Page 22 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

CHAPTER EIGHT

L IZZIE REALISED THEY were retracing their steps, then they weren’t, and she was hopelessly lost. The place was a beautiful maze. There were few steps, but the floor beneath her feet occasionally sloped.

Adonis could feel the tension coming off her.

‘Greeks are friendly people. They love strangers.’

‘Pardon my scepticism, but you are the only example I have.’

He conceded the strike with a wry grin. ‘We love them so much we have a word for it.’

‘A word for what?’ They had reached a set of open double doors, and the echo of music she had heard was now a solid sound. Lizzie could see a jazz quartet at the far end responsible for the mellow sounds.

‘For our love of strangers. Filoxenia. ’ His eyes brushed her pale face, lingering on the pulse beating at the base of her throat. ‘OK?’

As OK, she thought, as she was likely to be. ‘He won’t believe that we are—’

‘What he believes is not relevant, the point is he can’t disprove anything, unless we tell him.’

‘You must really not like him.’

‘I love him. I want him to live his last days and weeks with the hope that there will be a grandchild and the challenge of disproving it will give him endless pleasure.’ A distraction from dying, Adonis thought, his expression sombre.

‘That seems perverse,’ she observed, shaking her head.

‘Possibly,’ he conceded with a lazy grin. ‘But that is the sort of family we are. Are you ready to do this?’

She nodded, thinking, I hope that room is filled with a lot of filoxenia . ‘This is what I signed up for.’ Obviously she had not been in her right mind.

She was glad of the encouraging hand on the small of her back as she stepped forward. The room was dominated by a long table lit by a row of chandeliers that picked out the silver and crystal, illuminating the edges of petals in the flower arrangements that were starting to wilt.

Lizzie really identified with those petals!

She wanted to shrink into his side, but pride stopped her.

Adonis appeared to have no problem with being the focus of attention.

He ignored the various levels of bleats and gasps of surprise as he walked down the table to the head where a thickset man sat.

He had a head of dark hair liberally streaked with silver and a face that cynicism had etched deep lines into.

‘Happy birthday, Papou.’

‘You have brought me a present?’

Lizzie felt the dark eyes move over her in an assessing sweep that made her want to crawl out of her skin.

‘I have.’ Adonis made a flourishing gesture towards Lizzie, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

‘My wife. And my thanks for introducing me to her. Lizzie Rose. Lizzie—’ the fingers on the small of her back spread, as did the comforting warmth she needed at that moment ‘—this is my grandfather, Spyros.’

The silence was total. Even the musicians, awake to the drama of the moment, had stopped playing.

‘Happy birthday. I hope you don’t mind us gatecrashing?’

The elderly patriarch got to his feet, the hand tight on the arm of his chair the only indication that it was not easy for him. Despite his obvious ill health, he was not a man it was easy to pity.

‘Welcome to our family.’ He tilted his head towards Lizzie and gave what she supposed was his version of a smile. ‘Elizabeth.’

‘Lizzie.’ He took the correction with a shrug that made her think a little of Adonis. ‘I think you might know my father?’

She looked such a picture of innocence as she threw out the challenge that Adonis had to fight back an admiring laugh.

His grandfather didn’t miss a beat. ‘Indeed, I do. Welcome, Lizzie. Welcome to our home and this family.’ He gestured in a grand fashion to the family seated around the table, who obediently echoed him.

‘Sit by us, Adonis, sit by us!’

Lizzie was surprised the plea came from the two youngest of the family members. She had never thought that Adonis would bother to make himself popular with youngsters.

His grandfather responded to the children in Greek. His imperative gesture making it obvious that if anyone was going to have Adonis’s ear it was him.

The girls, after a quick glance at the woman sitting opposite them, subsided into sulky silence.

‘Let me make the introductions. Lizzie, this is my aunt Elena.’ He pointed out the tall, elegant woman whose dark hair had a striking silver streak. She nodded, her expression curious but not unfriendly.

‘Her girls, Cora and Chloe, and her husband, Nik.’

A balding middle-aged man got to his feet and tipped his head in Lizzie’s direction. ‘Kalispera.’

‘This is my aunt Lydia.’ The other woman had the silver streak but her face was much more rounded. ‘And her girls—or should I say young women?’

‘Yes, you should.’

‘Definitely you should.’

‘Hi, Lizzie,’ they both said in unison. Then the one who had shaved off the sides of her hair added, ‘I love that dress!’

‘And this is Iris and Areti.’

‘I’m Alex,’ the man sitting closest to her said, getting to his feet and extending his hand. ‘Better known as Iris and Areti’s dad.’

