Page 108 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Long, sun-drenched days bled into balmy, starlit nights, all of them spent either in the water, on ancient, stunning islands, or naked together on the boat.

Of all the weeks in her life, Jane had never known one to go as swiftly as this one.

It was as though time had been sped up, and they both sensed it.

They slept sparingly, catching a few hours here or there, when they were too utterly exhausted to fight it any longer.

They ate the most beautiful food, whether on the islands they visited, or aboard the boat. Zeus’s chef procured just-caught seafood, the ripest fruit and vegetables, and served it all simply, to showcase the delightful flavours.

And they talked. Not about Zeus’s mother, or his father, or Jane’s parents, but about their lives, their childhoods, their favourite movies, books, places they’d visited. They made each other laugh in a way that Jane knew she could become addicted to, if she weren’t very, very careful.

So, she was careful.

Careful not to let her guard down completely. Careful not to let her heart be exposed more than it had been. Careful not to fantasise about falling in love with a man such as Zeus. Or Zeus himself, more specifically, because she doubted that there was another man like him.

But two days before she was due to leave, as they were walking along a deserted beach at sunset, he stopped walking all of a sudden and spun Jane around, so that she was looking out to sea. He pulled her back against his chest, held her there, so her breath grew rushed and hot.

‘Do you see that mountain over there, in the distance?’

She squinted across the sea, to where a shape seemed to emerge from the middle of the ocean. ‘Yeah?’

‘That’s Prásino Lófo,’ he said.

She repeated the Greek words before tilting her face to his. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Very literally, it means Green Hill,’ he said with a slow smile.

‘Green Hill. Erm…very…er…creative.’

‘The name came with the island.’ He shrugged. ‘My grandfather bought it, as a gift for my yaya .’

Her smile slipped and she refocused her attention on the island itself. She couldn’t see much of it, but she tilted her face to his.

‘It’s your family’s island?’

‘When my parents married, my grandparents gave it to them as a wedding present.’

Jane nodded, but her mind was galloping ahead, even before he spoke the words.

‘It has always been promised to me, when I marry,’ he said. ‘It’s tradition.’

When he marries.

Someone else.

A reality that was far closer than Jane dared to think about. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

‘Some wedding present,’ she said, the words rushed and a little high-pitched. ‘I thought crystal bowls were the norm.’

‘Or candlesticks,’ he responded, squeezing her tighter around the waist.

‘Or at least registering for gifts. And I don’t think you could put a Greek island on your registry without people thinking you were a little touched in the head.

Then again, perhaps in the circles you move in…

’ She let the sentence taper off because she had no way of finishing it.

She didn’t want to contemplate Zeus marrying, belonging—in the sense that any human could belong to another—to someone else.

Coming home to her, holding her, kissing her, making love to her.

Jane squeezed her eyes shut, her back to him, before forcing the thoughts from her mind.

‘What’s it like?’

‘I haven’t been there in years,’ he admitted. ‘But I remember it as being quite beautiful.’

They began to walk once more.

‘It’s overgrown and lush, with forests from one side to the other, though my father did add a very nice home and a nine-hole golf course.’

‘As one does,’ Jane drawled, earning an indulgent smile from Zeus.

‘He stopped going there, once my mother was too ill to travel.’

‘It must have been so hard on you both,’ she murmured.

And perhaps because their time together was drawing to a close, he glanced down at her and said, ‘It was, at first. I didn’t know how to handle it.

Seeing her like that. She’d always been so vibrant, so alive.

And then she got sick, and the treatments were worse than the cancer.

She slept almost all the time. I couldn’t go near her in case I had a cold or flu.

It was almost impossible to understand, as a boy.

All I wanted was to be able to click my fingers and make her well. ’

‘Oh, Zeus,’ she said, shaking her head a little.

‘I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. They were very good at trying to keep everything as normal as possible for me, but I knew. I knew how sick she was, and that there was nothing I could do to help her.’

She squeezed his hand.

‘I hated it, agapeméni . I hated feeling as though I was powerless to do a damned thing. Seeing her in pain, my father heartbroken, my whole world slipped through my fingers. I could do nothing.’

She shook her head, tears threatening. ‘That’s not true.

You were there, for your father, and your mother.

