Page 103 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Amelia didn’t expect him to show up, not after the way they’d left things, but she’d hoped he might.

He did not. She waited, far too long, and Diego did not appear.

The only upside was that he had not left the castello yet. As he hadn’t come with more than his little bag, she knew it wouldn’t take him long to pack. So…maybe he wouldn’t come see the nativities, but maybe he would stay.

And she would keep trying to get through to him. She wouldn’t give up on him, no. If anything, this morning had made clear to her it was that…there was a way to get through to him. There were soft spots beneath all that barbed wire.

But she wasn’t going to destroy herself to get to them. She would give him the opportunity to take it off.

Maybe Christmases past had been the wrong tactic. Maybe she needed to focus on future Christmases. Not for him. But for herself. Maybe… Maybe she had to do a little inner healing along the way to really help him.

She smiled at the thought as she got behind the wheel. It eased some of her frustration and disappointment that he hadn’t come down.

Whether he joined her or not, she was going to go look at some nativities and enjoy herself. Because this wasn’t just about him —his Christmas pasts, his guilt, his grief. It was about her, too, and she was ready to turn the page from past to future.

So she drove to Dolcina. She walked the streets, taking in the nativities. She took pictures of the ones she liked the best, shopped, and even took a break at a little café for zeppole and a coffee. She sat there and felt…renewed.

Sex with Diego had been oddly transformative. Not just because he had done things to her body she had never dreamed of doing with another person, never known to dream of. No, it was bigger than that.

She had fully engaged in something not for anything other than pleasure.

She had thrown herself into something… dangerous wasn’t the right word.

The unknown, perhaps. She had taken a chance instead of hiding away.

She had done something for herself , without being concerned about serving someone else.

And it had been glorious. It emboldened her to start thinking beyond just sex. Just Diego.

What did she want?

The truth was, it had been easy to stay at the castello and in her job because she liked both things.

She excelled at handling Diego’s business ventures and all his other holdings.

She had a head for numbers, she knew how to deal with people and organization was something she got great satisfaction out of.

The life she’d been living did suit her.

She had simply let it take up too much real estate.

She had simply let it take over any self-reflection.

She had focused on tasks rather than feelings.

Even the way she’d been reading her father’s journal, in small chunks, as if she could pretend he was still alive, still with her every night.

As if, once she reached the end, he’d really be gone, so she avoided that eventuality.

But he was already really gone. The rate at which she read his journals changed nothing. It just allowed her to pretend she could put off that final grief, when the truth was that it was always here. Would always be here.

She had to do things in spite of the grief. Find joy and life beyond trying to live out her father’s wishes.

She finished off her pastry, watching with a small, satisfied smile as snow began to fall. She gave herself a few minutes to enjoy the soft, picturesque perfection, then decided she should head back before the roads got bad.

She drove with renewed determination. She would go through with the Christmas Ball because it was a fine tradition and good for the castello. Because it would be good for Diego. And because she liked event planning.

Perhaps, if it was a success, she would focus more on that than meeting Deigo’s every beck and call. She would still be happy to work for him, but he was going to have to start working for himself.

In the new year, they would both have to take some new steps, whether he wanted to or not.

Stepping into the future rather than hiding in the past.

She was humming “O Holy Night” as she walked back into the foyer of the castello. She stopped short when Diego surged forward, looking furious.

“Where have you been?” he demanded, a strange, frustrated energy pumping off him.

She unwound her scarf, hung it carefully on the peg. “Well, I went and looked at some nativities. Just as I told you I was going to.”

His thunderous expression was almost amusing. She had not been fooling herself. She knew this man. Maybe he didn’t know or understand her back—not yet—but that did not strip away her understanding of him.

Anger and ice hid all the more complex emotions, and seeing that in the context of what she knew about the Follieros, she suspected he’d developed those coping mechanisms at a young age.

“I came down,” he muttered.

“Did you?” she asked, trying not to grin, trying not to be warmed from the inside out, or worse, apologetic. “At what time?”

