Page 17 of Modern Romance March 2025 (5-8)

“I should have brought my conditions up before I fainted and followed you here like a dutiful little puppy,” she said, wistfully.

“Is that how you see yourself with me, Nyra?” He sounded almost…sad at the picture she painted.

She shrugged, refusing to elaborate.

“Tell me your conditions.”

“I’m not sure how your parents will react to this pregnancy, given everything I’ve done. I refuse to be subjected to their brand of venom through the pregnancy. So leave me here.”

“Hiding you here looks like you’re truly guilty. For all my sins, I’ve never backed away from admitting when I’m wrong.” He cast her a sidelong, assessing glace. “And while I never meant it like that, keeping you here, separated from the rest of my life made it look like I was ashamed of you.”

“That isn’t on you,” she said, her fair-mindedness forcing her to speak. “I chose to…”

“Why did you never tell me how they treated you when I wasn’t present?”

This time, she had no answer.

“I never made you believe that I would be okay with them calling you names to your face, treating you like you were some cheap tart I picked up by mistake,bella. Please—” frustration rattled the word as it fell through his tight lips “—do not put that sin at my feet.”

“I…I don’t know why I didn’t come to you,” Nyra admitted, even if it made her feel raw again. “It felt like telling to the teacher. I guess I thought you’d…” She cut herself off there. “I didn’t dare test the tenuous bond we had.”

His jaw locked up so tight that she would need a jackhammer to break through. A tenderness she didn’t want to feel toward him coiled in her chest. He’d doubted her loyalty, even her character, but there was no denying the fact that she had lied to him. A lot. The why she was too exhausted to plumb her own behavior just then. “Not telling you and not standing up to them was both foolish and cowardly. But I’m telling you now and—”

“They will all apologize to you. Will continue to, until you’re satisfied.”

Nyra stopped so fast that her head spun. “That’s…that’s not what I asked for, Adriano. Really, they would just hate me more if you humiliated them.”

“That’s a problem I will deal with directly this time,” he said, taking the ends of her shawl and pulling them tight. He bopped the tip of her nose in a playful gesture, but his words weren’t light when he said, “I’m already a villain in your book. Keep your conscience light and free.”

Nyra was only capable of nodding.

He turned, taking away temptation with him. “What else?”

“I want that trust fund for my…for the babies,” she amended. “You can lock it up however you want.”

“For when you leave me,” he added, without missing a beat.

“I’m learning to be…smart. For them,” she said, palming her belly over the shawl.

“That’s…smart,” he said, and then grinned.

It was impossible not to smile in return. The prospect of being parents touched every glance and word, every interaction between them.

He would make a wonderful father—Nyra knew it as surely as she knew her own rasping breath. But them together as a couple was a different matter. A mirage that she would never believe in again.

“I have one more condition,” she said.

“Tell me.”

She bit her lip. “It’s more a generous gift I’m trying to trick out of you since you’re in a receptive mood.”

“No con man or woman would admit to the con before they spring it.”

“Hey, I’m still learning,” she said, giving him a shoulder nudge. He was so solid that she simply swung in the opposite direction instantly. Even with her growing girth.

His arm snaked out to catch her by the waist, that same flicker of fear dancing in his eyes again. “Careful, Nyra.”

There was anger and command and more in his words. That raw, simmering emotion that he never let rise to the surface. Could there be anything more than common decency under his fear for her?

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