Page 152 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

The light dawns. “That was who you didn’t want to recognize you.”

“There were many people there that night that I did not wish to be known to,” he agrees, that gaze still steady on me. “It is as I told you. Any indication that I take the allegations about that diary seriously is as good as announcing my own doubt in my position.”

“That won’t matter now. Your mother will take the test. Soon enough, no one will mention your legitimacy ever again.” That reminds me of what I was trying to do before he started making all of these extraordinary comments. “And once that happens, I think you’re really going to want a more appropriate—”

“Annagret,” he says, his voice raw and intent, his eyes so bright they are setting me afire, “I’m in love with you. I am deeply, madly, irreversibly in love with you. You are the only thing I think of, night and day. This obsession has not waned. If anything, it has gotten worse.”

But this is exactly what I most want to hear, and I can’t allow it. I can’tbelieveit.

“You left me in that cottage!” I burst out. “How can you say all these things and expect me to believe you when your actions point to something else entirely?”

“How could I tell you who I was?” he demands. “I could not tell anyone. I was pretending to be someone I am not. It seemed not entirely unreasonable that I should finally get to touch you while playing that role and then have to leave.”

I lean forward in my chair. “I had no idea you were such a martyr.”

When he speaks again his voice is something like flat. Stripped of anything but the hardest truth. “Those were the worst months of my life.”

“Taio…”

“And then, one day, as I sat in the fallout of my own choices, playing a melody on a piano that reminded me of you, there you were.” That gaze of his is bright again. Wild and hot. “First I thought that I was dreaming again. And then, when I realized that you were carrying my child, I will admit it. I got greedy. Selfish. I wanted you for myself, and I was willing to do anything to make that happen.”

I frown at him. “But you had to rush it, because you are terribly afraid of your own mother and what she might do—”

“Toyou,Annagret,” he thunders at me. “I love my mother. I listen to her opinions about my life and my choices out of respect, and then I continue to do as I wish. My concern about her was that she would turn all of that iciness on you and I could not bear it. To extinguish your fire would be nothing short of a crime.”

My pulse hurts in my veins. My heart aches as it pounds. I can feel every part of me, and it is all ariot,and his gaze is like light. Life.

He leans forward then, his hands moving to hold my legs as he crouches there. “Look how successful she is. Do you doubt her power? It took her two conversations to convince you that you should leave me.For my good.What will be next?”

“She had nothing to do with it.” I belt that out, because it stings. “I’ve seen your life here. You might have tried to hide me away, but I can tell what it’s like all the same. Running a place like this requires a head for all those details, but it also requiresyouto be the face of it. Someone steady and calm to while the years away, one generation to the next. That would be a great deal easier to do if you did not have an American wife who everyone will assume is an embarrassment without my having to do anything.”

“I’m not the least bit embarrassed by my American wife,” Taio tells me gruffly. “And I would very much like anyone who feels differently to take that up with me directly. I look forward to it, in fact.”

“Taio.” And my heart is pounding so hard again that I feel almost dizzy. It hurts. I hurt.This hurts.“We come from two different worlds.”

“That’s not the issue here, I think.”

He moves back and then he pulls me up to my feet so he can hold me in his arms. Then he looks down at me, and there are no masks between us. There is only that heat. That glory.

This,I think.Us.

“You don’t believe that anyone could love you,” Taio says.

And then stands there, looking down at me with a kind of intense patience all over his beautiful face.

When what he’s done is blow me to smithereens.

“…what?” I manage to get out, though my throat is tight. My chest is constricted. I feel as if I’m about to break, and that’s before I can feel the wetness on my cheeks.

I do nothing to stop it. I can’t seem to move.

“You’re not the only one who is good at looking into other people’s lives,” he tells me, very quietly. Very intently. “Your father should have loved you better, Annagret. That’s the beginning and the end of it.”

I hear a sound, but it makes no sense. It reminds me of some kind of wounded animal, and then he’s holding me closer, my face is tipped into his chest, and I realize it’s me.

But it can’t be me, because I don’t cry, give or take a tear or two. I don’t cry likethis—hard, howling sobs.

It takes me a long while to hear the things he’s murmuring, but they seem to hang in the air as he holds me. As he rocks me, slightly, side to side. As his hand smooths down over my hair.

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