Page 228 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

“So I’m just going to have to get used to it. And stop sulking.”

“Were you sulking?”

She lifted a shoulder. “A little bit.”

He found that he wanted to dig in deeper. Who she was. What made her, her. And it was that impulse that made him pull away.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “We will be getting into the ballroom etiquette portion of your training. I will be participating in that.”

“Ballroom?”

“Dancing,” he said, grinning.

“Dancing… I didn’t agree to any dancing.”

“We did once,” he said, thinking of when they’d been just Clem and Stevie, out under the stars.

“I suppose we did,” she said, looking away.

“I said that you could back out now,” he said. “If you’re afraid.”

She looked back at him again, the challenge making sparks shoot from her eyes. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

* * *

The next day, she showed up at the dancing lessons in a glorious, golden ball gown. And he smiled to himself as she entered the room.

She was only here because she was challenging him, he knew that. He respected that.

Stevie was nothing if not… Well, everything she had been when he had first met her. Putting her in a palace, promising her a title, none of it had changed her. She was resolutely stubborn and strong. And he was thankful for that. Because if not for her tenacity, he would’ve bled to death on the side of a mountain.

“You look every inch a princess,” he said.

She looked around the room. “There’s no instructor?”

“No. I’ve no need of a teacher to show you how to dance. I personally have taken dancing lessons since I was a child.”

“I thought that you were untamable as a child.”

He smiled. “Yes. Quite. But I never minded a dancing lesson. Typically, it involved being in a woman’s arms. I quite took a liking to it, especially around the age of fourteen.”

“Shameless.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why what? Why be shameless? I think the greater question is why do people choose shame?”

“No. That’s not what I mean. I mean… Your mother, she created a big scandal when she left your father. Yes, I googled all that. And she hurt you. I know she did. So why are you…”

He gritted his teeth. “Why am I like her?”

“You’re not,” she said. “I know you’re not because you care so much about the future of your country. But on the outside, to other people, you look like you might be. I guess what I don’t get is why it didn’t make you like your father.”

“Because I still wanted her attention. Isn’t that a terrible thing, Stevie?”

He felt scraped raw to say it, but he couldn’t hold back with her. She’d nearly watched him bleed out in a wrecked plane. Why not tell her about the things that made him bleed inside?

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