Page 63 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 1-4

He has to know about the pregnancy. Why else would he be so angry?

Again, though, how could he know? She was beginning to show, yes, but she’d been wearing looser clothing for the past month. That wouldn’t make him suspicious, surely? Men didn’t notice women’s clothing unless it was very sexy.

Wren fought down a rising panic, digging her fingernails into her palms, and asked, before he could speak, ‘Is this about my resignation letter?’

Isandro didn’t move, his tall, powerful figure still half in shadow. A figure she’d stared at and obsessed over time and time again. Broad shoulders and muscled chest. Narrow waist and strong thighs. A perfect example of the male form. The royal tailor constantly went into raptures about what a privilege it was to dress him, since everything he made was perfection on the King.

Today, Isandro wore one of his handmade suits, a charcoal so dark it was almost black, with a white shirt and a tie of blue silk that matched his eyes. As usual, he looked phenomenal.

‘Yes,’ he said at last.

Wren’s heartbeat was a steady thumping in her ears. He was wearing his ‘King face’, as she often called it. Neutral, impassive, impossible to read. When they were in private, he wasn’t like that. She’d seen him laugh, get angry, get frustrated, get impatient. She’d seen him passionate and fierce…

‘I don’t care if you don’t accept it,’ she said quickly, forcing those thoughts away. ‘I’m leaving, Isandro, and you can’t stop me.’

‘I can certainly stop you,’ he replied with glacial calm.

She caught her breath, the panic on the point of swamping her no matter how hard she fought it. She had to leave. She had to.

She’d spent five years working here, and she’d loved it. She loved the country and its warm, generous people, and, while the work had been hard, she’d believed in Isandro’s vision. To create a new, less selfish legacy after his father, King Xavier the Tenth, had nearly destroyed a family that went back generations.

But a bastard child featured nowhere in that legacy. Especially a child conceived while the King himself was married. Especially a child of the daughter of a woman who’d once nearly brought down a government. Wren’s pregnancy might not topple the throne, but it would definitely stain it, and that was something she knew Isandro would never accept. Which was why she hadn’t told him.

It would rip him apart. He’d have to keep the existence of a child hidden, or disavow it, and for a man as protective as he was, that would be an agony she couldn’t bear. A burden she didn’t want him to have to carry. So, she’d taken the decision out of his hands and made it herself. Better he remain in blissful ignorance and find himself a new queen to have heirs with.

Except she couldn’t think why he’d want to pull her off a plane. Was it really just about the resignation letter? Sure, she hadn’t said goodbye, but that was the one thing she’d been cowardly about. She just hadn’t been able to stand the thought.

Wren had kept calm under the most intense of public pressures, such as the time the Queen had been seen stumbling out of the palazzo of an Italian count in Rome and the paparazzi had managed to snap a few pictures. Yet she was finding it very difficult to hold onto that same calm now.

‘Why?’ she asked bluntly. ‘Why would you do that?’

‘You’re legally required to give me at least one month’s notice if you wish to leave my employment.’ Isandro took a step towards her, the light sliding over his night-dark hair. ‘It’s in your contract.’

Sadly, it was.

‘So?’ She dug her nails into her palms a little harder, because she was finding it very difficult to keep the fear out of her voice. ‘Sue me, then.’

He took another few steps, moving with his habitual lithe grace, then halted. ‘I’ve put a stop on your passport, Wren. You’re not going anywhere.’

Oh, God.

‘Isandro, please—’

‘You’re not leaving the country.’ His tone was iron. ‘Not when you’re carrying my child.’

* * *

Isandro hated himself for wanting her. He always had. And now, with her standing in front of him, small and delicate, and seeming quite self-contained, he hated himself even more.

Image was everything in her line of work, as she’d often told him, and normally she was in elegant suits of muted blue or soft grey, her make-up immaculate, not a strand of her silvery hair out of place in its elegant chignon. The perfect media face of the royal family.

Right now, though, she was in jeans, a voluminous black hoodie, sneakers and sunglasses. Unrecognisable, especially with the small backpack she was carrying over one shoulder. She’d disguised herself well.

But he’d known, even before her resignation email arrived in his inbox, that she was leaving. She’d been actively avoiding him for at least a month, and he’d been sure that it wasn’t wholly to do with the…incident in his study. Yes, the incident had made things difficult for both of them, but they’d agreed to put it behind them and pretend it had never happened.

She was good at acting the part, and she’d played it to perfection in the weeks following… At least until her avoidance of him had kicked in, which had been unusual and noticeable. Then the chic suits she normally wore with a fitted blouse had become a skirt or trousers and some very loose-fitting tops, and that had, again, been noticeable. He noticed everything about her. Including how she’d appeared to curve in on herself whenever he was around, her shoulders hunching, forever holding a large tablet or folder in front of her torso.

A horrible suspicion had begun to take root in him then, and after getting one of his security team to investigate the issue, the reason for her strange behaviour had soon become clear.