Page 16 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

‘I’m taking you out to dinner.’

‘You are not.’

‘I am. You had a horrific experience last night, and this is my way of putting something good back in your life—a good memory to counter it.’

How she maintained her smile was a mystery to be solved in another life. ‘That’s very sweet of you, but I’m not a charity case. Go and take your girlfriend out.’

‘I don’t have a girlfriend, but if I did she could take herself out. I’m taking you out for dinner and I’m not taking no for an answer, so take yourself off to your bedroom and get changed into something more Athena—not even my grandmother would wear those pyjamas.’

‘They areextremelycomfortable.’

‘They are extremely ugly. Now, do as you’re told.’

Suddenly she found she didn’t have to do any work to maintain her smile. Grinning, she saluted, ‘Yes, boss,’ and practically danced to her bedroom.

Draco watched her dance away, shaking his head with a smile.

He’d known the moment she opened her door that she was feeling better. He could see it in her posture and the strength with which she held herself. If he’d had any doubt she was up to going out he’d have ordered a delivery for them.

What he did have doubts about was her emotional recovery, and it was this aspect that had seen him pacing his home for what had felt like hours, resisting the growing urge to call her oldest brother and tell him to get his backside back to Athens and take care of his sister. But, as strong as the urge had been, what good would it have done? If Alexis or any of the other Tsaliki offspring gave two shits about Athena they would have remembered her birthday. Yes, she was an acerbic madam, but they’d left her all alone on her birthday. They’d forgotten her. Even her mother, who, despite not having been a Tsaliki for over twenty years, had flown to Sephone with the rest of the Tsaliki family and forgotten her daughter. When it came to Tsaliki family gatherings, everyone, even ex-wives, was included.

Everyone but Athena.

Athena was all alone and far more vulnerable than she wanted anyone to believe.

Draco had needed to satisfy himself that she was as fine as her replies to his messages made out. Whenever he remembered how she’d walked out of his home barefoot, hugging her knee-high boots to her belly, his heart constricted. He didn’t see her as a charity case as she’d suggested, but he’d developed a weird sense of protective responsibility to her, and responsibility, too, to his mother and her insistence that the acerbic, quick-witted, vivacious nightmare called Athena had once been a sweet, angelic, loving child.

She’d clung to him like a trusting child. She’d cuddled into him in her sleep like a child. But she was all woman. Beautiful, sexy woman. Beautiful, sexy, vulnerable woman.

The longest night of his life had been spent hardly able to breathe.

It was only as the long night had gone on that it had come to him that there had never been any physical contact between them before. Not even a brush of an arm or the brush of a finger when cups of coffee were exchanged. They’d both maintained that distance, he realised. The woman who flirted like she’d taken a master’s degree in the subject and who was forever picking off bits of fluff from the clothes of colleagues brave enough to go near her had never allowed her flirtations with him to become the slightest bit physical.

Athena had been keeping her distance as he had, wary of the attraction that flickered between them. Which begged the question, though he knew he shouldn’t let it, of why. He knew why he had to keep her at arm’s length, but Athena’s affairs, incredibly short though they all were, were legendary. She was never shy about showing off her latest lover. If she wanted someone, she pursued them until she got them.

There had been no paparazzi shots of her falling out of nightclubs either alone or with a lover since she’d started working for Tsaliki Shipping.

None of his business, he reminded himself firmly. Theirs was an attraction that would forever go unacknowledged, and whatever reason Athena had for refusing to acknowledge it would forever remain a mystery, because that was how it had to be.

She’d cleaned the kitchenette, he observed as he made them coffee. Spotting a pair of rubber cleaning gloves, his heavy mood lifted and he grinned, picturing Athena wrinkling her nose as she slid her pretty hands into them. This was better. Think of Athena as she was, not as the vulnerable woman she’d been asleep in his arms.

Still grinning, he took his coffee into the living area. The boxes were exactly where he’d stacked them that first day. He’d come to the point of thinking she never used the living area because it never changed from day to day, but that day there was an A4-sized book and a pencil tin on the floor.

Curious, he picked up the book and flicked through it. Then he blinked, closed it, and reopened it at the beginning.

Taking a seat on an ancient sofa that almost sagged to the floor under his weight, he went through the book carefully, page by page, filled with an emotion like nothing he’d felt before.

When he heard the door handle turn, he quickly placed it back where he’d found it with a thumping heart, suddenly certain that what he’d been looking through was intensely private to her, and then when she appeared before him his chest managed to tighten and swell all in one motion.

There was a faint stain of colour on her cheeks as she did a twirl for him. ‘Better?’

‘Much.’ He swallowed a lump that had formed in his throat. ‘Much more Athena.’ Inimitably Athena. Only Athena could get away with wearing a hot pink jumpsuit with red, purple and white swirls covering it in paisley fashion. But unlike the canary yellow one she’d worn the night before, this jumpsuit was neck-high and long-sleeved, the short shorts displaying her fabulous legs but with more modesty, the hem an inch longer than she normally wore. She’d kept her honey-blonde hair loose but had brushed it until the silky tresses shone, her make-up lighter and fresher than she usually applied it, enhancing her beauty all the more.

She might not be an angel but she had the beauty and glow of one. And, God, she could draw like one.

CHAPTER SIX

USUALLY WHENATHENAshared the back of Draco’s car with him she spent her time dreaming up ways of annoying him and ingenious ways of skiving off doing any work. The times Grace and any of his other minions joined them, she had a marvellous time annoying them too. She didn’t even need to speak. Literally, all she had to do was open her mouth, and their lips would purse and their faces pinch in on themselves. Unlike Draco, who rarely showed disapproval or annoyance with anything stronger than a raised eyebrow, they made no bones about despising her.