Page 42 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she managed to rasp out, hoping he would stay across the room so she could keep herself from falling at his feet. “I was told you were awake.”

“Yes. I have a schedule I like to keep. You are free to join me, of course.” He gestured at some of the equipment. “Light weights are safe in pregnancy, I have read.”

Rebecca looked around at the intimidating room of equipment, tried not to think of this incredibly strong, incredibly sweaty, incredibly hot man reading a book about pregnancy.

It was doing too much frying of her senses.

“I was thinking of something more like going for a walk. That is what I do at home, but I do not have a beach at home.”

He started moving. Toward her. She backed away a little. Not out of any fear of him , but fear of her own pitiful lack of control.

“You should come with me,” she said on a squeak, hoping it would halt his forward movement. “And we will start to get to know one another.” Because that was the point. Make them something different from strangers who couldn’t seem to resist each other.

He eyed her, and still approached. She thought there was some suspicion in his gaze, but she couldn’t understand why. He had been the one to say they should stop being strangers as if it was easy as that.

He came to a stop right in front of her. His eyes were intense, his face and chest covered in sweat. But his eyes pinned her, held her gaze there. It did nothing to stop the frantic rattling of her heart.

Or worse, the insistent pulse deep within her, demanding release.

“Very well. You must eat first.”

She licked her lips, trying to wet her dry throat. “I…did. I can’t promise it will stay down, but I did eat.”

He nodded in approval. “Good.” He looked her up and down, and some very stupid part of her wished she’d thought to put an effort into her appearance. “How did you sleep?”

“Oh, very well.”

“Dreamless?”

She blinked, not sure what he was getting at. “Yes.”

He reached out, traced a finger down a strand of escaped hair. His gaze was dark. And wicked. “Would you like to know what I dreamed of, Rebecca?” he asked in a low, husky voice.

The curve of his mouth was a sensual promise, tales of the dream were, as well.

Yes , she wanted to say. Tell me. Show me.

But damn it, she had to have some self-control. Some self-respect. She took a step away from him, swallowed down the hard ball of everything that lodged in her throat.

“N-no. I will…meet you on the beach.” And then she turned and hurtled herself away, aching for something she needed to resist.

He met Rebecca outside. She stood on the patio, looking down at the beach below.

The wind whipped through her hair and played with the loose fabric of her clothes.

The blue of the sky and sea framed her, set her apart, seemed to create a spotlight in which she was the most stunning thing he’d ever seen.

The cold shower had done nothing to cool his bloodstream. He had seen her interest, her desire, her wants clearly expressed in those crystal blue eyes. The reality of her, in his space, the same wants and needs careening through her, was a thorn he had not considered.

And he had been plagued by dreams of her. Naked and his.

He had sought to exorcise the demon of her through a hard workout. It worked with almost every other problem in his life.

Not her.

He had been forced to use his shower wisely, and held no compunction about picturing her mouth taking him deep as he had dealt with the problem.

But just the sight of her now had him stirring again, like some uncontrolled teen.

Like your father.

At least that idea had him finding some semblance of control within himself. He came to stand next to her. She glanced up at him, a soft smile on her face.

“I still think you should have asked me to come here, but it is beautiful,” she said. “And wonderfully warm.”

He grunted in response, then with some reluctance, took her arm. “The sand will make it harder to walk. You should be careful.”

She hooked her arm with his but kept a space between them. Like strangers on a first date might act.

This also irritated him, enough so that the pretty morning seemed more affront than solace.

They hit sand and she paused to take her shoes off. She sighed happily and then they began to walk again.

“Tell me about yourself, Theo.”

Like this was some kind of job interview. Frustrated with his own raging desires, and the way she suddenly seemed so unaffected by her own, he was curt in his response. “You do realize I know all I need to about you.”

“Is that so?” she returned with haughty indifference.

“You are Rebecca Murphy. Born and raised in Ireland on the Desmond Estate. Your parents both work in the equestrian arm of said estate. You showed an aptitude for riding from a young age, and the Desmonds encouraged your parents to allow you to compete. They helped fund your competition schedule. You would have gone to the Olympics, but an unfortunate injury and subsequent surgeries made it impossible. Hence the scars on your hip.”

