Page 93 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 1-4

A burden. Wren? He’d known about her mother—she’d been up front about that from the day she’d started—but she’d never said that her mother had abandoned her.

He frowned. ‘What do you mean she abandoned you?’

Wren glanced away, looking at her finger still tracing a circle on his chest. ‘She used to go away periodically to see my father, but she wouldn’t bring me. I was the scandal that ruined his career, and he didn’t want a bar of me. Then when I was five, she told me that she would be going to live with him permanently and that I’d have to live with my grandparents.’

There was another painful shift in his chest, a flick of anger coming with it. He knew what it was to be abandoned. His mother had left him, too, but she’d done so without even the grace of a goodbye. She’d just gone.

That never mattered to you, though, because you didn’t care. Did you?

Again, another twist in his chest, making him shift in the chair. Wren looked up at him once more, frowning. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ he said dismissively. It was true. He hadn’t cared. Not one bit. He just felt sorry for Wren, that was all. ‘I’m sorry that happened to you.’

‘You know how that feels though, don’t you? Because of your own mother.’

‘It’s not the same,’ he said. ‘I didn’t care about my mother. She didn’t have any time for me, so her leaving didn’t matter.’ Yet the words sounded hollow, even to his own ears.

Wren stared at him for a moment longer, then she said, clearly deciding to let the subject of him go, ‘My grandparents weren’t pleased. They were hoping for a child-free retirement and got stuck with me instead.’

Isandro tried not to think about his own father’s not-so-silent resentment that Isandro wasn’t the son he’d hoped for. Xavier had continually told him that he was sour-faced, and judgemental, and that he had no respect, and Xavier had been right in a way. Isandro had judged him, and found him wanting, and so he didn’t care about Xavier either.

‘Did they tell you that?’ he asked, dismissing his own unwanted thoughts and concentrating on her instead. ‘That seems very unfair.’

‘Not in so many words. They were deeply disapproving of my mother, and were worried that I was going to be the same, so I spent most of my childhood being told to be good in case I ended up like her.’

Looking down into her lovely face, he thought about the PR image she often projected, contained and calm, and in control. The perfect palace spokeswoman. But she wasn’t always contained and calm and in control. She’d kissed him as if he contained all the air she needed to breathe, and she’d got angry with him, shoving him as if he weren’t the King, as if he were just a normal man. And when they were talking about work, and she was into the ideas they were discussing, she got animated and excited.

That was who she was deep down, he understood suddenly. She was a bright and stubborn spirit, who’d pulled herself ruthlessly in line to meet the expectations of people who didn’t even care about her.

That rankled. It was unfair and it was wrong, and it was…

Familiar perhaps? Isn’t that what you do? Keep yourself ruthlessly in line to meet your own expectations?

But there was nothing wrong with that, surely? His expectations of himself were high, it was true, but shouldn’t they be? He wasn’t in charge of just himself, but an entire country.

‘You’re not her, though,’ he said after a moment. ‘What you are is yourself. And you don’t need to be anyone other than that.’

‘Aren’t I, though? Sleeping with a man who was married at the time? And then having his child…’ She let out a breath, the warmth of it whispering over his skin. ‘I’m…not Carlotta,’ she said, a little hesitantly. ‘I’m not trying to sabotage the—’

But Isandro had heard enough. The doubt in her voice made the pain behind his breastbone even worse, so he reached down and took her chin, tilting her head back so he could look into her eyes. ‘I don’t think you’re Carlotta,’ he said. ‘Why would you think I would?’

Her gaze had darkened. ‘Because I haven’t exactly been good, have I? A good person wouldn’t have had sex with you on that desk.’

He stared at her. Did she really think that she wasn’t a good person? That one mistake made her irredeemable? ‘Wren,’ he said softly. ‘You’re the best person I know.’ And he understood that it was the absolute truth. An inescapable truth. ‘You never had a bad word to say about Carlotta, for example, even when she was at her worst, and you treated her with nothing but kindness. And you shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened between us. I mean it, little bird.’ He touched her lip gently with his thumb. ‘One mistake doesn’t mean you’re your mother. If you truly were, you’d have had the child and left it with me.’

She didn’t look away, a slightly challenging glint in her eyes. ‘Are you sorry that I didn’t? That I didn’t go and leave the child with you?’

The question caught him around the throat and for a second he found himself thinking of finding his newborn heir in a basket outside the palace gates, with Wren nowhere to be found.

Another person leaving you…

His chest ached and ached, but then of course he would be sorry if she left. A child needed their mother and he cared about Wren as much as he was able. He liked spending time with her, and he certainly enjoyed having sex with her.

‘No,’ he said and meant it. ‘I would be sorry if you did go.’

‘Why?’ Another blunt, direct question.

‘Because I’d miss you, and so would the child.’