Page 150 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

“Not about my family,” he clarified into his glass.

“About the wedding.”

He gulped, then hissed out a breath. “My mother asked if my father could come as her date. They’ve reconciled.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know what surprised her more. That statement or the fact that he was sharing it on the heels of insisting he didn’t want to talk about his family. She came forward to perch in the chair that sat at an angle to his. “Did you tell her you’d rather not?”

“I said I didn’t care. They’re adults. They can do what they want.” He took another hefty gulp.

She studied him, trying to read more in his expression than he was saying aloud, but he was very good at hiding his thoughts and feelings.

“It must have been a shock for him to learn his wife had had an affair, even though it was before they were married.”

“It wasn’t an affair,” he said darkly.

“A—”A hookup like us?That was what she almost said, but her heart twisted in her chest as understanding dawned. Magnus wasn’t sulking or holding a grudge. He was hurting. “Oh, Magnus.”

He only curled his lip and sipped.

“Did the queen know?”

“Yes. She helped my mother leave the palace the night she was assaulted, then paid her to keep quiet. Or, I should say, she offered a settlement that my mother agreed was fair,” he said pithily, as though quoting something he’d been told but didn’t buy. “Once my father—Sveyn—realized it hadn’t been consensual, he wanted the truth to come out, but my mother wouldn’t hear of it.”

“It’s her story.” Lexi had had her own run-ins with handsy men over the years. It had never been as grave as what his mother had suffered, but she preferred to put those experiences as far behind her as possible, not revisit them. She completely understood Truda’s desire to forget.

“My father couldn’t see past his anger at the palace. Once I agreed to live here, I became one of them. The enemy.”

“That’s horrible. But his reaction is not your fault, Magnus.”

“Don’t psychoanalyze me.” He flashed an icy glance at her. “I knew what I was doing when I agreed to come. More or less. I mean, I didn’t want any of this, but Katla is very persuasive. She suspected from the time I was born that I was her brother. She said shegaveme that time with my family. And that if she’d had her own children, she wouldn’t have prevailed on me, but I was being called. What kind of man was I, at my core? The kind who knows he’s needed and walks away?”

“That was a lot to put on you when you were barely a man.” The words hit her like a ton of bricks. She could only imagine how they had landed on him.

“I thought my father would eventually see my side of it, that I didn’t really have a choice, but he wouldn’t talk to me. He didn’t talk to any of us for a good year, not until he divorced my mother. Then he insisted on shared custody of Dalla and Freyr, driving us further apart.”

“He turned them against you?”

“Maybe it would have happened anyway. I couldn’t see much of any of them. I was here and they were still in Norway, but I speak to my mother every month. She never mentioned that she’d been seeing him since Freyr’s weddingtwo years ago. He’s been living at the house I bought her forfour months.”

“And this is the first you’re hearing of it?”

“Yes.”

“And it feels like another secret that was kept from you.”

“That’s exactly what it is.” He drained the last of his drink and clacked the empty glass onto the side table.

She left her chair and slid into his lap.

He stiffened. “I don’t want pity.”

“It’s comfort.” She draped her legs over the armrest, ignoring his scowl. “That was very insensitive of them.”

“I don’t expect them to be sensitive,” he muttered as his arm curved behind her back in a way that seemed more reactive than conscious. His other hand found her hip so he could pull her more snugly into him. “I expect them to be honest.”

“Then be honest with me. You weren’t happy about our going to see them even before we saw Sveyn was there. Why?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded irritated. “I knew they would like you and they did.”

---