Page 4 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8
CHAPTER ONE
A DONIS STEPPED OUT of the shower and shook his head, pushing his fingers through the drenched strands of his dripping ebony hair. A quick glance in the steamed-up mirror told him it was time for a trim—the waves were damply curling on his neck in a way he found irritating.
Quickly drying off, he had pulled on a pair of boxers and was reaching for his razor when his phone rang. He saw the caller ID and picked it up, a half-smile curving his mobile, sensually sculpted lips.
‘Thought you didn’t get up before noon on vacation, Jack.’
‘It’s hard work to maintain the illusion I’m an entitled hedonist.’ His friend’s languid response, accompanied by an exaggerated yawn from the workaholic lawyer, drew an ironic grin from Adonis. ‘I thought as your best friend, possibly only friend—’
‘Thanks for that,’ came the dry interruption.
‘It takes a very determined person to get past your iron ring of security, and of course your trust issues. Not everyone has an angle, you know.’
Adonis grunted, thinking, No, but most people do.
‘But back to the reason I called—it was of course to congratulate you? I’m kind of hurt that I am the last to know.’ There was an audible question mark in the light teasing response.
Adonis looped a towel around his neck and walked over to the glass wall of his penthouse apartment, rubbing a hand across the dark stubble on his jaw as he glanced from the numbers on the screen of the laptop set up on his desk to the iconic view of the city far below.
‘Last to know what?’ His dark brows twitched into a frown. Had someone leaked information on the deal he had spent the last month putting together?
‘About your marriage plans. Have you set a date yet?’
Adonis’s eyes narrowed. He was not very amused by the joke, particularly given the significance of the date.
Two years ago today he had been meant to be exchanging vows with his beautiful bride.
And Deb had been beautiful, he thought, an image of her face floating into his head along with a wave of genuine sadness. She’d had her whole life ahead of her. She’d had everything, including him.
An ironic, self-mocking smile tugged at the corners of his mobile lips. Beautiful Deb had taken him for a fool, a fact that he had not discovered until after her death when, along with the helicopter pilot, a third body had been found in the wreckage.
Identified as an older man, neither wealthy nor influential, a married man, and, it turned out, her long-standing lover.
This fact was not general knowledge, though how his grandfather had buried that little pearl he didn’t know.
He must have pulled in one hell of a lot of favours, which meant that the world didn’t know that Adonis was a fool. But he did.
His pride had taken a massive hit when he’d discovered he’d been played.
The rumours of his infallibility, he conceded with a cynical grimace, had been grossly exaggerated.
The fact he had been confident that she would have been faithful seemed beyond laughable. It was even more disturbing that in his arrogance he had so readily accepted her word when they had struck their very civilised bargain. Which seemed, in hindsight, irredeemably stupid.
If Deb had actually produced the one child they had agreed on when they had hammered out the details of their practical, mutually beneficial arrangement, which was obviously no means a given, there was a big doubt that any child would have been his.
But that was academic. There was no wife, no child, not even an ignominious divorce.
He’d been blinded less by her beauty than by the fact he had been utterly convinced he had found his version of the perfect bride: beautiful, ambitious, driven, and not clingy or, most importantly, in love with him.
A fact she had quite happily admitted when he had initially thrown the idea of marriage out there.
He’d been upfront, said he wasn’t in love with her, and had had his instincts rewarded when she’d told him that that was not an issue.
She had not recoiled in horror at the possibility of divorce if things were not working, and he’d congratulated himself on finding his perfect bride. For many people, marriage was about staying together and raising kids. For Adonis the staying together aspect was deeply unrealistic, but kids?
He would have happily stayed single but his grandfather’s influence on his younger self meant he was fully aware that it was his duty to provide an heir to continue the Aetos legacy and family name.
Of course, it was possible to father a child outside marriage, but it remained a fact of life that legally a marriage contract made a father’s rights a lot more secure.
He had never been looking for a woman who thought she was his soul mate—the last thing Adonis wanted in his life was the sort of love that his devoted parents shared.
The sort of romantic love that to his mind had more in common with an obsession than a partnership, mutual obsession that led to emotional stormy fights, and equally emotional making up.
