Page 93 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
CHAPTER SEVEN
Amelia was quite pleased with herself when Diego made no plans to leave the castello the next day. Reverse psychology had worked wonders. She had been afraid it would not work on him, but he was so deep in his complicated grief, guilt and denials that it was clear he hadn’t seen through her.
What a triumph.
She didn’t know that he was avoiding her on purpose all morning, but she suspected he was. What else would he be doing in this big house alone? She considered bringing the lunch tray to him herself, but the last time she’d brought him a meal hung heavy in her mind.
Part of her wanted to anyway, to prove she could. To prove that it hadn’t affected her at all. But it had affected her, and it did not leave her feeling any of the ways she thought she might or should.
She should be afraid. Offended. Disdainful. Wholly and utterly uninterested.
Instead, even the memory left her feeling jittery with excitement. Just thinking about going up to his bedroom had her imagination running wild. He did something to her, and she wanted to dive deep into what that something was and could be.
Why don’t you?
No. That would be… Well, for starters, it would be selfish. It would be about what she wanted, or thought she might want, or at least her body wanted even if her mind had its doubts. It would not be about him , even if he had some of the same… wants .
Did he?
She stilled at this internal question. Since the market, she’d been grappling with herself. Her interior thoughts, feelings and reactions. But she hadn’t considered his. Not when it came to the physical reactions he may or may not be having.
He was experienced. He knew what he was doing—stirring up feelings.
Maybe he’d isolated himself from the world for two years, and that meant he probably hadn’t had any women up at his little cabin, but he’d spent years being an adult male moving through the world with extreme wealth, privilege and attractiveness.
He knew what he was doing. He probably knew what she was feeling. She, on the other hand, inexperienced and slowly realizing just how sheltered she’d kept herself despite a life of loss, had no idea how to navigate these waters.
What did a person do when desire seemed to cloud their usually extraordinarily rational train of thought? What did a person do when being in the same room with a man made them feel like they were a live wire, crackling and exposed? Dangerous.
In all the best ways.
It was moving through her now, that heat, that excitement, and he wasn’t even here . And even if he were… He might create these feelings inside her, but did he reciprocate any of them?
If he had any reaction to her, it could simply be that he was a certain kind of desperate born of two years of isolation. He might have this reaction to any woman who crossed his path right now.
Well, that was a depressing thought.
“It should be a reassuring thought,” she muttered to herself aloud. Because no matter how curious she might be about the physical reactions in her body, it did not mean anything would come of that curiosity.
He was her boss, and she had a singular goal when it came to him.
Her goal was simply to show Diego that his guilt was wrong. There was a natural impulse to blame oneself. Even she had gone through that phase briefly after their deaths. But though she understood too easily how cruel life could be, she’d never been able to sink into that guilt the way he did.
She would have to show him that what he thought of himself was not true or conducive to the life he should be living. Not just because he was a good person, but because he owed it to the people he’d lost to truly live—the way they could not.
Amelia moved about the kitchen gathering her supplies, feeling wound up and frustrated, which was a common enough occurrence around him , but it was even more annoying when he wasn’t even here . She was letting just the thought of him make her crazy.
With a scowl on her face, she measured out flour. Making cookies would soothe her. Would remind her of who she was. Not a sexual being. A practical one who cared about the needs of others , not herself. That was the Baresi legacy she was striving to uphold.
She had given the kitchen staff the day off so she could have the kitchen to herself for her annual holiday-cookie baking.
She would have invited Diego down, but making cookies was something she doubted Diego had any old memories about.
His mother had not been known for her time in the kitchen, or too many maternal instincts at all, but making and decorating Christmas cookies reminded Amelia of her childhood Christmases, so she set about to do it for herself.
This season might be about bringing Diego back to life, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t also enjoy her usual Christmas traditions.
And if he was distracted by cookies, perhaps she could talk to him about the ball. She was getting more confident she could assure his attendance, but she wanted to get a sense of what he remembered about the old Christmas balls, what she could recreate to get through to him.
