Page 104 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

CHAPTER NINE

The first port the boat stopped in was on Crete, at the ancient city of Heraklion, which they explored on foot.

Jane was in awe of the history, transfixed by the beauty and so captivated that she hardly had time to think about what had happened that morning.

When she did think about it, her cheeks flushed and her lips twisted into a smile, because it had been perfect.

Not just what had happened between them on the deck, but afterwards, too.

When he’d walked with her, hand in hand, into the yacht to a palatial bathroom, so she could shower.

He’d offered her space, but she’d shaken her head because she didn’t want space.

She’d wanted him. More touching. More feeling. More kissing.

He’d stirred something to life inside her and it was turning out to be quite insatiable.

They’d showered together, loofah-ing one another with sudsy bubbles, kissing, laughing, worshipping some more, and when they were finished, he wrapped her in a towel and gave her a brief tour of a small section of the boat—ending in his bedroom.

They’d stayed there, in bed, until the boat had stopped moving and Zeus had glanced through the windows and commented, ‘We’re in port. Fancy some exploring?’

She’d been reluctant to leave the boat, which had been obvious to Zeus. He laughed. ‘Just for a few hours, agapaméni. We’ll be back soon.’

In the end, she was glad she’d agreed, because Heraklion was incredible. Not just beautiful, though it was that; the city was charged with a strange energy. As though all the layers of its history were still here, somehow, caught between the wide streets and stone buildings.

‘Hungry?’

She hadn’t realised it until now, but she was famished. ‘Definitely.’

‘I know a place.’ He gestured with his hand, then caught hers in his, and glanced down at her.

Jane’s eyes met his and she almost lost her footing, so powerful was the sense of something flashing between them.

She smiled quickly and out of nowhere, thought of Lottie and her duty to her best friend, and her whole body seemed to weaken.

‘Here.’ He gestured again to a charming little restaurant.

The glass-panelled door was painted a bright blue, the awnings above the windows were blue-and-white-striped and the chairs on the sidewalk were white wrought iron.

At each table, there was a small vase with a single carnation placed inside.

It was quaint and charming, rustic and old-fashioned, everything Jane adored, but she felt slightly off-kilter in that moment, with the mental reminder of how duplicitous this all was.

Except it wasn’t, she reminded herself forcibly.

She was here with Zeus for one week. That was all.

It didn’t matter that she’d been sent by Lottie with a ploy to delay his ability to propose to anyone else.

It didn’t matter that meeting him hadn’t been fate or an accident, but rather part of Lottie’s scheme.

It didn’t even matter that if she ever had to make a choice between Lottie and Zeus, she would choose Lottie—of course she would, because they had been best friends for over a decade, and each woman meant the world to the other.

She’d never have to make that choice, though, because Zeus would never know about Jane’s connection to Lottie. This week was safe from all of that.

She exhaled as they were shown to a table by the window, and Jane was glad to be sitting inside, in the air-conditioning, rather than at the tables on the sidewalk. As charming as they were, the afternoon sun was beating down and she suspected it would be unbearably hot to sit there and eat.

They ordered calamari and a salad and a glass each of white wine, and while they ate, Zeus mostly talked about the island. Lottie had a very soft recollection of its history, courtesy of school classes, but nothing had really sunk in. Zeus, she discovered, was somewhat of an expert.

‘How do you know all this?’ Jane asked as coffee was delivered, along with a single enormous slice of ketaifi .

Zeus seemed to hesitate. ‘My mother loved history. When she was unwell, I would read her books—histories, historical accounts, myths. She loved it all. She was incredibly proud to be Greek,’ he said, one side of his lips twisting in what might have been described as a smile by someone who’d never seen his actual smile.

Something heavy thudded in her stomach. Guilt.

Because Zeus’s mother had died only recently, and yet he was carrying on as though everything was fine and normal. But surely, he was still grieving her?

‘You said she was sick?’

His lips tightened, outlined by white. ‘Yes.’

Which was shorthand for, ‘can we not talk about it’?

But if they were to know one another only for the rest of this week, then Jane wanted to really know him. To leave no stone unturned. It wasn’t as though she’d be able to pick up the phone in a month’s time and ask him whatever she’d forgotten to ask now. Leaving Zeus would be a one-way trip.

‘And you helped care for her?’

