Page 1 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

PROLOGUE

Two years ago

H EAD DOWN , thinking wistfully of the jacket that in her haste she had left slung over a chair, Lizzie walked straight into a puddle.

She was approaching the flight of shallow stone steps that led to the impressive porticoed entrance of the exclusive hotel hosting the meet-and-greet dinner for the two families about to be joined by matrimony.

Hosted and paid for by Lizzie’s own father.

It was a generous gesture considering the bride was not his daughter but his niece. Although her dad, the head of a successful firm specialising in maritime law, could afford the gesture, and, as he often said, he couldn’t have been any more proud of Deb if she had been his own daughter.

Lizzie, who was his own daughter, rarely—actually, never—elicited the same sort of rave reviews from her parent.

This had been the case even before her cousin had burnished her already glowing golden child crown by marrying into the Aetos shipping family, who happened to be her dad’s most important client.

While her dad had never come right out and said so—he was not an unkind man—Lizzie knew she was a bit of a disappointment.

Their relationship had actually improved since she’d stopped trying to win his approval, and she could see his point of view.

Unlike her cousin, she was not a professional asset and no one had ever called her dynamic.

As for working the room, her dad frequently forgot she was in the room, a situation that suited Lizzie fine—she didn’t like to be the centre of attention.

Swearing softly under her breath, she decided not to look at the puddle damage to her pale-coloured suede heels—the only bit of her outfit that worked—and her spirits lifted a little as she saw a uniformed doorman holding an umbrella rushing forward.

Her half-smile withered as he hurried past her to someone he presumably considered more deserving.

Someone who wasn’t going to arrive looking like a drowned rat, she thought, adopting a tight-lipped stoic stance as she sidestepped to avoid a couple running down the steps wielding a large brolly like a battering ram.

A snatch of their conversation reached her as they passed by. ‘I don’t know what you’re worrying about…’

The words, though not the supportive intonation, threw her mind back to her last conversation with the bride-to-be. There had been nothing that could be construed as supportive in Deb’s voice, just bored irritation as Lizzie had admitted she was really nervous about being her cousin’s bridesmaid.

‘I don’t know what you’re worried about.

Nobody will be looking at you.’ Deb had dismissed Lizzie’s comment as she’d tossed her river-sleek silver-blonde hair in a practised flicking action, a complacent smile curving her lips as she’d caught the rippling effect in the wall of mirrors.

They had also revealed Lizzie in her mushroom-coloured gown with puff sleeves—she’d looked awful but then she defied anyone to look good in that shade.

‘They will if I fall over this walking down the aisle,’ Lizzie had pointed out, holding up the acres of drab fabric that had pooled on the carpet.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. There will be a hem and you won’t be wearing heels.’

‘I won’t?’ Lizzie, who stood five two in her bare feet, had responded to this information with a depressed grimace before reminding herself that in this dress no one would see her legs, which, while not supermodel length like her cousin’s, were pretty good.

‘And I want you as my bridesmaid. You’re like my sister.’ Deb had pouted, air-kissing either side of Lizzie’s face. ‘Everyone knows that.’

Actually, not everyone. Just Lizzie’s dad.

Lizzie sometimes wondered if her dad really believed they were like sisters or if it was wishful thinking because Deb was the sort of daughter he not so secretly longed for.

It had been her dad who had offered a perfect solution to a single parent’s dilemma, when, soon after Lizzie’s own mum’s premature death, Deb’s mum’s modelling career had experienced a revival.

She had become the face of a global cosmetics brand, upping her profile and offering opportunities that entailed whisking her off to exotic locations around the world.

‘Deb can stay with us…she’ll be company for Lizzie.’

This arrangement had resulted in the two girls, who were of similar age, being virtually brought up together, and when Deb’s glamorous mother had been home Lizzie had often been shunted to their apartment.

They said that opposites attracted but, in the case of Lizzie and her cousin, they really didn’t, which was partly why Lizzie had been surprised to be asked to be bridesmaid, but not flattered, after her cousin had explained she didn’t want a gaggle of attention-seeking bridesmaids all trying to upstage her.

Lizzie had responded with a thanks, but no, thanks and explained that she didn’t feel she was the right fit for the role.

