Page 66 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
I frown, puzzled. Pregnancy is usually a reason for happiness, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s not, though, and maybe this is one of those times. I take a couple of steps into the room. ‘You’re not happy for her?’ I ask carefully.
Ulysses turns back again, eyes still blazing like a torch. ‘What did I tell you about not being near me?’
I realise then, quite abruptly and on a level I haven’t felt before, that I’m reallynotafraid of him. Not even a little. Not when I can see that it’s the fear lurking beneath the fury that’s driving him. ‘You said you wouldn’t hurt me and you won’t,’ I tell him simply. ‘I’m not afraid of you, Ulysses.’
A muscle leaps in his jaw. ‘You should be.’
‘Why? Do you hurt a lot of women?’
His tall figure is almost vibrating with tension. ‘Yes, many.’ He throws the words at me like missiles trying to keep me at bay.
‘Physically?’ I ask, even though somehow I know deep down that the answer is no.
That muscle leaps again. ‘No,’ he grits out. ‘Never.’
‘So, now we’ve established I have no reason to be afraid of you, perhaps you can tell me why you’re so angry about your sister being pregnant.’
He lets out a breath, opening his hands and closing them again, as if he’s longing to grab something—a weapon of some kind—desperate to use it against whatever enemy is threatening him. ‘This is my problem,’ he says with carefully restrained fury. ‘And it has nothing to do with you.’
‘Well,’ I point out logically, ‘You were the one who brought me here. So, now you’ve made it my problem too.’
My frankness is not appreciated, as he stares at me balefully, yet I can’t help but be drawn to his intensity, the fire in him calling to the same fire in me, the fire that I know is deep inside me. The fire that, unlike of him, I’m afraid of.
My childhood was unsettled, my mother going from one place to another—living in communes, helping out on farms or wherever her free spirit took her. I hated never being able to settle, never having any routines, everything changing, sometimes every week, sometimes every day. All the changes would often drive me to meltdowns I couldn’t control, and which my mother didn’t know how to deal with, so sometimes she’d just lock me in a room wherever we were and leave. Once she was gone a whole night, which was terrifying to me at the time.
As a result, I become very adept at controlling my emotions, never getting too angry, never getting too sad. Never getting too happy either, because my mother didn’t like how I expressed my happiness, which was to hum. In fact, the way I expressed any emotion at all felt wrong when it came to her, so in the end it was easier to express nothing at all.
But those emotions don’t go away, even if they’re not expressed. They get stuck inside, boiling away like lava and, if nothing is done about them, they burn a person alive.
Numbers kept my emotions in check. The abstract beauty of them, divorced from anything but logic, was a lifesaver. I did number puzzles, solved equations and number games, anything that would distract me, and it worked.
But…here in this room, Ulysses is furious and he is doing nothing to distract himself. He’s not out of control with fury, but it’s there, and he clearly feels it, and is not denying it. I find it fascinating and I wish I could be like that too.
‘You don’t have to be here, Katla,’ he reiterates. ‘I would prefer that you leave, in fact.’
‘But I don’t prefer it,’ I tell him, because I want to stay with him. I want to help him, even though I don’t know how, I just do. ‘You might as well tell me what the issue is. I might be able to help.’
His mouth twists, as if me helping is the stupidest thing he’s ever heard, and maybe he’s right. Maybe me trying to help himisa very stupid idea, which of course makes me feel stupid yet again. Except I can’t bring myself to leave, not yet. Not without knowing what’s making him so afraid.
The desk is between us, his gaze like the sun searing over my skin. I expect him to tell me to leave again, but this time he says, ‘My entire life has been spent keeping Olympia safe. It’s my duty as her big brother to protect her and that’s all that matters to me. Nothing else is of any importance. I failed in that duty once before and I will not do it again.’
‘How did you fail her?’ I ask. He’s a powerful, dangerous man who gets whatever he wants, whenever he wants it, and I can’t imagine him failing to do whatever he set his mind to.
‘After our mother died, Olympia was taken into state care and I was too young to stop it from happening,’ he says tightly, then curses again as he tugs his phone out once more, looking down at the screen. ‘If Rafael Santangelo thinks he’s safe from me, he’s wrong,’ he growls, before raising his phone to his ear and issuing a series of what sounds like orders in rapid Greek, his tone hard and cold.
Part of me thinks I should leave him to his fury. I’m not good at dealing with my own excess emotions, let alone anyone else’s, and I’m sure I’m an irritant he doesn’t need. But… I can’t just walk away, not yet. The threat to his sister is upsetting him and, now I have an inkling as to why, it upsets me a little too. I don’t like him thinking he’s failed, which is ridiculous, given I barely know him. Yet he was kind to me in the jet, he was careful and patient, so I want to be kind to him in return.
In fact, I can’t shake the feeling that he needs me somehow, so instead of walking out of the door as he continues his conversation I move over to the shelf where the shell is, skirting round the broken glass sparkling on the floor. I gently pick up the shell, contemplating the spiral: the golden ratio, perfectly expressed, and exquisitely rendered in nature. The shell has that sense of rightness I require from all the items I have in my collection, and part of me wonders if Ulysses would mind if I took this shell to add to them.
Beside the shell is a small photograph of a young woman who looks about my age. His sister, surely? She has the same black hair and amber eyes as Ulysses, the same straight, proud nose, and she’s smiling.
‘That’s her,’ Ulysses says from behind me, his tone brusque. ‘That’s Olympia.’
The sound of his voice so close makes an electric shock jolt through me. I can feel his heat too, smell his intoxicating scent, and it makes me shiver. The memory of what we did in the plane is still so new and incredible. Now I’m thinking about it again, and I can’t stop. The pressure between my thighs is an ache, and I can’t concentrate. But I can’t ask him for sex again, not now. It would be incredibly inappropriate when he’s so angry and upset about his sister.
‘I thought so,’ I say, hoping the heat won’t show in my voice. ‘She has the same eyes as you.’
‘She was ten years old when our mother died,’ he says.
