Page 106 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

CHAPTER TEN

‘You’re quiet ,’ he said as their dinner plates were cleared away.

He’d sat through the meal, watching Jane push her quinoa salad around on her plate and take minuscule bites of the chargrilled fish, occasional sips of wine.

It wasn’t like she’d been sulking. Nor ignoring him.

She’d asked questions about his grandparents, as well as the history of the area, but there was a tension in her that was very, very obvious.

In complete contrast to the way she’d been in the water that very afternoon.

Before he’d joined her and shut down her line of questioning.

Because she asked too much. No, she saw too much.

Other women had asked him personal questions, and he’d never found it hard to sidestep them.

With Jane, he felt a pull towards full disclosure, and it made him uncomfortable.

Hell, it made him want to break out in a cold sweat.

His one rule in life was not to trust anyone.

Or anything. He dealt in facts, figures, the tangible certainty of black-and-white numbers.

When it came to people, he expected to be disappointed. To get hurt.

‘I’m tired,’ she said, pulling her lips to the side. Lying. She was upset. Uncertain.

‘Jane,’ he said on a tight sigh, because he knew why she was upset now; he just wasn’t sure how to broach it.

He didn’t have to worry about that.

‘Zeus, I’ve never done anything like this before,’ she said after a beat, her voice a little uneven. ‘As you know.’ Those words were slightly acerbic. ‘I don’t really know how it’s meant to work.’

He stared at her. ‘Work?’

‘Yeah. Like, is it just sex? Is that the main thing we’re doing?’

His gut churned. Wasn’t that his stock in trade? How he usually had relationships? Sure, there was the polite dinner beforehand, a bit of surface-level conversation, but ultimately, he preferred to keep things easy. Casual. Enjoyable.

‘You’re upset.’

‘I’m trying to understand,’ she corrected with a defiant tilt of her chin, ‘how you expect me to be.’

‘I just want you to be yourself,’ he muttered, recognising the hypocrisy of that. As did she, evidently, because she sat back in her chair and crossed her arms, one brow arching upwards.

‘Are you sure? Because when I’m myself, and I try to ask you questions, you shut me down.’

She had a point, but she was also being a little unreasonable.

‘I spoke to you about my mother today.’

‘And it was like pulling teeth.’

‘What do you want? A therapy session? Would you like me to bare my soul to you?’

‘Not if you don’t want to,’ she snapped, reaching for her wine and taking a sip before replacing it on the table with enough force to slosh the liquid against the edges of the glass like a roiling ocean.

‘I don’t want to,’ he said, wishing the words sounded slightly less accusatory.

‘Fine, then. So, it’s just sex.’

But that characterisation sat ill in his gut. ‘Jane—’

‘No, it’s fine. It’s just good for me to know, so I can personally do a little less of the soul baring.’

He ground his teeth. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘This is my problem, not yours.’

‘What problem?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Jane—’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ She stood up and paced towards the railing, turning her rigid, straight back to him, staring out in the direction of Crete. He looked at her for several beats before pushing back his own chair and striding in her direction.

She whirled around as he approached. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

She was hurting. He’d hurt her. He shook his head, unable to accept that. ‘I’m sorry.’

She glanced away. ‘Don’t.’

‘This is different. Everything’s different with you. I don’t know what I’m doing, either.’

That had her eyes slamming back to his with a ferocity that almost knocked him backwards.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve been making conversation, asking questions about me, my life.

That’s fine. You’re not the first woman to be curious.

’ Her cheeks flushed pink. ‘But you are the first woman I’ve ever felt like I wanted to be honest with.

To actually talk to. Not as a means to an end, but because there’s something addictive about you.

And that scares the hell out of me, Jane. ’

‘Scares you?’ she repeated, her eyes on him like he was a puzzle she desperately wanted to break.

‘I don’t like things in my personal life to be unpredictable.’

She frowned, her features shifting, softening. ‘Because of your mother?’

His first instinct was to deny it. He hated to discuss any of it.

He’d built walls around his pain, and he liked having those walls there.

They kept him safe, secure, able to function in the world.

Because deep down, he knew that nine-year-old he’d once been was still a part of him, reeling from the very idea that his mother, the woman he loved more than anyone on earth, could possibly be so sick.

How could he deny it to Jane, though? Because it wasn’t just his mother. His father had further pulled the rug out from under him with the revelation of his infidelity and secret child. The sense of betrayal was immense.

