Page 77 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A FTER TAKING A shower and having something to eat, Lydia sat in bed stalking her phone.
When Alexis had finally left for the party it was with a promise not to be too late and with the order that she be waiting in bed naked for him, an order she was more than happy to obey.
It was also with the promise that if he heard anything about her brother, he would call her, a promise she’d made in turn.
Putting her phone to one side, she gazed up at the ceiling. She had to stop worrying about the future. It would happen when it happened. For now, Alexis was hers and she was his…
Her phone rang.
She snatched it up. It was her mother.
Once the call ended she sat for a long time in a fugue trying to process everything.
She needed to call Alexis but as she put her thumb back to her phone, a massive burst of euphoria wrenched through her and suddenly she didn’t want to speak to him, she wanted to see him, needed to see him, right now.
Leaning over to the bedside table, she pressed the intercom.
‘Can you arrange for a car for me, please?’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll be ready to leave in ten minutes.’
Call done, she bounced off the bed and raced into her dressing room.
Throwing on underwear first, she chose a taupe dress she’d bought on a whim because she liked the colour but had never worn.
Mid-thigh-length, it wrapped around the neck halter-fashion but draped so cleverly over the breasts and belly that no one who knew her would suspect she was pregnant.
A vigorous brush of her hair, a sweep of mascara, blush and lip gloss and she was good to go…
until she was halfway down the stairs and realised she was barefoot.
Luckily she still had the sparkling silver sandals she’d bought for the wedding, and she slipped her feet into them, enjoying the elevated height they gave her.
Feeling like she could fly, she climbed into the back of the waiting car and told the driver to take her the short drive to Alexis.
The Nikolaidises’ home was classical Greek architecture at its finest, and when Lydia got out of the car she imagined senators from ancient times passing through the marble pillars flanking the entrance.
Helena Nikolaidis was at the door to greet her—without an official invitation Lydia had given her name to the security guards at the bottom of the drive who’d only taken her seriously because she was an Antoniadis and the fact she was being driven in a chauffeured car.
‘Forgive me for gatecrashing,’ Lydia said after they’d exchanged kisses, ‘but I’m here to see Alexis Tsaliki.’
Helena arched an eyebrow in surprise then quickly composed herself. ‘You are more than welcome,’ she assured her, although she was clearly itching to ask why Lydia would be seeking her family’s enemy. ‘Let me show you around and see if we can find Alexis—I can’t remember where I last saw him.’
Inside, the home was of a free-flowing semi-open-plan design with wide sliding doors separating the plentiful rooms, central to it all a stunning white marble circular staircase.
There was a real buzz in the air, champagne and canapés flowing, the music playing loud enough to dance to but low enough to still make conversation.
People, hundreds of them all clothed in beautiful dresses and tailored suits, were mingling all over the place, some in small huddles where it looked like they were exchanging state secrets and others in larger groups where they were clearly just enjoying each other’s company.
One of the waiting staff approached Helena and whispered something in her ear.
‘Excuse me,’ Helena said to Lydia. ‘There’s something I need to attend to. I won’t be long.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Lydia assured her. ‘I’ll find him.’
Alexis was so tall he should have been easy to spot, but after scanning all the faces on the ground floor, trying to blend in and be unobtrusive so as not to catch the attention of anyone who knew her, she’d seen no sight of him.
A small group of guests, though, were climbing the wide stairs from the basement, and, seeing another guest descend them, she decided to follow suit.
The basement was a vast, open space that covered the whole footprint of the house with artfully decorated pillars structurally supporting it running across its centre.
She saw two snooker tables in one section, gambling tables, a large fully stocked bar manned by three staff, comfortable sofas, caught a peek of a home cinema behind velvet curtains, but no Alexis.
Ready to cut back across the basement and go up and explore the gardens, she suddenly glimpsed a couple leaning against one of the pillars.
Or, rather, the man wearing the navy embroidered suit and holding a glass of champagne was leaning back against it.
The woman, taller, blonder and more beautiful than Lydia, was leaning into him, their torsos a feather away from touching, coquettish delight alive on her face.
