Page 90 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

CHAPTER FIVE

Amelia felt like she was on fire. She felt like she’d run a marathon. She felt a million physical things she could not name, all pulsing through her like…like…

She didn’t know. And still she understood that it would be dangerous to know. For the both of them.

So she could not stay here, in this moment of physical reactions short-circuiting all her faculties. She had to move forward. She had to…to deal with business. Business.

She cleared her throat, then had to clear it once more to speak. “I am happy to discuss whatever plans you wish.” She’d meant to say this as professionally and formally as possible.

Instead, her cheeks heated even more, because she knew it sounded more like an offer than a business proposition. Like plans had nothing to do with the castello or Christmas or his soul.

She was not offering anything. Why she needed to remind herself of that, she wasn’t quite certain.

Perhaps if she had some experience, she might understand.

But she’d never had much of a life outside the castello.

Never thought much about pursuing one. Even when her father had been alive, the thought of leaving hadn’t crossed her mind.

The castello had become home, her father her lone constant.

She hadn’t been eager to leave, to chart a course, and her father had never pushed her to.

Only now did she realize that meant she’d missed out on the normal things a woman of twenty-four might have experienced. Flirtation.

Lust.

Perhaps if she had some experience, what she’d said to him might be an offer.

And that was a terrifying thought, all things considered. Especially when that sharp smile didn’t change, when that gaze that felt as hot and heavy as a brand only became more so.

When her entire body reacted, like she’d simply been a match waiting for friction to come alight. If she were someone else, would that be the kind of thrill she jumped into headfirst?

You are not someone else.

She needed to get a hold of herself. She needed to get out of here, because he wasn’t pulling on a shirt. So he stood there, barefoot and naked from the waist up, the fascinating grooves and dips of his chest and abdomen a picture she wanted to sear into her memory.

Didn’t want to. Couldn’t.

He was her boss , and perhaps she had friendly feelings toward allowing him to see the good inside himself for her father —a man he was closer in age to than her —Diego would not view her in such a way.

Would he?

Get a grip, Amelia.

“But for now,” she said, her voice a high squeak that she sought to tame with the rest of her words, “I will leave you to get ready for your meeting.” She forced her mouth to curve upward, but it felt nothing like a smile.

Perhaps a grimace, at best. She turned on her heel and warned herself to walk slowly and gracefully out of his room.

She was almost certain she accomplished little better than a scurry.

She had things to do, but she made a beeline for her own room. Five minutes. Five minutes to find her center. To…process what had just happened.

She slid into her room, closed the door behind her, then simply leaned back against it. Her hands were shaking. She curled them into fists. She closed her eyes and tried to rationalize…everything.

She had seen him naked. He had clearly held absolutely no embarrassment about that.

And why should he when he looks like that ?

Well, that was not at all a productive thought. Any more than having his naked form emblazoned on her brain now was productive.

Why had he done it? She shook her head. It didn’t mean anything.

He’d simply become unused to the normal rules of society by isolating himself up on that mountain.

Or he could not even see her as a person, simply an object to do his bidding, and therefore it had not occurred to him how she might react to… nakedness.

That she might look. That she might… really look.

Either way, it hadn’t meant anything. She’d woken him up. He’d needed to get dressed. So he’d gotten out of bed.

Naked. A tall, broad, muscular specimen of a man. Dark hair smattered in interesting places, and the most interesting thing of all…the hard, shocking length of him.

And she’d been lanced through with fire. With a distressing bolt of what could only be described as need .

But she did not need it or him. Her body had reacted, probably mostly to all the things she did not know about…the male body. But her mind was in charge now , and she could chalk it all up to surprise and…well, science.

It happened, these types of reactions. Maybe not to her, but she’d read about it in books.

Intense physical reactions to chemistry.

He was certainly too old for her, and he was her boss.

These were all intellectual reasons not to have a reaction to him, but she was smart enough to know that intellect did not always have control over feeling.

So she would have to accept that she was attracted to him. That this, of course, meant nothing. It would just require a certain kind of…bracing herself. She would not waltz into his bedroom thinking that would be a smart move. Not if he felt comfortable simply being naked.

Whatever he was doing on that mountain wasn’t simply twiddling his thumbs. He was doing something to carve out all that impressive muscle. He was clearly very, very strong. And very, very …big.

She closed her eyes against another wave of intense physical response. Something was wrong with her. Perhaps she needed some kind of therapy. She’d seek it out.

After Christmas. After she showed Diego that he was more than his grief or guilt or whatever it was that had stopped him from thinking he was a good man even before his family’s deaths.

