Page 119 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

He shook his head and grimly said, ‘No, that’s a different company. Hans, though, has a lot of influence in the corporate world and if I can get him to lend us his support and endorse us, it will go a long way to calming nerves. I learned today that he’s travelling into Athens tomorrow and that on Friday night he’s going to Theo Nikolaidis’s summer party—I too have an invitation to that party.’

‘Then you have to go.’

‘Yes. The question is do you want to come with me?’

‘I don’t know Theo but I know his wife, Helena,’ she said slowly. ‘She’s discreet but we have mutual friends. If I come with you then there’s a good chance the whole of Athens will know about us before we’ve finished our first canapé.’

‘It will get you out of the apartment and it might work as a distraction to the news that will have come out about the resolution of the meeting between your brother and his investors.’

‘As much as I’d love to go, you know I can’t do that to my family—it would be too cruel. Friday is going to be intolerable for them. I can’t add to it. We need to stick to the agreed timeline, and you’ll just have to go to the party without me.’

‘As long as I have your blessing.’

Surprise flashed in her eyes. ‘You don’t need my blessing to do anything.’

‘I don’t need it but I do want it.’

‘Then fine, you have my blessing to go to the party without me.’ Before he could breathe a little easier at this—Friday, he knew, was going to be especially hard for her and she’d be spending the majority of it on her own—she drained her grape juice and jauntily added, ‘If you don’t want to go alone you must have dozens of names stored in your personal phone who would jump at the chance to be your plus one for the night.’

Working hard to stop the edge creeping back into his voice, he said, ‘The only name that’s ever been in my phone that I would even consider taking in your place is my sister, Athena, but as she’s liable to spend the evening flirting with any man with a pulse and decent bank balance and making snide comments about all the other guests, I’ll give her a miss and go to the party on my own.’

She stilled, just a fleeting stillness in which a whole host of emotions flashed in her eyes, but he saw it and the edge subsided. He mustn’t forget that while they were both navigating their new life together, Lydia didn’t just have her family’s destruction hanging over her along with the real possibility of losing her family, but was pregnant too. He shouldn’t be adding pressure to her or allowing bitterness to set in over things that were yet to happen.

‘One party you won’t have to miss is the one I’m hosting next Friday at the nightclub. It’s for a friend’s birthday, and youwillbe coming with me for it.’

Her smile looked forced. ‘I’m not a nightclub kind of girl, remember?’

He looked her up and down, the silver of her top reminding him of the dress she’d worn their first night together. ‘I don’t know,’ he murmured. ‘You seemed to enjoy yourself at my club the last time you were there.’

Lydia was lying on her side, Alexis spooned against her, his hand making slow circles over her belly. She couldn’t settle her brain. When Alexis had come home from work they’d taken a swim in the roof terrace pool together and played three games of backgammon before getting an early night that had turned into a long night of lovemaking, but she was still too jittery over what tomorrow would bring to switch mind or body off.

‘You never did tell me why you turned those marriage proposals down,’ he said sleepily.

Her eyes opened. ‘You already know the answer,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t love them enough.’

Didn’t love them enough because in her yearning for something different, she’d gone for arty men too absorbed with themselves and their artistic creations to fall in love with, men she’d never had to cut the safety nets for. Never even wanted to. She’d refused to entertain even living with them. She’d wanted to escape the ‘men in suits’ who filled her life, wanted something different for herself than the life her mother had made, but had never found the courage to fully go out there and get it.

‘But you did love them?’

Her heart swelled and then tightened, and she had to swallow a compression in her throat to answer. ‘I don’t know. I thought I did…or maybe I just told myself I did. Maybe you were right when you said I’m a commitment-phobe like you.’

‘No,’ he corrected quietly. ‘I said you were the one afraid of commitment, not me.’

‘Alexis, I’m twenty-seven years old and you’re only the third man I’ve been with, whereas you’ve been with…’ She swallowed, unable to voice a number that didn’t make her stomach twist.

‘I’ve been with a lot of women,’ he supplied into the silence.

‘And how many of those women have been more than a fling?’ For all that she’d valiantly tried to block her thoughts from returning to the call and message that had come through on Alexis’s personal phone after they’d made love in the dining room, Lydia’s mind now filled with the myriad women she’d seen pictured on his arm. Nausea filled her twisted stomach. Which one of those women had been the one to try to reach him that day? Had she been the woman he’d wanted to marry?

‘Not many,’ he confessed.

It took a long beat before she could force herself to ask, ‘And of those, how many have you even contemplated a proper relationship with?’

He took a deep, long inhale as if bracing himself before saying, his voice heavy, ‘Just one.’

A sharper, hotter twist in her stomach and a deeper roll of nausea stopped her probing any further.

He tightened his hold around her and kissed the top of her head. ‘I made my vows toyou, my angel. Never forget that.’