Page 172 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

He narrowed his eyes at the wordpizazz, as she’d known he would.

“Never mind that. Mrs. Moretti informed me you have not eaten all day.” He put the plate on the desk next to her.

“Oh…” She had to blink down at the plate because there was suddenly moisture in her eyes, and she couldn’t let him see it. “You didn’t have to worry about that. I’ll eat at dinner. The guests should be arriving soon.”

“You will eat now. We will not have you fainting. In my experience, this weekend brings out the worst in the people planning it. You have done very well, but we will not have that change.”

She had to swallow the lump in her throat and work for a smile and light tone. “Your mother did tend to get a bit…unpredictable around the Christmas Ball. But it was just nerves, and your father always calmed her down. He only tended to lose his temper if he’d had too much wine, and your mother always made sure he was cut off at just the right time.” Amelia helped herself to a little wedge of cheese and nibbled on it, hoping her stomach would hold.

“They managed each other well,” Diego agreed. She didn’t think he’d suddenly lost all bitterness toward his parents, but the more they discussed the past, the more at ease he seemed to come with it.

Like she’d been right all along.

“And your father often stepped in to alter their poor management of me,” he said, almost offhandedly.

Amelia felt the now-familiar twining double-emotion reaction to Diego voluntarily mentioning her father. Sharing his experiences with Bartolo came in strange little bursts that filled her heart with equal parts grief and joy.

Amelia liked to think it was one of the things that brought them together, like another gift her father had left behind.

“He never lost his temper,” she murmured, hoping to keep the conversation going. Any little scrap of information about her father was to be collected like a little jewel, but when they came from Diego, they were even more sparkling.

“Well, that’s not altogether true,” Diego returned. He picked up an olive and handed it to her.

Amelia regarded him. While she liked to think she knew her fatherbest, Diego had full-on experiences with him before she’d even known who he was and vice versa, so she knew that there were parts of Bartolo that Diego would know that she would not. Still…

“I suppose you could drive a man to lose his temper,” she said with a teasing smile, but she ate the olive as a kind of peace offering.

“Indeed. Especially in the early days. My parents hired him to take care of things for me while I was in university. I thought I was very worldly and adult, and I resented having no say in who was hired. I resented…much.”

His eyebrows drew together. “I had the entire world in the palm of my hands, and I resentedeverything. I had everything, and I was patently unhappy.” He shook his head. “I look back and I do not understand myself.”

Amelia was afraid to say anything, that it might break the moment. Not just a memory of her father but also Diego engaging in self-reflection.

“But your father learned to deal with me eventually. In the early days, I think I infuriated him. Especially my…lackadaisical approach to university, you could say. He did not approve of my drinking, carousing and very activelynottaking advantage of the education my parents were paying for.”

Amelia swallowed. “He always wanted to go to university. He couldn’t afford it, and his parents did not value education. That’s why he was so insistent I have a good one, even though it made it necessary for him to mostly stay here rather than follow you about.”

Diego frowned, looking a little arrested. She thought maybe she’d stepped wrong, that he’d close up now, but instead he kept talking.

“That puts things into…more context. I suppose if I’d ever thought beyond myself, I might have seen it. Instead, he seemed…overbearing and dull. An unfair punishment from my parents. One day I’d skipped my exams entirely, partied the whole night before, slept through the tests the next day. Your father had had enough of me at that point. He came into my room that afternoon and dumped an entire bucket of ice-cold water on me and lectured me about at leastgoingto my exams, even if I was going to be a waste of space and fail them.”

Amelia was shocked into a laugh. “You can’t be serious.”

“I think it’s the angriest I’ve ever seen… I eversawhim. Usually he kept his temper very carefully arranged, you are right. But in the early days, when I had just gone off to university and it was his job to keep me in line…well, it was not all good feelings.”

“It must have been hard for him, to work for someone who had so many more opportunities than he did.”

“And waste them away. Yes, I did not make it easy, that is for sure.” Diego handed her a cracker this time, and she would eat anything he handed her if he kept talking about it.

“I flew home immediately, found my parents here in the castello planning the damn Christmas Ball and told them they had to get rid of Bartolo immediately. Anyone who had ever been harsh with me before had immediately been sacked. A nanny, a butler. But when I went to my parents, told them what happened, I expected them to handle it. They had always handled it before, but…they told me I was a grown man now. If I didn’t want Bartolo working for me, it was up to me to get rid of him. They were busy. With the ball.”

Amelia frowned even though it did not surprise her, exactly. Her father had written of this. The way the Follieros had determined that at eighteen, a man was a man and their responsibility to their son was done, except financially. But she had never conceptualized what that meant until now.

To go from every whim being catered to, to handling everything yourself in no uncertain terms… “That must have been jarring,” Amelia murmured as he handed her another wedge of cheese.

Diego laughed. This time therewasbitterness. “Just months before I’d told them I was adult enough to hire my own assistants. Now I was yelling at them to fire this one.” He shook his head. “And you are right. Even though I claimed to want it, them forcing me to handle something was jarring. I didn’t realize it would happen, that they would cut me loose. Oh, not in any real way. I had the money I had, the privilege I had, but they were done…managing it, I suppose. I wasn’t prepared. It’s not an excuse, of course, but it was…alarming.”

“Alarming or terrifying?”