Page 72 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
To his incredulity, water filled her eyes and a tear spilled down her cheek. Palming the cheek, he wiped the tear with his thumb. ‘I thought this would make you happy.’
Blinking back more tears, she bit into her bottom lip and gave a shaky smile. ‘It does. I’m just feeling a bit emotional—probably tiredness and baby hormones.’
He gazed at her intently. ‘You are sure that’s all it is?’
She nodded and wrapped her arms around him, nestling her cheek into his shoulder. ‘I’m sure. What you’ve done in here is beautiful.’
He held her tightly, breathing in the scent of her hair and rubbing his hands over her back, and assuring himself that she was here, that Lydia was his and that given time she would understand the fullness of what that meant…
And understand that he was hers too.
The weight Lydia had entered Alexis’s apartment with had become heavier overnight and now, hugging her knees on the bed and watching him dress for the office, she could swear she felt it all the way down to her toes.
It was time for reality to pierce the bubble they’d made for themselves. It already had. It hadn’t occurred to her that in all the time they’d spent together he must have turned his phone off because it was currently leaping around on his dresser like a jumping jack.
‘Are you not going to answer it?’ she asked, trying not to sound wistful.
He met her stare in the reflection of the mirror he was doing his tie up in front of and shook his head. ‘I’ve seen and heard enough. The rest can wait until I’m in the car.’
‘I suppose I should look at my phone too,’ she sighed and flopped her head back on the pillow. ‘Anything I should be prepared for?’
‘Lucie’s still in hiding. The press are still stalking your brother.
’ He grimaced and dipped his fingers into a pot on his dresser and rubbed his hands together before dragging it through his black hair.
‘A rumour was published overnight on one of those British gossip sites that Lucie ran away to escape a forced marriage.’
Lydia’s heart sank. ‘Which site?’
He told her. It was a name that meant nothing to her.
‘I’ve instructed my lawyers to get it taken down but…
’ He closed his eyes a moment. ‘Once a rumour is out there it can be impossible to stop it taking on a life of its own. I’ve had my fair share of lies and innuendoes published.
Normally I ignore them but this one…’ He shook his head.
‘This one has the potential to cause real damage.’
She thought of the woman she’d seen on the supply boat early Friday morning, when she’d still been working out how she was going to manage three days on Sephone avoiding all contact with Alexis.
She’d dreaded it, had felt sick to the pit of her stomach to imagine even glimpsing him.
It had been bad enough seeing his face all over the media on a near daily basis.
Worse that in a few moments of weakness she’d searched his name herself.
Worse still that the algorithms on the social media sites she used had kicked in, and, along with all the graphic-design-related posts, art, music and book posts curated to her specific tastes, had started infecting her feed with posts about Alexis Tsaliki.
It meant that since their night together she’d been subjected to regular pictures of him dining and partying with a variety of beautiful women.
If anything, his libido had become even more ravenous.
There had been three different women in the last month alone.
And that was why she’d kept her mouth shut about Lucie being on the supply boat.
If Lucie had needed to run then let her run free, even if one of the consequences of Lucie’s freedom had been Lydia’s own entrapment with the man she’d hoped to hide away from for ever.
Or at least until their baby was born and all the feelings their night together had brought out in her had had the good sense to disappear.
‘You’ll be safe though, won’t you?’ she asked, now trying not to sound anxious.
‘On a personal level, yes, but when it comes to Tsaliki Shipping…’ He lifted his shoulders and grimaced again.
‘You can only fight so many fires at one time. Too many and it becomes impossible to contain.’ Striding to the bed, he leaned over and kissed her.
‘I’ll try not to be late but with everything going on, I can’t guarantee it. Call me if you need me, okay?’
‘Just go and fight your fires and don’t worry about me.’
He smiled wryly. ‘When I imagined marrying, I didn’t imagine we’d only have a day for the honeymoon period.
’ Another kiss and then he was off, snatching his suit jacket from the armchair he’d draped it over, leaving Lydia puzzling over words that made no sense.
They’d agreed to marry only four days ago and that was to put out Lydia’s own fire, so why would he have imagined… ?
