Page 12 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

CHAPTER FOUR

‘Y OU ARE CERTIFIABLE !’ Lizzie said with deep conviction.

‘The fact is your father does have a financial black hole that my grandfather is willing to plug if he persuades you of the advantages of marrying me. The engagement was apparently the first act, meant, I assume, to set the ball rolling.’ He dropped languidly into a seat.

‘It would be easy for us to call their bluff, but, as I say, I’m fond of my grandfather. Where’s the harm?’

His casual offhand question made her leap out of her seat. The sight of him sprawling there looking so relaxed sent her temper soaring.

‘Are you off your head? Harm. Harm!’ she spat out, stabbing the air with a finger before pointing it at him. ‘You know what I think? I think you are deranged! I think this is all some fantasy you have created. Well, I’m not buying into it.’

‘A fantasy where I need to blackmail you into marriage?’

His sarcasm brought an angry flush to her cheeks.

‘There is an easy way to settle this one way or the other. Call your father. Ask him.’

She blinked, taken off balance by his suggestion. ‘Call him?’

He nodded. ‘Why not? Unless you are scared of the answer you get.’

Her chin went up. ‘I’m not scared,’ she lied.

‘Fine. I’ll give you the room.’

He returned twenty minutes later to find Lizzie still pacing the room. She paused when she saw him. He studied her face for a moment and experienced a rare stab of compassion—her expression told him everything he needed to know.

‘I’ve spoken to Dad.’

He watched her gather herself and didn’t push. It was not a leap to assume she hadn’t liked what she had heard.

‘I always thought that he was confident but really…he’s—’ She couldn’t bring herself to say weak. She loved her dad and she always would.

‘The man is in financial trouble. He’s desperate and he’s proud,’ Adonis said.

The defence coming from the most unlikely source made her shake her head. Amazingly, Adonis Aetos was showing more compassion than she felt able to at that moment.

‘Proud, yes, he is, and he’s self-entitled.’ Shocked by the audible bitterness in her voice, she put her hand to her mouth. Snippets of their recent conversation flying piecemeal into her head. Her dad had gone from denial to anger, to pleading.

‘He didn’t say sorry. Nothing was his fault.’

Had it ever been?

An image of him sitting on the sofa, his head in his hands, when the doctor had explained that Lizzie would always have a scar after the scalding incident.

‘You should have stopped her,’ her dad had yelled. ‘You should have come and got me. This wouldn’t have happened if you had watched her.’

Lizzie, shamed, had said, ‘Yes, Dad.’ Even though he hadn’t been there to get—he rarely had been during the latter stages of her mum’s disease—and Lizzie had been watching her.

She had only gone outside for a few minutes to play with the new kitten.

Mum’s carer—by that point she had needed full-time care—had been upstairs turning off the bath tap before it overflowed again.

When Lizzie had come back in, her mum, wearing a glittery and saturated evening dress, had been in the kitchen and there had been a full pan of boiling water bubbling furiously on the stove.

Lizzie had got between her mum and the pan but when Lizzie had stretched up to switch the gas ring off, her mum had made a grab for the pan.

Most of the boiling water had spilled harmlessly on the floor, except for the amount that had hit Lizzie’s wrist before she’d jumped back. The scarring would have been worse if the carer hadn’t returned and immediately plunged Lizzie’s arm under cold running water.

‘Your father needs validation and approval. He can’t admit a weakness or own a mistake.’

She blinked, her lashes fluttering against her cheek at this objective and painfully accurate assessment.

‘Do you think people change?’ she wondered.

‘No.’

She nodded, then said defensively, ‘I love him,’ before adding, ‘You love your grandfather and he’s not perfect!’

‘Unlike you, this comes as no great shock to me and I have always found perfection a dead bore. Did you tell your father you would save him?’

‘No.’

‘Only human to want him to stew for a while.’

She gasped. There were just so many things wrong with that statement. ‘I do not want revenge on my dad and you are speaking as though I have already agreed.’

‘Your father thinks you will. He is relying on it.’

She gave a bitter little laugh and addressed his claim with weary resignation. ‘He thinks I’m a pushover and so do you!’

‘Maybe you’re just too lazy to push back?’

‘Do I come across as someone who cares what you think about me?’ she flared.

‘I think you sell yourself short, which is entirely up to you,’ he drawled. ‘No judgement. Your father, on the other hand, needs the world’s approval. He sees himself through the eyes of others and yes, actually, plenty of judgement there.’

