Page 115 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

And all of them speak the same English as Luc, with the same cultured accent.

I grow more fascinated by this man by the minute.

I tell myself that it’s hismysterythat intrigues me, nothing more.

Maybe that’s the real reason I feel not a single twinge as I follow him inside.

“I have some matters that require my attention,” he tells me as we stand in the center of a great, airy foyer through which it would not seem out of place to hear ahosannaor two. “You are in good hands here. My staff is ready and waiting to assist you with anything you need.”

“Like, to pick something at random, your genealogical information?” I ask, feigning great innocence.

“I would think you already know the Garnier family genealogy,” he replies smoothly, but there’s a hint of something like a smile in his tea-steeped gaze. “As you are such a trusted lieutenant to the great man himself.”

We are standing too close, I think, but I don’t step away. “You do know that speaking of yourself in the third person makes you seem deeply affected, don’t you? Real people don’t do that.”

“I am pleased that you still cling to that belief,” he replies, his eyes glittering. “You have obviously encountered a far better class of people.”

And then he stops.

I have the sense that he’s given something away. Though I can’t think what.

Maybe,something in me suggests,he simply forgot himself for a moment.

And for a man pretending to be someone else, forgetting his role is as good as handing over his passport.

I like to think that maybe I’m pushing his buttons, too. I think of that stark look on his face as we flew, that sense that he wasthis closeto revealing himself…

There’s no reason at all that my pulse should be rocketing around the way it is, making me feel weak. And silly.

We are staring at each other, the sun from high above spilling between us and seeming to dance its way inside me, too. Ahosannaall its own. I have the strangest urge to reach across the light and touch him, almost like I want to assure myself he’s real—

But he steps back, out of the light. And keeps going until he’s in the shadows again.

I tell myself this is a relief, though the humming in me suggests otherwise.

It doesn’t ebb. Not even when he murmurs something that I only realize is an order when he hands me over to a waiting woman, dressed in a uniform that I do not have to have seen before now to understand indicates a certain status as a member of staff.

Because clearly he has not just staff, butlevelsof staff.

The woman does not offer me her name. She leads me up through the villa and into a lavish suite of rooms that could put a five-star hotel to shame. There are sweeping views from the window, a jumble of the sea and more of these famous French coastal towns in the distance.

“Feel free to make yourself at home,” the woman tells me. “And should you need anything at all, you need only call.”

She indicates a button on the wall, not the bell pull of my favorite old movies, and I feel a hint of disappointment as she leaves, closing the door behind her.

When I turn, I can see that my suitcase has preceded me here. It is already here waiting for me, but when I go over to it and pick it up, it’s empty. It takes me a few moments to find my way through the serene set of rooms to my very own dressing room, where my clothes have been hung and folded.

The dressing room is bigger than my first New York apartment. If these are guest rooms, it is clear that the people who stay here come with trunk upon trunk and are expected to attend wildly fancy parties that require endless costume changes.

“Then again,” I remind myself, “that is exactly what you’re doing here, too.”

That strikes me as funny, and I laugh—but the laugh goes on too long. I laugh too hard. I laugh until my chest hurts, and for a moment there I’m strung out in the midst of my own overreaction.

I take a breath. A deep one, because I’m alone. The door is shut behind me. I have nothing to prove and no one to see me react.

So that’s what I do. I stop plotting and puzzling. I stop worrying.

Ireact.

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