Page 156 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

And I realize that I don’t need anything more. Not from him.

Because I have everything. Almost more than my heart can bear.

But the best of these things is Taio.

And every year we take a holiday, away from the children and the estate that I take delight in running, and we go back to that little seaside cottage in Cap Ferrat.

We remind ourselves of who we are.

Thunder and light. Sweet heat.

Two hearts made one.

Every year we go back and love each other, without masks. And we stay tangled up together when the mornings come, remaining there until it’s hard to remember that we could ever be anything but this.

Us.

“Read me my favorite story,” he tells me on one such morning, a long way into our happy years. “The man who brought us together.”

I laugh and pull out the small book, white and red, withPure Princess, Bartered Brideon the cover. Above a diamond solitaire set in gold, and a cameo that encircles a couple we like to tell each other looks like us.

And I read to my love, as I always do.

“Luc Garnier did not believe in love,”I read out loud into the warmth and sun of the cottage.“Love was madness. Agony, despair, and crockery hurled against walls. Luc believed in facts. In proof. In ironclad contracts and the implacable truth of money. He had been relentless and focused all his life and as a result, wildly successful. He did not believe that this was a matter of luck or chance. Emotion played no part in it. Just—”And I stop, smiling at my husband the way I always do at this part.“Just as emotion played no part in picking out his future bride.”

“Poor Luc,” Taio says with a grin, as he always does. “Love will claim him all the same.”

And we read the rest of the book together, until it does.

Because love doesn’t require belief to be true. It only requires love.

As we are living proof.

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