Page 138 of Modern Romance March 2025 (5-8)

“I’ve never slept with her.” It was the truth, but Iris wasn’t having it.

“It looks like you did!”

“I can see that.” He wasn’t going to repeat the false accusations that Stella had fraternized with him for her own gain. What a mess. “But it’s in the past—”

“No, it’s not! It’s happening right now.” Iris jabbed her phone, quoting, “‘With an engagement announcement between Davenport and Makepeace-Reid expected any day, another woman has appeared with a vengeance.’ Whyvengeance, Atlas? I said last night I would tolerate discreet affairs. This is not discreet!” She shook her phone. “And I didn’t expect they’d start before we announced our engagement.”

“It’s not an affair.” He bit back an urge to say she was overreacting.

“You left me in the boutique tomeether.”

“We bumped into each other.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that?”

Hell, he barely believed it. Iris was entitled to her outrage, but it was bringing down his carefully assembled house of cards.

As she started back to her bedroom, he asked, “What are you going to do?”

“Go back to London. What areyougoing to do?”

This was his chance to save their engagement. His only chance.

Go with you.

The iciest logic in his brain urged him to say it. To do it. He should go straight back to London, issue a statement that pushed Stella firmly under a bus, patch things up with Iris and take over DVE. That’s what he wanted, wasn’t it?

“I’m scheduled to heli-ski with Zamos tomorrow,” he reminded her.

Iris’s laugh was a high-pitched wobble before she delivered a stone-cold, “I’m keeping the earrings.”

CHAPTER TWO

STELLA WAS PROUDof herself for not stalking Atlas online, not even when she returned to her small flat in the top of the four-story walk-up.

Looking him up was a bad habit she had largely conquered because the humbling truth was, she didn’t need to. She had memorized his backstory long ago.

Atlas was usually described as Oliver Davenport’s son from “a brief relationship with Rhea Voudouris,” daughter of a Greek restaurant owner. At the time of his birth in Greece, Atlas’s father had been married to an heiress who started a line of athletic wear as a lark, under the DVE umbrella. When she passed from an unspecified illness, Oliver took it over.

In his teens, Atlas moved to live with his father in England. He’d been excelling in junior games as a competitive swimmer, which explained his powerful shoulders and lean hips. Within a few years, he’d won three golds and a silver at the Olympics.

His good looks and status as an elite athlete made him a natural for becoming the face of the athletic wear line. Through his late teens and early twenties, he was often posed with Carmel, Oliver’s legitimate child, next to pools and on rocky outcroppings atop mountains. Carmel was waif-thin and sulky next to Atlas’s broody strength. They made a striking pair and Carmel’s frequent scandals sent their images viral on a regular basis.

Over time, Atlas quit modeling in favor of working directly at DVE. Oliver was the majority shareholder and CEO, but Atlas was seen as his successor, which kept eyes on him as an industry titan worth watching.

Then there were the women.

That was the real reason Stella refused to look him up anymore. Every time she did, she was accosted by a photo of him with a beautiful, wealthy starlet or heiress. It shouldn’t bother her, but it did, probably because it reinforced exactly how different they were.

Honestly, with the world as his playground and an army of foot soldiers to fetch and carry for him, she had to wonder what he’d been doing walking into a shop in Zermatt today, but she refused to seek answers online.

Because it didn’t matter. He was dead to her.

Even if she did keep replaying their conversation, alternately wishing she had said more, or less, while also rehearsing what she would say if she ever got the chance to speak her mind again.

I shouldn’t have kissed you.

If onlyshehad said that tohim, rather than letting him say it first. Why did it sting so much to hear it?

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