Page 117 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

Whatever point she’d been trying to make to herself had backfired, and she had to plead with herself to keep it together, to remind herself that when her skin was no longer pressed to Alexis’s and the heavy beats of his heart were no longer dancing with the beats of hers and he was no longer inside her, this rush would pass and all these emotions that had sprung up from nowhere would go back to the nowhere from where they came.

She wasn’t falling in love with him. She wasn’t. It was just a chemical rush.

Mercies came in unexpected places and hers came from the ringing of a phone.

‘That’s yours,’ she said, climbing off his lap and grabbing his discarded suit jacket where the ringing was coming from and passing it to him, then used the excuse of gathering the rest of their discarded clothes to avoid eye contact a little bit longer, using that fragment of time to pull herself together.

Whoever was calling, he didn’t answer. Nor did he mention who the caller had been. The tightness of his mouth, though, told her whoever had called had been unwanted.

He’d just finished tucking his shirt in when his phone buzzed with a message.

Lydia, having pulled her top back over her head, saw the fresh tightening of his lips at whatever was on his screen. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ The way he said it made her stomach plummet and when she recognised the phone, it plummeted some more. Alexis had two phones, one that was strictly for business and one that was friends and family. It was his personal phone in his hand.

‘I thought that was my stock answer,’ she chided lightly. ‘Is it something or someone important?’

The blue-grey eyes fixed onto hers with a gravity she couldn’t remember seeing in them before. ‘If I tell you, it will hurt you.’

Alarm shot through her veins. ‘Is it about my family?’

His expression didn’t change. ‘No.’

Now her blood pressure plummeted too. Or did it rise? She didn’t know, knew only that she felt suddenly light-headed, and not in a good way.

With hisnohanging between them, poisoning the air she breathed, she somehow managed to hold onto the airiness of her tone. ‘Shouldn’t you reply to it?’

Grimness crept into his voice. ‘No.’

‘It’s bad manners to leave a lover hanging.’ She slipped her feet into her sandals and added, ‘Not to mention cruel.’

The tightening of his lips and the flickering in his eyes told her she’d hit bullseye. Smiling to show she didn’t care, Lydia strode to the door. ‘Call and put her out of her misery. I’ll order lunch for us.’

The gravity in his expression didn’t change. ‘It was over long ago.’

She shrugged and gave another bright smile. ‘Then deal with it however you see fit. Just remember she’s a human with feelings.’

Only after she’d popped into the kitchen to order food for them did Lydia lock herself in a bathroom and throw up what remained of her breakfast.

CHAPTER TEN

ALEXIS STUDIEDLYDIAdiscreetly but thoroughly as they shared their evening meal on the roof terrace. The humidity had lessened a little, the blazing heat of the day now a bearable warmth, and she’d changed out of her faithful jeans to sit out in it, wearing a simple cream skirt and silver scooped top. The silky hair he adored loose had been tied into an elegant knot and she must have trimmed her fringe because she hadn’t spent half the evening blowing it out of her eyes.

Watching her gracefully fork succulent slow-cooked lamb into her succulent mouth made his chest tighten.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he murmured, almost without thinking.

She gave a narrow-eyed smile. ‘What brought that on?’

He raised a shoulder. ‘Just making an observation. Did you speak to your mother?’ Lydia had said before he’d returned to the office that she was going to call her.

She nodded ‘She’s expecting me home on Sunday.’

Sunday. The date they would tell their families and then the world about their marriage.

The small amount of light in her eyes dimmed. ‘She thinks I’m coming home. She doesn’t know I’m only coming back to stick the boot even harder into them.’

‘What are you going to say to them?’