Page 180 of Modern Romance October 2025 5-8

Tycoon’s Terms of Engagement

Clare Connelly

Prologue

Charlotte’s fingers trembledon the mouse of her computer, as she tried to process what she was seeing.

A deposit of fifty thousand pounds, on the morning of her twenty-first birthday. No message beside the deposit and the name identical to all the others: Papandreo.

Her blood turned to ice.

Her skin lifted in tiny little goosebumps.

Her eyes squeezed shut—but it didn’t matter.

The numbers and, more importantly, the name, still swam inside her mind. She felt a tightening in her throat. A nausea that made her want to reach for the rubbish bin. Except she wouldn’t give in to that feeling. She wouldn’t give in toanyfeelings to do with her so-called father. After all, wasn’t being a father more than just making a sperm donation decades earlier? And providing a huge amount of money in exchange for silence?

Because Charlotte Shaw was a very well-funded, dirty little secret. An illegitimate child who had known, for as long as she could know or understand anything, that her very existence was not only a mistake, but a cause of regret.

Worse, she’d ruined her mother’s life.

Not her, per se, but by being conceived to a man who was married and very much in love with his wife—too in love to leave her, but not so much as to stay faithful.

Not only had there been a generous trust fund set up for Charlotte, but each year, on the morning of her birthday, an amount was deposited into her bank account as a ‘gift’. A guilt gift? More likely, as a reminder to Charlotte of the importance of staying silent.

Because the money her filthy rich ‘father’ had funnelled not only supported Charlotte, but more to the point, her mother, Mariah. Mariah, who’d been left heartbroken by the circumstances of Charlotte’s birth—by having fallen in love with a man who wanted her to have an abortion. By falling pregnant to a man who would never, ever leave his wife.

Charlotte clicked out of the internet banking browser and stood up, sucking a gust of air into her lungs and trying to steady her nerves.

So what if he’d given her a veritable fortune? To him, it was negligible. Small change.

It didn’t mean anything. She was still nothing to him and always would be. And that was just utterly and completely fine by her.

Chapter One

Charlotte stared blanklyat the lawyer. His words were somewhat amorphous, refusing to take any recognisable shape. Every now and again, though, she’d catch a hint of something that made her jaw drop.

Death of your father’s wife.

Officially acknowledging you.

Your birthright—the possible inheritance of the Papandreo business.

If you were to marry—and please note, marriage is a prerequisite for taking ownership.

She nodded along, even though it made very little sense. Her mind had gone into a shutdown from the moment she’d arrived in the fancy law firm’s boardroom and been greeted by three obsequious lawyers in custom-made suits, all bending over backwards to ingratiate themselves with her.

‘Do you have any questions, Miss Shaw?’

Charlotte blinked across at the oldest of the men, with his steel-rimmed glasses and side-swept greying hair, and reminded herself forcibly thatshewas a lawyer, too. Okay, she wasn’t a lawyer in the same way these dudes were. She worked in the charities sector and was more at home with staff in jeans and leather jackets, who brought in ramen noodles for lunch—because the salaries in their line of work were hardly anything to write home about.

But she’d done the hard yards in her degree, and she wasn’t an idiot.

‘So, let me get this straight.’ She reached for the fine bone china coffee cup and took a sip, relishing the familiar hit of caffeine. ‘You’re saying that my biological father’s wife has died.’

She left a gap, waiting for acknowledgement.

The lawyer to the left of the older man nodded once.