Page 209 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

A muscle throbbed in his jaw as he contemplated the deep betrayal of his father’s affair, the shifting of the man from the pedestal upon which Zeus had held him. He’d thought they were united in their desire to protect Anna Maria Papandreo. To love her and keep her safe and happy. But all the while, Aristotle had been sleeping around behind her back.

Anger flooded Zeus, so for a moment he almost forgot where he was.

‘Zeus?’ Jane reached across the table and put her hand on his. ‘Are you okay?’

He laughed, but it was a forced, brittle sound. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Look, if you want to go,’ she said with a lift of one of those delightful, bare shoulders, ‘I’ll understand. I know I’m not what I seem.’

He considered that carefully. ‘What do you think you seem like?’

She gestured to her hair first. ‘I think guys see the blond hair, my figure, and decide I’m some kind of sex kitten, ready to leap into bed.’

‘You’re very beautiful,’ he said, rather than admit that his first thought upon seeing her had been wondering how quickly he could get her from the bar to his home and naked on his sheets.

Unlike a lot of women he knew, she didn’t seem flattered by that. If anything, her expression tightened to one of disappointment and when she said, ‘thank you,’ it was through gritted teeth. There was more here than she was telling him. More he wanted to understand, because understanding things was one of Zeus’s core business strategies. Whenever they’d taken over another company, he’d spent the first month simply observing. Seeing how it ran. Where were the problems? What were the strengths? While it would have been easy to rush in like a bull at a gate with his own ideas and thoughts, he’d have risked missing something important.

‘Tell me what happened,’ he invited, leaning back in his chair but kicking his legs forward, so they were placed on either side of hers. Jane’s eyes widened and heat flared in his gaze; he felt it, too. Desire. A rush of it, wrapping around them like a cocoon, but nothing so comfortable or soporific. No, this was a wild, flagrant cataclysm of animalistic wants, which made it all the more imperative for him to understand why she needed to fight this.

‘With my father?’ she asked, and he suspected she was deliberately misunderstanding him.

‘With your celibacy.’

‘Oh.’ She glanced down at her drink, and at that moment, the curtain swished open and a waiter walked in. Zeus could have strangled the man, though of course, the intrusion wasn’t exactly his fault. Nor was it unexpected. They were at a restaurant; they had to order food. That was how it worked.

‘Good evening. Do you have any questions about the menu?’

‘I haven’t even looked,’ Jane murmured.

Zeus fixed the waiter with a stare. ‘What does the chef recommend?’

The waiter reeled off a few dishes; Zeus turned to Jane. ‘Any problems with that?’

She shook her head and this time, when her blond hair bounced around her angelic face, it released a hint of her fragrance, vanilla and cherries, so his gut clenched. He turned to the waiter to tell him to bring the chef’s recommendations and caught the look of undisguised admiration on the other man’s face as he also stared at Jane.

Something twisted sharply in Zeus’s gut, and not just at the waiter’s lack of professionalism. Jealousy. Protectiveness. Emotions that should have made him run a mile, rather than sitting there, waiting impatiently for them to be left alone.

‘That’s all.’ He dismissed the waiter curtly and caught the other man’s cheeks darken with a hint of embarrassment. Zeus turned back to Jane.

When they were alone again, she arched a brow and smiled at him. That smile that seemed to filter all the light from all the world and beam it across the room.

‘You sound cross.’

He shook his head once. ‘I’m not.’

‘Not with me,’ she said, then lifted her shoulders again. ‘Or jealous?’

Was he that transparent? And how bad was that? The fact that he was being so exposed to this woman, when usually he was a closed book. Warning sirens were blaring but he didn’t seem capable of heeding them.

‘You just told me you don’t like being objectified and then he walked in and couldn’t stop staring.’

‘Isn’t that a little like the pot calling the kettle black?’

He didn’t like it, but she was right. The night before, he’d seen little beyond her obvious physical beauty. Just like the other men at the bar who’d been ogling her.

‘It’s fine,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I went through a phase where I tried very hard to escape notice, but I got sick of it. It’s not my problem if the world views me a certain way. But in terms of men, it’s important to be honest. I wouldn’t want to lead you on…’

‘So, you do date?’