Page 3 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

Some people grow wan and pale when they’ve had an upset,Dioni had written in the letters she did not send to Jolie.But I fear that I become dreadfully proper. I will know myself again only when I realize I’ve been walking around all day with my dress on inside out.

She was laughing about that as she drew even closer to the brownstone and was struck even more by the still, watchful stranger’s resemblance to her memory of the man she kept meaning to make herself forget.

But the thing was, there had been that storm.

It had been a tense and awkward day. It had been Apostolis and Jolie’s wedding day and neither bride nor groom had even bothered to pretend that they were happy about the union. Dioni had therefore felt that it was her task to enjoy it for everyone. And as she and Alceu were the only guests and legal witnesses, she had dedicated herself to the cause.

She had planned an elaborate wedding breakfast, complete with cake and fizzy drinks, and despite Alceu’s seeming lack of interest in the entire affair, she had enlisted his help, too.

In the sense that she had sat next to him and made it seem as if they were acting in concert. Instead of what had actually happened, which was that she kept trying to make it a happy occasion and everyone else had been in some or other state of horror.

And after her brother and Jolie took the opportunity of their wedding toasts to rip into each other, Dioni had intended to stay and sort it all out herself. Because she, after all, was the only person in the room who loved both of them.

But instead, while her brother and her best friend had been leaning in close, smiling with malice as they landed one verbal blow after the next, Alceu had escorted Dioni away from the danger zone.

Looking back, she still didn’t know how he had managed that.

It had been so smooth. One moment she had been sitting there, literally gaping as Apostolis and then Jolie in turn made it sound as if their marriage should be a literal deathmatch. The next thing she knew she’d been led by the elbow out from the breakfast room.

Then she was in one of the sitting rooms, which had already been prepared for the hotel’s guests, because there were always guests at the Hotel Andromeda. Though that day, said guests were off adventuring on a different island. That was how they’d snuck in a wedding.

And nature had done the rest, because it was vile weather that day. The storm had pounded down, the rain had seemed to dance sideways, and she could not remember a single other moment that she’d beenalone in a roomwith Alceu Vaccaro.

Much less in a nearly empty hotel in the rain.

I wonder if they’ll make it, she had found herself saying, moving over to the window.

They must, Alceu had replied curtly, and he was not staring out at the swath of cliffside and the stormy sea beyond. He had instead moved over to fix himself a drink.There are legal considerations at play, which are always more likely to produce a strong union between two people than anything more fanciful could.

I meant the night, Dioni had said. Then she’d turned from the window and frowned at him as he fixed himself a drink.I think that’s the most words you’ve ever said in my presence. Certainly the most you’ve ever saidtome.

She didn’t think. She knew.

Alceu had taken his time looking at her again, but when he did, it had simply thrilled her. She had understood, then, thatthrilledwas the right word. He was so uncompromising. He was so quietly ferocious. Maybe it was no wonder she had never had any interest in the sorts of boys she’d encountered along the way, because always humming along in the back of her mind, there was this.

Him.

A man who seemed to her to be more like a mountain, impossible, unyielding, and wholly unimpressed with her presence.

That last part would likely sound bad, she knew, if she ever shared it with someone. But then again, she rarely met people who didn’t know who she was, and they always acted much too interested. Only it always turned out that what they were really interested in was her father. Or the hotel. Or her brother. Or the legend of her late mother that they wanted to play out with her.

Alceu, by contrast, looked at her the way any high mountain gazed upon a person foolish enough to wish to climb it.

It stirred something deep inside of her. Because wasn’t that why people climbed mountains in the first place? Because they were there?

There was all that storming tempest outside, right there at her back, and she understood with a deep kind of knowledge that seemed to come from the storm itself, or possibly from her own bones, that she was powerful or reckless, mad or daring in the same way.

That she was the kind of woman who stood in front of a man like him and thoughtyes.

It was the same impulse. One false move and she could tumble to her death.

But first, there in that sitting room, there had been the way that gaze of his moved over her.

Mountains and stars and the ache in her heart aside, Alceu was a remarkably attractive man.

So much so that there didn’t seem to be any appropriate words to describe it. That dark hair that he kept cut short, as if he found the hint of any length a challenge to his authority. It only emphasized the harsh lines of his face, from his bold nose to his sensually stern lips that would not have looked out of place carved in marble. His eyes were dark and his brows almost too expressive, given how little he usually spoke.

She had thought, in that moment, that he’d felt like a lightning storm of his own in front of her. And that she would have given anything she had just to see him smile.

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