Page 72 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

CHAPTER SEVEN

S EBASTIAN HADN’T BEEN back inside the nursery.

Aurora’s admission of loneliness that day had been too raw to ignore or dismiss.

He’d been lonely in the early years of his self-imposed solitude. Now he was used to it. But she wasn’t. And didn’t he have a duty to provide some sort of company for her? To make sure she wasn’t lonely. At least not until the baby.

He did.

Every evening since that afternoon, he had waited for her in a room he’d never used before she’d arrived.

The table had never been set. The ornate chairs and wine-coloured velvet padded seats had never been sat in.

But the candles were lit now. And they flickered in a line down the centre of the table in their silver candlesticks.

The clock chimed eight.

The door opened.

Tonight she wore gold. On her skin. In her hair. At her ears in dangling hoops. The material of her dress strained across her breasts. His fingers itched to touch her. To travel down the outline of her body to her waist, where the material flared out, softly caressing the swell of her.

He’d never dressed for dinner before. He usually ate in his studio.

But she dressed for dinner. Made it a spectacle of colours and diamonds that sparkled in the light of all the candles in the room.

And she had asked him to make a spectacle of it, too.

To make their evening meals together an event. Something to look forward to.

And so he’d agreed. He’d ordered a wardrobe solely for her eyes. And every night he thought of her as he took his clothes off and dressed for her.

He shifted in his seat. Ignored the heat at his back. Tonight, the black iron fireplace was stoked, and it smouldered. Adding a heat he didn’t need. He didn’t want it lit. But every night, something was added. Changed by her.

Including him.

‘Aurora,’ he greeted her, his voice a heavy husk he did not recognise.

‘Sebastian,’ she greeted him.

He dipped his head. But he did not stand at the head of the table. He waited and watched.

Every night, the ritual was the same.

With unadorned fingers, the gold sleeves of her dress kissing her wrists, she collected her plate from the opposite end of the table, picked up her cutlery, and set it down beside him.

‘That’s better,’ she said, and her smile didn’t falter as she held his gaze.

Every night, she ordered them to be seated together. And every night he ordered the staff to change it back, only for her to move the place setting herself.

He stood now, pushing back his chair, and moved beside her.

‘Is it?’ he asked, and pulled out the chair she wasn’t supposed to sit in and watched her take it regardless.

‘It’s perfect,’ she said.

He tucked her in. And he didn’t hold his tongue. ‘Gold is the perfect colour for you.’ He swallowed. ‘You look beautiful.’

He took his own seat.

Her hand rose. ‘I like this,’ she said, and stroked the suede of his brown dinner jacket.

He caught her wrist and gently removed her fingers from his body.

How easily she touched him. As if it were a normal thing to do. But it wasn’t natural to him. Her touch was anything but casual. His body strained beneath his jacket and open collared white shirt to press against her perfectly manicured fingertips.

‘Thank you,’ he husked and released her wrist. Trapped his hands on his thighs beneath the table.

‘The cot arrived today,’ she said. ‘Would you like to see it?’

The blood stopped flowing to his vital organs. He hadn’t seen a cot since that fateful night he’d settled Amelia, tucked the blanket beneath her chin, kissed her forehead and walked out of the house one last time.

‘No,’ he replied, and his answer was a weighted thing in his mouth.

Her eyes pleaded with him to continue the conversation she’d left on hold last week. But he’d buried it down deep, and he wouldn’t dig it up. His reaction to her putting a cot in the nursery she was preparing for their child had been unfair, he knew.

He would not react now.

He’d known eventually he’d have to see where his baby would sleep. But right now was too much.

He blinked. Broke the intensity of her gaze and looked down at his plate, zeroing in on the birds painted in a circle onto the plate. He’d never seen these before.

Another Aurora addition. They must be.

He exhaled quietly through his nostrils. The cot meant nothing. He didn’t need to see it. He did not want to.

He looked up, and he shuttered his gaze against the probing intensity of hers.

‘I would not like to see it,’ he said, and the light dimmed in her eyes.

His body revolted, urged him to take the words back, claim her hand where he’d abandoned it on the table and bring it back.

The light in her eyes.

His fingers clenched beneath the table.

‘Not yet.’

Aurora felt it. The arrow of space Sebastian had left open for her.

‘Tomorrow?’ she pressed.

