complications. “What is this ?”

She did the most incomprehensible thing then.

She spread her hand over her stomach, cupped the slightly rounded surface that had not been round before.

“Do you recall wearing a condom during our night together? After the first time, that is. Because I think there might have been a hiccup somewhere in the middle.”

It wasn’t embarrassment, exactly, that had him striding forward and closing his office door with a snap. It was how he could remember all too well, every moment, and if he looked back upon it, the hiccup she spoke of.

He’d had her, over and over again, and there had been a moment in there when he had not cared about anything except feeling her lose herself around him, and he had forgotten, momentarily…everything.

Which was not acceptable, obviously , and added to this unsettled frustration. Why was she here ? Surely she didn’t mean… “I am not certain this is an appropriate setting for…this discussion.”

“Maybe I’m just handling it wrong.” She pressed a hand to her temple, and she did look tired. A little pale.

Beautiful as ever.

But those eyes, direct and potent, met his gaze and said words that took their time to penetrate.

“I’m pregnant. The baby is yours, as I haven’t been with anyone else.

Since I couldn’t get a personal phone number for you, or through to you on a professional one, and dropping the news in an email to some faceless corporate name seemed wrong, I came here to tell you. ”

Everything rattled around in his mind like loose tacks. He tried to shake his head to clear it. “And you just expect me to…believe you?”

Her face got very hard then, but her words were not. “No. I don’t expect you to, I suppose. I don’t need you to, either.”

She made absolutely no sense, on every level.

“You are claiming I am the father of your baby.” He didn’t allow the words to form a picture, to truly penetrate. Partially because he was completely and utterly upended by her standing here. In his office .

She rolled her eyes. “If you want to put it that way, sure. Now you know. And I’ve done my duty, so…bye.”

He moved in front of her out of instinct more than plan, blocking her exit. She could hardly drop this…accusation, then say bye as if it did not matter. “This is…madness.”

“Madness seems a bit much. A surprise? Unexpected? Yes. But I did not come here to…make claims or have arguments. I thought about not telling you at all. It would have been easier.” She lifted a shoulder, as if this was a casual conversation about small, unimportant things.

“But… I guess it just didn’t seem right you didn’t at least know , but I don’t need help.

I don’t need…involvement. I won’t fight for you to be a part of this. I don’t need to.”

He tried to make sense of her words, but there was no sense. She had come all the way from Ireland to tell him he was—allegedly—the father of her unborn baby, and yet she wanted no demands, no involvement, no fight?

No, it was a trick. Somehow. Why else come all this way? She knew he had money. She wanted it. Like all of the women his father fell for, forever throwing money at anyone who smiled at him.

But there was no arguing this woman had done more than smile at him, and while it had to be a trick, he did not know how to fully settle into that belief.

He took a deep breath, centered himself. “And if I should like to be a part of this?” he asked, pleased with how mild and accommodating he sounded.

Since he felt and would enact neither of those things.

“Well.” She frowned a little. “I suppose we will have to figure out how that should work. I’m not leaving Ireland.” She looked around his office. “Though you probably have the means to make the trip whenever you’d like.”

Yes, indeed he did. But that had nothing to do with a child.

A child . Potentially…his child. But he couldn’t determine how he might feel about that. First, there were particulars that needed to be taken care of, and like everything else in his life, he needed to handle them calmly and stoically until he had all the facts.

Then maybe he could deal with feelings .

“I am a wealthy man. Even if I chose to believe you by merit of…something, considering I know nothing about you except you are Irish, I will need proof. In order to move forward. In order to…” Clean up this mess.

He had never truly considered being a father. He would have had to consider a marriage first, and while his father certainly made marriage seem easy and disposable , Theo did not view it as such. He held too much responsibility to be as free and easy with such things as his father.

He held himself to too high a standard, and any future wife would have had to have met that standard, and he’d certainly never met anyone who came close.

He stared down at the woman who claimed to carry his child. He did not know her at all, so there was no way to determine if she met any standard.

“I understand you might want proof, but I just don’t care enough, Theo .

You can go ahead and not believe me. And I can go back to my life.

I did what was right, and I don’t need to…

” She shook her head, and to her credit, she did not look overwrought.

Just tired. But certain. “I won’t prove it.

I don’t need to. I said what I need to say, and now I’ll go. ”

“You came all the way here.”

Her smile was small. Sad. “You wouldn’t answer my messages. It felt like the only way to move forward. Now it’s done. I got a glimpse of Athens. I told you what I needed to tell you. And now I can go home, conscious clear.”

“And this baby?”

She put her hand protectively over her stomach, and her eyes went fierce. “Will be mine.”

He had the pointless, ridiculous impulse to wonder if his mother had ever stood there, hand over her stomach with him in it, and called him mine .

No. It was clear she had not. She had birthed him and washed her hands of him as one might a puppy. Theo supposed he hadn’t been there, but his mother’s silence across the years while she perfected her life as a royal had made it clear.

And he had no business sitting in the past when his present…perhaps his future, stood in front of him. Becca, her hands cradling the child she grew.

A bastard. Abandoned by its parent.

No. The cycle would not repeat.

“We will have the test.”

“I told you—”

He stopped her with one quelling glare. “And I am telling you, we will have the test. I will know if this child is mine, and if it is, it will be mine.”

“What the hell does that mean?” she demanded, temper fraying the edges of her control.

“It means we are going to have a test.” Because every mess had to be cleaned up one step at a time.

This would be the first step.