Page 75 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

CHAPTER TEN

A LEXIS STUDIED L YDIA discreetly but thoroughly as they shared their evening meal on the roof terrace.

The humidity had lessened a little, the blazing heat of the day now a bearable warmth, and she’d changed out of her faithful jeans to sit out in it, wearing a simple cream skirt and silver scooped top.

The silky hair he adored loose had been tied into an elegant knot and she must have trimmed her fringe because she hadn’t spent half the evening blowing it out of her eyes.

Watching her gracefully fork succulent slow-cooked lamb into her succulent mouth made his chest tighten.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he murmured, almost without thinking.

She gave a narrow-eyed smile. ‘What brought that on?’

He raised a shoulder. ‘Just making an observation. Did you speak to your mother?’ Lydia had said before he’d returned to the office that she was going to call her.

She nodded ‘She’s expecting me home on Sunday.’

Sunday. The date they would tell their families and then the world about their marriage.

The small amount of light in her eyes dimmed. ‘She thinks I’m coming home. She doesn’t know I’m only coming back to stick the boot even harder into them.’

‘What are you going to say to them?’

‘I don’t know.’ Gazing into the distance, she said, ‘I keep thinking about what I can say that will stop them hating me or at the least stop them hating our child.’ Her stare landed back on him.

‘Mum already thinks Lucie used witchcraft to cast a spell on Thanasis. It’s a long shot but she might just believe you used your Lucifer powers to trick me into your bed and into a marriage. ’

‘Even though marriage was your idea and you said your vows under your own free will?’ he said steadily.

‘She doesn’t need to know that.’

‘Doesn’t she?’

‘It would be the most unforgivable thing I could do. You know this.’

‘Even though I am prepared to lay it straight with my family and tell them to accept you or else?’

‘It’s different for you.’

‘How?’

‘You hold the purse strings.’

‘I would still demand they accept you and our marriage even if I had no financial hold over them.’

‘My family will never accept you and never accept our marriage. If I’m lucky, they’ll let me and the baby through their door one day in the future but never you.’

‘And you won’t fight to make them accept me?’

She laughed morosely. ‘There would be no point. In their eyes, you’re Lucifer.’

And Lydia would never try to convince them otherwise.

Taking a deep breath to smother the acidic bile rising in his throat, Alexis said, ‘You know, there is still a chance your brother can pull a rabbit out of the hat and convince the investors to hold tight. It doesn’t have to be over for Antoniadis Shipping.

’ He gave a tight smile. ‘If the miracle does happen then your family might be more amenable to accepting me.’

Her laugh almost sounded convincing. ‘Not even Jesus could perform such a miracle.’

‘A lot can happen in two days,’ he pointed out.

‘Two sleeps but only one full day,’ she pointed out back before stabbing at some roasted butternut squash and dipping it into the feta and yogurt mousse.

‘I’m just saying don’t convince yourself it’s game over. Your brother has all the skills and acumen to turn it round.’

‘I know he does. It’s whether he has the will that’s in question. But let’s not talk about my family any more otherwise I’ll cry and this delicious food doesn’t need extra seasoning. How are things going for Tsaliki Shipping? Do you think you’ve stabilised things yet?’

He shook his head and took a drink of his red wine, which did nothing to smother the bitter taste on his tongue. ‘No. The story about us forcing Lucie to marry Thanasis refuses to die and I don’t see how it will if she doesn’t come out of hiding and officially deny it.’

‘You wouldn’t ask her to do that, would you?’

He took a long breath. If up to him he wouldn’t just ask Lucie, he’d force her, but he kept his private thoughts to himself.

His wife had proved very protective and defensive of his stepsister and he didn’t want to fall into an argument, not when he was already trying to rid himself of the bitterness that had risen in him at her refusal to even consider fighting for her family to accept him.

‘No. But I would hope she did it of her own volition.’

She pulled a rueful face. ‘I’m afraid that’s as likely to happen as my mother not disowning me. Lucie gave up her job and her home to marry Thanasis for your family’s sake, and she was repaid with lies. She doesn’t owe any of you or any of us anything.’

He eyed her meditatively and swallowed back fresh bitterness. ‘You make it sound like we’re still in opposing camps.’

‘I’m still an Antoniadis and always will be.’

‘But married to a Tsaliki and always will be,’ he reminded her, and then took another deep inhale to smother the agitation simmering in his guts. ‘For all that things are yet to stabilise, I remain confident that I can still turn things round with Tsaliki Shipping. Do you know of Hans Dreyman?’

‘The name’s familiar but I can’t think where from.’

‘Dreyman Co, the German food manufacturer, one of the top food manufacturers in the world. Their products are sold all over the world. You’ll know many of their brand names. We’ve been transporting their goods for years.’

‘Is this the contract you heard on the grapevine is threatening to look elsewhere?’

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 you will be 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.’