His scowl was truly a thing of beauty. “I do not recall.”

Which meant he’d come down very late expecting her to be waiting for him like a puppy. And she had waited for a time. Should she have waited longer? Should she have…

No. That wouldn’t be her. That wouldn’t be them .

He was going to have to make some of the choices.

He was going to have to start taking responsibility for himself and his own actions.

She could give him some grace. He was new to that after all.

But she wasn’t going to allow him to coast along any longer.

“You have lessons to learn yet, but I am happy to teach them to you.” She lifted onto her toes, brushed her mouth across his in a casual show of affection. But she liked it, and she was doing things she liked.

She tried to walk past him, but he grabbed her arm, pulled her back. “What is the meaning of this?”

“The meaning of what?”

“This? The humming? The kissing? The… You are not behaving the way you should.”

“The way I should or the way you want me to?” she returned. She didn’t try to escape his grasp. She liked his hands on her, in whatever ways he saw fit. And if that was a failing, she’d deal with it at another time.

When he said nothing to that, she didn’t fight his grasp but instead leaned into it, so it was more of an embrace than anything else. “Why did you come down?”

He frowned at her, eyebrows drawing together. “What do you mean?”

“You did not want to come see the nativities. You did not want to be around me. You wanted to sit in a dark room and hate yourself for some archaic feeling about my virginity. Yet you came down thinking I would be waiting for you and that you would go anyway. Why?”

He shook his head, and she didn’t know if he was denying her interpretation or just answering.

Still, she was getting to know him, understand him. If she stayed here, eventually he would be compelled to answer. Because he was not as cut off or as formidable as he wanted to be. At least when it came to her.

“I was not going to go, but I did not want you waiting for me,” he ground out.

Amelia was frozen for a moment. It was so clear now why he’d been angry when she’d walked in the door. What he’d been thinking.

She reached out, framed his face with her hands, her heart breaking for him. “Not everyone who waits for you dies, caro .”

He jerked away from her grasp, but she did not let him move away from her .

“That isn’t what I said,” he growled.

“But it is what you were thinking.” She gave him another light kiss, couldn’t seem to help herself. He needed comfort. He needed warmth. He needed so much, and he was so determined to punish himself instead.

Well, the way she saw it, he’d had enough punishment. Maybe if she showed him the opposite, he would start to leave it behind.

Future over past.

And if that didn’t work, she would accept it. She would not drown herself in it. No, she had to exist in this world too.

But first she would try. For the both of them. She pressed her mouth to his, not light or quick this time, but a kiss full of promise. A kiss full of all the more they’d had this morning, but with less frustration and anger tinging the atmosphere.

She expected him to resist. She expected a lecture, or maybe some more self-recriminations about her choices, but instead he sank into the kiss, his shoulders slumping in something like relief.

He’d been worried about her. Oh, he’d likely convinced himself he was just worried he would cause more harm. He would turn it into him being a problem, but that all stemmed from worry and care. He just framed it with him at the center because that’s all he knew how to do.

Self-centeredness was not the same thing as self-absorption. He could learn to not center himself in everything. And she would teach him.

He wrenched his mouth away from hers, tried to detangle himself, but Amelia held on. There was something here, and she wouldn’t make it easy for him to deny that.

She wasn’t about to make anything easy on him.

“You don’t have to stop.”

“This is madness,” he stated, but his hands were still in her hair. His eyes were fierce, but there was something lost behind all that fierceness. She could reach his lost, help him find his way. She knew she could.

“ You are madness.”

She laughed in spite of herself. He’d said it like an insult, but she’d never caused anyone madness before. It felt kind of powerful.

And if she had any power over this man, she would take it. Take it until he saw himself as a man worthy of something more than punishment. Take it until she led him from the dark to the light.

Diego did not know what had come over him. The living room had been one thing. A momentary lapse, relief that she had not died in some snowy wreck because he was cursed. He could have written that off.

But now it was the middle of the night, and he was in her bed, with her sleeping soundly beside him.