He flinched slightly, looked towards the window. Walling himself off from her. Beneath the table, she pushed one foot forward so she could stroke his ankle.

‘We had nurses,’ he answered, reluctantly. Slowly. ‘Around-the-clock care, in the end.’

Jane nodded, but he wasn’t looking at her.

‘My father preferred to stay by her side. I took over the business at her lowest points, when he couldn’t bear to leave.’

He painted a bleak picture, though he spoke of it with such sparing words. ‘It went on for a while?’

Zeus turned to face her then, held her gaze for several beats before reaching for his coffee—thick and dark. Again, she thought of Lottie with a pang in her chest.

‘Her first diagnosis was when I was nine years old.’

Jane closed her eyes against the pain of that.

‘It became normal,’ he said, stiffly. Coldly.

In a way that was rehearsed. Like he’d said this before, or at least thought it.

‘She was sick, and then she wasn’t. Periods of remission were, at first, like the sun, breaking through after a fierce storm.

The sheer sense of relief was almost crippling.

But then she became sick again. Then better, then sick.

I stopped expecting recovery—or even for her periods of wellness to last. Every day she felt good was a gift, but I knew, I always knew, it was temporary. ’

Jane shook her head, trying to stem the tears that were making her eyes sting.

She didn’t know what to say. She personally knew people who had recovered from cancer.

Who’d gone into remission and stayed there.

What Zeus’s mother had experienced sounded like an unbearably aggressive and harrowing form of the disease.

‘I’m so sorry,’ was all she could say, the words slightly tremulous.

‘It’s life,’ he said, and for all that her voice had been rich with emotion, his was utterly devoid of it. Even his eyes were cold when they met hers. Cold in a way she’d never expected to see in Zeus. Ruthlessly blanked of feeling, of sentiment. ‘It’s unpredictable and cruel.’

‘Not always.’

‘No?’

She shook her head. ‘Most of the time, life is wonderful. And the unpredictable is part of what makes it so.’

He stared at her for several beats and then glanced back towards the window. ‘We’ll have to agree to disagree, agapaméni .’

But she didn’t want that. She didn’t want him to be so burdened by his pain, by the unpredictability of his mother’s illness, by the impact that had clearly had on him. They had one week together, and she couldn’t bear to think of him living with such a dim view of the world.

‘How is your father?’ she asked, to draw his attention back to her and, obliquely, their conversation.

Zeus continued to stare out at the street, one of his large hands holding the small coffee cup in a way that, in other circumstances, she would have found amusing.

‘In reference to my mother’s death?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s complicated.’

Jane frowned. ‘Why?’

Zeus turned to face her then, scanning her features as though he’d forgotten who she was, and Jane’s heart went cold. After what they’d shared that morning, she didn’t ever want him to look at her like that. She blinked away, tears stinging her eyes for another reason now.

‘He loved her very much,’ Zeus said, finally. ‘They married young, essentially grew up together in many ways. She was his partner in every way. He is…bereft.’

Jane glanced back at him in time to catch an expression on his features that spoke of resentment. Anger. She frowned a little. There was more here than Zeus was telling her.

‘And you?’ she pushed, aware that he didn’t want to be having this conversation but continuing regardless. ‘You must also be bereft?’

‘I was prepared for it.’

She flinched. ‘Does that make a difference in the end?’

‘It must.’

She shook her head, frustrated. Because he was stonewalling her.

He was hiding his feelings rather than admit them.

She knew Zeus now. She knew his emotions ran deep, and that he must still be feeling an enormous black hole of grief for the mother he’d only recently lost. Or was he so determined to conquer grief, to be strong over it, that he refused to accept it, even to himself?

‘I knew it was coming, Jane. From when I was just a teenager, I had prepared myself for it. As I said, every day she was well was a gift, when she wasn’t, it was…my baseline. I braced for her death, and in the end, she was in so much pain, barely lucid. It was a release for her. I know it was.’

A tear slid down Jane’s cheek. He spoke so calmly, so sensibly, but Jane couldn’t hear his description without feeling all the pain of what he was describing.

‘Don’t cry, please,’ he insisted, reaching for a napkin so he could lean over the table and wipe her cheek gently.

‘It’s just… I’m so sad for you.’

‘Don’t be. Do I look sad?’