Page 3 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8
The people who weren’t staring at Deb were, like Lizzie, watching her future husband, Adonis Aetos, the heir to a Greek shipping fortune, his dark hair with the distinctive widow’s peak pushed back from his broad bronzed forehead.
His carved features had been called perfect, the high sharp cheekbones, the planes and hollows so symmetrical they could have made him look effeminate, especially when you considered—as many did—the lush sensuality of his full upper lip, but he wasn’t. He was undiluted raw masculinity.
Her stomach flipped as she remembered the charge she had felt when she had been staring into those eyes, before he had assumed she was pregnant.
She watched a possessive arm claim Deb’s waist as her cousin tilted her beautiful head to receive the kiss on her cheek. He murmured something that made Deb’s silvery laughter ring out.
‘Lizzie, I need to go powder my nose.’
Lizzie gave a start and plastered on a smile to greet her godmother, who was examining her dress.
‘Your dear mother had such excellent dress sense,’ she bemoaned.
Lizzie, who expected nothing less than brutal honesty from her elderly relative, kept smiling.
‘I need the ladies’ room. Come with me,’ her godmother said imperiously. ‘You could do with doing…something to your hair.’
It was ten minutes before Lizzie slipped back into the champagne reception through one of the arches that led into the chandelier-lit space, her hair looking pretty much as it had done when she’d left.
She stopped dead. A few feet ahead of her stood her cousin and Adonis Aetos. They remained oblivious to her presence.
An image formed in her head of her stepping forward and revealing herself, cool, composed, hand outstretched.
The image stayed where it was. A better option, she decided, was backing quietly out, less a cowardly retreat and more conserving her energy. Tonight would be an endurance event.
She had not put her slip-away strategy into action before Adonis’s deep distinctive voice reached her.
‘Your cousin, the one you invited to be your bridesmaid?’
‘Poor darling Lizzie. We are more like sisters.’
‘She works with you in the family firm?’ Lizzie heard him ask in the same casual offhand voice.
‘God, no, darling Uncle tried, bless. He gave her all the opportunities.’ She gave a theatrical sigh that made Lizzie’s fists clench, her nails digging into her palm.
‘But you know how it is with some people—they have no staying power. She only lasted a week.’ Another sigh.
‘But it’s sometimes that way with these little mousey people—they have no drive.
Seriously, she is scared of her own shadow. I hate to say it—’
But you’re going to say it anyway, Lizzie thought.
‘I’m afraid she is just your typical little rich girl. Her daddy pays all her bills, her rent, the lot. I think she does some voluntary sort of stuff. Oh, she’s very mousey, and apparently she dreams of being a writer. Don’t we all, darling?’
‘Mousey?’
From where she stood Lizzie could see his dark brows draw into a straight line above his masterful nose.
‘Have I got the right woman, the tiny one in the yellowy tent?’
Deb laughed at the description. ‘Oh, God, yes, the dress. Lizzie and fashion are not really friends. She favours the tent. They are usually black though, or, if she is being very frivolous, navy or brown. I’ve tried to encourage her to make the best of herself.’
‘I realise you are fond of her, but, honestly, do you think it’s a great idea to have a pregnant woman as your bridesmaid? She might give birth in the church.’
Deb’s mirthless cruel cackle made Lizzie wince. Her mustard-encased boobs swelled against the tight fabric as she took a wrathful breath. ‘She isn’t pregnant, darling. She’s just…how can I say it tactfully…?’ she purred as she reached up and stroked his lean cheek. ‘Stout?’
As Adonis emerged from Deb’s long lingering kiss, he looked across her shoulder and found himself staring directly into the bright burning blue gaze of the mousey cousin.
If looks could kill, he’d be lying stone cold and very dead on the floor, a mouse’s claws in his vital organs.
If it had been a scene in a drama, she would have undergone a Cinderella transformation, losing twenty pounds and returning midway through the film to have her revenge on the man who had humiliated her by making him fall desperately in love with her.
Obviously, she would have rejected him and he would have crawled away a broken man.
The triumph she built in her imagination crumbled as reality kicked in. This wasn’t a drama. It was real life and she was not a teenager who believed in fairy tales.
She had believed in fairy tales longer than most—she had still believed in them the day she went to buy her first bra, a long-awaited event as she’d been a late developer.
She remembered the fluttery feeling of excitement when she had spotted the rows of pretty lacy bras that her cousin had headed for.
But her aunt had ushered her past the colourful racks to another row without any colour or lace, to what she had explained were minimiser bras, which she had reassured Lizzie would reduce her by a full cup size.
In the real world she wouldn’t be losing any weight, partly because according to the charts she inexplicably wasn’t overweight, and partly because she enjoyed food. She turned her back on the happy couple and accepted a canapé.