Page 66 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

She was his now. She was carrying his child and, whether her brother liked it or not, tomorrow Lydia would be his wife, and hell would freeze over before he ever let her go.

Lydia, sitting on the windowsill trying to take in the spectacular view of clear blue seas, turned her head to the opening bathroom door and wasn’t quick enough to avert her eyes when Alexis stepped through it with only a towel around his waist. One quick glance was enough to fill her senses with the hard, muscular body she’d spent the last ten minutes studiously refusing to imagine under the shower.

Studiously refusing to remember the sculpted perfection of.

Bodies like his should be illegal.

Funny what the memory remembered best though.

For Lydia, it hadn’t been his sculpted perfection that had stuck so close but the texture of his skin and the taste of his kisses.

It was a darkly addictive taste that came from the whole of him, a taste she reacted instinctively and primitively to and that destroyed her willpower with one tiny morsel.

She heard the tread of his footsteps crossing the travertine floor and pressed her hand to her thumping heart.

‘Ready for your shower?’ he asked in that infuriating cheerful manner he had.

‘I’ve nothing to change into,’ she reminded him, refusing to turn her head again.

‘I have clothes you can wear.’

‘No, thank you,’ she said stiffly.

‘Afraid that wearing my clothes will feel too much like wearing my skin?’

Unable to think of a retort, she blew out a puff of air.

‘We’ll be married tomorrow, angel. What is mine becomes yours.’

‘No, it doesn’t. I already said I’d sign any prenup you demanded.’

‘We don’t need a prenup.’

That made her turn her head. ‘Why not…?’ The question had barely left her lips when she made the fatal mistake of dipping her gaze and taking in the unmistakable appendage clearly defined beneath the towel.

With a pulse of heat throbbing between her thighs, she shot her gaze back out of the window, but not before she caught the gleam in his eyes.

‘You look hot, angel. Sure you don’t want to wear my clothes?’

‘Oh, shut up,’ she muttered. ‘And stop calling me “angel”.’

‘But you are an angel…although I have yet to decide if you come from heaven or only from Hades.’

‘Definitely just Hades.’

He laughed lowly, his footsteps treading away. ‘What would you prefer I call you? Wife?’

‘I’m not your wife.’

‘Yet.’

‘Why don’t you want a prenup?’

‘We don’t need one. We agreed our marriage would be a commitment for life and I am trusting you to stick to your word.’

‘That’s a huge risk you’re taking.’

‘What is life without a little risk?’ His voice came closer again. ‘Now why don’t you take the risk of showering and then change into this shirt? I promise, it will not bite you and I promise you will be a lot more comfortable than you are in those things.’

Wishing she could blame the heat flooding her skin solely on the setting sun’s beams penetrating the window, Lydia jumped off the windowsill, snatched the blue garment from Alexis’s hand and stomped to the bathroom, all without looking at him.

His laughter lingered in her ears long after she’d slammed the bathroom door shut.

Where had this late-onset dose of vanity come from?

Lydia wondered with fresh despair. She shouldn’t be staring at her reflection wishing for a hairdryer and her makeup bag.

She hardly ever wore makeup as it was! And why the hell were her nipples jutting out like that?

Alexis would take one look at them and assume she was aroused just from wearing his shirt.

Damn him, he’d be right. It really did feel as if she were wearing his skin.

Maybe she should just storm back into the bedroom and push him onto the bed.

Get it over with. Use him to get all these hot sticky feelings out of her system and then she’d be able to think more clearly.

He wouldn’t mind being used in that way.

He’d revel in it, his massive ego taking it to mean that she was desperate for him.

Damn the bastard, he’d be right, and she would never willingly feed that damned ego or hand any more power to him.

Hanging on the back of the door was a black robe.

She yanked it down and shoved her arms into it, then tied it tightly.

It fell to her ankles. After rolling the sleeves, she checked her reflection again and expelled a long breath.

Visually, that was much better. Now she was fully covered with an extra layer of protection to stop her treacherous body giving her away.

