Page 216 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

“I require my encounters to be consensual. And I am never a swan.”

“I don’t even… I don’t even know how to respond to that. It is outrageous. I will marry you. Because it is the best thing for my family. But… I just wish you had told me who you were.”

“You can see why I couldn’t.”

“Because you thought that I would instantly turn into a gold digger?”

“You may be pregnant now,” he said.

She went still. “Is that why you asked me to marry you?”

“It is a concern.”

“I’m not,” she said. “I started my cycle right after I got back. So. No pregnancy.”

“I see. Well. That was not a contingency of marriage.”

“It just would’ve been convenient for you? Because you wouldn’t have had to sleep with me again?”

“Perhaps I wasn’t clear. We have chemistry. That is yet another reason that it is incredibly practical for the two of us to marry. It was one reason it seemed prudent to break off my arrangement with Drusilla.”

“How nice for both Drusilla and me. That you possess such a scant moral compass.”

“Better than my mother’s. But no, it is not as good as my father’s. And I can admit that. I can.”

“And where does that leave me?”

“I need a moral compass, Stevie. I won’t lie to you. That is a significant reason that I think you will be good for me as well. I need somebody to help me stay…correct. You have proven to me that you are a woman with great fortitude. You are a woman who knows what she stands for. That matters.”

“Am I supposed to be flattered by that? That you want me to…be your Jiminy Cricket?”

“I’m not asking you to be flattered by anything. I’m simply asking that you make the reasonable choice.”

And of course he felt that marrying him was the only reasonable thing. It had nothing to do with what had passed between them in the wilderness.

Not for him.

But maybe that was the issue. Maybe people weren’t really romantic. Her father wanted her taken care of, but he’d never said he wanted her to be loved. But in his position, he couldn’t afford ridiculous frills. Maybe it wasn’t any different when you were a future king.

You just had to be like wham bam be my wife, ma’am, or something.

She’d never been a romantic.

Not before.

It was petulant to be wounded by a lack of romance she’d never fantasized about.

She found she was anyway.

“Now what?” she asked, her voice small.

“You and I will leave directly. On my private jet. I will send people to help your family pack, and we will bring them to Olympus as soon as it is practical for them to go. I know that we will have to prepare a place for your father that is medically sound.”

Yes. That was why she was doing this. Her family was going to be taken care of.

“I don’t want to leave them.”

“They will be fine,” he said.

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