Page 110 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 1-4

Whereas his brother Javier was…an enigma. His name was rarely spoken.

She knew only that he’d left the country a long time ago and, of course, she also knew that he’d built a successful business empire in the intervening years. Her eyes lifted, scanned his face, and her breath caught in her throat as feelings she had come here tonight totally unprepared to experience washed through her. A rare and unfamiliar heat. A nervousness that felt a lot like butterflies in her belly. She hadn’t known either feeling her whole life. Her brow furrowed briefly because, in fact, she couldn’t say that was entirely true.

There were two distinct chapters to her life: before her family’s deaths and after. Before, she’d been a different person. A girl on the brink of womanhood. Able to laugh and be silly. To joke and tease. To feel. Afterwards, she’d had to learn to hide all her feelings away and eventually not to experience them.

Feeling, now, was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. Heat built under her collar and nerves seemed to spark inside of her. Suddenly, she couldn’t wait for the dance to be over so she could go back to smiling serenely and casting about for a suitable potential husband. Someone who wouldn’t set her pulse alight with a single glance.

She swallowed quickly, knowing she needed to pretend to be unaffected by him, even as her body felt as though it had been overtaken by physical responses alone. Her hands curved over his shoulders in a way that was perfectly appropriate—how she might have danced with the prime minister—and yet her fingertips were tingling with an awareness of his strength and warmth. They were itching to move lower, to press against his broadly muscled chest.

‘You know,’ her voice emerged light and calm, just like always. Phew. ‘The norm is to speak while dancing,’ she observed, forcing her gaze to hold his, seeing the way his expression flickered with something like cynicism.

‘What would you like to speak about?’ His own tone gave nothing of that away though. It was convivial enough, his words raspy and deep.

‘Tell me about yourself.’

Again, his expression flickered. His eyes going from a clear blue to stormy grey in a nano-second, then back again, so quickly she almost wondered if she’d imagined it. Music swirled around them and she was no longer conscious of the way people were staring.

‘My name is Javier, I’m thirty-two years old. I live in Spain. My favourite food is Pincho Moruno.’

Her brows lifted. She knew he was intentionally provoking her by giving such a ‘biography by rote’ and yet the last line caught her interest regardless. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

‘Then you’re missing out.’

‘What is it?’

His lips quirked. ‘Very flavoursome, spiced pork skewers. They are for sale on every street corner, where I live. They are cheap and delicious, and very filling.’

She nodded thoughtfully, easing onto safer conversational ground. ‘Why did you leave Norvenheim?’

His hand on her back moved ever so slightly lower, his fingers splayed wide over her spine, so she trembled with a sudden rush of heat. The kind of heat that might succeed in melting the ice she’d carefully cultivated and she couldn’t let that happen. She forced a detached smile to her face.

‘That conversation would take longer than this dance.’

‘Condense it.’

‘Is that a command, Your Majesty?’ Even the way he said her title was thrilling because it was not remotely deferential. If anything it was skeptical, but in a way that only fanned the flames that were licking her insides with heat.

‘If I say yes will it make a difference?’

‘Are we back to you threatening to throw me in prison?’

‘Treason is still on the table,’ she murmured with a sage nod.

This time, when his lips flickered, she could have sworn it was with genuine amusement and the warmth that ignited in her at that was a clarion call for distance and separation. Only how could she put space between them? The song was not yet half done and to leave him midway would be incredibly poor form.

Besides…she didn’t want to. Even when she knew it would be the sensible thing.

‘After my father died, I no longer felt at home here. My mother was Spanish so that country is in my blood, too.’

She nodded thoughtfully. ‘How old were you?’

‘Seventeen.’

Sympathy spread through her quickly. She knew the pain of losing a parent. Of losing everything. ‘I’m sorry.’

She felt him stiffen, his arms becoming like a vice. When she looked up into his eyes, it was as though something beyond explanation was connecting them. Only people who had walked in their shoes could truly understand the wrenching pain of such an experience, such a loss.

‘It was a long time ago.’