Page 3 of Modern Romance March 2025 (5-8)

She let it slide off her like water over a rock. Sometimes, she even wondered what Nigella’s, and this privileged family’s, reaction would be if they truly found out her background. If they knew what a taint she could bring on the mighty Cavalieri name.

Although it was anticipating Adriano’s reaction anytime she considered telling the truth that worried her the most. The idea of seeing contempt—even disgust, in his gray-green eyes when he set them on her—made her stomach clench tight.

Her husband was an intensely private man and nine months later, Nyra still didn’t know why he’d married her. Not that she had ever probed him about it. Gift horses and all that.

When he wasn’t there, when his touch didn’t anchor her to this reality, like the last four weeks, this life he’d given her felt like a particularly colorful daydream. Maybe Nigella’s name-calling didn’t bother her because Nyra felt like she was all those things in his world. An impostor who could be found out at any moment. She’d even tried to tell Nigella in a roundabout way that her position as the Cavalieri matriarch was not threatened.

She much preferred the cozy apartment near Lake Navigli. Not that she had ownership there either. She had followed Adriano with nothing but the hotel uniform she’d been wearing. All she had was her art supplies, gifted by him. But still, that space—with its huge four-poster king bed and the sunroom where she painted, and the small balcony with its view of the busy lakefront with all its charming cafés and sparkling Italian water, was theirs.

They’d stamped every inch of it with their lovemaking and their comfortable silences and their whispers and laughter long into the night.

And now, all of that was going to change. Irrevocably.

A tremor started in her legs and traveled up her spine, and the glass of water in her hand rattled on the table. Both excitement and dread filled her.

For months, she’d floated along on a different plane with him and this was a thud of reality. And it had made her realize how much she wanted to build this life with him, how bright and wonderful the future could be for them and their…growing family.

Family…the word moved through her like a giant gong. This was a new chance, a real start at something she’d never even dreamed she might have.

Though, how was she supposed to convey this huge news to him if he wouldn’t even look at her? Why did she get the sense that something was terribly wrong?

He’d gone up those winding stairs as soon as he’d stepped inside, barely sparing her a glance as she came running in to see him, from the orange grove where she’d been hiding. Then it had been cocktails with the lot of them, blinking back tears when Nigella commented on his lack of a greeting for her.

It was the first time her mother-in-law’s acerbic comment pricked.

Butterflies,no, it felt like dragons were flying in her belly as she sat at the table with all of them now.

How would Adriano react to the news of her being pregnant?Of them being pregnant.

Especially after the strange evening they’d had before he had left four weeks ago.

As usual, he’d exhausted her with his mouth and his fingers, but there had been something more intense to him in those few hours. As if he was equally fascinated and frustrated by her.

Since neither of them was a great phone person, that fraught silence between them had grown thorny and thick over four weeks.

Was it her fault, she wondered, twisting the fake diamond ring on her finger.

Was it her own distracted mind that she’d seen reflected in his edgy words and movements that evening and today?

She had disturbed the easy, harmonious rhythm their lives had fallen into with her lies and her stealing and her secret trips to London. But how could she have not tried to help…

Her gaze flicked to his for a horror-stricken moment.

Did he know? Had he discovered what she had been up to?

Just then, his gray-green gaze collided with hers. And then it seemed to spear and skewer her as if she were a helpless fish.

Heat and desire and panic and a host of other things she couldn’t name flooded her, and she stared back helplessly.

All she wanted was to be held in those arms. To know his touch again. To have him give her that crooked smile that no one else got.

Longing burned a path through her as his attention broke away from her. One of the cousins asked him something.

Damn it, it had been four weeks.

Wasn’t she allowed to greet her husband without the audience of his family members? Why did they have to sit down for this elaborate, six-course meal every freaking Friday? And today, of all days?

It wasn’t as if Adriano was close to either of his parents. She’d got the sense that he mostly tolerated them and they tolerated his…controlling dictates because he was the source of their continued wealth and jet-setting lifestyle.

---