‘I don’t trust easily,’ he said after a beat. ‘And yet, I find myself wanting to trust you, Jane. Why is that?’

Her eyes widened and her skin paled, almost as if it was the last thing she expected—or wanted—him to say. ‘I don’t know.’ A whisper, and then she reached for his hand. ‘But it’s something we have in common. I mean, after Steven, trusting anyone has been almost impossible for me, but with you…’

His eyes closed on a wave of acceptance. So, it was different, for both of them.

‘I get that you find it hard to open up to people, but you just lost your mother, Zeus. That’s got to bring up some issues. I’m just saying I’m here.’

For the next week, anyway. ‘I know,’ he said with a single nod. ‘And thank you.’

Jane wasn’t sure he should be thanking her. Not after she’d lost her temper, all because of his perfectly reasonable desire to maintain some personal distance between them. She’d felt lost, though, confused, worried that she was yet again feeling more for someone than she should. And wasn’t she?

I don’t trust easily, and yet I find myself wanting to trust you, Jane.

In the middle of the night, with Zeus fast asleep beside her, she slipped out of bed and moved from their room, out onto the deck.

It was an inky-black night with low cloud cover, meaning the stars were covered and those that weren’t were dimmed by the light pollution of Crete.

Nonetheless, she settled back onto the large pool lounger they’d shared that first night and stared upwards, as though answers would come to her if only she looked long enough.

Except they didn’t, perhaps because there was no satisfying answer.

Instead, she lifted her phone and tapped out a message to Lottie.

How’s it going?

‘Couldn’t sleep?’ Zeus’s voice was a deep rumble and Jane jumped, guilty at having been sending a message to Lottie—the woman who single-handedly wanted to bring about Zeus’s removal from his family business.

‘Nope.’

‘Funny, I thought you’d have been worn out,’ he teased, coming to sit beside her, sliding an arm around her and drawing her to his chest. She nuzzled in there, sighing at how right it felt to be this close to him, how much she loved it here.

‘Oh, you’re doing an excellent job in that department. Don’t worry, Mr Papandreo.’

‘Are you still upset?’ he asked after a slight pause.

She glanced up at his face, her heart turning over in her chest. She shook her head.

‘What did you mean earlier, when you said this is your problem, not mine?’

Jane’s stomach clenched. ‘Oh. It doesn’t matter.’

‘Now who’s avoiding the difficult questions?’ he asked, squeezing her shoulder lightly.

Her smile was half-hearted but then she sighed, resting in closer to his side, her hand absent-mindedly drawing spirals around his hip area.

‘I’m not close to my parents,’ she said, and if he thought it was a strange comment, he didn’t say anything.

‘Not like it sounds as though you were with your mother and are with your father.’

She felt him shift a little, and sympathy tightened in her gut.

Did he know about his father’s affair? Or was it multiple affairs?

There was so much Jane didn’t know, and yet the small amount of information she had about the other man made her angry.

On behalf of Lottie, yes, but now also on behalf of Zeus.

‘ Are you close with your father?’ she asked, tilting her face to his.

‘It’s complicated.’ He’d said that earlier today, too, when she’d asked about his relationship with Aristotle.

‘In what way?’

But he stiffened perceptibly. ‘We were talking about your parents,’ he reminded her, and a familiar sense of irritation sparked inside her chest. She didn’t push it, though.

She’d told him how she felt, and now it was up to Zeus to change, or not.

She knew that this was new for him, though, that he was grappling with the new experience of how much he wanted to confide in her, and that had to be enough.

‘When I say we’re not close, I mean… I barely have a relationship with them.’

He was very quiet, but his eyes were intensely focused on her face.

‘I was sent away to boarding school when I was very young, and I spent most of my time there. In the holidays, I would go home, and sometimes my parents were there, sometimes they weren’t. Usually, it was a nanny who had the most to do with me.’

He spoke soft and low, ‘I see.’

‘My father’s job required him to travel a lot. My mother went with him. They never planned to have children. I was a mistake.’

‘An accident,’ he corrected, as though the semantics of that might save her from the pain of knowing how unwanted she’d been.

‘I think my mother did her best for a few years, but she grew tired of it all. Hence, boarding school.’

He shook his head a little. ‘Were you at least happy there?’