Laughing, she put her hands around his neck, pressed her breasts into his chest and leaned in for a kiss.
Lydia’s chest turned to ice.
How the hell had he allowed himself to become trapped?
Alexis wondered. He still hadn’t spoken to Hans, and now Angeliki Poulis, an old flame, had made a beeline for him and was under the impression that he wanted to hear every last detail about her recent trip to Marrakech and that he would find every last detail as scintillating as she believed it to be.
Refusing to respond in kind to her flirtatious smiles and giggles, he simply waited with barely concealed impatience for her to stop talking so he could extract himself without having to cause a scene.
Angeliki was a spoilt daddy’s girl who thrived on drama.
Alexis didn’t want any drama, wanted only to find Hans, have a good talk with him, and then go home to Lydia.
But, of course, he couldn’t tell Angeliki that.
Angeliki had the biggest mouth in Athens.
When she put her hands around his neck and leaned her face closer for a kiss, his patience snapped. Clasping the hands, he was about to pull them off him when the hairs on the nape of his neck lifted.
Turning his head, he saw the small, curvy figure in the taupe dress some distance away, her gaze fixed on him with an expression that could only be described as agonised horror.
The drumming of blood in Alexis’s head and disbelief at the apparition before him froze him into place and froze his reactions, and now he was the one watching in horror as Lydia’s open mouth closed into a tight line and her beautiful face contorted.
She’d already reached the stairs when he pulled himself out of his stupor.
Disentangling himself from Angeliki like he’d been scalded, he hurried after his wife, taking the stairs three at a time and then taking the quickest, longest strides of his life to catch her as she stepped into the central reception room, overtaking her and then spinning around to block her path.
If it were possible for fire and brimstone to be fired from eyes then he was a damned man.
‘That was not what it looked like,’ he said immediately and firmly.
She folded her arms across her chest and gave a shrug of contemptuous nonchalance.
With a smile so brittle the slightest knock would shatter it, she said, ‘It really doesn’t matter.
I just came here to tell you that Lucie did come back to save Antoniadis Shipping—it appears she’s as madly in love with my brother as he is with her.
The investors believe she’s spent the last week in hospital with a relapse of her head injury.
A statement will be issued in the morning about the new date for the wedding.
Antoniadis Shipping has been saved and I imagine the knock-on effect will benefit Tsaliki Shipping too.
I just thought you’d want to know all that.
’ Her smile widened. ‘Looking at all the guests here, you’re going to be spoilt for choice over who to celebrate the hardest with. Enjoy the rest of your night.’
Lydia had barely taken three steps past him when Alexis caught her wrist and spun her back round.
‘What the hell, Lydia?’ he said tightly, his face dark with anger.
Drawing herself as tall as she could get, knowing the entire fabric of her being was a thread away from unravelling, she hissed, ‘Take your hand off me.’ And then she snatched her wrist away with such force that she stumbled, would have gone sprawling if he hadn’t caught her with one deft hook of his arm.
Before she could pull herself away a second time, he was frogmarching her through the reception room whilst simultaneously using the hand not trapping her to him to call his driver.
Once outside and away from the prying eyes of the other guests, Lydia pulled herself out of his hold and held tightly to her belly, as if she could protect the growing life from the cauldron of nausea bubbling and broiling inside her, the euphoria of her mother’s call all gone.
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ he demanded. ‘Nothing happened. Nothing was going to happen. I was about to extricate myself from the situation when I saw you standing there.’
‘I don’t care! I’m not your keeper!’
‘If you don’t care then why are you shouting and why the hell did you run away?’
‘Because it was humiliating!’
Because after the coldness of shock had come the heat…red-hot jealous heat.
She, the woman who’d never experienced an ounce of jealousy in her life, had wanted to fly at that woman with her arms around Alexis and physically drag her off him, and then batter her fists into his chest and scream in his face until he swore he would never look at another woman again.
‘ Humiliating? Angeliki didn’t know I was married—no one knew because you insisted we keep it a secret, but do you seriously think I was encouraging her?’