Page 109 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

‘He took steps to make sure she was never discovered—for my mother’s sake. It would have destroyed her to know he’d cheated.’

Jane’s eyes filled with tears; she blinked quickly to dispel them.

‘But now my mother’s gone, and all of a sudden, he wants to acknowledge this woman. To bring her into the family,’ Zeus spat, and now Jane found the simple act of walking beyond her.

‘What?’ Her voice was hoarse. Just a whisper.

Zeus was so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he evidently didn’t notice how pale Jane had become, all the colour fading from her cheeks as she stared up at him.

‘As if I have any interest in knowing her.’

‘Why not?’ Jane groaned, pressing a hand to his chest. This was Lottie they were talking about. Lottie, Jane’s best friend. Lottie, who was smart and charming and sweet and kind. Lottie, who could light a room up just by walking into it.

‘She is evidence of my father’s failings.’

Jane’s eyes swept shut. ‘Zeus, it’s not that simple.’

He was silent.

Jane tried again. ‘She’s a person, and none of this is her fault, just as it’s not your fault.

And maybe it’s not your father’s fault, either.

He made a bad decision when your mother got sick.

A terrible decision, but he was probably driven half-mad with grief and worry.

People do silly things sometimes. They make mistakes.

Surely, you have it in your heart to forgive him? ’

‘No.’ He stared down at her now with eyes that were black with fierce determination, and she shivered; this was a side to him Jane hadn’t seen. ‘Betrayal is the one thing I cannot forgive, not from someone I trust.’

Jane’s heart turned to ice and her skin stung all over. Panic flared through her.

‘The worst of it is because of the way our company is structured, she has it in her power to take it away from me. All of it.’ The words were clipped, his tone short. A lump formed in Jane’s throat. ‘I can’t let that happen.’

She wanted to agree with him. If she didn’t know Lottie, she would have readily nodded and told him that of course he couldn’t. She knew what the company meant to Zeus; she understood why it was so special to him.

‘Surely, you can work out a way to incorporate her into your life, your company…’ Though she doubted Lottie would want that. It was all so useless.

‘You cannot be serious?’ His face held that same expression, that ruthless, bitter anger, so Jane flinched a little.

He softened immediately, lifting a hand to her cheek.

‘You see goodness in everyone. I see only the risk of what could go wrong by involving the wrong person. Just because my father had an affair over two decades ago doesn’t mean I have any interest in bonding with the woman he insists on calling my sister .

As for the business, it is mine, Jane, and I will do whatever I can to ensure it stays that way. ’

Jane spun away from him before he could see the heartbreak on her face, because she knew what it would take for him to secure the business.

As soon as she left, he’d find someone to propose to and would marry as swiftly as the laws would allow.

He would be someone else’s husband, and Jane would be alone, licking her wounds, having failed Zeus and her best friend.

Only, later that night, back on the boat, Jane realised that maybe she could do something to fix this, after all.

When she’d come to Greece, it had been with a simplistic and ill-thought-out plan to delay Zeus’s marriage plans.

To complicate things for him. She wasn’t even sure how they’d thought she’d do that.

It had been a knee-jerk reaction to the news Lottie had received about the company.

Years and years of her hurt at having been hidden away by Aristotle Papandreo, paid off to stay silent, had culminated in a fierce, angry plan to make them pay.

But now Jane knew so much more. She’d seen behind the curtain, and she understood Zeus so much better. She understood his heart, his mind, his goodness and decency. What if she could convince Lottie to abandon her plans to take over the company, to force them into a meeting?

Zeus would never forgive her, Jane recognised.

Her betrayal would make that impossible—he’d said as much, and she couldn’t blame him.

But so what? If it meant the two people she loved most—and she could no longer deny that she had fallen in love with him—could be made happy, could be united, then wasn’t it worth sacrificing her own happiness?

Wasn’t that her duty?

When you loved, you did what was right for the person you loved, even if it hurt.

And it would hurt, she recognised. It would hurt like the devil, but she would do it.

Just as soon as this week was over, she’d fly to Lottie and she’d convince her—she’d use every last word in the dictionary until Lottie understood that Zeus was not the monster they’d always built him up to be.

He was, in every way, the total opposite.

When the sun came up the next morning, there was a heaviness inside Jane.

It was their last day together. After this, everything between them would change.

As soon as she forced a meeting between the two half siblings—which she now knew she absolutely must move heaven and earth to accomplish—Zeus would know that she’d been lying to him all along and he would never again look at her with eyes that seemed to promise he’d climb into heaven and pick out the stars if she asked it of him.

