Page 59 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

CHAPTER TWO

O NLY WHEN SHE was quite sure that she was hidden amongst the trees did Lydia put a hand to a trunk to steady herself and heave up all the water she’d consumed that morning. Perspiration had broken out all over her skin but she had nothing to blot her face with.

She was shaking, inside and out.

She’d known within a week of her night with Alexis that she’d conceived, known it before her period had failed to arrive.

She hadn’t told a soul outside the medical profession, had kept it a tightly held secret in her heart.

A terrifying and yet miraculous secret. Terrifying because of how her family were going to react when they learned the identity of the father.

In the last six months or so Lydia had watched her parents age before her eyes, watched her father be removed from the company he’d founded and her brother installed in his place, and been subjected to a level of press intrusion she couldn’t even bring herself to wish on the Tsalikis.

The stress on everyone had been intolerable and she’d had no means to help, could only watch despairingly as her happy family began to disintegrate under the strain of it all.

She’d known the only way their family could rise before the business became ashes had been through forming a truce with the Tsalikis, something her parents had reacted to with fury when she’d suggested it.

Her brother though… Thanasis had taken the idea with his usual thoughtful consideration.

A seed had been planted. All she’d needed to do, so she’d figured, was plant another seed.

The question had been how to plant that seed without her family finding out.

The Greek shipping world was a world where nothing stayed secret.

There was no way she could waltz into Tsaliki Shipping’s headquarters and ask for a meeting without her parents finding out before she’d left the building.

Even an innocuous email would be leaked, and so Lydia had dressed up in a nineteen-sixties-style silver mini dress and knee-high heeled boots, and taken herself to Alexis Tsaliki’s favourite nightclub, the place he was regularly pictured spending his Friday nights.

Memories were funny things, she thought as she tried to breathe her body back under control. Some events passed and you looked back on them hardly able to remember a thing that had happened. With other events, every minute— every second —became etched in the memory…

Lydia had been to Athens’ most exclusive nightclub only once before, years ago, for a friend’s twenty-first birthday party.

As with the first time, she climbed the wide, rounded stairs to the VIP section.

This time she climbed them alone, and when she passed through the roped barrier, it was to a booth reserved for one.

She’d used half her month’s earnings to pay for this booth.

She gave it exactly fifteen minutes before carrying her champagne onto the dancefloor.

Lydia loved dancing, but that night the only thing she had in mind was attracting Alexis Tsaliki’s attention, and so she moved to the music keeping her stare fixed on the club’s most private booth, the one most hidden in the shadows, where a tall, well-built man with perfectly quiffed hair so dark it was almost black was holding court with a harem of sycophants hanging onto his every word.

Lydia would bet every woman at that table’s skirt was shorter than her own, and she’d gone as short as she dared without giving both her parents a heart attack.

If she wanted to attract his attention, she needed to look the part.

As she’d known would eventually happen, the eyes of the face she only knew from a distance drifted past her and then zoomed back. Their gazes locked. A flicker of recognition flared.

She raised her glass, smiled, and then sashayed off the dancefloor back to her booth.

Barely two minutes later, he slid into the booth beside her.

‘Lydia Antoniadis,’ he said, spreading out his long arms to rest along the top of the booth, taking a third of the available space. His cologne, a deliciously exotic scent that brought to mind untamed jungles, filled the rest of it.

‘Alexis Tsaliki,’ she replied with a sweet smile, refusing to be intimidated. But, wow, in person the man was even bigger than he’d looked from a distance, even taller and broader than her brother.

‘And to what do I owe this pleasure?’

‘Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you.’

Blue-grey eyes that made her think of winter skies and yet weren’t in the slightest bit cold narrowed almost imperceptibly before he beckoned a waitress and ordered two glasses of champagne.

‘So, Lydia Antoniadis,’ he said, settling back again and fixing his stare back on her. ‘Tell me why the youngest member of the family at war with my family is here alone in my hunting ground.’

She gave another sweet smile. ‘Catching my prey, of course.’

He leaned his face closer to hers, and what a face it was; not a single picture she’d seen of him over the years doing him the slightest bit of justice despite the camera loving him. ‘And for what reason do you want to catch me, Lydia Antoniadis?’

