Page 2 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

Which was to say, she thought about it all the time.

But Alceu was unlikely to have considered Dioni’s inner life overmuch, assuming he thought about his friend’s younger sister at all. What people normally thought about Dioni was that it was astonishing that she was related to her exquisite mother, her over-the-top, legendary father, and Apostolis himself, who had long been considered one of Europe’s most eligible bachelors. So sophisticated. So charming. Never a hair out of place.

Dioni, by contrast, never had a hairinplace. Her old headmistress had applied herself to the task, certain that she could tame Dioni’s bedraggled hems, wild hair, and inability to even take a breath without looking like she’d rolled around in something distressingly humid.

I believe you’re the only failure of my entire career, the poor woman had said at graduation, shaking her head.I can’t believe it myself.

Then she’d tried to straighten the dress that Dioni was wearing, to no avail, as a kind of last attempt at making the proverbial purse out of a sow’s ear.

There was no possibility that Alceu, who made Apostolis’s perfection seem casual and faintly bedraggled by comparison, would ever notice a wild-haired little sow like Dioni. And even if by some chance he did, it would not be forpositivereasons.

How could she have a crush on a man like that? A man so remote he made the stars seem accessible and familiar?

And yet.

The thing about Alceu Vaccaro was that he made Dioni’s heart hurt. And he always had.

She had always felt drawn to him, as if he was a source of light.

When nothing could be further from the truth.

Her brother had a way about him, and could certainly be charming when it suited him, but Dioni had never seen any evidence that Alceu could do the same. He was a grim, forbidding, deeply self-contained kind of man, and that should have been more than enough to have her running for safety. Instead, there was something about him that simply...sent her spinning.

Though inside her, when she was near him, there was a kind of glorious stillness.

And so she never would have called her reaction to him acrush.

Or any of the sophisticated words that she imagined her best friend Jolie would use to describe the situation. Jolie had always been the chic, knowing one between them. It was why Dioni’s own father had married her, straight out of school. And no doubt why her brother had married her too, after their father had died, supposedly because it was in the will.

Though Dioni rather thought that had Apostolis wanted, he could have fought that.

She didn’t like to think about Jolie too much these days, because she hadn’t told her best friend about that unexpected connection with Alceu—however brief—or this pregnancy, either. How could she risk it? Jolie was now married to Apostolis and would certainly feel compelled to tell him that his only sister was pregnant. Thanks to his best friend.

That would lead to far too many questions Dioni didn’t want to answer, and the kind of trouble she liked to avoid, after growing up with her father and his dramas.

And she was terribly afraid that Apostolis would think less of her once he knew.

She reminded herself that she had chosen all of this, and quite deliberately, as she made her way down the street. It was a quiet street, for New York City. It was usually empty, though she could still see that person standing there outside her building, making her whole body shiver. Almost as if she had somehow manifested Alceu into being, right here before her eyes.

When she knew better.

Alceu had made it very clear that what had happened between them represented a loss of control on his part, an unforgivable lapse of judgment to hear him tell it, and had left him with nothing butpity.

At first, that had been hard enough to live with.

It wasn’t as if Dioni was bulletproof, after all. She did have feelings, it was only that she’d found a way to keep them to herself. Because in her family there were already far too many emotional outbursts. She had never fancied contributing to the show. It had always been easier to let the things her father said roll right off of her, leaving no marks. Her brother had always been there to assure her that she was better off ignoring the old man, so she’d tried.

But it was that word,pity.

It had stayed with her. It had sunk in, deep, and she’d discovered that when she was truly upset, garments simply stayed on her body the way they were supposed to. Her hair didn’t bother to fall out of clips and bands to go follow its own bliss.

She had spent the first few months in New York City so sophisticated it hurt, yet with no one around to notice.

Dioni had taken it as a sign that she might actually survive this that she’d managed to clumsily drop her mug of tea all over herself last night—happily after it had gone cold. And today, she’d thought that she was looking smart until she’d seen herself in the bakery window. And the reality was all wild hair, her huge belly, and the hems of her jeans dragging on the ground—unevenly and clearly notdeliberatelyfrayed.

In other words, she looked her usual fright.

Evidently, that meant she was going to be okay.

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