Page 78 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

‘I don’t know!’ All Lydia knew was how she’d felt in the moment when all the fears she’d tried so hard to bury had been realised and the future she’d been dreading had revealed itself more sharply and painfully than she’d ever allowed herself to imagine.

Oh, God, tears were burning the backs of her eyes, her heart thumping so hard the beats pounded like drums between her ears. She wasn’t just close to unravelling, she was close to disintegrating and she needed to get a grip on herself right now.

Large hands clasped her shoulders, his stare boring so hard into her that it compelled her to lift her gaze to the tight fury etched on his handsome face.

‘Do you seriously think I would try to hook up with someone else the first minute your back’s turned?

When we’ve only been married five minutes? ’

‘But that’s just it, isn’t it?’ she cried. ‘Five minutes or five weeks or five months, we both know it’s going to happen, especially when the baby comes!’ When she was sore and tired and needing her bed for sleep and only sleep.

If she’d thought his face was etched with fury before, it was nothing on what blazed on it now. Releasing her shoulders to fold his arms around his chest, he said tightly, ‘You never fail to assume the worst of me.’

‘I’m just being realistic! I do believe you that nothing happed with that woman but I can’t help how I feel and we both know it will happen in the future—you’re Alexis Tsaliki!

’ She did believe him—Alexis was no liar—but the jealousy and pain that had burned through her…

she could still feel its scald in her veins, and it came to her that one day soon, she would feel this pain and it would be for real, and if it hurt like this now then she couldn’t even imagine what it would feel like then, when he was burrowed even further into her heart.

‘I thought I knew what I was agreeing to and thought I could handle it but I can’t .

I should never have agreed to your terms and I wish like hell that I hadn’t.

I can’t pretend to be like your stepmother, I can’t ! ’

It was like the whole of his enormous body flexed. ‘What are you saying? Spell it out to me, Lydia.’

‘That I want to go home!’ she screamed. ‘My real home!’

For the longest time he simply stared at her before his features contorted into something almost inhuman. ‘Oh, you do, do you?’

She shivered, suddenly frightened, not of him but of something about him, the inhuman contortion that managed to be human enough to make her pounding heart twist.

The car that had so recently dropped her off pulled up before them.

Alexis opened the door, and in a tone cold enough to freeze the sun, said, ‘Get in.’

Wishing she could run away, run until her muscles screamed in protest, Lydia got into the car and compressed herself into the door at the far side.

Not a word or look was exchanged between them during the drive back.

For the first time ever, Alexis angled away from her…

No, that wasn’t right. He’d turned away from her the night before they’d married when she’d confessed her reasons for not wanting to tell him about their baby until it had been born.

In silence, they got into the elevator. Powerfully aware of his tightly controlled posture and of the tension emanating from him, Lydia squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated on breathing. She was trembling, every part of her turned to jelly.

He held the door open for her and then strode ahead, removing his suit jacket as he walked and throwing it onto the closest armchair in the living room. ‘Take the rest of the night off,’ he said curtly to the butler.

When Alexis was growing up, whenever a member of the family had an upset stomach, his father would order a port and brandy to be concocted for them, a medicinal trick he’d picked up on an English business trip.

Always as healthy as a horse, Alexis had never needed this concoction but the tight, nauseous feeling in his guts was worsening by the minute and he poured himself a healthy measure of both and drank it in one large swallow.

Pouring another, he restrained himself by only drinking half of it.

Only then could he bring himself to look at her.

Leaning against the bar, cradling his glass, he breathed in deeply and contemplated her with an evenness that was at complete odds with the heavy, erratic beats of his heart. He’d never felt the vibrations of his heart through his skin before.

Lydia had perched herself on an armchair. Her face, he noted cynically, was etched with misery.

‘So, my angel from Hades, you have decided that you don’t want to be married to me after all.’

She flinched. She would never know how fitting his name for her was. His beautiful angel sent from Hades to destroy him.

‘Just tell me one thing—was this your plan from the start?’

Her eyes widened, eyebrows drawing together in confusion. Her voice was barely audible. ‘Was what my plan?’

‘To hope for a miracle with Antoniadis Shipping.’

The throat he’d fooled himself into believing would be his to kiss for ever moved. ‘I hoped but I didn’t dare believe it would happen.’

‘But you did hope for it, and did you plan from the start to leave me if your hope was realised and the company saved?’

‘No, of course not.’

He gave a sardonic laugh. ‘So you’re an opportunist then. I should have known.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Don’t treat me like a fool. You only agreed to my terms because you didn’t trust that I would always provide for you and the baby without a ring on your finger.

The company being saved means your income from the shares is safe and you no longer need me, even if your family do throw you out and disown you.

’ He gave a tight smile. ‘And I am sure you know me well enough by now to know that I will still be a father to our child and provide for it.’

‘I have never thought that, not once.’

‘Maybe not consciously but your wish to return your real home tells its own story. Tonight was the perfect storm for you. You have never trusted me and seeing me with Angeliki gave you the out you’ve wanted from the start—you saw what you wanted to see and jumped at the escape route it opened for you. ’

‘That’s not true!’ she protested shakily. ‘Not in the way you’re making it out to be. I told you already, I do believe you that nothing happened or was going to happen between you, but—’

‘But you still saw what you wanted to see—what you expected to see—and jumped to the easiest conclusion because all you see me as is a sex-mad Lothario who would cheat on his pregnant wife at the first opportunity.’

‘No!’

‘ Yes. In your eyes I’m just Alexis Tsaliki, the commitment-shy Lucifer who can’t be trusted to keep his trousers on when a beautiful woman catches his eye.’

‘You never promised to be faithful to me.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘You did not ! When I said I wouldn’t waste my breath in asking it of you, you laughed .’

‘“I promise you love, honour and respect; to be faithful to you , and not to forsake you until death do us part”,’ he ground out. ‘To be faithful to you. I made that promise to you in front of witnesses and God.’

‘But you didn’t mean it!’ she cried. ‘You never once said you were going to take our vows seriously.’

‘Because I knew you wouldn’t believe me—in my world, actions speak louder than words, and I’d hoped, by proving myself a true and faithful husband to you, that you’d learn to trust me and believe in me, but as I’ve learned with you, I’m damned whatever I do. You don’t want to believe in me.’

‘I do, of course I do, you’re the father of my child, and it’s all well and good saying that actions speak louder than words but your track record…

You don’t have a track record! You’ve never sustained a relationship with a woman in the whole of your adult life!

For heaven’s sake, Alexis, you were only in a position to marry me in the first place because either you or the woman you came close to committing to got cold feet within weeks. ’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘The woman you were going to marry! The one you made the changes in your bedroom for! That happened weeks and weeks before we married and can only have lasted five minutes because I lost count of the number of women you were pictured with after I left your bed.’

The laughter that followed this landed like nails on a chalkboard to Lydia’s ears.

Shaking his head, his face twisted in something that could be either a smile or a grimace, he swirled the liquid in his glass before throwing it down his throat, and then he reached for the bottle of brandy, refilled the glass and took another large drink of it.

The smiling grimace was still alive on his face when his eyes next locked onto hers. ‘It was you.’

‘What was?’

‘The woman I was planning to marry. It was you, Lydia. It was always you.’