But she did not think of the ball as she got everything out to make the dough. She did not think of what she would do to convince Diego to attend.
She thought of his mouth. His gaze. His body. And what he could do with all those things if she convinced him to.
Diego had planned to stay far away from Amelia. After all, whatever her role in all this was, it had nothing to do with why he’d decided to stay.
He was here for pain.
But eventually, as the day wore on, he realized that avoiding her was cowardly. That all this avoidance was not quite the penalty he had been trying to achieve. Pain meant facing things.
Every second should be a challenging misery. Every moment should be a reminder of all he was that was wrong, that had caused horrible things to happen. Hiding in his comfortable bedchamber was not exactly fun , haunted by memories of Christmas seasons from his childhood.
But it was not the kind of pain he felt in Amelia’s presence. A kind of sandpaper-under-the-skin feeling. He found himself conflicted over what he should be seeking out. What was the most fitting punishment.
Painful memories. Painful resistance to temptation.
He thought memories made the most sense, especially considering his two-year isolation from exactly that, drowning memories of his family and his loss in physical labor. But it was not the same kind of active pain that being around Amelia —and from keeping his hands to himself.
He deserved that pain, that suffering. The active kind.
The kind that reminded him exactly what kind of man he was.
How little he deserved to be alive. He should be seeking out real punishment because she had not been fully wrong.
Some of his punishments had been weakness hidden under the guise of pain.
So he moved through the house, ghosts of every Christmas season he’d ever spent here as a child in every nook and cranny, and then found her in the kitchen.
She was at the oven, her back to him. She wore a silky skirt that clung to the curve of her ass, flirting there at her knees.
Her sweater was the color of the Christmas bows that seemed to be everywhere in this damn house.
Christmas music swelled softly from somewhere, but his eyes were transfixed on her .
She moved gracefully, humming, her honeyed-blond hair pulled back and swaying with every move.
And then he watched as she bent over, carefully placing a pan inside the oven, the skirt stretching over the sweet shape of her, filling him up with a sharp and potent and instant bolt of lust. Lurid and wrong .
But he could picture it so easily. Having her.
It would only take moving over to her. Whispering a few words meant to entice, a few well-placed caresses.
He had already seen her reaction to him, perhaps as effortless and violently organic as his own.
It would take no time at all to seduce her, lifting up her skirt, finding her wet and willing, and sliding home.
He would have her writhing in pleasure, begging him for release in seconds.
He stood at the entrance to the kitchen, hard and pulsing, trying to get a handle on some center point of himself that knew this was wrong.
His body was simply reacting to a lack. For years he’d glutted himself whenever he’d wished. Then he’d cut it off completely. For two years. Swearing off pleasure was simple enough, or close to it, when you removed all temptation. But refusing temptation was the true punishment.
He should thank her for this opportunity, because little up in that cabin had been as physically torturous as this .
She turned then, and clearly could not read the electricity in the room or the pained denial in him.
“Oh, you’ve finally appeared. Fantastic.” She smiled at him with a kind of cheerful welcome that wound around all the sharp edges of sexual need inside him and warmed. Making all those feelings far more complex than they had any right to be.
“We are baking cookies,” she announced.
We.
He took in the kitchen. Pans and bowls and little jars full of colorful things. Baking cookies? What on earth was she on about? “No. It appears you are baking cookies.”
“Well, then you could watch me do it. Would you like to help decorate them? Maybe you’d like to be the official taste tester.”
Nothing she was saying or doing made sense. She was all but infantilizing him. Suggesting he decorate and taste cookies? It left him with only automatic rejections, even if he’d meant to be more open to all the different types of pain she could inflict.
“No, I would not. If this is some strange show-me-my-childhood attempt, you’ll find my mother did not bake , nor did anyone expect us to be in the kitchen fiddling with sugar.”
“Well, that is a shame. Because my mother always had me make Christmas cookies with her, and it’s one of my fondest Christmas memories.”