Page 216 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

Are you coming to the races next weekend? We have a box.

Jane rolled her eyes. For a long time, Jane had held little value to her parents, but now, an intelligent graduate who had morphed into a doppelgänger of the elegant Mrs Fisher, Jane was suddenly a worthwhile accessory for certain society events. She clicked out of that message and then, with a fluttering in her chest, tapped into Zeus’s.

Can I see you tonight?

Her heart went from fluttering to exploding and she stepped sideways so she could lean against a building for support. Never mind that it was covered in years of dust and grime and Jane was wearing pale clothes. In that moment, she needed help just to stay standing.

She thought about what to respond with. Could he see her? There was nothing she wanted more.

Andthatwas the problem.

It was all happening too fast, getting too intense, starting tomeantoo much. They needed to put the brakes on, slow it all right down, make it more casual, more fun. Maybe then she’d be able to live with herself for intentionally plotting his professional downfall.

She groaned and shook her head, hating what she’d agreed to suddenly.

She clicked out of his text and into Lottie’s.

We need to talk. Call me when you’re free.

She began to walk once more, her stride long and intent. Coffee finished, she discarded the cup in a nearby wastebin, then turned and looked around, realising that she’d wandered without paying attention and had no idea how to get back to the hotel. She lifted her phone from her pocket and saw another text from Zeus.

No pressure.

Her heart rolled over in her chest.

If only he knew how untrue that was! Jane was under the kind of pressure that could fell a person. She needed to speak to Lottie. She loaded a map up and began to walk towards her hotel, willing her phone to ring, and for it to be her best friend on the other end. Wishing, more than anything, that in speaking to Lottie, she’d somehow know exactly how to proceed.

Zeus was getting used to ‘firsts’ with Jane, and that afternoon he recognised another one.

It was the first time he’d messaged a woman and not heard back almost instantly. The first time he’d sentmultiplemessages and had them be ignored.

He vacillated between irritation and concern for the better part of the day. Irritation with himself, and with her. Irritation that he felt completely unlike normal and desperately didn’t like it. Irritation with her for the power she somehow wielded over him.

Concern, because last night had been intense. True, they hadn’t slept together, but he’d enjoyed stirring her to a fever pitch. He’d revelled in the power he held in that moment over her, to make her whimper and thrash, to make her body explode, and he’d driven her wild again, and again and again, until she was so exhausted she could hardly keep her eyes open. Then, he’d lifted her higher into the bed, covered her with the blankets and kissed her forehead before letting himself, and his rock-hard arousal, out.

Only a promise to himself that he’d see her again soon had allowed him to leave at all. He’d sized up the sofa and considered sleeping there, just so he’d be able to pick up where they’d left off in the morning.

Maybe it was because he was on the brink of making a commitment to someone else. It was possible that the knowledge a marriage was imminent for Zeus was making his brain and body perceive Jane as more special somehow than she really was. But even as he thought that Hail Mary, he knew it was a false hope, because the way he felt for Jane had everything to do with her, and nothing to do with the arcane inheritance surrounding the company.

He stood from his desk angrily and strode across the expansive office, staring out at the landscape of Athens’ central business district. It was a view that usually puffed his chest with pride. He loved this city; he loved his family’s contributions to both it and the broader landscape of Greece. He was a Papandreo, and in taking over the running of the company, Zeus was carrying on a proud, important tradition.

Not once had he questioned the righteousness of that.

But his father’s stupidity and weakness had put everything in jeopardy. Now guilt was making the older man weak in an even worse way than infidelity: he was being reckless with the business. He was willing to bring in an outsider to run it, never mind her lack of experience and the fact she was his bastard daughter with God only knew who.

Zeus’s entire world was shattering, just like it had again and again as a boy, a teenager and finally, for good when his mother had died. Though by then, he’d hardened his heart to her loss, knowing that it was coming, accepting that he was powerless to save her, and that he would not make her pain worse by showing his grief. He wouldn’t burden her with that; he was brave, to the end.

Breathing in deeply, so his chest stretched and flooded with air, he turned his back on the view and stalked back to his desk, reaching for his phone. No replies, still.

Grinding his teeth, he picked up his phone to make a call, but not to Jane. If only to prove to himself that he was still in control of his life, that he wasn’t as utterly and completely at her beck and call as he feared he might be.

‘Finally,’ Jane groaned down the line, sinking into the sumptuous sofa of her hotel suite and staring out at the windows. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to ring.’

‘Sorry, I was on a flight.’

‘To where?’

‘That doesn’t matter.’ Lottie sounded harried, though.