Page 47 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

Thegall.

“Well, I take it you’ve seen the news,” Mr. Giordano said pleasantly enough, his gaze on the elevator doors instead of either of them.

“If you’re referring to my mother’s appearance in the tabloid scheme against me, yes I have indeed,” Athan replied, and he sounded quite carefree about it, which gave Lynna hope that he had recovered from this morning’s…blow.

“And it doesn’t concern you?” Mr. Giordano asked, looking back at Athan with something like overly acted skepticism in his tone. “Perhaps it should, young man.”

“You know what would concernme?” Lynna offered, managing to sound pleasant despite how much she wanted to wring the man’s neck. “Why someone seems so bound and determined to attempt to make my husband out to look like a problem, when there is not a shred of evidence that he has actually done anything wrong.”

When Mr. Giordano’s cool dark gaze turned to her, she smiled blandly at him. “But I suppose we all have different concerns, of course,” she added pleasantly enough.

“I suppose it makes sense you’d think so.” He looked back at the elevator door. “If I recall, your father was a bit of a criminal as well.”

“I wonder what determines if someone is a criminal,” Lynna mused, or pretended to anyway. “Because I think there’s something a little criminal about supporting your daughter marrying a man thirty years her senior just so you can feel more important in your job.”

The elevator door opened, but Mr. Giordano did not get out. He turned to stare at Lynna. And Lynna knew she shouldn’t have said it. She knew she should not enjoy the surprise, the horror, the slowly dawning fury on this man’s expression.

But she would not listen to anyone criticize her father.

“Lynna, darling, perhaps this is not the time,” Athan murmured in her ear, but he sounded amused more than censoring. “If you’ll excuse us,” he said, maneuvering himself between Mr. Giordano and Lynna and ushering her out of the elevator space.

Giordano said nothing, and Athan held her tightly by the elbow and walked her down the hall. He made a motion to a trim man behind a desk, then opened a door and guided her inside, closing the door behind them.

“I thought you had come here to help, not start fights.”

“No one will call my father a criminal to my face.”

“And here I thought you had supernatural control. Why, you have pretended not to hate me for so long, I almost believed you actually indifferent.”

Lynna did not want to engage with that topic. She tossed her purse on the luxurious leather couch and stalked over to the huge window that looked out over Athens. She crossed her arms over her chest and tried to breathe.

She usuallydidhave better control. She should have kept her mouth shut.Thiswasn’t her fight. “It isn’t as though Giordano is going to vote with you anyway.”

“No, I don’t suppose he will, but I don’t need to stir up my enemies when my father is stirred up enough. And my mother, apparently.”

Lynna closed her eyes, breathed in and then out. It wasn’t like her to lose her temper so easily. Athan was right, she’d spent five years pretending she was mostly indifferent to him when he was her second sworn enemy.

And now you’ve slept with him. Perhaps a lack of control in all things is your punishment.

She wanted to laugh at herself. The thoughts were dramatic and that wasn’t her. Time to screw her head on straight. She took a few more breaths then turned to face Athan.

“All right. No more fights. Moving forward, I am as detached and bland and pleasant as they come.” She even offered him one of her patented bland, polite smiles.

But it faltered when he stepped close. When he reached out, fitted his large palm against her cheek. Making her entire internal wiring go haywire.

“I don’t mind watching you fight, Lynna,” he said, his voice low and gravelly, somehow it always felt like friction against her skin, and now that she had let herself intimately know what all that friction coulddo, it heated her bloodstream even more.

She wanted to pull away. To center herself. She was letting too much get to her. Giordano. Athan. All of this corporate nonsense. When her only goal was her family. Her only focusthem.

But she was Athan’s wife here. They wanted people to believe it was true. They needed her father’s supporters to believe it was true. So she had to endure the touch.

Endure.If only she could convince herself it was a hardship.

A knock sounded at the door. “Come in,” Athan said, though he did not look away from her or even drop his hand.

The man from the desk, probably another assistant, entered. If he thought anything of Athan standing so close or his hand on Lynna’s cheek, he didn’t show it.

“Your meeting is here, Mr. Akakios. I have put him in the meeting room.”

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