Page 227 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

His frown deepened. ‘I thought you would like it.’

‘But there’s no reason for it.’ Her heart ached and ached. She was ruining this, ruining this day he’d made perfect just for her, and she couldn’t stop herself. ‘It was only supposed to be a legal requirement. It didn’t need to be...special.’

‘It was for you,’ he said, searching her face as if for clues. ‘I thought you would appreciate it if we made it an occasion, and I thought it would be nice to have it in the forest with some things that were meaningful to you.’

You are ruining this by making a scene. Stop it.

Except she couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t seem to stem the words that were pouring out of her mouth. ‘I didn’t ask you to do it for me. I didn’t ask you to make it special. And what about you? Why wasn’t there anything meaningful to you in there too? Why did it have to be all about me?’

Dominic stared at the woman in front of him, so startlingly beautiful in her golden gown and crowned with leaves.

His wood nymph. His wife.

He didn’t know what had gone wrong, but something had. Somehow, in the moment between when they’d said their vows and walked back to the manor, something had changed. Something had spooked this wild creature of his and he had no idea what it was.

He’d taken great pleasure in organising the ceremony, he had to admit. He’d put the kind of thought into it that he’d never put into anything but his business, and he wasn’t sure why, but he had. It had felt important to create something that Maude would like, since he was the one who’d suggested the idea of marriage in the first place, and for it to be special for her, because he didn’t want her to regret it.

When she’d stepped out of the forest, resplendent in gold, wearing the leaf crown he’d made, he’d felt the most acute pleasure that this beautiful, mysterious woman was now his. A pleasure that had only deepened when he’d put his ring on her finger, the possessive part of him roaring its satisfaction.

She was his wife now and she was pregnant with their child, and he would keep them, protect them, make sure nothing would hurt them.

He’d been looking forward to cutting the cake and eating the food Polly had prepared, and talking about their future and planning it together. Then, later, taking her to his bed in the manor for a change, and making her his wife in every way possible.

She’d looked a touch pale as they’d walked away from the pool and her fingers had been cold in his, it was true. But he hadn’t thought she’d suddenly and angrily demand to know why he’d made the ceremony so special, or why it was all about her.

There was something else going on here, he was sure.

He studied her face for a moment. ‘This isn’t about the wedding, is it? Something’s upset you.’

She was pale in the sun, all the warmth leached from her brown eyes. If he didn’t know any better, he would have said she was afraid, though he couldn’t think what she’d be afraid of. He’d promised not to sell Darkfell, and he’d also told her that things wouldn’t change between them, so what else was it?

‘You don’t love me, do you?’ she asked suddenly.

Frowning at the abrupt question, he reached out and grabbed her, his hands on her silken hips, pulling her close, as if that would make understanding what this was about easier. ‘No. Love was never going to be a part of this, I already told you that.’

Despite the wild look in her eyes, her body was already softening against his, moulding itself to him. Recognising him the way his body recognised hers. ‘Good,’ she said, her hands coming to his chest the way they always did, as if she couldn’t stop herself from touching him. ‘I love our child, but...not you.’

The words felt like small slivers of glass pushed slowly beneath his skin and he wasn’t sure why. Because he didn’t want her to love him. He didn’t want anyone to love him. Love demanded things, required things. Love was a list of expenses that he had to pay back. Love was a deal impossible to negotiate with. Love was an empty house and loneliness.

He didn’t want that again, not for himself. He never had.

‘Just as well,’ he said evenly. ‘Because I don’t love you either.’

‘But our child? You’ll love him, won’t you?’

Tension crept through him, making his muscles tight and his jaw ache. It was true, his heart had died the death of a thousand cuts. His father’s cold words and his efforts to ‘harden him up’. Little by little the store of love he’d had inside him had leaked away until there was nothing left.

Until he’d hardened himself entirely just as his father had wanted him to. As hard as his father had been. No, harder.

His father had turned him into the perfect businessman, the perfect CEO, and yet he’d retained enough of his ‘soft’ nature, as his father had termed it, to make it clear he wasn’t a carbon copy.

It wasn’t soft to enjoy pleasure, and so he’d cultivated it as carefully as he’d cultivated his business acumen, until finally he was both the businessman and the sybarite, because why not? Why couldn’t you have your cake and eat it too?

Why couldn’t you have all that,andlove your child? None of it was mutually exclusive. He didn’t need a heart in order to love. All he needed was to not be his father, and he’d already achieved that.

‘Of course, I’ll love him.’ And to make the point, he smoothed his hand over her bump where their baby lay. ‘He’s my son.’

Abruptly, as if his touch had burned her, she pulled herself out of his arms, and took a couple of steps away.

---