Deb had gone straight to her uncle in tears, heartbroken that Lizzie wouldn’t be her bridesmaid.

Her dad had been disappointed.

Deb had continued to be dramatically heartbroken, weeping without ruining her make-up.

What chance did Lizzie have? She could have held out against the pressure but what would have been the point? Better to gracefully concede defeat because she knew that what Deb wanted, she got, especially, historically, if it was something that Lizzie wanted.

Her cousin was very competitive.

The things that Deb had wanted down the years had included the special boyfriend that Lizzie had imagined herself in love with—so much in love and convinced that he was the one, she had brought him home to meet her dad.

Big mistake.

It had taken Deb just a few pouts and head tosses to make him forget that Lizzie existed.

Lizzie had pretended that the flirting over dinner between her cousin and boyfriend was just light-hearted.

But when she’d set out to see if he had got lost finding his way back from the bathroom, it had been impossible to put a positive spin on discovering her boyfriend enjoying a very close encounter with her cousin on the bathroom floor.

She could nearly laugh about it now.

Well, at least the early and very important lesson had taught her that loving someone gave them the power to hurt you.

Lizzie was not keen on being hurt, so during the head-on collision with something that resembled a stone wall she definitely did not enjoy the sensation of having the breath knocked out of her lungs in a soft, shocked whoosh.

The impact caused her to step backwards, and she tensed in anticipation of the inevitable jolting impact of hitting the step below, her arms windmilling wildly cartoon-character style as she sought to regain her balance.

But a large hand clamped itself around her forearm, attempting to drag her back onto the step while simultaneously Lizzie reached out, her hand closing around fabric that slipped through her fingers.

A split second later her centre of balance was restored and her hand was cushioned between a much larger hand and a hard, warm, male chest. She could feel the stranger’s heart beat and in that odd moment of intimacy felt her own heart rate react, seeming to slow and quicken at the same time, which was, she knew, an impossibility.

‘Watch where you’re going!’

The voice, velvet, deep, dark, with a gravelly edge that emphasised the terse impatience, shook her free of the weird light-headed moment.

Lizzie shook her head, the impatience in his voice pressing pause on her instinctive apology. The tendency to apologise for everything from the weather to someone standing on her toes was a habit she was trying hard to break.

She tilted her chin and looked up, a long way, as it turned out.

On one hand she was familiar with this face—you’d have to have spent the last years on a desert island not to be—but not familiar in the ‘up close and personal’ way she now was, near enough to see the faint darker shadow on his close-shaven jaw delineating where stubble would emerge.

Close enough to be uncomfortably aware of his personal forcefield of raw masculinity and conscious all the way down to her curling toes of the overpoweringly earthy, sensual quality he exuded from every perfect pore.

Everything about him in real life was more, from the dramatic symmetry of his carved features, the square jaw, hawkish nose and sharp sybaritic cheekbones, to the heavy-lidded eyes fringed by preposterously long lashes beneath thick, slightly slanted ebony brows and the chiselled sexuality of his mouth, which it was claimed had fuelled a thousand fantasies.

As she took in the healthy glow of his olive-toned skin Lizzie was no longer sceptical of this extravagant claim.

Adonis didn’t pause to analyse the strange reluctance he felt to release the small hand pressed to his chest or the fact it took a conscious effort to uncurl his individual fingers as he studied the face turned up to him.

Not a beautiful face, but heart-shaped, and her skin had a startling clarity, a clarity highlighted by the freckles sprinkled over her rounded, smooth cheeks and the bridge of her small nose.

Her kitten eyes, a startling sky blue, were too big, as was her mouth, which was wide, the cushiony full lips almost indecently sensual.

He felt as if he had walked into a wall of mind-numbing lust, something basic and raw—something about that face shook loose a hunger in him. As his eyes sank lower his glance landed on the billowing fabric across her middle and he experienced a flash of sense-cooling reality—the woman was pregnant.

‘Are you all right? You really should be more careful in your condition.’

She discovered that the man who had been called the sexiest male on the planet was not looking at her face.

‘In my condition?’ she began, her voice vague as she struggled free of the weird inertia that chained her to the spot.