You stepped in and helped with the business, you read her stories, you grew into the kind of man she must have desperately hoped you would be.

She would have been so proud of you, Zeus.

She got to see you become this.’ She squeezed his hand again, in the hope it would show him how much she meant it.

‘I think she would have liked to see me take a different path than this.’

‘In what way?’

He was quiet for several long strides, and then, on a long exhalation, ‘From a very young age, the company became my entire life. At first, it was an interest, a passion rather than anything else. But as she became more and more sick, it became a tangible distraction. Somewhere I could go and be useful. I had no power to heal my mother, but with the company, I was able to do something. I was good at it, too. I stepped into my father’s shoes.

I saw problems and I fixed them. I saw opportunities and took them.

I became obsessed and gradually, it became my whole life. ’

Something hard and sharp opened up inside Jane. A shape that was almost impossible to accommodate, and every step she took seemed to jag it against her ribcage.

‘But it’s just a business,’ she said eventually, the words a little breathless. ‘And isn’t the point of business to make money? Clearly, you have enough money.’ She sounded desperate to her own ears.

‘Money is the last thing I care about,’ he contradicted.

‘Then why does it matter so much?’ She couldn’t meet his eyes.

She couldn’t look at him without the dark, all-consuming sense of betrayal rearing up and swallowing her alive.

Lottie was going to take the business from him.

She was going to move heaven and earth to achieve that—anyone who knew Lottie knew that she always, always achieved what she set her mind to. And Zeus was going to lose everything.

‘Where do I begin?’ he said with a lift of one shoulder.

‘It gave me a sense of control. When things at home were spinning wildly away from me, and I could do nothing to help, in the business, I could pull levers to effect change. It was my sense of purpose when I needed one most. My mother’s death hasn’t changed that.

If anything, it makes me more determined to build the Papandreo Group into the best it can be. ’

Jane lifted a hand to her lips, pressing it there. The telltale gesture simply slipped out, but Zeus didn’t appear to notice.

‘When I took over as group CEO, I came up with a ten-year plan that would revolutionise our business model. I’m only five years in, but already we’re tracking well ahead of schedule.’

‘Your father must be very proud,’ she murmured, simply to fill the silence, because he had told her something great about himself, and she needed to acknowledge it. But her head was spinning, her heart hurting, her chest heavy, as though bags of cement had been placed on her.

‘My father…’ He hesitated and she glanced up at him, seeing tension radiating from his handsome face. ‘We’re not in a good place right now.’

She could tell how hard it was for Zeus to admit that. It was the sharing of a secret, of a part of him that he instinctively wanted to keep hidden.

Everything she knew about Aristotle caused her to dislike the older man, but she kept her tone neutral as she asked, ‘Why not?’

Zeus’s eyes skimmed to her face then bounced away to the ocean.

They were close to where his boat was moored, but she didn’t want to leave this idyllic beach without finishing this conversation.

She was worried that once they stepped onboard, he’d move on to something else. She slowed her step imperceptibly.

Zeus made a gruff sound, part sigh, part grimace. ‘He’s not the man I thought he was.’

Jane chewed into her lower lip. This was getting close to home, close to Lottie, she just knew.

‘Last week he told me that he’d had an affair.’

Jane’s footing stumbled a little and Zeus’s arm shot out to wrap around her waist. Instinctively protective. Her heart sped up.

‘Recently?’ Her voice was hoarse to her own ears.

‘Who knows? This affair was many years ago, but how can I trust it hasn’t been going on longer? That there haven’t been other women?’

‘Why would he tell you about one but not others?’ she pointed out, logically.

‘Because in this instance, there’s a complication.’ He glanced down at her and Jane’s heart skipped several beats in a row. ‘A daughter.’

She gasped. Lottie. So, Zeus had only just found out about her. He hadn’t known about Lottie and chosen to ignore her. He’d been as innocent in all of this as Lottie herself. Guilt, grief, pain and panic swirled inside Jane’s gut.

‘I see,’ she whispered, because she did see. She saw all too much.

‘She’s twenty-three, and my father has been supporting her all these years. While my mother lay dying…’

‘What would you have had him do, Zeus?’ she felt compelled to say, in defence of her best friend. ‘Leave her to fend for herself?’

A muscle jerked in Zeus’s jaw.