Page 5 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

Had his new bride been aware when they’d met that her cousin had had a married lover tucked away? Was that what had given her the audacity to think he would fall for this sort of obvious trick?

‘So I am engaged. Interesting… Thanks for the heads up. Speak later.’ He hung up.

His next call went direct to his PA, who was in charge of his carefully choreographed life. She didn’t let him get a word in before she launched into a litany of exclamations.

‘Engaged! Why didn’t you tell me? I’ve been inundated and I don’t even have a quote!’

He cut her off. ‘Cancel the meeting.’

‘Cancelled.’

‘Maybe cancel my day, Jenna.’

‘Is it true?’

Adonis, sifting the possibilities in his head, continued to keep his options open. ‘That remains to be seen.’

Lizzie was running late. She twisted her thick hair into a loose knot and pinned it on her head, ignoring the thick waving strands that escaped to cluster around her face, without even glancing in the mirror.

She snatched the slice of buttered toast she hadn’t got around to eating and glanced automatically at her phone before she slid it into her bag.

The sight of the number of missed calls and messages made her dark feathery brows twitch.

‘No time now,’ she muttered, narrowly avoiding tripping as her annoyed cat wound herself around Lizzie’s legs demanding attention. Not proof against the animal’s pathetic miaow and reproachful stare, she paused to pour some dried food into the half-full bowl.

‘You’re getting fat.’

The cat gave her an eloquent ‘look who’s talking’ superior feline glare, and walked away from the bowl, tail twitching.

Her phone rang. She saw her dad’s number and ignored it.

She’d ring back later. Actually she’d been a bit concerned he’d cancelled their last Sunday lunch, which since she’d left home had become an established tradition, and the last time she’d seen him he’d not interrogated her on her love life or lack of it.

He’d also told her she looked nice, which was as unusual as it was untrue.

Glancing at the time on her phone before she slid it back into her bag, she debated whether to ring and warn the stables she’d be a few minutes late before deciding it would be quicker just to get a move on.

Her dad approved her work ethic and also approved that she had kept her day job.

Approval was relatively rare from her parent so she had not bothered telling him that she now helped at the disabled riding stables where she had worked since leaving school on a voluntary basis.

She might not be getting paid but that was no excuse in her mind for bad timekeeping.

Her cottage had an upside-down arrangement, the open-plan living area upstairs and the two bedrooms and bathroom downstairs. She flew down those stairs, hitching her bag over her shoulder as she flung open the front door of her red-brick Victorian terraced cottage.

Normally she would step out onto the path between the tiny square of lawn and the fragrant lavender-lined border, except there was no lawn and her lavender was crushed.

There was just a sea of bodies and faces.

The sea stretched beyond her garden and onto the street, where more faces were creating a wall of noise.

Disorientated and confused, she stood there blinking as questions came at her from all sides. Like a trapped animal, she half turned and glanced back at her front door, which was now hidden by a jostle of bodies who had moved in all around her, essentially cutting her off from any avenue of escape.

Lizzie hated crowds. Panic flared in her belly as she fought her visceral response, the horrid impression that she was suffocating under the press of bodies, the same way the coats had been pressing in on her when Deb had ‘accidentally’ locked her in that wardrobe.

‘Excuse me, please, I think you’ve got the wrong person. Excuse me…’ Polite having failed, head down, she tried to elbow her way forward taking small shuffling steps. It was like fighting a living tide.

Nothing she said made any impact, nothing paused, nothing stopped—if anything the bodies pressed in closer, not respecting anything resembling personal space.

Lizzie, who had massive issues with claustrophobia, focused on her breathing and struggled to slow her hyperventilation as a rash of red dots danced and whirled dizzily in front of her eyes.

She had never fainted in her life… This would be a very bad time to start.

‘I’m from the…’

‘Exclusive story…’

‘Where’s the ring, Lizzie Rose?’

Her eyes darted from left to right, stilling as they located a figure who was head and shoulders above the crowd. He moved with a negligent broad ease through the packed bodies, his face hidden by the tinted visor of a helmet.

She had been watching his progress but it was a tummy-flip moment of shock when he appeared at her side.

She didn’t react when his hand closed around her arm, her eyes just slid from the point of contact upwards.

