Page 89 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

Diego turned away from the tree, strode out of the room. This was temporary. This was simply to meet with the lawyers tomorrow. It was nothing else. So he did not need to engage with these pointless memories.

Everyone was dead, essentially by his own hand. Everyone except Amelia.

He refused to look back to see if she’d followed him inside or into the main room. He would not engage with her anymore. Whatever she was up to, whatever her goals, he had no interest.

Diego moved through the house feeling as though a noose was fastened around his neck. Every step in the castello was like a splint being shoved under his fingernails. Painful memories he wanted to push away, ignore. Run from.

So once he finally made it to his old room—even though that too was pain—he elected to stay there. He did not respond to Amelia’s summons to dinner. He didn’t touch any of the food brought up to him on a tray.

He sent a missive to his lawyers that he expected them at the castello first thing in the morning, then stripped and took the coldest shower he could manage, reminding himself pain was the price. Pain was good. Pain was what he deserved.

In that icy shower, the hard band around his lungs eased. Yes, pain was what he deserved.

He got out of the shower, dried himself off and then stood at the foot of the bed, staring down at the carefully made-up monstrosity.

A huge mattress that would be like sleeping on a cloud.

Soft bedding that would keep him warm even as he shivered, naked and with hair dripping, in the still air of the room.

One night. He needed only one night to solve this complication. Tomorrow night he would be back in his cabin. Back in his…

It was his punishment, his imprisonment, but it was confronting and confusing that he’d prefer that pain over this pain, as if it hadn’t been a sort of selfless penance at all but hiding from the truth that his family was gone.

He ripped back the covers on a growl. This was her fault. She had jumbled things up. He would not be fooled into thinking soft beds and warm rooms were what he was really afraid of, because that was ludicrous.

One night—to handle her —and then he would go back to what was right . He would not be lulled into falsehoods that there were things to face here in the lap of luxury.

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 expect any of 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 with her —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 and taking that 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, be that person again, was something he hadn’t felt in so long that he reacted without fully thinking it through. Without remembering himself now .

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, his assistant , would enter into any touching equations, 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 the old Diego 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.

She would be quite the enjoyment.

He gritted his teeth against the traitorous voice of his former self and kept a safe distance between them. “Am I meant to eat with an audience?”

Her cheeks were flame red, but she didn’t scurry away. She moved carefully, as though she felt fragile. She took a few steps away from the desk, giving him access to the tray of food. Too decadent. It all smelled like heaven.

Or she did.

“I thought we could go over my plans before you met with the lawyers to have me sacked.” Her voice was not quite itself, but it didn’t shake.

“I do not plan on having you sacked,” he muttered, pouring himself coffee. It wasn’t the bitter, weak brew he allowed himself on the mountain. It was rich, deep, delicious. He wanted to spit it out.

But it moved down his throat, warm and decadent. It eased through his body with treasonous delight.

“Then perhaps we could go over your plans,” she said.

The devil on his shoulder was straining at its leash. He could not stop himself from a slow, sensual smile. Full of promise. Full of intent. One that made her pupils dilate and her breath catch in her throat.

“Oh, I have quite a few plans for you, tesoro .”