Page 142 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 1-4

Astrid frowned contemplatively.

‘I’m very like my father,’ he said, slowly. ‘It’s obvious to anyone who cared to look at us.’

Astrid nodded slowly. ‘I remember him and you’re right. Far more so than Otto.’

He buried a complex swirl of emotions. Because that had been part of the problem. Otto wasn’t similar enough, the compliments that fell to Javier, because of his likeness to his father, Soren. Even those became a doubled-edged sword. No matter how good a compliment felt in the moment, he knew that when he was alone with Carlotta, he’d pay for it. He’d come to fear anyone’s noticing how like Soren he was.

‘My stepmother struggled to accept me. I was living proof of my father’s infidelity and here she was expected to bring me under their roof, to raise her like her own child. My father simply wanted to protect me, but even I can see the lack of sensitivity inherent to his proposition.’

‘None of that was your fault, though,’ Astrid said, so gently that he knew she understood what a tightrope he’d walked his own childhood.

‘That didn’t particularly matter.’

‘This explains why you’re not close to them,’ she said. ‘And why you left?’

‘I left because I had no choice,’ he said, grimly, handing her another ornament and taking one for himself. ‘After my father’s death, Carlotta had my things packed up and asked me where I would be living so she could arrange delivery.’

Astrid sucked in a sharp breath, her eyes anguished when they locked to his. ‘She didn’t.’

‘We hadn’t even held the funeral and she was shunting me out of their lives.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ Astrid said, but with such sadness in her eyes that he knew she did indeed believe he spoke the truth. ‘What did Otto do?’

‘Probably sigh with relief? He hated me, too.’

‘Surely she didn’t hate you,’ Astrid murmured, obviously appalled. She hung her ornament quickly, but instead of retrieving two more, she came around the tree and stood right in front of him. ‘Javier, that was your father’s misstep. He mismanaged the situation and your stepmother took that out on you. Their issues were theirs alone. You should never have felt to blame.’

‘Spoken by someone with actual emotional intelligence,’ he said, keeping his tone light rather than admit how much her words were threatening to leak into parts of him that had been broken for a long time. Parts that he knew would always be broken.

‘So you just left?’

‘Of course.’

‘No, not of course,’ she said, angrily. ‘No one stood up for you? There was no one who made her see sense?’

‘Querida, do you truly think I would have stayed somewhere I wasn’t wanted? Do you think I would have forced myself on them, once I had been asked to leave?’

Her lips parted. She lifted a hand to his chest. ‘Your father had just died. Carlotta was grieving. Otto, too. They acted—’

‘In a way they stand by, even now. At no point has she acknowledged that she erred, or apologised for her behaviour. I do not need an apology, anyway. I left, I rebuilt my life, without them in it.’ He tilted his chin, defiance in his gut making him clench his jaw. ‘I have zero regrets. Except, perhaps, not leaving sooner.’

‘Where did you go?’ Her tone was careful once more, modulated and unemotional, but he saw the torment in her eyes, and the sympathy. Strangely, it didn’t even bother him.

‘Home to Spain.’

Something briefly flashed in his expression that he didn’t comprehend.

‘To your mother?’

‘My mother had died by then. I didn’t know.’

She gasped. ‘What?’

He cleared his throat. ‘My father chose not to tell me.’

Her expression showed even more confusion. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I was eleven. I suppose he thought it would be bad for me.’