Page 135 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

‘When your family died?’

He stiffened.

She removed her borrowed sunglasses and looked up into his face with wide brown eyes. ‘The press never talks about the before.’

‘The before?’ he croaked. She couldn’t know. No one did. No one except Esther ever would. And even she didn’t know it all.

‘Before your time on the streets,’ she clarified.

‘There is nothing else for the press to talk about,’ he dismissed her tightly. ‘There is nothing to know about the…before.’

‘I’d like to know,’ she said.

‘There isnothingelse,’ he repeated. ‘I am Sebastian Shard. Street artist. Homeless man turned billionaire.’ He used the words she’d said to him earlier to sum up who he was in a few sentences that revealed nothing.

‘And who are you beneath the headlines?’ she asked quietly.

‘I am the father of your child. That is all that matters now,’ he said, ending this, whateverthiswas, because he didn’t want her questions. That part of his life was for no one. It was not a story for Esther to use to increase the worth of his art. It was his story. His burden. And he’d tell no one. Not even Aurora.

Her brown eyes searched his too deeply. ‘Do you want to know if it’s a boy or a girl?’

His gaze dropped to her stomach. ‘Do you know?’

‘I do.’ Her hands tenderly moved to where his eyes lingered.

The image of a fat fist reaching for his cheek, pudgy fingers touching him with love, hit him squarely in the ribs. A memory of giving love freely in return. Without question. Without exception.

And you left her to die.

Sebastian’s throat closed. He shook his head. The sex didn’t matter. He looked back up at Aurora.

‘Is it healthy?’ he asked.

She smiled tightly. ‘It’sperfect.’

‘That is all I need to know.’

Her mouth firmed. She slipped the glasses back on and moved in front of him. Through the pillared entrance without him. Down the path of earth, until it turned to stone. She didn’t stop. She didn’t hesitate in her steps. She walked through the stone courtyard and met the stone steps. One step after the other, she took them to stand beneath the arched entrance.

She fingered the black iron handles to the heavy wooden doors. ‘In here?’ she called behind her.

‘Yes,’ he called back.

She pushed at the door and stepped inside. She slipped off his glasses and placed them on the small round table holding a basket of long reeds he’d pulled from the ground himself.

Hands knotted at her waist, she turned to him.

His heart hammered. There she stood in his sanctuary on the grey slate floor of the octagonal entrance to his lair. Waiting for him. And she was an array of earthy colours. Her dress. Her skin…

She wasn’t scared, was she? Buthewas. Scared of her proximity, and his body’s determination to get closer. But still he moved forward. He stepped inside the ruby-red entrance, which was now filled with the scent of her.

A reckoning was coming, he knew. He’d let her inside his home, his sanctuary…

She tilted her head, and he watched the heavy drag of her swallow.

‘What now?’ she asked.

Sebastian closed the door and turned the key.