Page 32 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 5-8
‘Okay.’ He nodded but he didn’t move and neither did she. They just kept staring at one another.
‘Actually, I wanted to thank you,’ he said after another beat of silence.
‘For what?’
‘I lost the thread earlier with Checco and my uncle. You had my back.’
She shrugged. ‘Your back is my back.’
‘You kept your head. I’m grateful.’
‘How did we do? Did we pass? I couldn’t tell.’
‘I think so.’
He looked tired, but then it must have been as stressful for him as it was for her. Maybe more so.
‘You passed anyway. You were more than a match for them. Even though they were incredibly provoking, particularly Checco, you didn’t let them get under your skin.’
She remembered the edge to Ettore’s voice as he’d warned his cousin. The memory of how he had turned and silenced the other man scraped over her skin.
‘You did,’ she said softly.
His expression didn’t alter but she felt something shift between them.
‘It’s complicated.’
She thought about Oscar and his bouts of despair and drunkenness. ‘Families are like that.’
‘What shall I do with these?’
He was holding out the pins and she forced herself to take them. As her fingers brushed against the palm of his hand, her pulse surged forward with a whumping sound like a tide curving under a cliff and she was so sure that he could hear it and understand what he was hearing that, instead of picking the pins up, she managed to knock several of them onto the grass.
‘Sorry.’
He crouched down, his fingers rifling through the dense blades, and she was almost tempted to help him. But she had watched enough romcoms to know that dropping-things-and-picking-them-up was a classic meet-cute scenario and, after what had happened in London, she didn’t want him getting the wrong idea.
Or her?
‘You didn’t drop them,’ she said as calmly as she could with that question repeating inside her head. ‘I did.’
‘I wasn’t apologising for that. I was apologising for yesterday. For how I acted. How I overreacted. I said things I didn’t mean.’
He was apologising. She felt oddly fragile.
‘And I said things I did. I wasn’t pretending. You were bleeding. I was worried.’
‘I know.’ His gaze moved past her as if he was searching for something in the darkness. Or maybe seeing it.
‘I know,’ he said again. ‘I was worried about you, too. I thought…’ He hesitated. ‘It reminded me of what happened with Edoardo. He was the heir, before me,’ he said simply. ‘And then he wasn’t.’
Wasn’t.Small words, big meaning.
‘What happened to him?’
‘He was killed on the estate. Riding one of the dirt bikes. He lost control and the bike hit a tree. I was with him when it happened. I can still hear the noise in my head…’
She felt him flinch inside, heard the splintering sound again. And she had been simply messing about. No wonder he’d overreacted.
