Page 119 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

And besides, I remind myself, I don’t actually know what kind of man he is. No matter what I might feel. No matter what I might have imagined in that glorious freestanding tub, with only the quiet around me and the Mediterranean gleaming in the distance.

No matter what the dress tries to whisper to me as I move, as I breathe. As the domino mask presses into my skin just enough to feel like a touch.

Maybe his touch.

“Stay close,” he tells me, forbiddingly, and yet it is somehow compelling.

Then he forestalls any commentary I might possibly have by reaching over and taking my hand.

Our fingers lace together as if we’ve held hands a thousand times before and it’s a muscle memory. His hand is so big that mine almost seems to disappear in his grasp, but with every breath, I can feel the tug of the places where our fingers intertwine.

And I can feel that tugeverywhere.

In my breasts, my nipples hardening. Between my legs, not only in the sensuous way my thighs brush when I walk but deep between them, where I can feel the heat of his palm against mine.

I’m too hot, though the night is cool. I get hotter with every breath, until it feels as if I’m breathing into a corset when I know the bodice of this gown is not nearly that restrictive.

And when he hands me a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing staff member, I know I ought to refuse. I never drink on the job, and despite the Cinderella games I let myself run away with earlier, this is a job.

He is the job whether he hired me or not.

And besides, I already feel as if I might be internally carbonated already.

But I take the glass anyway and I click it to his, our eyes seeming to meet and cling the way our hands still do. I take that first sip, not sure why the simple fact of him watching me do it makes me feel as if that stern mouth of his is all over my body.

Maybe it’s right at this moment that I finally accept it. This thing I’ve tried so hard to pretend hasn’t been happening all along.

Maybe it’s finally time for me to face facts.

Whoever this man is, and it matters less the harder my heart beats against my ribs, I want him.

“Annagret.” My name is like a song on his lips. “Annagret, this is not the kind of place that wants its mysteries solved.”

I suspect that’s true. But what I say, in a tone like his, is, “I think you are the one who does not want his mysteries solved.”

His eyes look anguished behind his mask. I forget that we are in a crowd. I see the ache in them. I feel it in me. I feel it where our hands touch, like we are connected by so much more than a mere clutch of fingers.

“Me most of all,” he agrees.

And my breath gets tangled somewhere in my throat.

But the moment ends in an abrupt shower of laughter that comes too close and turns into coy introductions from people with shrewd eyes behind masks and very familiar silhouettes. They pretend to ask questions, but are really just playing games.

Because that is what people like this do. It is all they do. They dress up in masks and laugh as if they care for nothing.

I remind myself that the man beside me, who dropped my hand when we were swept up into their orbit, is one of them.

I am sure of it.

And I like the comfortable life I’ve built for myself. Every bit of it comes as a result of my own hard work, and I take pleasure in both the work itself and the life it affords me. We had none of this growing up, and I had the smallest slice of anything we did have.

I couldn’t have imagined a place like this back then.

Or adaylike this.

Yet still, in my head, I try hard to make a distinction between him and them. Something he helps along by seeming to find what’s going on around us somehow distasteful himself.

And it is not until much later—as the party spills recklessly all throughout the villa and I find myself in the atrium once more—that I accept that the music and the splendor and yes, the bubbly, have all gone to my head.

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