Page 143 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

He settled into the bed, convinced it would be a miserable night of sleep. Instead, to his surprise, the exhaustion won. He slept hard, but not restfully. Dreams seemed to hunt him through the dark, snatches and flashes of people and places he’d known.

And the screams of everyone he’d loved who’d died because of his selfish choices.

He awoke to the dark, or partial dark. A bright swath of light was widening across the bed as his door opened.

He expected staff. Maybe someone with a breakfast tray or someone to tell him his lawyers had arrived. He did not expect Amelia to sweep in carrying a tray. He did not expect daylight to be creeping through the edges of the drapes. He did not expectanyof this.

“Good morning,” she greeted cheerfully, marching over to his desk and depositing the tray of food and coffee on it. “I would have let you sleep later, but your lawyers are set to arrive in less than an hour, and I thought you’d want the opportunity to eat and dress before they do.”

Diego simply lay there, trying to take in this onslaught of information. Two years without much in the way of human interaction seemed to have dulled his ability to deal with…any people. He wouldn’t have cared, except it was starting to make it feel like Amelia had the upper hand.

Impossible.

She turned to face him, that sunny smile in place, those gray eyes alert and taking in the room around her. She was dressed in a trim kind of dress suitable for any office, sensible heels, her honeyed hair pulled back yet again in some fussy clip that seemed to have a candy cane theme to it.

He pushed himself into a sitting position, trying to shake away the dregs of sleep and dreams. He raked a hand through his hair. If he were at his cabin, he would have buzzed it. It was getting to be too long, too close to the old Diego and his perfectly coiffed style.

He pushed any memories of that old life away. The lawyers. They would be here soon. And once he dealt with them—and they dealt withher—he could…leave this horrible old nightmare.

But when he looked at her again, she was standing in a strange position. Almost like she’d been in the middle of doing something but had been frozen in time. She looked…shocked.

It was only then that he realized he was naked under the blankets pooled at his waist. Whether she knew that or not, he could not tell, but she was getting a full view of everything above—getting andtakingthat full view.

For a moment, eyes wide and mouth hanging open just a shade, she took in the sight of him. A pink flush appeared on her cheeks before she blinked and seemed to pull herself together to look away. She fussed with the tray. She said nothing.

But she had looked. Blushed.Enjoyed.

It was almost as if something in his brain short-circuited then. Thrust him back into a former life, a former body. Sensations, impulses, behaviors not foreign so much as…memory. From a long time ago, a whole different person ago. And yet the desire to reach and touch that person,bethat person again, was something he hadn’t felt in so long that he reacted without fully thinking it through. Without remembering himselfnow.

He tossed the covers off and slid out of bed. Amelia turned, her mouth opened as if to say something, but the words never came out. She made a squeaking sound and then whipped around, putting her back to him.

“What are you doing?” she finally said, her words little more than a screech.

“Getting dressed,” he replied casually. He walked over to the closet. Inside were all his old clothes, exactly as he’d left them whenever he was last here. He kept full sets of clothes at all the places his parents liked to jump to and fro. Would they fit him now, different person that he was?

He did not feel embarrassed in his naked state. She did not have to look if she did not want to.

He took a pair of boxers, soft even after years of no use. Far more comfortable than the clothes he allowed himself on the mountain. He glanced over his shoulder.

Amelia was looking. Her gray eyes met his, a mix of so many things in their depths that he was very nearly winded.

Questions. Crackling heat. A dangerous need. Hope. Fear. Desire. So much damn desire.

It had been years,years, since he’d touched a woman—been touched at all.

And it was beyond ridiculous to even entertain for half a second that Bartolo’s young daughter, hisassistant, would enter into anytouchingequations, even if she did like what she saw.

As much as he liked what he saw of her.

He turned back, grabbed a pair of pants and hitched them on. He didn’t bother with a shirt. Perhaps it skirted a few lines, was something theoldDiego might have done, but she’d conned him down the mountain, so maybe she deserved to deal with his old self, his old ego, his old selfish desires.

Desire. He could practically taste it. Her. Her hair would feel soft and smell of something delicate. Her skin would be warm velvet. Her mouth…

Pain is the price.

A sharp reminder, the stab of guilt that no one who had loved him, counted on him, believed in him was here to have any of these sensations, feelings,likes. They were dead.

His life was meant to be a penance, his own death, not an enjoyment.