Page 127 of Modern Romance October 2025 5-8

Enzo frowned, unsure why that was of any significance.

‘Kayla’s husband?’ Marcus pressed.

The faint stirrings of his memory began to shake free.

Kayla. London.

‘Wait, Kayla Masters?’ Enzo asked.

‘Yeah,’ Marcus said, wide-eyed as if he should understand the warning inherent in his gaze.

‘The one I gave a lift to? After her husband got in a snit and stormed off leaving her alone at the opera house in Covent Garden?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘But nothing happened,’ Enzo said.

Not that her marriage vows had stopped Kayla from trying it on with him. Disgust shivered across his skin from the memory. Despite what everyone seemed to think of him and his proclivities he would never cross that line. Unlike his parents who made a mockery of the institution,repeatedly, he respected the sanctity of marriage and abhorred anyone who didn’t do the same.

‘I don’t think he believes that.’ Marcus winced.

Enzo dismissed it as very much not his problem with a shrug, and turned back to find the stunning redhead weaving her way towards him. Oh, she wasn’t making a beeline for him. Her movements were more like a dance. Subtle. They created...expectation.

She was going to make him work for it, he instinctively knew. And helikedthat.

They locked eyes again, and again he felt it. That fizz, bubbling in his veins, as if someone had dropped baking soda into water. The crystalline blue was so unusually bright, it made her gaze almost startling.

They skirted each other, the distance between them getting shorter and shorter. He wondered where she was from. She looked almost Celtic in her colouring. He swept two glasses of champagne from the tray of a nearby waiter, and inclined his head towards her in an offering.

Her gaze brightened, the smile broadening, before frowning slightly, with a slight look of alarm on her features, when her eyes focused on something over his shoulder.

It prompted him to turn, just in time to see a large, red-faced man bearing down on him. Now, Enzo was tall, but this man looked like a door, and while Enzo could probably have held his own in a fight, he also didn’thaveto and instead simply chose to sidestep the oncoming force.

This, however, was a near fatal mistake.

Because while Enzo had successfully managed to avoid the bull-sized charge, it had left the other man with nothing stopping him from careening straight into the large sunken pool that the guests had been dancing around, taking both the redhead and another poor innocent bystander with him.

Genuinely shocked, Enzo looked around to find somewhere to put his glasses down so that he could at least help the red-haired woman, whose name he still did not know, out of the pool. She had emerged from the water with a gasp, and was all but indecent as the turquoise silk, now a dark forest green, clung desperately to a lithe, toned body of subtle, but no less delicious, curves.

Laughter and cheers broke out from the fringes of the gathering from people who had clearly not seen the entire situation, but above them all, Kayla Masters arrived and turned her not inconsiderable ire onhim.

‘This is all your fault!’ she screamed, as Enzo realised that the large man must have been her husband.

Utterly taken aback, Enzo peered at her. ‘Are you drunk?’

‘No, I am not! None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for you,’ she shouted accusingly, causing Enzo to question his sanity.

Because while he enjoyed his fun, skirting the edges of what most would call common decency in hisprivatelife, this was quickly becoming verypublic.

He felt the wide-eyed furious gaze of the wet woman in the pool, andDio mio, hehatedthis. The drama, the hysteria. It was all too close to home for a man who had witnessed his parents’ dramatic and often very public exchanges, one too many times. The memory was strong enough to blot out all thoughts of red hair and turquoise silk, of pleasure-filled evenings and simple fun.

‘Did you tell your husband that we slept together?’ he forced out through gritted teeth.

Kayla’s eyes glittered for one moment, as if she’d suddenly realised that she might have made a mistake.

‘I...no, I...’

The lie was as clear to him as day.