Page 228 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

He stared at her in surprise. ‘Maude? What the hell is going on?’

‘Your childhood,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘Why was it unhappy?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘If you want to be a good father to your child, then I want to know why you were so unhappy as a kid. So we can avoid making the same mistakes.’

Impatience twisted inside him. He had no idea where she was going with this, or what had provoked it, and he really didn’t want to continue the conversation. What he wanted to do was cut their cake and then take her to bed.

‘Later,’ he said, trying to temper his tone. ‘Let’s have some cake first at least.’

‘No,’ she said, oddly insistent. ‘Now. I need to know who I married.’

He took a calming breath, trying to hold onto his temper, because she was clearly upset so maybe going along with this—whatever it was—would finally get him to the truth.

‘Fine.’ He thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers so he wouldn’t keep reaching for her, since clearly she didn’t want him to. ‘What do you want to know?’

She’d folded her arms across her chest as if cold. ‘Everything.’

‘Okay. Well, my mother was my father’s lover. They weren’t married. She walked out when I was two. My father was going to put me up for adoption because he’d never wanted children, but then he changed his mind. He decided he needed an heir after all and, lo, there I was.’ The words had a bitter tinge to them, but he decided he didn’t care. Hewasbitter and he had reason to be. ‘Dad wanted a strong businessman for a son, so from an early age that’s how he treated me. Everything I wanted, I had to negotiate for. Clothes, food, heating, toys, his attention, his time. Nothing came for free. I had to pay for it all.

‘When I was thirteen, I was handed a list of expenses I’d incurred merely by existing and he expected me to pay him back.’ He kept his tone casual, because, after all, while he might be bitter, all of this had happened many years ago and it had no bearing on what was happening now. ‘My father wanted me to learn how to be a boardroom warrior, how to be hard, to never let anything get in the way of a good deal, and that was his way of doing things. He told me that if I paid back the money he spent on my upbringing, I’d be named his heir.’

Maude was silent, her golden-brown eyes fixed on his.

‘He died of a heart attack when I was seventeen,’ he went on. ‘But I hadn’t paid him back yet—nearly, I was very close—so I missed out on being named as his heir. I suspect the game had always been rigged and he’d never intended to leave it to me anyway. I just didn’t know it until then.’

Her gaze flickered, though what she was thinking he didn’t know. ‘What did you do?’ she asked.

‘I took the company back.’ He smiled, though it was rather more savage than he’d meant it to be. ‘I put into practice every lesson he’d ever taught me, and I fought the board of Lancaster Developments into submission. Then I took the company apart, piece by little piece, and sold all of it. Then with that money I started my own company, and built it so that it was larger than his ever was.’ He’d always found some satisfaction in that, yet saying it out loud to Maude now, it almost sounded...petty. ‘You could say that my father would have been proud of me,’ he went on, ignoring the feeling, ‘because I turned myself into him. Everything I learned I put to good use as a businessman and he wasn’t wrong about a lot of things.’

There was a taut expression on her face. ‘Will you teach the baby those same lessons?’

It was a fair question, though he hated she’d felt the need to even ask it. ‘No,’ he said fiercely. ‘I will never do to him what my father did to me. Never.’

The tension in her face had eased slightly, yet something was still wrong, he knew it.

‘Is that what was worrying you?’ he asked. ‘You’d think I’d hurt our—’

‘No,’ she interrupted quickly. ‘No, I don’t think that, not at all. It’s just... Well, I suppose we both have our issues, and I’m not going to be the usual kind of wife. So if you’re expecting me to be a certain thing...’ She trailed off, but he didn’t need her to explain.

He’d been right, shehadbeen afraid, and he could understand why. Her life with her grandparents had left its mark on her and she was worried he might do the same thing to her. He wouldn’t, of course. All he expected of her was that she be the delightful creature she already was.

‘I’m not expecting you to be anything but yourself, nymph,’ he said gently, and when he took his hand out of his pocket and extended it to her, it was in invitation rather than as a demand. ‘Come and sit down with me. Let’s eat this wedding breakfast and talk about anything you want. Or not talk if that’s your preference.’

For a long moment she stared at him, as if she were a wild creature unsure of whether to trust him or not. Then slowly she came to him and took his hand, and together they sat under the white silk pavilion and ate their wedding breakfast.

He told her about the forest and Craddock, and the stag he’d cried over. ‘My father sneered at me,’ he said, sipping on his glass of champagne. ‘“It’s just a dumb animal”, he told me. “If you can’t handle shooting a deer, then how are you going to survive in the business world?”’

‘Your father was the dumb animal, not you.’ Maude’s dark eyes were full of fire. ‘What a terrible thing to say.’

‘It was,’ he agreed. ‘Dad only had terrible things to say.’ It didn’t feel bad to talk to her about these moments of vulnerability. In fact, it felt as if he could tell her anything, anything at all. ‘You should know,’ he continued, after a moment’s pause, ‘that I haven’t led a good life, nymph. Nothing was more important than my own pleasure, and even that was getting dull. At least until the night of the bacchanal.’

She leaned her elbows on the table, velvety eyes dark. ‘So, what changed?’

He looked at her. ‘You know what changed. You, being in the woods that night too. You, running from me. You, giving me all your passion even though I was a stranger to you.’ He paused, because this was a confession that felt dangerous somehow, and yet he had to say it. ‘You changed my life that night, Maude.’

Something flickered in her gaze, an expression gone too fast for him to read. But then she leaned forward and reached for his hand where it rested on the tabletop, her long, slender fingers twining with his. He hadn’t asked for any of her confidences, so when she spoke, everything in him went still.

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