Page 148 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 5-8

Walked away.

* * *

Eleanora gazed at her reflection in the mirror in her bedroom, an ache filling her. Never, in all her life, had she ever looked the way she did now.

Beautiful.

She heard the word in her head, heard the echo of it in Sanzio’s voice. Then another voice intruded. Telling her the truth.

Beautiful? You? Oh, little Ellie-Ellie, did you really think you were beautiful enough for Sanzio? He tried you out—and didn’t want you. How could he, when it was me he wanted?

She turned away, not wanting to see her reflection. Memory drummed, of how she’d dressed up that evening, so long ago, a hopeful teenager, thinking she looked good. She had failed then, all those years ago, and she had just failed again. Oh, maybe there were men out there who would find her attractive now—

But not Sanzio. He put me aside.

Then said sorry to me. For not wanting me.

The ache tightened in her chest.

* * *

Sanzio was out on his terrace. Beyond, the lights of the city glittered. Rome, the city he had been born in, where he had worked tirelessly to haul himself from poverty to the wealth he enjoyed today. Crowning his achievements with a trophy wife, the titled daughter of a nobleman he could never have aspired to had he still been that penniless, working-class youth.

A trophy wife—

His mouth twisted.

Except the woman he’d married was not the one he’d set his sights on. The one he’d intended to marry.

But she brought me what I wanted, just the same—brought me the palazzo my forebears built for their rich lords, brought me the trophy wife I wanted, descendent of those rich lords.

And now—now, with her beauty revealed, she would be a trophy wife indeed—shown off to the world. And to one person in particular.

And, most of all, to herself. That was what he could give to her in the marriage they’d made—to know herself beautiful.

The trouble was—his mouth twisted—that her beauty was also affecting him, in entirely predictable ways.

He felt again, vivid in his mind, the velvet touch of her mouth beneath his, as he had kissed her to convince her of her own beauty. She had yielded to him—he had felt it instinctively in the tremor of her lips, the faint breath she had exhaled, the slow lowering of her eyelashes. And if he had done then what, outside her bedroom door, he had so, so wanted to do, not let her go, not said what he had, but what every overpowering instinct was impelling him to do—take her into his arms, sweep her to him, press her slender body to his, find that velvet mouth again, feast upon it to feed the quickening desire coursing through him, unstoppable, hungry—then right now, right now, he could be with her.

Right now, I could be in her room, her bed, making her my own.

But that would be unforgivable.

There were reasons why they’d married, reasons which held good—but the intimacy his body now craved was not one of them.

She married me only to save the palazzo she loves. For her, there is no other reason. She didn’t even know I was going to bring her to Rome, reveal to her the beauty she does not even know she possesses.

Let alone what effect that newly revealed beauty would have on him…

So now, for him to indulge himself in celebrating that beauty in the way he knew his body wanted would be just that—indulgence. For himself.

An indulgence he must resist, because it was not what Eleanora had married him for.

With a raggedly indrawn breath he steeled himself. He had to draw back, hold back—make himself as immune as he could to the temptation to yield to what was coursing through him.

I have to do it—I have to be strong and self-denying.

For her sake. That was all he must fasten on now. Hold on to. However hard to do…