As a child he had learnt never to relax.
The most peaceful moment could without warning become full-scale no-holds-barred vicious war.
And he had been in the middle. Some of his earliest memories were of being asked to side with one or the other in their current row. He much preferred the times when they had forgotten his existence, sometimes literally.
He had been glad when they’d packed him off to boarding school at seven, arriving with what he’d considered an advantage: he hadn’t spent the first weeks crying because he’d missed his parents.
There had been weeks before school when Adonis had seen more of hotel staff than his parents, though he had found the food at school not up to the standard of the room service offered by the five-star hotels his parents favoured and he’d spent a great deal of his young life living in.
After he had exchanged hotels for school, he had been offloaded on his grandfather and extended family, spending his holidays on the family’s private island, which had suited all involved.
While his parents had drifted from one fashionable watering hole to another being beautiful in love people, he’d run wild on the island while being taught the responsibilities that came with being an Aetos, along with privileges that he should never take for granted.
He had nothing against beautiful things or people.
He could see the attraction of beautiful…
Deb’s exquisite face floated into his head.
He fully appreciated the irony now that he had been impressed when she’d countered his honesty with some of her own, admitting quite openly that, being married to him, she would enjoy the status and, she was sure, the sex too.
‘And on that note… I’m sure the sex will be great, but considering this is a contract situation I’d prefer to wait until the ink is dried?’
He hadn’t liked the idea, even for him her attitude was clinical, but he could see the logic. It wasn’t as if he’d wanted to stake his claim, own her the way his father wanted to own his mother and vice versa.
At least he hadn’t loved her. How could a man who didn’t believe in the existence of love find himself a victim of it? He wasn’t congratulating himself—being a victim of his own arrogance and lack of judgment was not something to celebrate.
He had messed up big time, but he wouldn’t be repeating his error, and he wasn’t going to be pressured into marriage, despite his grandfather’s growing frustration.
His friend interrupted his chain of thought, pulling him back into the moment. ‘So was it a secret? It isn’t any more.’
‘Enough with the cryptic clues, Jack…get to the punchline. I have a meeting in an hour. I’m not on holiday.’ He closed the laptop lid with a decisive click.
‘No punchline, no joke. I have the proof in my hand.’ The rustle of paper echoed down the line, along with laughter.
‘Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across this. And I suspect it won’t just be me that stumbled.
The notice of the engagement that the families are happy to announce between Mr Adonis Athan—you kept that quiet—Aetos to Miss Elizabeth Rose Sinclair. ’
His phone was wedged to his ear as he entered the walk-in wardrobe and selected one of the suits that hung there. ‘I don’t even know any Elizabeth Rose Sinclair.’
‘The daughter of Rafe Sinclair?’
In the act of selecting a tie, he paused. ‘Rafe Sinclair? He has a daughter?’ Which made her Deb’s cousin. A face floated into his head, big kitten eyes, rounded cheeks, a pointy little chin, that mouth… The so-called mouse with a spark of molten anger in her eyes, the die-a-painful-death glare.
Not his idea of a mouse. Was she feeling the pinch now her father’s finances were in a death spiral? Was that what this was about? Was she looking for another source of income to replace Daddy? he speculated grimly.
His thoughts continued to fly as he grabbed a fresh shirt and stalked back into his bedroom.
‘She is…was Deb’s bridesmaid, or she would have been.’
Instead the next time, the last time, he had seen her, had been at the funeral. Wearing a black tent, she had walked right up to him, her eyes huge in her pale face. Like her cousin, she did sincerity very well. Her lips had quivered as she had delivered the formal platitude.
‘Sorry for your loss.’
The rest of the time she had been supporting her father.
Someone had had to be—Rafe Sinclair had seemed on the point of collapse—and now it seemed the supportive daughter was part of some sort of plot to trap Adonis into marriage.
Obviously she hadn’t been working alone.
He could see his grandfather’s fingerprints all over this and, considering his financial woes, her father’s also.
How complicit was his new bride? he speculated, his lips twisting into a cynical smile.
He was angry.
He was curious.