Page 125 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

I never wanted to hurt you,he said.

On that night I was mad enough to think nothing ever could if only he touched me.

Sometimes I think it would be easier if he’d left me to perform a bedraggled walk of shame all the way across the South of France—diamond-studded mask still welded to my face to make it that much more embarrassing—but he thought about that. He planned for that.

And I can’t decide if he did it because he’s simply that conscientious, or because he didn’t want me tracking down that villa and pounding on the door. Sometimes I just get caught up in the fact that hethought it through,and I can’t decide if that means I imagined the whole part where we found each other in that cottage…or if he was playing me all along.

I’ll never know, because when I finally emerged from the bedroom of the cottage, the woman who dressed me the night before was there in the living room with that same iron smile welded to her face.

I don’t mean to rush you, madam,she said in that soothing voice of hers that talked me into dressing up in the first place.But we will need to get you to the plane sooner rather than later.

And then, as I stood there, dumbfounded while wearing last night’s dress haphazardly, she’d taken charge. She turned on the water in the bath, all but herding me in to take a shower. When I came out, squeaky clean in a body that didn’t feel at all like mine, every remnant of the night before was gone. When I looked in the mirror there were no goddesses looking back, it was only me.

The me without him, and that felt like grief.

When I wrapped a towel around me and walked out into the bedroom, the bed was made and looked as if it had never been touched. The dress and shoes and mask were gone. She had even laid out clothes for me on the bed.

Myclothes that I’d last seen in a dressing room in a different villa.

Is this a cottage of requirement?I asked her dryly when I dressed and tried to make myself feel anything but the pain in my chest and the absence of a man who’d never existed.

This is not a place that anyone can access without an invitation,she replied, with that cool gaze of hers.

But it’s part of the villa where the party was last night.

I watched her face, but it was smooth and gave away nothing.It is considered a part of the estate but I believe that technically, it belongs to a previous owner of the property and can only be used with that owner’s permission.

But—I began.

Madam.Her voice was as impenetrable as her expression.The plane.

And it was my intention to stay awake the whole flight home and pepper the crew with incisive questions before conducting an in-depth investigation of all the parts of the plane I didn’t see before, but the events of the night before caught up with me, and I slept.

Deeply.

Then, like a terrible magic, I was back in New York as if nothing had happened.

Back in my life, where I realized after only a few days, that he was not going to appear again. He was well and truly gone.

He had done exactly what he’d told me he would. He’d assumed the Luc Garnier persona, held it for a short while, and then disappeared.

I wonder if he found that woman. I wonder who she is to him. I wonder if she was worth all of this. If finding her was worth burning so bright and then leaving all that flame to sputter out and die.

I wonder how I let this all happen in the first place.

How I let him hurt me when no one ever has, not since I left my childhood home behind.

I should have leaped into action immediately, the moment I got back to New York, but I didn’t.

It was almost like I wanted to sit with that night. Hold on to it for a while before I forced myself into unraveling the mystery.

Because part of the mystery was why I’d fallen so hard for him when Iknewhe was nothing but a lie.

Tomorrow,I kept telling myself.

I would start tomorrow, but tomorrow never came.

In the meantime, I took myself to the office each day. I performed for Tess and all of my existing clients. Hints of Luc Garnier were sprinkled all over the papers, tales of sightings and rumors of his many glorious deeds, fueling a surge of new clients.

---