Page 141 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

She was proud of her foresight, because while she’d thought that would simply be good practice, now she thought it might actually…get through to him, and this wall he’d built between himself and the real world.

She had known he was grieving. She had known he felt guilty for not being on that plane like he was supposed to have been. She had even had an inkling that these were the things that had prompted his extreme isolation. But she hadknownthis in a far-off, inconsequential sort of way. Assuming that said isolation was comfortable, easy—perhaps not fullyhealthy, but not…extreme.

Now that she’d seen just how extreme his self-punishment was, she was determined to show him there was life on the other side of grief and guilt and pain.

A good man existed under all those things. Her father had thought so, so it must be true, and the only way to honor her father was to prove it to Diego himself.

Her first attempt would be to use the ghosts of his Christmas pasts to open him up to that. She couldn’t help but think it would have to work at least alittle. Because remembering her parents and her past with them always caused her to ache now that they were gone, but it was a comforting ache. Remembering them meant remembering love, and, in doing so, reminded her that while her parents might have died, that love did not simply evaporate. It lived on inside her for as long as she did the things that would make them happy. Proud.

Diego had hidden himself away, sunk into the hard grieving part of loss rather than keep moving through life. So now she would require it in her father’s stead. So that Diego felt the love that must still exist there, even if he’d had a complicated relationship with his family.

She walked across the paved walkway to the back door, nodding in approval at the greenery and red bows adorning the windows even at the back of thecastello. No detail had been missed. In the darkness, every inch of this place—inside and out—would glitter with Christmas lights.

There wasn’t much snow this far down the mountain, but hopefully some would fall before the ball to add to the overall effect. She’d already decided to hold it whether Diego approved or not, whether he came or not, but she was still holding out hope she could convince him to attend.

Shewouldconvince him. Shewouldget through to him.

She supposed she should be more concerned she wouldn’t have a job and he’d hire someone to cancel all her plans. A life without this job would be…terrifying.

But something about that realization was concerning. In a strange way, it made her see that she too had been in a holding pattern the past two years. Running around acting as his assistant, doing his bidding—as was her job—and little else.

She did not have friends. She did not socialize outside of work, outside of the castello. She’d hidden herself away and let working take the place of…living.

She hadn’t been terribly unhappy, and grief filled in all the lonely spots in a way that was oddly comforting. This had made it easy to not realize she wasn’t happy. She wasn’t living. She wasn’t doing what she’d promised her parents’ memory: that she would do her best because it was what they would have wanted.

This realization shrouded everything with a new sense of tension, worry. What if she messed everything up? What if she pushed him too hard, and he fired her, and she ruined everything?

What if, in all that ruin, she became truly untethered and fully alone?

She breathed carefully through the anxiety. Her father had always urged her to make a plan when she was worried. To take it step by step. A wrong plan could be fixed, but inaction left you in the same place.

It was better to be afraid, to be forced into a new situation, than to stay wallowing in the old. Diego could fire her. He could cancel the ball. But he could not take her goals away from her.

She would prove to him he was the man her father had thought he was. And if it required living an entirely different life from the one she’d comfortably settled into over the past two years, then so be it.

Because that would make her father happy and proud.

“So be it,” she whispered to herself firmly. She stopped at the door, turned to find Diego had not followed. He was still by the car, his gaze on the castello in front of him.

He stood there, expressionless. She knew he had some reaction to being here, though. He would not stand as still as he was if he didn’t havesomefeeling about it, but the feeling was hidden deep under a sheet of stoic rock.

It was her job to find a way to break that rock apart. “I suppose you have not celebrated Christmas up there in your isolation,” she offered across the expanse of the walkway. Then she crossed back to him, linked her arm with his in a friendly move that caused him to stiffen even further.

She kept her voice light and cheerful. “Well, no worries. We will celebrate big enough for these lost years. Just as your family would have wanted.”

He looked down at her, said nothing. The moment extended, tight like a rubber band that would either break completely from the pressure or snap back into place with a painfulwhack.

But neither happened. After moments of the tension building, he simply took his arm out from hers, looked away and walked inside.

Amelia didn’t immediately follow. She let out a slow breath, trying to find a calm center in the midst of all the strange sensations his dark gaze affected inside her.

As though he were in charge, when she was the one who’d gotten him down here. She was the one with the power, even if it was his name on all the businesses.Shehad handled everything for too long for him to be fully in charge.

Or so she told herself. But actually dealing with him, butting heads with him in person rather than through email, made her realize her position was far more precarious than she’d initially thought. Part of her wanted to give in to that pressure. To step back, do as he said.

But a bigger part of her could see her father’s careful handwriting.

He will be a good man someday. I wish I could convince him of that.