Page 106 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

“You have perhaps overestimated the allure of an investigation, I think,” I say, and it’s my turn to hint at matters beyond his comprehension. “Unless you find thinking about things an epic battle, that is.”

His gaze darkens in a way I tell myself I don’t understand. No matter how it feels, deep inside.

But he ignores me. And drops the bomb I knew was coming, so I guess I haven’t completely lost my touch. “You will be there, of course, Annagret. Right by my side. For every Sherlock Holmes needs his Watson, does he not?”

CHAPTER THREE

Iexpecttheother shoe to drop, but it doesn’t.

I don’t want to leave the office that first day, certain that when I return I’ll be locked out andpersona non gratain the place I built, but that doesn’t happen. I get in early the next day—a bit psychotically early, I will admit—and everything is as it should be. I make it in so early that I beat Tess in and that’s a good thing, because I don’t have to run the gauntlet of her innuendos or speculation.

I don’t think I can control my facial expressions. Not yet.

I see that Luc is not in his office—and I am deeply ashamed of myself for thinking of him by that name, but I can’t seem to help it—so I duck into mine instead.

I have always liked it. It sits along the hall on the way to the big office, and I’ve always liked to think of it as the power behind the throne. I happen to be both the powerandthe throne, but no one knows it but me. So why not sit in a little internal office that has no windows of its own, but commands every window in this place?

I’ve always liked being underestimated. I learned that in my stepmother’s house, too.

And that first day after the appearance of Luc, I’m grateful for the fact that I can sit with my back to a wall, my door closed, and will therefore see anyone coming. That there will be no sneaking up on me in my delightful cave of an office.

I spent all last night digging around online, looking for clues to this man’s identity, but I came up with nothing.

This man showed up in the most sacred place I have, my beautiful office that runs precisely the way I want it to, where I am never questioned or demeaned or attacked by anyone. He clearly studied me without my knowing it, and this makes me feel even more exposed.

I feel like the kid I haven’t been in years, trapped in a house I hated with a family that—it was made abundantly clear—wasn’t mine. If I didn’t stay out of the way, I paid for it. Sometimes I paid for it even when I did stay scarce. My stepmother’s goal was to get rid of me and she accomplished it.

Will the fake Luc Garnier do the same thing to me now?

The very idea makes my entire body ache. Like a vicious bout of a sudden flu—the kind that can kill a person if they’re not careful.

This man did all these things already to place himself in the middle of this life I built, he isdoing themeven now, and I can’t find anything on him, anywhere.

It makes me feel even smaller and more precarious.

This morning I decide instead to switch my focus to the upcoming masked ball in Cap Ferrat. I put in a long morning of digging, trying to figure out the highly exclusive and not at all public guest list.

Because once I have it, I can try to cross-reference the sort of people who would want entry to a place like that—enough to, say, pose as a fictional character—and what they might do there if they got it.

It’s slow going. Absurdly wealthy people can afford privacy and the security to go with it.

I look up at the knock on my door and call out a quick, “Come in,” assuming it’s Tess finally coming to see what’s become of me today.

I have to school my expression when Luc appears there instead, filling up the whole of the doorframe in a way that instantly reminds me—so much so that my stomach seems to drop—of how big he is.

Enormous and yet elegant. It’s a dizzying combination.

But I swore to myself that I was not going to let him get to me today.

“It’s an unusual name,” he says, nodding at the name on the door. “Annagret Alden.”

“It is only unusual in some cultures,” I correct him. “In others, it is very common.”

I focus in on him and notice that he is wearing a completely different suit from the day before. Yet it achieves, in all its particulars, the same level of perfection as the one I already saw.

This solidifies some things for me. A person might be able to find, purchase, and inhabit one such suit but two? That feels like a lifestyle. A style to which one has long since become accustomed, even. I make a note.

And then I continue. “The story I have been told that my mother was of royal Danish blood, though a great many generations removed. That was what my father always said when I was small and asked about her.” I can see the next question in his gaze, and forestall it. “I personally cannot remember her. She died when I was only a few months old and there are no pictures of her anywhere in my father’s home, because my stepmother objected. But as he is a small, brown-haired man, I have always assumed that the story was true.”

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