‘To ask you, Alexis Tsaliki, to consider a truce.’

The beautiful eyes narrowed. ‘Now why,’ he asked slowly, ‘would I want to do that?’

‘Because all the negative headlines and publicity mean your company is suffering as much as ours?’

‘I think you’ll find that your company is in much worse shape than my father’s. Or mine as it is now.’ Alexis had recently taken control of his father’s company. Rumour had it that he’d wrested it from him against his father’s wishes.

Their champagne was delivered. Alexis handed Lydia’s to her and then raised his own with a smile. ‘Your father was too reliant on outside investment, which has made it much more vulnerable to external forces than mine.’

She clinked her glass to his. ‘But all the negative publicity means Tsaliki Shipping is suffering a breakdown of consumer confidence as well as plummeting share prices. I understand you’ve lost three long-standing contracts in recent months.’

He had a drink of his champagne. ‘I didn’t think you were involved in Antoniadis Shipping.’

She swallowed half of her glass and smiled. ‘I’m not. But I am an interested party. Obviously.’

‘Obviously,’ he echoed. ‘An interested party close to losing everything.’

‘You can stop that happening.’

A smile tugged at his mouth. She couldn’t help thinking what divine lips they were, the perfect mouth with a fullness barely a fraction away from being feminine.

But there was nothing feminine about Alexis Tsaliki.

He was the most rampantly masculine man she’d ever met in her life and sitting in this booth with him, the full weight of his attention on her, she fully understood why he had such a high success rate with the ladies.

He didn’t need his wealth to attract them.

With his classically chiselled face complete with high cheekbones and strong nose, and bronzed skin the sun adored soaking itself into, all enhanced rather than disguised by his trimmed dark goatee beard, the man was sex on legs.

‘So in reality, it isn’t a truce you want—in any case, there has been an unspoken truce between us since I replaced my father at the top and the Antoniadis board forced your father to resign—you want my help to stop Antoniadis Shipping from going bust.’

‘Do you think you could?’

‘I’m sure I could.’ His gorgeous blue-grey eyes glimmered. ‘The question is, what’s in it for me? Since I’ve taken control of the business, the rot has stopped. Our share price is rising. Any contracts lost will be either replaced or regained.’

‘That could take years.’

‘I can play the long game.’

Now Lydia was the one to bring her face close to his. ‘The question, though, is can Tsaliki Shipping afford for you to play the long game?’

Their gazes held, challenge firing from both. And then the smile that had been tugging at Alexis’s divine lips pulled into a full-blown grin that filled her chest with an inexplicable warmth. ‘Do you drink tequila?’

‘Only if it’s the good stuff.’

His grin widened. The warmth in her chest spread.

‘Lydia?’ It was her mother’s voice, pulling her out of the memory she’d fallen into.

‘I’m here,’ she called back, wiping away tears she hadn’t felt fall.

Her mother emerged through the trees. ‘What are you…?’ She saw the redness of her daughter’s eyes and pulled her into an embrace.

‘We’ll survive, baba . You’ll see. So long as we all stick together, we can survive this and start again and come back stronger.

’ She stepped back and cupped Lydia’s cheeks.

‘Now dry your eyes—those vile Tsaliki people are on the island and I need you by my side to face them because God knows your father and brother are in no state to deal with them.’

‘Thanasis has fallen in love with her, hasn’t he?’ Lydia sniffed.

Her mother’s lips thinned. ‘He thinks he has, yes, but that kind of witchcraft is fleeting.’

She hesitated to ask, already guessing the answer. ‘Witchcraft?’

‘How else could Lucie have tricked him into forgetting that she’s a viper like the rest of them?’

‘So we are all in agreement, then,’ Alexis stated, eyeballing every person around the dining table with the exception of Lydia, who he skimmed past. He’d sent her a message saying to meet him on the beach at midnight.

Until that hour struck he could not allow himself to think of the news she’d thrown at him or allow himself to think about her.

‘We all keep our mouths shut.’ At this, he gave his sister an extra-hard stare.

Athena gave him her most innocent look.