Not you , she thought, staring up at the tall alpha male figure.

On many levels he remained an enigma to her.

Superficially he and her dad were two generations of the stereotypical alpha male.

But her dad was playing a part. His confidence was a thin veneer hiding his inadequacies.

Adonis’s was not an act, was not a veneer of confidence.

It was at a cellular level. She was betting he had never needed anyone’s approval in his life.

His confidence was not based on how he was perceived by the world. It came from an inner certainty.

He waited, watching the emotions she wore so close to the surface running across her expressive little face.

‘You were right… I was wrong about Dad. I am sure he’s ashamed deep down. He…he… I think he was crying.’ She took a deep breath, the emotional exhaustion she was determined to hide creeping into the tremor in her voice.

Her hunched shoulders, the bruised hurt in her blue eyes, dragged a surge of something he chose not to recognise as protectiveness.

She straightened her shoulders. ‘So how would this work?’

‘My family, including my grandfather, are at present at the island. It belongs to our family, totally private. There would be no press intrusion for you to deal with for the weeks or months.’

‘So the plan would be?’

‘We marry, go there and play the newly-weds until the charade is no longer necessary.’

‘You make it sound simple. You can’t just get married. There is paperwork?’ she persisted, hopeful of a flaw in his reasonable-sounding plan.

Reasonable? At what point did insane become reasonable?

She supposed it depended on how it was sold, and Adonis was a very good salesman.

‘It is not simple,’ he agreed. ‘But you don’t need to worry about it. I will sort the details.’

‘You’re relentless, aren’t you?’

‘I prefer focused.’

‘I don’t like being organised.’

His lips quirked. ‘Yes, I am getting that.’

‘So if I agree, in three months’ time I’ll be married and separated.’

‘I thought you already had agreed.’

‘That’s because you only hear what you want to.’

He laughed then, adopting a more serious note, added, ‘Divorce is not a stigma any longer.’

‘It’s not divorce. It’s marriage. It’s something I always vowed… I never intended to get married ever.’

His brows lifted at her vehemence, then he watched as the frown lines in her forehead smoothed.

‘But this wouldn’t count, would it?’

‘Legally it will, but, well, obviously it is a transactional arrangement.’ Head tilted to one side, he considered her face.

He was still adjusting to the fact that he was attracted to her.

The more he looked at her face, the more he enjoyed looking.

The glimpse of the suggestion of the body underneath the awful clothes had tweaked his interest. Perhaps this was a perversity in the male of the species, the hidden more erotic than flaunting acres of flesh.

Next he’d be getting turned on by a nicely turned ankle.

‘Or are you talking about sex?’ he said, thinking about it as his eyes sank to the curves she tried hard to conceal.

Her little gasp sounded very loud in the silence that followed.

‘No, I am not!’ she cried, making a red-cheeked recovery. Angry as much with herself for reacting to his taunting when she was sure he had barely noticed she was a female. ‘It had not even occurred to me!’ she said with lofty disdain.

‘Well, it had occurred to me.’

Lofty disdain vanished as her jaw dropped literally.

He had said it so casually, she would have assumed that he was winding her up if it hadn’t been for the gleam she glimpsed in his dark eyes before his heavy lids half lowered.

Imaginary gleam or for-real gleam, the fact that the man frequently billed as the sexiest man on the planet had just said that he had thought about sex with her…

Lizzie worked very hard at keeping her face blank, but her defence mechanism failed her, probably due to the fact her hormones were going crazy.

Get a grip, Lizzie , she told herself. This is a wind-up.

His dark eyes crinkled at the corners as his head tilted to one side in what she was recognising as a characteristic gesture. He slanted her a curious stare. ‘You look shocked.’

The mild surprise in his voice made her want to hit him.

‘Just stop! We both know that you already have me, so you can save yourself the bother of resorting to the tired old seduction routine.’

‘Tired? I’m offended,’ he mocked, his eyes shining with amusement and something else she tried hard not to see.

‘If I agree to this, there won’t be any sex.

I assumed that was a given,’ she said, recalling the occasion when Deb had offered Lizzie her leftover lovers until Lizzie had realised that showing her visceral distaste only encouraged her cousin, who had taken great delight in mocking what she’d seen as Lizzie’s prudery.

‘A given?’ He allowed himself the painful indulgence of wondering about her glowing skin. Was it that smooth and pale all over? Did the freckles extend beyond her pretty nose? ‘I think you have not thought this through. We could be together for weeks.’