A needle of ice injected itself into her heart.
Her brain working hard, she climbed off the bed and treaded her toes into the newly laid hardwood floor and thought back to the time she’d had contractors in to lay new flooring in her cottage.
It had been a lot more involved than she’d initially envisaged.
This bedroom was huge and the intricacy of the flooring design meant a specialist had been employed to lay it, and she just couldn’t work out how Alexis’s staff had found a specialist floor layer and employed them to remove the old stuff and then prep and lay the new stuff to this specific design in a maximum of three days.
Despite the warm welcome she’d received on her arrival, Lydia was still apprehensive about leaving the bedroom.
Hunger drove her out. Feeling very much like a house guest abandoned by the owner, she headed to the kitchen she’d been given only a cursory tour of and found the chef already busy preparing for the evening dinner.
Once she’d got over her shock at being addressed as despina , a term she was used to associating with her mother, who was the lady boss of her household—Lydia absolutely did not feel like a despina —she still felt too much like a guest to say she’d find herself something to eat as she always did at home.
Her parents employed chefs too but once she’d moved into the cottage, she’d had the urge to learn to cook for herself.
While she would never win any culinary prizes, strapatsada for breakfast was the one meal she’d mastered to suit her own taste buds, especially since she’d become pregnant.
Hurried footsteps were followed by the flustered appearance in the kitchen of the maid who’d shown Lydia out of the apartment three months earlier.
‘My apologies, despina ,’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear you leave your room. Let me show you to the dining room—the table has been set for you…unless you prefer to eat somewhere else?’ she added with a touch of anxiety.
‘The dining room works fine for me, thank you.’ Her words had barely left her mouth before she was being chivvied to the smaller of the two dining rooms.
Thinking wistfully of her sunny kitchen and the table she’d managed to wedge by the bay window where she ate every morning looking out over her own private patch of the Antoniadises’ landscaped gardens, Lydia took her seat and stared at the abundance of food that had been set out for her.
It was the kind of spread she’d woken to every morning of her childhood and adolescence when the family had come together for the one meal where it was just the four of them.
It was a rare evening meal when it was just them, her parents’ open table policy being taken advantage of by extended family, friends, business associates and even employees, the evening meal often feeling like an extended board meeting.
Once she’d officially moved out to what was essentially the cottage at the bottom of the garden, Lydia had still joined them most evenings for dinner, and her heart clenched tightly as it suddenly occurred to her that she’d already enjoyed her last evening meal with them.
‘Coffee, despina ?’
She nodded, blinking back the sudden swell of tears and prodding at her eye to make it seem as though she had something caught in it. ‘Yes, please. Sorry, what’s your name?’
‘Maya.’
Another Maya. Lydia’s lungs opened a little wider. She’d never known a horrible Maya.
‘Can I be of any further assistance?’
‘I’m good, but thank you…actually there is one thing.
’ Before she could talk herself out of asking it, she said, ‘The flooring in the bedroom is different from when I was last here.’ No point pretending that she hadn’t made the walk of shame with this woman.
Mercifully, she wasn’t feeling any judgy vibes from her. ‘How long ago was the new floor laid?’
Maya’s forehead furrowed a little. ‘I think two, maybe three months ago. I can check.’
‘Don’t worry about doing that.’ She dredged all the brightness into her tone that she could muster. ‘I was just curious—it’s all so different from how I remember it.’
If the maid’s face hadn’t turned the colour of the tomatoes the chef would be using to make Lydia’s strapatsada , there was a slim chance she would have pushed the timing of the new flooring and the other niggling things to the back of her mind, but Maya’s bright red cheeks, tight lips and the way she was rubbing at her skirt told a story Lydia valiantly assured herself it was better to know now.
The words Alexis had said before he’d distracted her by telling her the bed was brand new and so silently confirming he’d not shared it with any of his other lovers came back to her.
‘When I knew I would be marrying, I set things in motion…’
The drastic change in his bedroom hadn’t been for her sake. The wheels for the change had started turning weeks, even months before she’d begged him to marry her.
Whoever Alexis had imagined himself marrying, it hadn’t been her.