Page 4 of Modern Romance January 2025 1-4

Fortunately, he turned away and she followed him back into the very fancy big room, still barefoot because she had not thought to pack any other footwear for the hotel and no way was she forcing her feet back into the heels!

The wine came from a built-in chiller cabinet and she tried not to stare, but she felt as though she were visiting royalty because who else might have a disguised chiller in their drawing room? She accepted her wine glass with a tense smile and sank down on the edge of a plush armchair, knowing that if she sat back properly her feet would dangle like a kid’s.

‘So you were up here on a business trip,’ he remarked casually.

‘Yes. I was attending a conference as an interpreter for a South Korean tech firm,’ she imparted with greater calm. ‘I speak Korean and French. I spent the first fifteen years of my life in South Korea because my father worked in Seoul.’

‘Interesting,’ Nic commented, studying her with an intensity that made her feel slightly uncomfortable.Thee mou, she was gorgeous, he was thinking, scanning her pale perfect skin, her sparkling ocean-coloured eyes and her golden hair. There was something about her face that he found hard to look away from and she was reddening again like a traffic light. He focused on the drink in his hand instead, marvelling at his inept behaviour in such circumstances.

‘Maybe you could show me out to the kitchen,’ Lexy almost whispered.

‘I apologise for staring,’ Nic countered easily. ‘You’re impossibly pretty but I assure you that I am not about to do anything about it that could make you feel unsafe.’

Lexy laughed and said, without even thinking about it, ‘I wish I could promise the same!’

Nic gazed back at her with stunned dark-as-night eyes, framed by lush velvet black lashes, narrowing.

Lexy turned hot pink and exclaimed, ‘Because you’re impossibly pretty too and I wouldn’t wantyouto feel unsafe!’

‘Kitchen,’ Nic reminded her, thinking it was time to end this particular conversation.

CHAPTER TWO

NICHADEXPERIENCEDevery possible type of encouragement from women since he was around fourteen. But...

‘Nobody has ever called me pretty before,’ he heard himself say, regardless of his previous desire to conclude that dialogue. Lexy was now busily slamming through kitchen cupboards, checking the extensively stocked pantry and investigating the contents of the fridge in a sudden surging hive of industry.

‘Well, they mustn’t have taken a real good look at you, then,’ Lexy mumbled, cheeks on fire as she established that Nic had a surprisingly refined spice rack and every possible tool in what was probably her dream kitchen.

Determining that he had no allergies, she pulled out vegetables, washed them and began to chop them up.

‘I’mnotpretty,’ Nic informed her with huge conviction.

‘Whatever you say.’ He sowas. She was mortified that she had said what she was thinking out loud, but she knew in her bones that she was safe with him because he had gone out of his way to ensure that she felt secure by allowing her to take those photographs with her phone.

She was ashamed that she didn’t have any of the flirtatious chatter that women of her age usually had. She felt clumsy and unfeminine in his presence even though he had labelled her impossibly pretty. And that statement alone made her entire body sing a chorus of appreciation because compliments of that magnitude did not come her way. Not when she had grown up with a father who had once derided her because she lacked his height and, even though she had inherited his colouring, had failed to shine at maths or sports. Those criticisms had hurt like so many other of her father’s little asides had done over the years, whittling away at her self-esteem, driving a need in her to support her loving mother in any way she could.

Nic stood in wonderment while she chopped at the speed of a professional chef and expertly threw together a beef stir fry flavoured with spices he had never used. Yes, he could cook, but not as it seemedshecould.

‘Did you learn to cook in South Korea?’ he asked.

‘No, I learned in the UK. You’re seeing the results of seven years of part-time off-the-books employment in a restaurant kitchen. I started out washing dishes and peeling veg and by the time I left, I was good enough to function as a junior chef.’

‘What age were you when you started?’

‘Fifteen... Yeah, I know it was illegal, but my mum and I needed the money.’

‘Didn’t she work?’ Nic was frowning.

Lexy shrugged a thin shoulder. ‘She wasn’t really able to. She was depressed after her divorce.’

Nic groaned. ‘I know the damage a bad marriage does,’ he surprised her by admitting. ‘I used to urge my mother to divorce my father, but she thought divorce was a fate worse than death, so I can relate to some degree. But your mother was the adult, she shouldn’t have left you to take care of the problems.’

‘Why not? Mum had never worked a day in her life. She got married at eighteen and went straight into a set-up where a housekeeper did everything for her and my dad told her what to do the rest of the time. She couldn’t cope without money... She didn’t know how,’ Lexy confessed as she drained the rice.

Seated at the kitchen island on a bar stool, Nic looked at the colourful plate of food set before him and accepted the implements she passed him. ‘This looks amazing.’

‘No need to over-egg the pudding,’ she quipped. ‘A guy like you living in a house like this...well, I bet you’re not used to bad food.’

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