She sat up groggily in the bed, looking towards the window to see a lot of trees on the shore of a sweet little cove. The boat must have moored here overnight; she could hardly keep track of all the islands they’d hopped to.

‘I thought we could take a look up close,’ he said. ‘Start getting your land legs back.’

She glanced down at Zeus, who was awake, but reclined in the same pose he’d been in a moment ago, his bare chest exposed to her, his face so sharply angular and beautiful. She took a moment to commit this to memory and to fold the memory in a little space inside her brain.

‘What is it?’

‘Prásino Lófo.’

‘Your family’s island?’

He nodded.

‘I’d love to see it,’ she said, though the words were heavy, because she knew what the island meant to him and his family. If her plan to unite Lottie and Zeus didn’t work, then the marriage wars would be back on, and this island would be Zeus’s gift from his father. To enjoy with his new bride.

Bitterness soured her mouth.

‘We’ll have lunch there,’ he said, his hand reaching out for her waist and pulling her towards him, oblivious to her inner turmoil.

‘There’s no need to rush—we have plenty of exploring we can do here first.’ He kissed her as though he had not a care in the world.

As though the walls weren’t all coming crashing down around them.

And, Jane supposed, for him, they weren’t.

This was still just a simple week-long fling.

She surrendered to his touch, his kiss, to the feelings he could evoke, partly because they drove the guilt from her mind temporarily, but mostly because she simply couldn’t—and didn’t want to—resist him.

He was taunting himself, and he knew it.

Bringing Jane to this island so he could always imagine her here.

Jane, who might have been his perfect, ideal wife, in a parallel universe.

In a universe where he could open himself up to the uncertainties of life, to the idea of loving someone who might leave him, who might hurt him.

In that world, she belonged here.

In this world, too, he thought, watching as she strolled onto the large timber balcony that hung, cantilevered from the house, over a cliff atop the ocean.

‘It’s so beautiful,’ she said, shaking her head a little, so her blond hair, naturally wavy, he’d discovered this week, flew loose around her face, reminding him of gold.

‘It was a labour of love for my parents,’ Zeus admitted, remembering the way they’d pored over the plans when his mother was well enough.

‘They would talk about coming here with their grandchildren.’ His smile was grim.

They’d all known his mother wouldn’t live to see grandchildren, particularly when marriage had been the last thing on Zeus’s mind.

But it had given her pleasure to imagine, to hope.

‘Hence the millions of bedrooms?’ Her tone was teasing as she came to stand beside him. ‘You’d better get busy, Zeus, because there’s room here for at least ten children.’

He didn’t laugh. The thought of marrying someone else, of having children with them, was now like acid inside his throat all the time.

‘Do you think you will?’ She glanced up at him, the humour gone from her face, too.

He didn’t follow. ‘Have ten children?’

She waved a hand in the air, her features a little troubled. ‘Marry.’

He shifted his body to face her, and the air between them seemed to grow heavy and thick all at once, making it difficult to breathe.

In another world, if he were any other man, this might be where he’d say something like, That depends if you’ll agree to marry me.

But Zeus had been shaped by all that he’d seen and lost, by the fear and pain and anticipation of death that he’d been forced to live with almost his entire life.

The thought of opening himself up to that again was the antithesis of his approach to life.

And yet, the thought of Jane hearing about his engagement in the papers in a week’s time, maybe two weeks, depending on how quickly he acted, and not understanding his reasons for it…

‘When I marry,’ he said carefully, ‘it will be a pragmatic marriage, not for love.’

She bit into her lip, her eyes showing a swirling current of emotion. ‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t want that kind of marriage.’

She shook her head. ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘Doesn’t it?’ He reached out and caught her hair, tucking it behind her ear. ‘You know me, Jane.’ Even to his own ears, his voice was deep and rumbly. ‘After this week, I think you know me better than anyone. Can you really stand there and tell me you don’t understand?’

Her lips parted on a quick expulsion of breath.

‘The more I felt for someone,’ he said, voice gruff, as though it had been dragged from his chest over hot coals, ‘the less able I would be to have them in my life.’ He stroked her cheek. ‘I’d always rather let go on my terms, you see.’

Did she understand what he meant? What he wasn’t saying? Did she know how much she’d come to mean to him?

A single tear slid down her cheek, and she turned her face into his palm, eyes sweeping shut. The afternoon sun dipped towards the ocean and cast her in a halo of gold, so she shimmered like an angel.

‘I’ll always be glad to have met you,’ he said, and then, because he couldn’t resist, he pulled her to his body and kissed her as though they’d just said their wedding vows, and this was the beginning of the rest of their lives together, rather than the beginning of the end—their last night.