Page 147 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

She inhaled heavily through lips that trembled. ‘Kissing you good-night.’

‘Why would you do that?’

Colour heated her cheeks.

‘It’s what people do.’

He stood—backing away from her. ‘It’s not whatwewill do.’

‘Why not?’

‘Aurora,’ he warned darkly.

‘My parents ate dinner together,’ she said. ‘They dressed up every night. But we were never allowed to join them. Not when we were younger. It was only when we got older that we were allowed in, and I realised it was all a show.’

He frowned. ‘A show?’

‘On the outside, they looked like the perfect couple.’ She nodded. ‘They sat together in the same room, but my parents avoided all meaningful contact. They barely spoke. They avoided the tough discussions that would make them uncomfortable. They never touched. Or kissed. They didn’t even sleep in the same room.’

Her gut curdled at the visceral reaction to the memory. The uncomfortableness every time she was in the room with her parents. The silence. The expectation to nod. To smile. To comply with their clipped instructions or their dismissals. But Aurora need to talk. She needed the hard conversations.

‘I have put on this show at your request.’ His chest deflated as if she’d punched him in the ribs. ‘I have done these things. Eaten with you, dressed for dinner to make you comfortable. To prove to you that you won’t be alone. I will be beside you through this. Our pregnancy, and the arrival of our child. I have done this to show you what it means to stay with me. I am here for you. Both of you,’ he told her.

‘I don’t want a show,’ she said. ‘I want no part of a relationship that is nothing more than a shell of respectability. I want nothing lukewarm. I want honesty and warmth. Passion. I want—’

‘We are not in a relationship,’ he told her.

‘But we could be,’ she said. ‘I want us to do all the things my parents didn’t,’ she insisted. ‘I want us to respect each other. I want us to talk. To touch.’ Her gaze slid down the length of the noble nose and halted at his lips. Hairs feathered the softness of his pink mouth. ‘To kiss.’

‘No.’

‘Admit it,’ she pushed. ‘Admit you enjoy spending time with me. That you think of me all day, waiting for dinner time. I think of you,’ she confessed. ‘All day. Every day. And I know you like it when we meet here in the evenings.’

She waved her hands around the room, at the flowers she’d made them put in here, the fire she’d insisted on being lit to warm the dark edges.

‘You wait for me to sit beside you. You like it when I move my plate and get closer to you,’ she told him, admitting what he wouldn’t, but she knew. ‘You want me closer, so let me get closer, Sebastian. Let me in. Tell me why you don’t want to see the crib.’

The pulse in his cheek was an erratic drum, but his mouth remained sealed.

‘I don’t want to do this alone,’ she told him. ‘I want to raise our child together. But that means we need to be a team.’

‘I will do my duty,’ he replied, his tone too neutral, too calm.‘But that’s all I have to give, Aurora. My protection.’

Fire flamed inside her ribs. ‘I don’t need your protection. I have my own money, my own house. If I wanted to, I could employ a team of guards. But I don’t want a team of guards. I don’t need a security detail. Our baby needs you. I need you.’

She placed a hand on her ever-growing stomach. His gaze fell to her belly. And she would not examine the expression in his eyes. She needed action from him. Not looks she couldn’t decipher, however much they made her long.

It wasn’t enough.

‘We could be something special, Sebastian, but if we can’t at least talk…’

She didn’t want to force him.

She wanted him to want this.

And she knew he did. Knew he needed it as desperately as she did. To exploit this connection between them and make their lives together full. For themselves, and for the child in her belly. For the family they could become.

She turned on her heel. Walked out of the room and made herself keep her eyes forward. She wasn’t playing games. She’d put her cards on the table. Again.