Page 149 of Modern Romance January 2025 1-4

‘He raised me.’

‘You loved him?’

Sebastian was silent. ‘I am very grateful to him.’

‘But?’

‘But nothing. He made my mother very happy.’

She contemplated that for a while, trying to imagine what it had been like for a little boy to accept that reality. He would have been happy for his mother, even when he missed his father and grandfather and old life in Cavalonia.

‘He was a great man. I wish he was still here.’

‘I’m sure you do,’ she said sympathetically.

‘What about your father?’ he asked, handing the rod back so Rosie could throw the line in. She did so, unaware of the deep frown lines that had formed on her brow.

‘You said you’re not close?’ Sebastian prompted, when a minute passed without Rosie’s response.

‘We’re not.’ She’d been guarded about this conversation for a long time.

‘Were you ever?’

She was glad he hadn’t immediately launched into “why not?” because she wasn’t sure how to answer that question.

‘Perhaps when I was younger.’

They were quiet for several moments. Rosie moved her rod a little, but it seemed the fish had calmed down and were no longer biting the moment she cast in.

‘Then something changed?’

Of course he wasn’t going to let it go. He was taking a less direct approach, but Sebastian was not a man to have mysteries in his life. He wanted to know about this, and he was teasing the information from her in a way that was gentle and non-threatening. Never mind the fact he kept his own cards close to his chest.

She sighed a little. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Did you become a teenage rebel? Drugs? Alcohol? Wild parties?’

She sent him a droll look. ‘If I had done any of that, don’t you think the media would have dug it up by now?’

He arched a brow.

‘I was almost depressingly straitlaced,’ she said with a lift of one shoulder. ‘I was more of a tea drinker than anything else.’

‘So, what happened?’

She tugged on the fishing rod. ‘It’s hard to explain.’

‘We’ve got time.’

She bit into her lower lip. ‘I guess it wasn’t just one thing. As I grew older, I became aware of things I couldn’t have understood as a child. Lifestyle choices he made, for one.’

‘Such as?’

‘You know my mother is in a coma?’

‘I remember that, from our wedding arrangements,’ he confirmed with a nod, but his eyes had softened in a way that spoke of sympathy—something she hadn’t expected from Sebastian—and her eyes stung with the threat of tears. ‘She was in an accident?’

Rosie ignored the compunction at the small fib—one she’d used for so long that it was now an accepted part of her narrative. They didn’t talk about what had really happened. For Rosie, it was too painful, a constant refreshing of guilt, of having been the instrument of her mother’s demise.

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