Page 138 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

I smooth my palm over my belly again, but this time I can feel the way my own hand trembles.

“I decided I would go about getting to the bottom of this in a more roundabout way,” he tells me, and I do not ask again why he doesn’t ask his mother to take a simple test to find out the truth. How can I? What do I know about mothers? I suppose my life has been marked by the absence of mine, but until I got pregnant, I’m not sure I could even begin to glimpse the enormity of the loss.

But he is telling me his story. I focus on that, and not the pressure behind my eyes. “I happened to be at an event where an acquaintance was bragging quite loudly about the benefits of having his very own private investigator on retainer so that he could immediately look into anyone who approached him. Whether it was a new lover, a business connection, or even a neighbor at one of his properties. Whatever the situation, he told me, he could always dig into their backgrounds and know precisely with whom he was dealing.”

Taio seems several degrees less agitated now, though he still paces. He thrusts his hands into the pockets of yet another perfectly cut suit. So perfectly cut, in fact, that putting his hands in his pockets in no way mars its lines.

It’s a true sartorial feat.

I tell myself that this is neither the time nor the place to admire the elegant, deeply masculine lines of his body. Much less to sit here and remember exactly how I navigated my way around those lines and licked my way—

Focus,I order myself.

“It had never occurred to me to hire an investigator,” he is saying. “On the contrary, I rather thought that doing so would be an admission of guilt. That has not changed. I knew that if I were to be seen digging into this question, that would be seen as an answer all its own. And so I spent a lot of time researching various investigation firms, hoping that a solution might present itself to me. But all roads seemed to lead back to Miravakia Investigations. And Luc Garnier.”

“We have an excellent reputation,” I manage to say.

His gleaming gaze touches mine and then moves away, but I feel it all the same. All over me, like fire.

“You do,” he agrees, his voice intent. “I thought that what I would do is arrange to meet this Luc Garnier. Not in his offices. Not officially. But all rumors suggested that sooner or later, we would cross paths at some or other gala. Except we never did.”

“This is what made you suspicious?” I ask. “Did it never occur to you that perhaps you were simply at different events?”

He studies me then, and it makes me feel hot, and not only because of the things I’ve been imagining. It’s as if he can see straight into me, and I’m not sure I like it.

I know I don’t. But I also know it goes both ways. I remind myself of that as he regards me for yet another moment, and it does not feel like atwo-wayanything.

“It is a smaller world than I think you realize,” he tells me. Eventually. I get the strangest notion that he is trying to…protect me from understanding what I can’t have known—especially back when I started—about the kind of clientele I wanted to attract. “For some, who could never dream of attending any such event, it might seem that there are too many of them to count. But the truth is that there are only so many that count at all. And everything else is filler, or focused on outward-facing celebrities. These are not the same kind of events and everyone who belongs in these circles knows it.”

Heistrying to protect me. From my own ignorance of the very, very wealthy. After all this time.

A great tide of warmth rises in me, but I don’t think this is the time or place to show it.

I clear my throat, carefully, and hope my eyes aren’t too bright as I gaze up at him. “So what you’re saying, I think, is that you have a secret club.”

I’m certain his lips curve in one corner, but he turns before I can confirm it. “The club isn’t secret but what it is, I’m afraid, is tediously exclusive. And so I began to wonder how it was that everyone seemed to think that this famous detective was at all the same events that I went to over the course of several determined years, yet was never present when I was. And once the idea took hold of me, I could not let it go.”

“I would accuse you of being obsessive,” I say. “But that is actually a compliment in my line of work.”

Taio inclines his head. “I began to look into the actual agency itself. And there you were.”

Something runs through me as he says that, another kind of electricity, maybe. It’s that look on his face—

But he turns again. He paces until he is standing on the other side of this small study, filled with so many books and cozy places to read them. He has his back to a set of doors that, given the brightness pressing in from the other side, I suspect lead outside.

I ought to feel trapped. But I don’t.

Because looking at him reminds me of the way we exploded into the universe together, far-flung and yet stitched together like a spell the stars cast themselves.

I do not feel trapped at all.

“I watched you,” he tells me, with that same intensity. “For some time.”

I sit up straighter, a different sort of shivery thing working its way all over me. I’m fairly certain it isdelight. “You are the Most Excellent Taio de Luz, Eighteenth Marquess of Patrias,” I say in mock astonishment. “Are you saying that you are also a stalker?”

“I believe that in your parlance it would be called surveillance,” he replies. When I only lift a brow, he continues. “I only saw you and your secretary. And so, eventually, I decided to risk it. You know the rest.”

It’s tempting to linger here. More than tempting. “But your timing was specifically planned to get us to that masked ball,” I say instead. “That was the point of the whole thing.”

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