Page 69 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 1-4

Impatience gripped him. There were circles under her eyes and she was pale, and he didn’t like that. He’d always worried for her when she got that pale, drawn look, and he’d worried even more in the month after their interlude in his office. She’d looked constantly pale and had had to take time off, which was unusual for her. A stomach bug, was all she’d said when he’d asked, and he, fool that he was, had thought no more of it.

He leaned forward, his elbows on the desk. ‘Sit, Wren,’ he said in a gentler tone. ‘You look exhausted.’

Another expression flitted across her face that looked like pain, but it was gone before he could be sure. ‘Let’s get whatever this is over and done with,’ she said tightly. ‘I want to go to bed.’

Wren had always hated being told what to do and she could give a mule a run for its money when she was being stubborn, which was most of the time. He knew better than to argue with her, but this was her cutting off her nose to spite her face. Also, she was carrying a child, his child, and since the baby’s health was dependent on hers, he was not going to be argued with on this one.

‘Do as I say, and sit,’ he ordered flatly. ‘For the baby’s sake.’

There was a mutinous cast to her chin, but, after a minute, she sat herself on the edge of the chair like the bird she was named for, delicately perching on a twig. ‘There, Your Majesty,’ she said tartly. ‘I’m sitting.’

Your Majesty.

She never called him that, and he’d never wanted her to. He’d always been Isandro to her when they were in private, and in public, he’d been ‘sir’.

‘As I already mentioned,’ he said, ignoring the subtle dig, ‘we need to decide on a story to tell the public.’

Wren stared back, giving him nothing. ‘Weren’t you going to tell the truth? At least, that’s what you said back at the airport.’

‘Yes, but we need to craft it carefully. I don’t want Carlotta’s memory to be tainted by this.’

‘You know she wouldn’t care about yours, if it had been you killed in that car accident.’

Isandro frowned. Wren had been meticulous at covering Carlotta’s mistakes, and she’d never had a bad word to say about her, even when he’d been less than discreet about his own anger towards his wife. Yet he could hear the sharp edge in her tone. This wasn’t about Carlotta, though.

‘Being angry at me about this is not going to help,’ he said, getting straight to the point. ‘We need to be clear-headed about this.’

‘Why?’ she shot back. ‘The truth is we slept together in a moment of madness, two months before Carlotta died. There’s no point dressing it up as something it wasn’t, and if you want to curry sympathy from the public, the only way you can do that is to let everyone know what Carlotta was really like.’

Tension coiled inside him. He’d hoped to find a way through the morass of cover-ups and lies, come up with a form of the truth that would leave Carlotta’s reputation intact. She’d certainly made a lot of mistakes herself, but getting Wren pregnant was his responsibility, and Carlotta’s memory shouldn’t have to suffer for it.

What about Wren’s?

Well. Hers shouldn’t have to suffer either.

‘I’m not willing to do that,’ he said. ‘What happened between us was not Carlotta’s fault.’

Wren gave a snort, which was, again, unusual for her. She was normally much more self-contained. ‘Wasn’t it? If your marriage had been a happy one, you wouldn’t have looked twice at me.’

He shifted in his chair, uncomfortable. He’d gone through this in his head many times, what he’d have done if he’d met Wren while happily married. And there had always been a seed of doubt in him, like a worm hidden in an apple core, that he might well have done something. Their chemistry had been instant and powerful, and in the end he hadn’t been able to fight it.

See? You are your father’s son after all. Why bother denying it?

Isandro ignored the thought. ‘That’s true,’ he said, both to himself and to the doubt. ‘Still, the mistake was mine.’

‘It was mine, too,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t just you.’

Yet he was the one who’d made the first move. Carlotta had been photographed in the arms of a man in a nightclub in Montecarlo, and it had seemed likely that her indiscretion would be impossible to fix this time, at least not without him spending a considerable amount of money paying off the paparazzi.

He’d been angry. They’d had an argument the week before, where he’d laid down the law about her behaviour, and she’d screamed at him loud enough for the whole palace to hear, about how he spent more time with ‘that stupid PR woman’ than he did with her. That had hit him in a painful, vulnerable place, and he’d reacted badly. Being even more cold and unforgiving with her than he already was, even though he’d known that was a mistake. She’d needed kindness and understanding, not him being a prick, but it had been too late. She’d left for Montecarlo the next day without a word to him.

He’d been sure the photo had been staged by her as revenge, and had lost his temper. Wren had come around the side of his desk, wanting to calm him, but he’d turned to her, looked into her silvery eyes, and thought that if Carlotta could have what she wanted, why couldn’t he?

It had been a split-second decision, his fury turning into something hot and demanding, and he’d gripped Wren’s upper arms before he could think about it, pulling her close, and then it had felt as if the whole room had ignited.

She’d been on his desk and he’d been inside her within seconds.

So yes. It had all been his fault.