Page 38 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

“Yes.” She didn’t care if it was considered emotionally healthy or not. It had gotten her here, and maybe this exact here was a borderline disaster, but it was a moment in time. Her life was on the right track. A good track. She was setting Rhys up for every success, and once she got out of this, she would go back to the work she loved.

Then he said the next words, low and in her ear. “It is still there, Lynna.”

An unbidden lump began to form in her throat. Tears wanted to spring to her eyes, but she swayed to the music and fought off the wave of emotion. Maybe all her feelings were there, but what did it matter if she never thought about them? If she never took them out and poked at them?

It did not matter. She would never let it.

And she did not cry. Even when Athan pulled her slightly closer, like he was offering some kind of comfort she didn’t want and wouldn’t take. Not back at his house when faced with the topic of her father’s old friends missing him. Not now, simply because he’d reminded her of a time before…and wanted to speak of what happened.

Whathappenedwas Athan and his father had ruined her family’s lives. Intended consequences or not, they had done that. Whether the feelings about that werestill thereor not didn’t matter.

Shegot to choose how she dealt with them. Which was not at all. You could only control yourself, so she would.

And when he led her off the dance floor, in the direction of the exit, she was determined,so determined, to not let all these emotions get the best of her. Because chemistry, desire, lust—they were just emotions, right? Or science at the very least. Things that could be controlled with the right parameters put in place.

Outside the air felt cool. She could almost breathe again. She could set all that happened inside away.

Best to box it up, set it away, push it down?

Yes. Forever. That was how she’d survived the past five years, and how she’d survive the rest.Always.

Athan helped her into the car when it came around, and she made to settle herself with as much distance as possible from him, there in the back seat.

Sheknewhe noticed, but he said nothing and made no attempt to scoot closer. Honestly, it was somehow worse when he seemed able to control himself…because then it felt like she should be better at this. Less…teetering on the brink of a terrible decision.

“Now that the pictures have been taken and will start to circulate, the biography Ophelia drew up that you approved should begin to appear in the media tomorrow,” Athan said, as if he had not mentioned her eighteenth birthday or her father or feelings at all back inside. “There might be some who are still interested in digging deeper into you, but the basic facts will help dispel some of the rumors my father has planted. And we can add more to the story as needed, but the pictures tonight will go a long way to take away the mystery, to undercut his leverage.”

Lynna hated this part of it, but she hated more that Constantine should get to call all the shots and morph how the public interested in Athan Akakios might view her. It wasn’t that she felt in any way shape or form protective of Athan’s reputation—because obviously he deserved whatever he got. And she wasn’t all that concerned with hers—couldn’t be, when she’d watched how easily someone else could ruin a reputation. A name. A family.

She had not allowed herself to really nurse that anger—it was unproductive, and she’d had to be productive. She’d had to pick up her family or else they would have sunk. But now, it was tempting.

Surely anger would keep herself from giving in to this…thingburning between her and Athan that he seemed so bound and determined to stir up.

“We will need to continue to make public appearances over the next few weeks. No doubt Constantine will have a rejoinder, and we must be ready to deal with it,” Athan continued as they drove.

“And you would know all the devious and underhanded ways to do that,” she said archly.

She couldfeelhis gaze on her, but she didn’t dare look at him, even in the dark of the back seat of the car. She kept her gaze resolutely on the glittering Athens passing by outside her window.

“I would,” he said evenly, and it was completely and utterly unfair that he could make her feel small when he’d always been in the wrong and she never had, at least when it came to him.

She refused to say anything else the whole drive home. No, nothome.Hishouse. One she wouldn’t even have to live in for the entire year. Once they had won enough AC International people over, she would go somewhere else. Anywhere else. Back to London or maybe to his Norwegian home in the fjords—far, far away fromhim.

When the car slowed to a stop, Athan got out of the car and before she could manage to scramble out herself, he was there. He helped her out of the car again, and he didn’t immediately let her go. He led her to the front door, her hand in his. His grip was firm, but she could have pulled her hand away with a decent yank.

That hardly screamedhappily marriedcouple though, and it would allow him to see too many emotions, when she hoped he saw her as an emotionless robot.

Oh, how she wished she could be one.

Once inside, she did pull her hand out of his grasp. She offered no good-night, no words of anything. She simply marched for the stairs. She wouldn’t run. Shewouldn’t.

But part of her thought maybe she should.

He wasn’t following her though. Still, when he spoke, his words were loud and clear, even though she had the impression he was still standing by the door while she was hurrying up the stairs.

“I want you, Lynna.”

It was stark. Plain. Said in his dark, low voice it was like the most intimate touch. She had to squeeze the banister just to steady herself, had to stop so she wouldn’t trip.

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