Page 95 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8

She blanched. “Oh. That doesn’t seem like the best idea.”

“Don’t worry, I resisted the urge to transform into a mustache-twirling villain.”

“Well, while that is good to know, it does seem as if perhaps it was ill-advised timing on your part.”

“I will see to my own timing, thank you.”

He looked at her profile, at the gentle slope of her nose, the sharp curve of her cheekbone. She was an exceptionally beautiful woman, but beauty was a common thing. It didn’t feel common just then.

Her beauty cut through the rage he felt now. The anger at his father. His anger at himself.

He was caught, just then, suspended between the reality of what he was, the role he played in the world, and the truth that was Auggie, and what she made him feel.

That she made him feel at all.

She challenged him. She unearthed parts of him long buried. He hadn’t asked for that. He didn’t want it.

She was silent for a moment. “But what did you mean by that? ThatIwas the Scarlet Pimpernel.”

It was her words that sliced through him. Cutting his normally impenetrable façade to ribbons. He wanted to return the favor.

“You have always seemed a perfectly pleasant looking woman, but you have a way of hiding yourself. You are more beautiful than any woman I’ve brought on the plane in your time there, and yet, you found a way to sort of blend into the background.”

Her cheeks went red. “It’s my job,” she said. “Also, I am notsobeautiful.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because the only time a man has ever put a ring on my finger it has been for a ruse?”

“I’ve never been engaged either, and yet it is a truth universally acknowledged that I am extremely handsome.”

“And very modest,” she said, smiling up at him overly sweetly. Her complexion was clear, her brown eyes addictive. He wanted to keep searching for other layers of color in their depths. But that was a foolish thought. One perhaps that more matched a man who would’ve chosen that particular decor for his penthouse. And not who Matias truly was.

They got into the town car again, and were whisked to the trendiest part of the city where it was an absolute certainty that they would be seen and photographed. And that her ring would be noticed.

“We likely won’t be set upon by paparazzi,” he said. “Not until after this story breaks. This will be the calm. This will be the moment where we spark the imaginations of those around us.”

“What is it like inside your head?” Augusta asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I have never thought that my mere presence would spark the imagination of anyone.”

“And why not? You are stunning. Your mere presence could incite whole volumes of sonnets.”

She looked away. “You’re too good at that.”

Was he? Was that what he was doing? His same old sort of display. He didn’t think so. But then perhaps it didn’t matter.

Perhaps all that mattered was that it had accomplished his goal. She looked happy. And they would look believably a couple. What else could he possibly want?

They arrived at the restaurant and when he opened the door, he reached out toward her. “It is time,” he said.

She took his hand, and he pulled her out into the night. Into his world.

She had to remember not to get lost in this. Admittedly, she was kind of entranced by her own appearance. She had never looked like this. She had never looked so... Beautiful before. She had never really thought of herself as beautiful. She had thought of herself as someone who had an adequate canvas, she supposed. She knew how to fix herself up, though nothing like the way she had been fixed up today. She would never have chosen this color for herself, and yet it highlighted her pale complexion to perfection, it made her hair color seem deeper, more exotic—which was not what she would normally refer to the mousy brown as.

Indeed, nothing about her seemed mousy now. She was more than just Auggie from Oregon, who had lived a quiet life, learning to pay bills and manage medical visits before she had learned how to drive.