Page 136 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

“A pleasure to see you again, Madam,” the woman says in that same voice, so calm and unruffled I can’t tell if I’m soothed or triggered.

“Yes,” I agree. “An absolute delight. This time, will you drug me and throw me in the back of a car before you whisk me off somewhere else?”

Triggered it is.

Salma themayordomodoes not respond. But Taio has that thread of laughter in his gaze again. “Only if I decide you’ve become too mouthy,” he says.

The two of them exchange a look. Then he nods, and she bows out of the room.

And I watch, something like amazed, as this man who has taken on a number of roles already in my presence, takes on a new one. This time, of a nurturer.

He transfers the plates from the gleaming trolley to the low table between us. And I can only stare as he does it, because it is getting harder and harder to believe this is real. I think of everything that’s happened. What these past four and a half months have been like, and now we are just… Here?

Having a snack?

Though in fairness, it’s really more of a banquet of small plates.

I want to refuse any sustenance at all, like some kind of Victorian heroine, but pregnancy really gets in the way of sustained theatrics. Because I’m hungry. Really hungry, and the baby comes first.

“This is very kind of you,” I say. I lean forward and load up my plate with savory tapas and bright pieces of fruit. “But maybe you can take this opportunity to tell me what, exactly, all of this was about.”

“It seems you know already. Since you, after all, are the real Luc Garnier.”

I have wanted to have this conversation for a long time. I dreamed of having this conversation. Of the two of us admitting what is fact and what is fiction. Of saying these things out loud.

But the reality ofthismoment, of him saying such a thing to me with his whole chest, is another humming inside of me. I can’t tell if it is agony or relief to have it out there, in the air between us, at last.

“I had to create Luc Garnier,” I tell him, as I have told no one, ever. I tell him the story of how I started, how no one would hire me, how they only came to me when they thought I had male oversight. “It was that or crawl back to my stepmother’s house, hat in hand, and that was not possible. It is still not possible. Even if she would let me in, it would kill me.”

He studies me for a moment. “Is she your only family?”

“She is married to my father.” I try to smile. “But I would not call either one of them family. I’m not sure either one would call me that, either.”

And there is something about the way he frowns at that, as if he cannot comprehend what I’m telling him. As if it makes no sense. “Your own father does not consider you family?”

He sounds…baffled.

So baffled that it makes me feel a kind of warmth, everywhere.

“He might. But my stepmother does not like it. She was actively opposed to it from the moment we met.” I force a smile when he lifts a brow. “I was three.”

Taio mutters something I cannot understand, dark and low.

This, too, is warming. Almost soothing.

“I have never told anyone these things because there was no one to tell,” I find myself saying. “If I am honest, I suppose I have long suspected that there is something about me that caused it all, so it was better to keep myself at a distance from others. In case they all felt the same.” His eyes widen at that. I laugh. “It sounds sad when I say that out loud, but it doesn’tfeelsad. It’s just how it is.”

“This, Annagret,” he says quietly, “is the greatest lie you have ever told.”

“Taio.”

Our gazes slam together, then. And I know why. This is the first time I say his name. Out loud.Tohim.

And I know how that must feel, because I know how it feels when he saysmyname.

Every time he says it.

Once again, I remember lying side by side in that dark cottage with that tapestry of recognition and awe wrapped all around us, in ways I could never explain to anyone else. In ways that seemed made up even to me, afterward. One more case of a jilted lover pretending it all meant more than it did.

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