Her mouth had dropped open. “You…did an internet search on me.” He didn’t know why she was surprised. She’d done the same. Did she think he would not find out a few facts about the mother of his child ?

“You are not much of a mystery, Rebecca Murphy. And that is only the surface. I could know more if I hired someone to go in depth. All but the scars on your hip were easy enough to discover on my own.”

“I hardly made it difficult on you to discover the scars on my hip,” she muttered, a mix of amusement and self-deprecation.

He laughed, the sound and the feeling a strange foreign lightness he wasn’t used to.

Even when she churned him into unrecognizable knots, there was something amusing about her.

She had a self-awareness she did not try to hide, try to sophisticate away.

He was not sure he knew someone with a sense of self that did not come from money and power.

“You’re not the only one who can do an internet search, you know.” She fisted her hands on her hips and glared up at him.

He didn’t relish the idea of her finding things out about him that the press reported, particularly in his youth, but she’d already done it, so he waved her to speak.

“No one knows who your mother is. Your father, Atlas Nikolaou, presented you as a baby as his own and there was never any whiff of where you came from, though there are many rumors and stories. None could be proven enough to take hold. Throughout your childhood, your father was married a handful of times and you were alternatively sent off to boarding school or kept home depending on the wife.”

He stiffened, couldn’t seem to stop himself. He knew his father’s many marriages were very public, easy to find out about, but he hadn’t expected her to draw conclusions about his on-again, off-again boarding school experience to be tied to which wife was lady of the manor at the time.

“You showed an aptitude in school for many things, but business has always been where you’ve shined,” she continued. “Quickly becoming your father’s heir apparent. And it seems very few people can attribute that to the fact you’re his only child, because you’re just that good at your job.”

“Naturally.”

Her mouth curved at that, amusement in her eyes. But she didn’t stop there.

“Since you were more responsible and dedicated than your father—according to reports—you quickly took on more responsibility as he acted more a figurehead. That is, until his heart attack a few months ago, when you also took on the role as figurehead and Atlas stepped back to focus on his health and family.”

Theo’s gut churned. It made no sense. These were all things everyone knew about him. Easily found on the internet as she said, and yet the way she recited facts about him, reduced him to a little paragraph, it grated.

She grated.

He began to walk again, not wanting to meet her gaze. “See, a simple internet search and we already know each other. We could be married by the end of the day, and all will be settled.”

“We don’t know each other. We know a list of facts about each other. Certainly not enough to form some kind of legally binding union.”

“The scars on your hip are not a list of facts.”

“You know nothing about the injury. The surgery. The recovery. What it felt like. The surgery is a fact . The scars are a reality you couldn’t possibly understand without understanding me .”

He heard the heartbreak in her words and felt twin emotions. He wanted to know all those things. Wanted the find the source of her hurt and fix it.

The other half of him wanted nothing to do with something so complex, so unfixable. Because he could not cure her physical ailments. He could not turn back time and change things so she was able to compete at the Olympics.

So he found himself uncharacteristically speechless. Thankfully, she did not give him much time to live in this discomfort.

“Tell me something no one knows.” She demanded this, as if he should jump to whatever she said, and it would not start a disastrous precedent.

“You first,” he retorted.

She didn’t look angry. Instead, her expression went thoughtful. “I suppose a few people know this, but you don’t.” Her eyes met his, a kind of challenge. “I was engaged, in a way, to Patrick Desmond.”

Theo stood stock-still. He could picture Patrick Desmond, the groom at that wedding that had started all this. The only descriptor Theo could think of for Patrick was bland . Soft maybe. There had been nothing interesting about the couple at all.

But he could remember now, Rebecca watching them. Asking him if he thought they were happy.

He looked down at her. With her wild hair and sharp eyes and the light dust of freckles down the bridge of her nose. The idea of her with Patrick Desmond , the idea of that man’s hands on her, his ring , enraged him for reasons he could not and would not parse.

“What does in a way mean?”

