Page 17 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

She’d never shared the back of the car and found her brain turn to goo or felt such awareness of him. Not like this. Since that first morning he’d decided to become her human personal alarm clock, she’d made a studious effort to deny those strange sexual feelings, to not let them even flicker. Her efforts had mostly paid off, but then Athena was an expert at turning off unwanted feelings. She couldn’t seem to turn them off now, though. It wasn’t just Draco she was so hugely aware of but herself, the strength of her heart and racing pulses, the sensation, almost like electricity, dancing through her skin.

As the day had passed, more of the haziness had passed, memories clarifying. Draco punching the man who’d refused to let go of her hand. Draco breathing into her hair when her blood sample had been taken. Draco coaxing her into drinking water. Draco holding her hair when she’d been sick into a bucket. She thought that might have happened twice.

And now he was taking her out to dinner. And he’d confirmed he didn’t have a girlfriend, a confirmation that shouldn’t have made her heart leap. In the five weeks he’d kept her chained to her desk in his office, she’d often had to stop herself pondering too deeply about his love life. She’d never once asked about his plans for the evening or asked when they shared their early morning coffee in her kitchenette how his evening had gone or how he’d spent his weekends.

He never asked about her evenings or weekends either, a realisation that made her heart thump.

‘You know, I should be the one taking you out to dinner,’ she said, breaking the thick silence that had developed between them. ‘To thank you.’

‘You’ve already thanked me.’

‘I know, but it feels so inadequate after everything you’ve done. I should pay. Where are we going?’

‘Zeus.’

The swankiest, most expensive restaurant in the whole of Athens.

‘In that case, I take it back…unless you want to give me a pay rise so I can afford it?’

‘I’d consider giving you a pay rise if you ever did any work.’

She gave a mock gasp of outrage. ‘I’ll have you know I worked so hard last week that my forefinger feels bruised from inputting all that stupid data.’ She lifted the finger and waved it in front of him. ‘See?’

He gave the unimpressed face she so adored.

‘I think I might have repetitive strain injury too. And possibly tennis elbow. I should see a doctor and see if I can be signed off work for the next three weeks.’

Draco couldn’t help but laugh. Athena was the most incorrigible person he’d met in his life, but she amused him, and he admired how she refused to let the awful incident in the nightclub hold her down and was forcing herself to bounce back from it. He didn’t think it had occurred to her that what she’d been through would have most people needing a sick note, just to recover emotionally.

Athena didn’t allow herself emotions. He recognised that. But she had them. He recognised that too. She was just better at hiding them than other people. Especially, he suspected, from herself.

Their car came to a stop in the underground car park.

‘Come on, you,’ he said, grinning. ‘Time for dinner.’

She matched the grin. ‘You do know that people will talk, don’t you? You being seen with me in polite society on a Saturday night…people will put two and two together and make five. Mr Serious and Miss Trouble…both our reputations risk being ruined.’

‘I’ll risk it,’ he said drily as the driver opened Athena’s door.

Draco had already considered this. He knew from his mother’s experience at the hands of Georgios and Rebecca Tsaliki how easily a reputation could be destroyed, but the whole of Greece knew he currently employed the Tsaliki siblings, and he had no doubt the whole of Greece knew he’d taken Athena under his wing and had guessed why. So long as he maintained the professional distance they always kept between them, there would be no need for anyone to talk. Taking the underground entrance cut the risk of being spotted by the paparazzi to zero.

He’d avoided the paparazzi at the nightclub by leaving through a private exit. Hefty bribes had ensured nothing of the previous night’s incident would make it into the press.

She brought her beautiful face close to his as she swung her long legs out of the car and practically sang, ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

Athena had dined at Zeus a couple of times before. Located on the eighth floor of the exclusive Dionysus Hotel, the pretty terrace they’d been seated at had the requisite spectacular views of the Acropolis and the Aegean, clever heating staving off the winter chill of the evening. If a tourist wished to experience a traditional Greek meal and ambience, Zeus, despite its name, was not the place to come, the food contemporary, the atmosphere rarefied. The last time she’d dined there had been a date with yet another rich plaything who’d believed she was easy pickings and who’d returned home barely containing his anger when she’d kept her legs closed.

Draco, she was certain, wouldn’t end the meal expecting her to put out, and it was partly because she wasn’t already thinking ahead as to how she was going to brush off his advances that she found herself relaxing in a way she was so rarely able to when dining out with a man. This was despite the none too subtle glances being thrown their way.

Let them stare. She didn’t care. Well, maybe a little, but not for herself. For Draco. She would hate for any of their fellow diners to think less of him for dining with her. Athens was a city where everyone knew everyone. Draco, a serious, focused, discreet man, had one of the best reputations in the city. She had one of the worst. Actually, make thattheworst.

After they’d finished their appetisers and their main course had been served, she inhaled the delicious aroma of the chilli pepper oil-infused citrus beurre blanc encircling her cod and steamed lobster, and happily dived in. It was the first evening meal of her adult life that she didn’t have a glass of wine with—she didn’t think she’d ever be able to face alcohol again—and it touched her immeasurably that Draco, without making anything of it, had eschewed alcohol too.

‘Can I ask you a personal question?’ she asked.

‘Since when have you needed permission to ask anything?’

She grinned. ‘Have you ever been married?’