Page 10 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

She was totally disarmed, not just by this bombshell, but by this chink in his almost inhuman control. Her glance drifted to the vein beating in his temple as the small crack in her outrage widened before, like ice cream in a microwave, it melted into gloop.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I didn’t know about your grandfather.’

‘It is not widely known outside the family and,’ he added, his hard stare so obsidian dark it was difficult to believe the glimpse of vulnerability moments earlier had not been an hallucination, ‘I would prefer it stayed that way.’

Did he think she was about to blab to the world?

Swallowing her indignation at the implication there was a danger she would not respect his family’s privacy, she nodded then hesitated, emotion swelling in her throat as she reminded herself that just because he was far too good-looking and had thought she was pregnant, that didn’t make him an evil person.

She almost hoped he’d do something awful so she could put him back in that convenient box labelled ‘toxic and no redeeming features’ in her head.

‘I’m sorry, it’s hard, I know, when someone you love… I hope…’

Adonis watched her blue eyes fill with tears, the muscles of her throat working as she swallowed before she pinned on a smile and, after a small hesitation, said brightly, ‘Do you possibly have a glass of water?’

He arched a brow. ‘Brandy?’

Tears still sparkling in her eyes, her husky laugh rang out.

The throaty sound made his dark eyes widen.

That was a sexy bedroom laugh from somewhere in his subconscious.

An image of her shedding another layer and standing, or preferably lying there in her…

Realism intervened and he realised there would not be silk and things involved.

Never in his imagination or outside it had utilitarian white cotton aroused him more.

Her loud sniff brought him into the moment and out of the rapidly escalating strip-poker fantasy playing out in his head.

‘I think I’ll pass. Just water, that would be lovely.’

‘Water it is. Give me a moment.’

Before he had risen to his feet, a figure appeared wearing an overcoat that his vast shoulders stretched. He stood there, an expectant expression on his craggy features.

‘Hi, boss. Water, was it?’

‘Impeccable timing as always.’ Dark eyes flickered to Lizzie. ‘Biscuits?’

She shook her head.

‘Sure thing.’

She felt the hooded gaze move over her before he vanished. Obviously it wasn’t her place to ask who he was but even when, unexpectedly, Adonis reacted to her unspoken question she was not much the wiser.

‘Dmitri is my… He is… Actually he doesn’t have a title, but you can trust him.’

‘I don’t trust you.’

He leaned back in his seat, extending his long legs, and crossed one ankle across the other, the action pulling the faded black denim close across his thighs as he studied her for a long uncomfortable moment before asking, ‘Do you always say what you think?’

‘Hardly ever.’ It must, she decided, be the brandy.

‘Then,’ he said, executing an elegant mock bow from a sitting position, ‘I am honoured.’

Lizzie was alarmed because she felt pleased, as if they were on the same page, which they clearly were not, so she said nothing.

The water arrived, ice clinking on glass delivered on a tray. The character without a title was now in sleeves rolled up to reveal tattooed forearms. ‘No biscuits, but there is a cookie mix in the freezer I could…’

‘No, I’m fine, thank you.’

She waited until he had gone. ‘He cooks.’

‘No, but he has a sweet tooth and my housekeeper adores him.’

‘Is she here too?’ She looked around as though she expected people to materialise from the walls.

‘No, here at least I can be alone. Susan does the housekeeping and makes sure I have no sour milk in my fridge. She and Dmitri fill my freezer with meals, unnecessary, because I rarely eat in and delivery from…’ he mentioned a Michelin-starred establishment that made her eyes widen ‘…is simple.’

She wondered whether he actually believed the three-Michelin-starred establishment did takeout, or whether his bubble was so secure that reality never impinged on it.

‘Thanks…’ She lifted the glass and took a sip, eying him over the rim as she admitted, ‘Alcohol at this time of day.’ Actually, alcohol at any time of day was an issue for her.

‘I might have overreacted. I’m sure you’ll sort it and things will go back to normal.

Is your grandfather…confused?’ she wondered tactfully.

Lizzie knew that people did not always like to discuss dementia and she of all people respected that privacy, the need to protect loved ones from speculation.

‘Confused?’

‘Your grandfather?’ she repeated. An image of a craggy-faced man at the awful dinner, with his blade of a nose and a mop of silver-shot black hair, flashed into her head.

She had been introduced and been slightly repelled by his black heavy-lidded stare, not that she had held his attention for more than a moment.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Dementia, it can be hard for the family.’ And it would totally explain the announcement. ‘My mum once left me in a department-store restaurant and went home.’

‘How old were you?’

She shrugged. ‘Around ten.’

‘She must have been very young?’

Lizzie nodded.

‘No, my grandfather does not have dementia. Spyros is as sharp as a tack.’ And as ruthless as a wolf. ‘However, he is dying…cancer.’

The curt delivery was calm, almost cold, but the telltale quiver around his taut jaw suggested that he cared a lot more than he wanted to let on.

‘I am sorry…’

People said it, the words were an automatic reflex, but the difference was she meant it. The growing suspicion that it was not an act with her, that it was never an act with her, disturbed him.

He found deceit much easier to manage.

‘He’s already lived six months longer than they gave him. It is not common knowledge.’

She ignored the second implication that she would blab his personal business to the world.

‘He wants me to marry and provide an heir, hence the engagement announcement as a way of forcing my hand.’

This time she allowed the implication that she had no say in the matter to pass because surely it wasn’t the only hole in this crazy theory. ‘Surely not.’

‘Two years ago to the day I was meant to be marrying Deb.’ Her stricken look made him grin in what she might once have considered an utterly heartless way, but now she suspected it was all part of hiding his true feelings.

Then again, maybe he didn’t have any true feelings to hide.

‘I didn’t realise.’

‘Why would you? Before your earlier shock-horror gasp, I was about to explain that my grandfather let it be known to me at Deb’s funeral that six months is an acceptable period of grieving and then you get on with it.’

‘He said that?’ She studied his face. ‘No, not seriously.’

‘No one has ever accused my grandfather of possessing a sense of humour.’

‘People in pain say things they don’t really mean.’

He looked at her, curiosity shining in his hooded eyes. ‘Have you always believed everyone has good in them?’

Her chin lifted in response to the mockery in his voice.

‘I am not naive or gullible, if that is what you are suggesting. Whatever your grandfather’s motivation, he can’t think that just because of an announcement in a newspaper you’ll marry, even if I would agree, which obviously I don’t,’ she began a little incoherently, then paused, her blue eyes narrowing. ‘Why me?’

‘I think it is possible this was a collaborative approach.’

She shook her head. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Your father.’

‘You are not suggesting…?’ She fixed him with a grim glare and slammed her glass down on the table, sending splashes across its surface.

‘Your father. Is it Lizzie or Elizabeth or Lizzie Rose?’

She just glared back at him.

‘Your father is in a financially compromised situation.’

Choosing to be offended by the suggestion, she shook her head, not wasting words on her response. ‘Rubbish!’

‘He is within a hair’s breadth of going bust, being declared bankrupt.’

She opened her mouth and closed it. He watched her face, a study in stillness, her eyelashes flickering against her smooth cheeks.