If only the weight of the robe didn’t make her feel as though he were embracing her…

To Lydia’s relief, the bedroom had been empty of Alexis.

Less of a relief had been the expression on his gorgeous face when she’d appeared on the patio to join him for dinner.

Amusement. He’d taken one look at the robe and known exactly why she was wearing it.

The worst of it was that he didn’t have to say a word, and now she was picking at her food and sweltering under the humid air even more than she’d done earlier when the sun had blazed.

She would not give him the satisfaction of asking if they could eat inside where the air-conditioning worked like a dream.

‘How many properties do you own?’ she asked, just for something to say, something to distract from the heat of the sensuous stare she couldn’t stop her eyes from seeking.

‘Eight for my personal use. As for my business portfolio…’ He shrugged and shook his head. ‘Do you want me to include business properties like nightclubs and retail units or just the properties I rent out?’

She blinked. ‘You own nightclubs?’

‘I own many businesses.’

‘I know, but I’d never heard of you owning nightclubs.’

‘Most of the businesses I own or invest in are done through a company my name is only attached to if a lot of digging is done.’

‘Why the secrecy?’

‘I don’t need my family knowing my net worth. My siblings have bled my father dry over the years. If I fail to save Tsaliki Shipping then I will have to support them—I am supporting them—but they need to learn to fend for themselves.’

She took a moment to digest this. ‘Did you know our fathers’ rivalry was going to lead to their downfall?’

He speared a lemon potato. ‘I saw long ago the way things were headed. The world we live in is very different from the one they lived in when their war started. The bottom line is the bottom line, but investors are no longer so willing to risk reputational damage—it matters much more than it did even a decade ago.’

‘That goes for clients too,’ she pointed out, thinking of the contracts Tsaliki Shipping had lost since the whole toxicity of the rivalry had been exposed.

He bowed his head in agreement.

‘You say about your siblings bleeding your father dry…does that mean you see me as a freeloader too?’

His eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘Of course not.’

‘I still live with my parents…well, on their estate… and the majority of my income comes from my shares in Antoniadis Shipping.’

‘But you still work. You don’t rely on your parents’ largesse.’

‘Of course I do, and from tomorrow I’ll be relying on yours, especially when Antoniadis Shipping files for bankruptcy and I lose my income from the shares.’

He fixed her with a stare. ‘Have you ever demanded a brand-new penthouse apartment? Or a chalet in Gstaad? Or your own yacht? Or a McLaren fresh off the production line?’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it, and if I did, I’d be told to buy them myself.’

‘And that is my point—my siblings not only dream of those things but see it as their right, and my father never says no. He happily bled money supporting his own lifestyle, Rebecca’s, his ex-wives’ including my mother’s, and all his children.’

‘Including Lucie?’

‘Lucie’s not his daughter.’

‘Is that why you thought it was okay to treat her like dirt and trick her into believing she was in love with my brother?’

The dig landed. She saw it, the tightening of his features.

‘Lucie agreed to marry your brother. I did not coerce her or bribe her or blackmail her. She agreed of her own volition, and then she let her emotions get the better of her and broke her word—we all knew how things would end if she failed to marry Thanasis; it’s what’s playing out now.

Her amnesia gave us all the chance to play the card again and if your brother hadn’t been so damned stupid as to tell her the truth, she wouldn’t have run again and your family wouldn’t be facing bankruptcy. ’

‘And I wouldn’t be sitting here.’

Now he was the one to consider what had just been said. ‘Would you ever have told me about the baby if circumstance hadn’t forced you into it?’

‘Only out of obligation, but not before the baby was born.’

‘What the hell does out of obligation mean?’

‘I would have told you because you have a right to know and our child has a right to know its father, but I wouldn’t have asked for anything from you or wanted or expected anything.’

Incredulity rang from his eyes. ‘You think I wouldn’t have heard about the pregnancy once you started showing?’

She had a small drink of her water, holding the glass tightly to stop him seeing the tremor in her hand. ‘I’d planned to hide myself away after Lucie and Thanasis’s wedding. I’m not one for the society social scene so no one would have missed my presence.’