‘My soon-to-be ex-husband,’ Lydia added as her husband sat down. ‘And this is my partner, Adrian.’ The handsome young man sitting next to her sent Lizzie a dazzling smile. ‘Dr… Baros, is it?’

A tall, thin man wearing spectacles got to his feet and inclined his head politely to Lizzie. ‘Yassas.’ He turned to Adonis. ‘Congratulations.’

‘And that is the lot, except, of course, for Grandfather.’

The music began at the same time as groups of servers began to unobtrusively lay extra places at the table and the rest of the family discovered their voices.

Lizzie exhaled, finding the low buzz of chatter a relief.

Adonis ushered her to one of the new place settings and pulled out the chair for her, bending low to speak encouragingly into her ear. ‘All OK?’

The whisper of his warm breath on her skin sent a distracting wave of heat along her nerve endings as his dark eyes held hers for a moment.

She was incapable in that moment of doing anything else but nod—she would have nodded to anything he suggested.

This piece of self-knowledge she could have done without and did nothing to soothe her jangling nerves.

‘When you have finished, Adonis.’ His grandfather gave a sharp nod to the place that had been set beside him.

Before Adonis had taken his seat, Spyros pushed out a peremptory question, making no attempt to lower his voice. ‘Now tell me, is it true? Are you actually married or is this one of your—?’

‘We are married.’

‘Oh, when?’ one of the older twins asked. ‘We could have been bridesmaids.’

‘Today.’

The look of astonishment was shared by everyone at the table.

‘You got married today? Where? How?’ His grandfather continued to look sceptical.

‘Gibraltar.’ Adonis produced a paper from his pocket that Lizzie hadn’t known he was carrying. Clearly he had anticipated some scepticism. ‘The official licence will follow in a couple of weeks.’

‘You eloped?’ Lydia gasped.

‘That is so romantic,’ one of her daughters inserted, her twin nodding in vigorous agreement.

‘Exactly, and Adonis is not one of life’s romantics,’ her mother responded, looking across the table to her sister for confirmation.

‘It’s true, he isn’t.’

‘I am pleased that I have enabled you two to agree on something.’

His aunts glared at him.

‘So the engagement announcement was real?’

The doctor scraped his chair on the floor. ‘Perhaps I should leave the family—’

‘Sit down, man!’ his patient instructed. ‘If you breathe a word of what is said in this room, I will sue your pants off.’

Flushing, the medic sat down.

‘The engagement announcement was true?’ Elena said slowly. ‘None of us believed it.’

‘Neither did we,’ Adonis said, sending Lizzie an intimate smile that left her shaking and reflecting on what a loss he was to the acting profession.

‘Look, I really don’t know why this marriage is anyone’s business but our own. When you, Papou, conspired to push Lizzie Rose and I together…’

All eyes went to the figure at the head of the table, who simply shrugged.

‘It was both our intentions to tell you to go, very respectfully of course, to hell. However, being thrown together as we were…the unique circumstances. I had never met a woman like Lizzie.’ The last observation had the ring of truth because, he realised, it was the truth.

One of the teen twins gave a sigh. Lizzie struggled to put a name to the pretty face but the names were still interchangeable in her head. ‘I think that is so romantic.’

Unlike the teen, Lizzie had heard the deliberate ambiguity in his sentence, but she also heard the caressing lie and, even knowing it was a lie, she felt herself reacting to the fake warmth even though they had no intimate bond and never would be likely to have.

‘We are planning on spending the rest of the summer here—’

‘I’m not planning on dying yet,’ the old man snarled.

‘That is good to hear,’ Adonis said smoothly, glad to see the spark of defiance while planning to discuss that subject with the doctor, who was looking fixedly at his plate as though wishing himself elsewhere.

Not an encouraging sign.

He had actually been shocked to see the changes wrought by the cruel disease that had had his grandparent in its claws the past few weeks. The clothes that hung on his broad frame, the sallow cheeks and dark shadows under his sunken eyes.

‘Papa,’ began Lydia.

‘Do not “Papa” me, woman. I can’t be doing with weaselly words. We all know I am dying.’ He rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘I will go to bed.’

His daughters both jumped to their feet.

‘No, you can walk with me,’ he said, waving an imperious finger at Lizzie.

‘Papou…’ began Adonis, rising to his own feet, his height and physicality highlighting the older man’s frailty.

‘No, Adonis,’ Lizzie said calmly as she pushed her chair back.

‘You haven’t eaten—’

‘I’m really not hungry.’

His eyes held hers, a question and concern in the dark depths. ‘Sure?’