She sighed, looked out at the water as they walked. “We were meant to be engaged when I came back from the Olympics. He’d said we would be.”

Theo watched her face for every little emotion. He saw anger. Frustration. Maybe some wistful sadness. He did not see heartbreak or abject misery there, but he thought back to the wedding. Her easy acquiescence to his invitation. Did it stem from both those things?

Did it matter? Of course not.

“Instead, I was hurt. Patrick was very… Well, he was not attentive after my injury. I didn’t read into that.

I should have. But I was in a hospital hours away and he was at home.

Still, in all that time, he never said anything about not getting married anymore.

Then when I was able to come home, I went to see him and… ”

Theo did not want this story, and yet he stood there memorizing all her features as emotions chased across them. Eyebrows drawing together, the slow downturn in her mouth. Again, anger over any kind of bereft loss.

Or was that a strange kind of wishful thinking?

“Bridget was there. The woman he married. A ring on her finger, draped all over him. And I realized I had been very, very stupid. A fool, really. He was always going to follow his father’s decree. I just thought…”

“That because the family had been kind, funded your Olympic bid, and because this weasel had told you that you would be married, you would indeed be married.”

She blinked once, then looked up at him with a startled kind of expression. “I should have—”

“It seems to me the should-haves fall on the Desmonds. This Patrick was a coward. People change their minds, omorfiá mou . People cave to pressure. But they should be stalwart enough to admit this to the people who are affected.”

Rebecca seemed to mull this over as they walked over sand again. He thought that would be the end of it, but then she spoke. Quiet and unlike herself. A kind of demure searching.

“But shouldn’t I have seen the coward in him?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

She asked this as a real question, and it hung there, as if he was forced to answer it when he was already eager to leave this conversation and his part in it behind. And yet, he found words easily enough. “Perhaps. Perhaps you were blinded by love.” He tasted his own bitterness at the word.

“I guess,” she agreed, which caused a little pain in between his ribs. Then she shrugged. “For whatever kind of excuse that is. I don’t know why love should blind . It isn’t as if I didn’t know he had flaws. I simply loved him in spite of them.”

Silence between them fell again. The idea of her loving a weak-willed fool who then went on to marry a suitable bride almost immediately settled in him in sharp edges and strange weights.

He wanted nothing to do with it, so he introduced a topic that would no doubt change the entire conversation and be something that she did not know about him.

“ I know who my mother is.”

Now she stopped walking, watched him in complete surprise. “You do? She’s…alive?”

“Alive and well.” He thought he had come to accept this long ago. That his bitterness had eased, but the existence of his own child had stoked the flames of bitterness once more.

“Who is she?” Rebecca asked gently.

“It is of no matter,” he replied, and meant it with fervency. She would never matter. “We have never had contact. We never will. But it isn’t as if no one knows her identity. I do. She does. My father does.” His father had never lied. Never tried to hide the truth. He’d always been quite clear.

His mother did not want them. She wanted her crown and her family. She had deigned to birth him, and that was all it would ever be.

And Theo supposed that was why he never could bring himself to hate his father. At least his father had wanted him. Kept him. It wasn’t the best of feelings, but it was better than abandonment.

Which was why he would never abandon his child. He would never allow Rebecca to, either. His child would be given everything he had not. His child would never doubt his place.

“I have to believe that we are the only ones who know or it would have come out at some point,” Theo continued.

“Come…out.” Rebecca looked at him, as if she studied him long enough she would see the answer stamped across his face. “But for it to come out , it has to matter who she is. So she’s famous in some way?”

Had he taken a misstep? Given away a detail he shouldn’t have? He was so taken aback by the idea he’d made a tactical error that he could not find words for long ticking moments. Standing on a beach, staring at this beautiful woman who’d upended his entire life.

You are Theodorou Nikolaou. You will not be upended.

“I think we have walked far enough,” he said, knowing the clipped tone would only increase her curiosity. Knowing he should have kept his mouth shut instead of trying to distract her from her own misery.

Knowing, if he did not get ahold of himself, he would make more mistakes yet.

Unacceptable.