‘What about your family?’ he asked in disbelief. ‘How the hell did you think they were going to react when you told them? Your brother would have hunted me down.’

‘I wasn’t going to name the father to anyone until after the birth. My hope was that my parents would fall in love with the baby before I told them. I hoped that loving it would make it harder for them to turn their back on it.’

He put his cutlery down and pushed his plate to one side to lean forwards. ‘Did you, at any point in all your plotting, consider my feelings and what I would have wanted?’

‘Alexis, I was just another notch on your bedpost. If you hadn’t taken me back to your apartment that night some other woman would have gone with you, and if you remembered me it would only be because of who I am and the fact that we didn’t exactly part on good terms. I thought you’d be relieved to be let off the fatherhood hook. ’

‘Let off the fatherhood hook?’

For the first time since she’d known him, Lydia saw real anger on his face.

‘Oh, come on,’ she defended herself, gripping her forearm. ‘I can’t be the first woman you’ve had a condom mishap with. For all I know, there could be a dozen mini Alexises stashed away around Europe.’

‘No, Lydia, there are no mini Alexises, not in Europe or anywhere. What you and I shared that weekend was not normal , do you not understand that?’

‘You called me a not particularly memorable one-weekend stand only yesterday!’ she protested.

His lips twisted. ‘They were just words. In my world, what counts is actions and intentions, and your intention until your hand was forced otherwise was to keep me out of my child’s life. You didn’t even want me to share in the pregnancy with you.’

‘Only because that’s what I thought you’d want!’

He stared at her for the longest time, long enough for her trembling insides to turn into a guilt-ridden quivering wreck. ‘Then you don’t know me at all.’

‘Alexis…’

He cut her off with the scraping-back of his chair. ‘I’m going to bed. I haven’t slept for two days and need to sleep. Finish your meal and join me when you’re ready—I choose to believe that it’s sleep deprivation causing my dinner to taste so bitter.’

He disappeared inside without another word.

Lydia crept into the bedroom. She’d seriously debated finding another room to sleep in but didn’t want to make matters worse. She’d angered Alexis enough as it was.

Her heavy heart twisted to see the dim bedside light left on for her. Twisted harder to see the huge form burrowed beneath the sheets and the flash of black hair poking out of the top.

In the bathroom, a toothbrush still in its packaging had been left on the ledge above the sink for her, and she brushed her teeth automatically, her head too full of the man she was about to slide under the sheets beside to even pay attention to the action of rinsing her mouth out.

Was it possible that she’d hurt him?

It had never crossed her mind that Alexis was capable of feeling something as everyday human as hurt, but, hurt or anger or both, it didn’t matter, she’d caused it. Hurt or anger or both, she still felt wretched.

The heavy robe hung back on the door, she tiptoed to the bed holding tightly to her thrashing heart and carefully slipped under the covers.

It wasn’t until she turned the light off and the only noise to be heard through the darkness was the blood roaring in her ears did she realise Alexis, his back turned to her, was still awake.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, guilt driving her words.

‘I shouldn’t have made assumptions. I was…

’ Terrified. The positive sign on the pregnancy test had unleashed a swathe of emotions but terror had been the strongest, a future as a single mother without the family who’d always loved and protected her all she could see.

Her family who were already having to deal with the prospect of losing everything.

The thought of tracking Alexis down a second time to tell him the news and what she’d believed would be the strong likelihood of him contemptuously offering to pay her off had terrified her too.

The bad feelings they’d parted with had still tasted bitter in her mouth but, as hard as she’d tried, she’d been completely unable to stop her mind being consumed by him.

Been completely unable, too, to stop her heart skipping and her stomach lurching every time her phone made a noise.

Knowing the life growing inside her meant she would be tied to Alexis for the rest of her life…

that had been the most terrifying thing of all.

She swallowed to force her next words out. ‘I can make all the excuses in the world but I should have told you as soon as I knew.’

His silence spoke louder than any verbal answer could have done.