‘No,’ he said.

‘The next day?’ she asked, pushing him.

His lips compressed. He shook his head. The chestnut hair swept across his cheek, grazing the collar of his jacket, and she longed to push the hair out of his face, hold his cheeks, and ask him why. Why not yet?

‘Then when?’ she demanded, but she kept her voice soft, when everything inside her wanted to push him to tell her everything he wouldn’t. Why the crib was such a trigger for him…

‘Soon,’ he promised, and butted her from the entrance to the fortress that he was. He slammed the doors of possibility closed, with her on the outside, looking in. And there was nothing for her to see but the shadows darkening the green in his eyes.

Soon was too long.

She dipped her head. Looked down to the dinner setting she’d moved to be closer to him.

It wasn’t close enough.

All week she’d been subtle. Executed her plan to show him small intimacies, show him what their life could become. Sharing nightly meals together was a start, but there was more.

She’d been too subtle, perhaps.

Impatience made her skin tight. Her hands burned with the itch to clench her fists, slam them on the table, and demand to know who had hurt him. To promise she would not do the same. That their baby was coming. Soon. Time wasn’t on their side. But she understood that was he needed.

Time.

Time to get used to her being here, in his space. To crave her when she wasn’t with him. To look forward to the time when they would meet and she would sit beside him.

The doors to her right opened.

Her neck snapped towards the staff entering the room with the feast she’d asked them to prepare. Delicacies that could be held between two fingers and examined, could tantalise the tongue, the senses. Food fit to be talked about that could induce conversation.

But all week, regardless of her attempts to encourage him, the conversation between them had been one-sided. She wanted in. Into his head. She wanted the same honesty she’d seen the night they’d met. The passion.

She swallowed, looked down at the nested pastry set before her, layered with flavours and texture and complexity.

The staff left them alone.

‘Shall we begin?’ he asked.

Aurora looked at the pastry. Picked up her spoon and splatted it open. The layers merged and spread over the plate.

That was what she wanted. To merge with him. To get inside his mind and explore his complexities. His layers.

But he wouldn’t let her in.

She dropped her spoon into the mess she’d created.

‘I’ve lost my appetite.’ She stood, pushed back the chair with her thighs.

‘Aurora…’

And there it was. Every time he said her name, she felt her whole body tighten with the need to feel his breath on her, speaking her name against her skin.

‘You must eat,’ he said. ‘For the baby.’

She scowled, met his gaze, and thrust out her chin. ‘The baby is fine.’

‘But you’re not?’ he asked.

Her scowl fell. Did he care? Did he just not know how to do this? Them? Or was he humouring her?

She felt petulant. Impatient. She felt young and restless. And for once she wanted to allow herself to be all those things. To fight against Sebastian’s calm exterior. He made her want to be all the things she had never been allowed to be.

She wanted everything, and she wanted it now.

Meeting him, making love to him, carrying their baby inside her, it had all changed her.

He’d changed her. Made her understand, recognise all the moments she’d let go when she could have reached out and claimed them. Made herself heard. Made it meaningful.

For Michael.

For herself.

‘I’m fine,’ she lied, because regardless of what she wanted, of how she wanted to act in this moment, he needed her to take things slower.

He needed time.

She advanced a step toward him and dipped her head to his ear. His hair whispered across her forehead. And she did what she longed to do. She touched the chestnut silk and pushed the hair behind his ear.

‘Good night,’ she husked and dipped her head further. Pressed her lips to his bristled cheek and kissed him.

A low moan vibrated in his chest.

She lifted her lips from his cheek, just enough to claim his face and turn it to her. And the long bristles of his beard pricked at her fingers. Made her skin tingle from her fingertips to her gold-sheathed toes.

Their eyes clashed and locked.

His eyes were an amber blaze, and they mirrored the hum in her body demanding she get closer. Taste his lips. His mouth.

She leaned in—

‘What are you doing?’ he said quietly, but so dangerously it hit her straight in the chest.

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 what we will 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.

He wanted her, she knew. She could feel it. All the things she’d offered him freely, he needed. He wanted her to stay. He wanted them to be a family. But he wasn’t ready to admit it. She had to give him the time to figure that out on his own.

And so she would.

Aurora walked out on him. And only when she was out of sight did she run to her room, close the door, and throw herself on the bed.

And she wailed.