Page 18 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

And she couldn’t see anyone up above her now, but she knew, all the same.

Alceu was not as immune to her as he pretended.

Or anyway, she amended, he came to look at her. Who could really say if that was an immune response or not?

She picked her way back through the series of libraries. One was stuffed with novels. Another was full of carefully arranged reference books and a wide, round table in the middle, sporting a map of the world with Sicily placed dead center. She took her time in the next, a bright, museum-like space featuring precious first volumes in seven languages, all set behind glass doors that indicated these books were to be admired, not loved.

It was then, suddenly, that she became aware of someone else in the room.

She could admit that when she looked up, her heart leaped, and she hoped—

But it was not Alceu.

It was, once again, his mother.

“It is a good thing you like a library, I suppose,” Marcella said. She was dressed similarly to the first time Dioni had seen her. It was well before noon, yet she wore an evening gown that appeared to have been painted onto the generous curves of her body. Dioni did not have to be an expert on fashion to recognize that the bold jewelry she wore was not exactly appropriate for the morning.

To say nothing of her vampire lips, still in that shocking red.

“I love libraries,” Dioni said brightly. “And this house has so many to choose from. It would take me a lifetime to read my way through.”

“That is about what you can expect.” Marcella drifted in, casting a derisive sort of look at one glass case, then another. “A Vaccaro wife is little more than a collector’s item. Chosen to sit aside, off on a shelf, good for a bit of breeding, and then left to her own devices. And you have already accomplished the first part of the business.”

Dioni had the urge to hold her belly, as if to protect the baby from Marcella, but that didn’t make any sense. It was only words. “That sounds like a lovely life. Books, my baby, endless solitude. I have to say, since everyone has been at pains to tell me how terrible it is here since I arrived, I did expect something a bit more onerous.”

Marcella sniffed. “You are so optimistic. But then, you are very young.”

“I’m not that young,” Dioni protested.

“It would not matter if you were eighteen or eighty,” Marcella declared, though she, herself, appeared something like ageless. “These walls are a curse to all. You will find out, child. Like it or not.”

And by the time she vamped back off to wherever she’d come from—like, perhaps, a crypt—Dioni could acknowledge that she was becoming ever so slightly tired of all these proclamations.

She was still thinking about that later that very same day as she enjoyed yet another meal all by herself. Today she was trying a selection of Sicilian delicacies like cheesyarancini, an auberginecaponata, andpasta con le sardeout on her formidable wall terrace with the steep mountainside and the sea in the distance as company. Every bite was a symphony, fresh and perfect, and then she glanced up to see Alceu there at last.

And every time she saw him it was like the first time.

Dioni told herself that she was getting used to those ripples he left behind him, like a wake, waves crashing into her and riptides carrying her away though he was nowhere in sight.

But she was not used tohim. To the simple fact of his presence, and how it both enticed and overwhelmed her. At once.

He was dressed as formally here, in his own home, as she had ever seen him anywhere else. She wanted to ask him about that. She wanted him to tell her if he even knew that he did these things, but other topics were a little too heavy on her mind.

“Is there a particular reason that every person I’ve encountered here over the last two days, and specifically your mother, has gone out of their way to tell me how terrible it is?” she asked.

Without much heat, because thearanciniwere little balls of ricotta and rice, fried to perfection, and it was impossible to work up a temper with such goodness on her tongue.

“I told you,” Alceu replied in that dark, brooding way of his, as if they weren’t standing here draped in golden sunshine with the hint of the sea in the air. “This is a place of darkness.”

Dioni stared at him. She kept staring and then tilted her head, just slightly, and let her gaze go with it to take in the sky above. The view. The expansive brightness in every direction, cascading down the steep mountainside and stretching out across the Mediterranean.

Then she shifted her gaze back to him. “Yes,” she agreed. “The darkest.”

His brow creased at that, but he did not come any closer. He stayed where he was, standing in the doorway in a manner that she would describe as stiff if it was anyone else. But he was notstiff.He was Alceu and he might have been still, but he was also impossibly graceful, even wrapped in his usual forbidding cloud.

“My doctors will be arriving shortly,” he told her after a moment. “They will perform the necessary examination and blood test so that we can determine both if the baby is healthy, and that it is mine.”

She knew that she should have been offended at that. Maybe she was, a little bit. “Is there some doubt?”

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