She inhaled carefully, gave herself a reassuring nod and then pushed off the door. She had work to do.

Diego had been gone so long from “real life” that he’d forgotten how much he detested lawyers.

This business . He’d spent so much time hating himself for his selfishness that he’d forgotten at least part of the impetus to waste away his twenties had been prompted by how much he hated all the things his father had wanted to pass along to him.

“You were the one who set up this in the first place,” the first lawyer said, disdain dripping from every word.

Diego found himself retreating to old patterns. Impulses he’d thought had died with his family. Sarcasm, for starters. “Was I?” he drawled. “A shocking revelation.”

The lawyer’s face got very pinched looking.

“ Signor , this is not so simple as a quick meeting,” the second lawyer said.

She was much more reasonable, far less stuffy. And still her words were firm and not what he wanted to hear.

“You signed over an incredible amount of responsibility to Ms. Baresi. We can untangle that responsibility, but it begs the question of who then takes it? If you are planning on staying within reach—”

“I am not.” He needed his mountain, his solace, his penance .

“Then you’ll need someone to replace her. Living by proxy requires having a proxy.”

“I simply want to block her from being able to sell my own property out from under me.” He ground this out, wondering when in the last two years simple directives had come to be arguments instead of his staff jumping to do his bidding. How he suddenly was forced to deal with all he had eschewed.

“You need someone reachable who can handle the day-to-day needs of the castello. If it is to be you making those decisions—”

“Enough.” He’d fire the whole lot of them. He’d have Amelia make certain…

Damn Amelia. He was only in this meeting, this house, this fiasco because of her , and they were telling him it would be complicated to pluck her from the carefully woven fabric of the castello business.

She’d no doubt done it on purpose. Maybe she didn’t seem like the scheming type, but he’d only trusted her because he’d trusted Bartolo. Perhaps it had been a mistake.

But these lawyers made it seem like a mistake he did not wish to deal with correcting. Perhaps he should let her sell the castello out from under him. He got the money either way. It wasn’t like she could do it for her own gain. She could only act in his interests.

So why is she threatening to sell?

He glared at the lawyers across the table from him, then waved them away. “You are useless, and you may go back to the holes you crawled out of.”

The man’s face got very red. The woman rolled her eyes. But without argument, they both got up, collected their things and left him to brood in the formal office his father had once presided over.

Diego stared at the huge painting that hung on the wall across from him. A family portrait that had required interminable hours of sitting when he’d been an antsy young man.

His mother, painted much younger than she’d actually been at the time. His father, painted taller. The frown his sister had sported any time they’d had to sit for the painter had been turned into a serene smile she’d never once been capable of accomplishing. And he…

He looked at a version of himself that was so certain of his place in the world, so certain of all he was entitled to.

Brash and arrogant and…listless. Purposeless.

He felt like the only one who was honestly portrayed in the painting, but perhaps that’s because he could only look on the young man he’d been with disgust.

But sitting here, facing himself, he was confronted with a question he had not expected. A question he did not want.

How was he any different from that young man? How was his penance doing any good? Or was that too simple selfishness? Was that all he was? His chest got tight, and it was hard to inhale around this confrontation of thought.

A quick knock sounded at the door, and before he could decide on how to deal with an interloper on his current internal crisis, it opened. Amelia walked in with the same purpose she’d walked in with at his cabin in the mountains, and then again this morning in his bedchamber.

But he was dressed this time around, and he watched as her eyes darted away from him, like she was remembering the last time she’d entered a room with little warning.

Because her cheeks grew pink as she stood there, though whatever was going on in her imagination did not leak into her voice. “If you are done with your lawyers and I am still employed, we have an appointment.”

He could address that—her employment—but he didn’t want to. “What kind of appointment?”

Her smile was…soft. Sweet, almost.

He hated it.

“Come, Diego. Where is your sense of adventure?”

“Dead.”

She tsked, not at all cowed by his harsh response. “You breathe, caro . You are alive. This cannot be changed in this moment any more than death can be changed in any moment.”

Her words shook him, though they shouldn’t. Of course he was alive. Of course he breathed . He knew this.

And yet…the way she said it, with a cheerful gentleness, as though she understood the depths of despair that went into knowing you were alive when you should not be. Others were dead and they should not be.

She did not know, could not know, the weight that he strove to make right with his punishment.

“Come,” she said, a warm, gentle order. “Breathe. Live. If only for a moment.”

He wanted none of it. Still…he found himself following in spite of it all.