Page 107 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

I wave a hand in my own direction, encompassing all six feet of me sitting there behind my desk. Complete with the blue eyes and blond hair that mean I resemble nothing so much as a shield maiden. Or a Valkyrie.

The latter of which is where I got the logo for Miravakia Investigations.

“As you can see,” I say, “I look as if I ought to be at the helm of a Viking ship in a terrible storm, cleaving my way through the North Sea. Instead, I’m afraid my origins are rather more ordinary. I grew up in the unremarkable suburbs of a midsize city in Pennsylvania, nowhere near any ocean of any kind, and the closest thing I ever did to going Viking was to take the train to New York City on my eighteenth birthday. I’ve been here ever since.”

I sit back in my seat and look at him, standing there so deceptively casually in my doorway. “What about you?”

He smiles at that and I almost think it looks genuine.

“No one has ever confused me for a Viking,” he says.

We both know he’s avoiding personal questions, but I have to like—again, against my will—how easily he does it. As if we are both involved, now, in some grand joke. Just the two of us and this secret of ours.

“I was up most of the night thinking about all of this,” I say.

“Oh, dear,” he murmurs, his voice a dark knowing.

There’s a golden sort of gleam in his gaze, and nothing like an apology on his face as he moves into my office, making me suddenly and irrevocably aware of how small it is. Almost claustrophobic, really. Maybe it’s simply that his shoulders seem to take over the space, even when I can see that they don’t. They don’tactuallybrush the walls.

Still, it feels that way as he comes and sits in one of the chairs on the other side of my desk, where the clients normally perch themselves. And in so doing, he somehow makes it seem as ifI’mthe one begging for an audience withhim.

And that dark knowing is in his gaze now, too. “Did I keep you awake at night, Annagret?”

I feel the heat of that and I don’t want to. I resent it.

I tell myself that I resent itdeeplyas it winds its way inside me, but that is not the point of this. It doesn’t matter what I feel. It can’t.

It can only matter what Ido.

“You must be here for a reason,” I say, and though it’s a struggle to keep my voice light, I manage it. “Given that this is a private investigation firm, I have to assume that the reason is that you’re looking for something. Or someone. Why don’t we look for answers together?”

“What a generous offer.” His tone is sardonic.

“Not at all.” I make sure my smile is pointed. “It’s entirely selfish. I want you gone. It seems to me that solving whatever mystery it is you’re here to solve will get you on your way sooner rather than later.”

He looks as if he wants to laugh at that, but he doesn’t. He sits back in that chair that is nearly too small for him. The chair that I suddenly realize he could easily smash with a fist, if he wished. I study him with more intensity, trying to understand how a man who can look elegant enough that he could grace the cover of an Italian fashion magazine with ease can also seem as if he isonly justkeeping the true power inside of him under control.

I’m fascinated.

And I’m aware of an alarm that rings at that fascination, deep and long within me, but I ignore it.

Luc is not exactly leaning into the hand he has propped up on the arm of the chair, but he taps his index finger against the side of his face as he regards me. As if contemplating his next move in a chess match.

“I’m looking for a woman,” he tells me after a moment or two pass us by.

And there is a terrible clarity in the disappointment that runs through me at that.

A terrible, revealing clarity and one I could do without—because it tells me far too much about the various sensations I feel in this man’s presence. Sensations I’ve been calling by other names because I don’t want to admit what they really are.

When surely I ought to know better. Idoknow better.

I’m disgusted with myself, but all I do is sit forward and flip open my notebook as if this is any client intake meeting. “I’m listening,” I say.

I can feel his gaze on the side of my face, as if I’ve thrown open one of the windows I don’t have in this room to let the summer sun in. “If she exists, this woman might have emigrated here from somewhere in Europe. That would have been some thirty-five years ago. Give or take.”

I put down my pen. “You do realize that you’ve described a vast number of people.”

“I do indeed realize that.”

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