It seemed like a long way upwards. He was very tall, broad-shouldered and athletically lean.

She found herself looking at her own reflection in the visor of the helmet he was wearing. All that was visible of his features was a strong jaw and a sensually sculpted wide mouth.

As she stared up at him for the space of several frantic heartbeats the clamour and the frenzied mob seemed to retreat, unable to compete with the stranger’s overwhelming presence.

She had no idea how many seconds ticked by before she shook herself free of the weird thrall.

‘I didn’t order anything,’ she said apologetically as her temporary respite from the babble ended.

Adonis, who had never been mistaken for pizza delivery before, swallowed the unexpected rumble of laughter he felt in his throat.

‘If you want to get out of this, come with me.’

Maybe it was his unrealistic confidence that she reacted to, but he was offering her an escape, whereas previously she hadn’t been able to move. The crowds seemed to part as, with his hand in the small of her back, they moved through the small garden and onto the street.

They were still surrounded and now she was not the only focus of the stream of questions, though Lizzie didn’t take in anything other than the name.

‘Adonis… Adonis… Adonis!’

‘Did love grow from your mutual grief?’

‘When did comfort turn to passion?’

Clamped to his side, not because of any pressure on his part but because of the shelter it offered, Lizzie turned her head. Yes, the jawline was unmistakable and the mouth that had fuelled a million fantasies… Adonis Aetos. Of course it was!

To retain her composure and not be fatally distracted by the hard male muscle or the warm male scent that was making her stomach quiver, she trained her eyes on her toes until they reached the edge of the pavement.

Where now?

Her question was soon answered.

‘Oh, God!’

Instinct, not always practical, made her close her eyes as he stepped without hesitation off the pavement, taking her with him. If the lorry didn’t get her, the double-decker bus behind it definitely would.

She reached the other side of the road while the bus was just rumbling past.

‘Move, woman!’ A helmet was shoved unceremoniously in her hand.

She bit back a retort, her eyes narrowing to angry blue slits as she resisted the temptation to tell him where he could shove the damned thing.

People got her wrong sometimes just because she took the road of least resistance when nothing was at stake that she cared about. That did not mean she was in any way pliable. She might look like a brown mouse—no one had called her that since she left school—but she wasn’t one.

It could on occasion work to her advantage when people underestimated her. She didn’t think this was one of those occasions.

‘Get on!’

As the bus trundled along, the mob waiting to cross was revealed. Lizzie decided it was not the moment to argue so she hastily pulled the helmet on and climbed onto the gleaming monster of a motorbike.

‘Hold on.’

He didn’t even bother with polite pretence. It was an order.

She looked at the leather-clad back of the man in front of her and, holding her breath, she tensed the same way she would have if she was about to duck her head under cold water.

A small yelp was wrenched from her throat as, with a roar, they pulled away from the kerb.

Underneath the leather he was hard and lean.

She was riding pillion with Adonis Aetos.

Could be she was still asleep?

If so, it was a very realistic dream or rather a continuing nightmare.

The cliff-edge emotions she struggled to keep in check surged, sending her thoughts into a flashback moment of childhood terror, when the hide and seek game had left her locked in a wardrobe with no Narnia behind the coats when Deb had forgotten they were playing.

Escape from the memory was not much better.

She was bombarded with sensations, her palms damp, her heart pounding, fingers laced tightly into the strap of her bag, digging into her damp palms. She pressed her cheek against his leather-clad back and screamed as he rounded a corner at what felt to her a ridiculous, actually reckless, speed.

She heard, or rather felt, his laugh and bit her lip, determined not to offer him any more opportunities to mock her, when he took a sharp right down a narrow cobbled alley, navigating a number of obstacles at a pace that made her teeth rattle.

It would have been an exaggeration to say that she relaxed as the journey progressed, but she moved beyond the conviction she was going to fall off or die.

She refused to acknowledge the zing of exhilaration the combination of speed and hard male body shook loose inside her, and as her thoughts moved beyond survival, other thoughts rushed in to fill the vacuum.

She was clinging not because she was afraid of falling but because she liked the male scent of him, the heat of his lean muscled body filling her senses, blocking out everything else.