Page 7 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

He would like her to explain how any of this had happened.

“You are pregnant,” he said, perhaps with the faintest hint of accusation.

She blinked at that, then looked down. Then she rubbed her free hand over the great swell of her belly. “You’re very observant.”

“By my calculations, we are talking about six months.” He bit off those words, harshly. “When, pray, were you planning to tell me that you and I managed to conceive a child?”

She kept her eyes on her belly for a moment and when she lifted her gaze, he was surprised to see something like defiance there. “I wasn’t.”

“You planned to hide this?” Alceu could not take that on board. “Do you think this is some kind of prank, Dioni?”

“Why would I tell you?” She looked genuinely astonished, as if he was the one behaving outrageously. “You made it perfectly clear that you were appalled at what happened between us and wanted nothing more to do with me. I believe you said youpityme, and were ashamed of yourself for indulging—” She stopped, with a shake of her head. “There’s no point talking about it. I heard what you said and acted accordingly.”

Alceu had always prided himself on keeping his temper in check, but he thought he was as close to fury today as he had been since he was a university student. “You call thisacting accordingly, do you? You picked up and moved across the planet, alone, to a city like this? Do you know the sorts of things that happen to foolish, sheltered women in places like New York? Every day?”

She regarded him for a long moment, and he disliked it. Intensely. The way she looked at him made his chest seem to contract.

“There are foolish and sheltered women everywhere,” Dioni said, very quietly, which did not help the constriction in his chest at all. “Including, most notably, at my brother’s wedding. But don’t worry, Alceu. I’m significantly less foolish these days than I was.”

“Where is your security detail? Who is watching out for you?”

And he only realized that he had moved closer to her when her chin tipped up, so she could keep meeting his eyes. “I told my brother to leave me alone. He has respected my wishes.”

He reminded himself that standing this close to her led nowhere good. It led to streets in New York City and the reality of the baby she was carrying. Why compound the error?

But he didn’t step back. “To what end, Dioni? Do you think you can keep this secret forever?”

“I was considering it,” she shot back. “New York allows a person to be happily anonymous. My brother never comes here. It’s entirely possible that I could just...”

“Raise the baby without him noticing?” he finished for her, incredulous.

And Alceu had to caution himself against reaching out and putting his hands on her body. It didn’t matter that he wanted to, desperately. He knew better. Now he knew all too well where it would lead.

“The fact of the matter is that it’s not Apostolis’s business when or how orifI share this with him,” Dioni said, with a certain calm that Alceu found far more offensive than the previous flare of defiance. “And it’s not yours, either.”

“I beg your pardon.” He could hear the ice in his own voice. He saw it make her shiver. “Am I laboring under a misconception? Are you not carrying my child, Dioni? The girl who had never been kissed has had a host of lovers since that night, is that it?”

He was pleased—and ashamed that he was pleased—that he could see the color rising in her cheeks.

“You’re the father,” she said, as if she would love to deny it. She scowled at him. “But I’m perfectly capable of forgetting that when it comes time to sign a birth certificate. I don’t need anything from you. I don’t want anything from you.” He stared at her, stonily, and her scowl deepened. And her voice took on a slightly belligerent tone. “I don’t even want yourpity, Alceu, so feel free to take that with you when you turn around and go back to wherever you came from today.”

The fury in him was like a lightning bolt, and it struck him again and again.

“I do not believe that I will be doing that,” he told her.

Then he took her arm, the way he had done once before, and led her up the stairs and into her own home.

When he had done the same thing after that interminable wedding breakfast, he had assumed that she was that easily cowed. He knew better now. There was a certain alchemy, a certainchemical reactionwhen his flesh touched hers. It was one more thing he could not account for. But he also could not deny it.

And he was not above using it.

This was how he found himself standing in the well-appointed foyer of a historic Lower Manhattan brownstone with the door shut tight between him and Dioni, and the world.

Which, if he’d thought about it at all, was really not the wisest course of action.

“I don’t know how you do that,” she was saying, forging ahead of him to move deeper into the house, tugging her arm free from his grasp. “It’s impolite, at the very least, to be foreverpropelled aboutby the arm when you least expect it. And you do it too easily.”

She walked differently now, and he found it mesmerizing. Her hips moved like a sinuous metronome, so different from the nervous way she’d darted about before. He followed her, not sure what that seething thing inside of him was, all of those lightning bolts—or how it might explode.

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