Page 217 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

‘Is everything okay?’

‘Fine. What’s up?’

Jane frowned. ‘I—’ But now that it came to it, she struggled to find the words. How could she tell her best friend that the man they’d always, always hated was the most deliciously sexy person on earth? And that he also happened to be kind and interesting…? It felt like a betrayal of the highest order, and so she cast about for how to begin.

‘Is it Zeus?’ Lottie demanded. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m… Yes. Of course. Why?’

Lottie expelled a long breath. ‘I just— I’ve been worrying that maybe I sent you on a quest to the lion’s den. I couldn’t live with myself if he hurt you, too, Jane.’

Jane squeezed her eyes shut, unsure how to confess that she feared she was the one who would be hurtingeveryoneif she wasn’t very careful.

‘He’s not going to hurt me,’ she promised, and found the words were spoken with confidence.

‘God, I hope not. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.’

‘He’s not like we thought, Lottie.’

Silence sparked. A silence that Jane perceived, because she knew Lottie as well as she did herself, was loaded and important.

‘Oh?’

Jane bit back a groan. ‘He’s actually quite…nice.’

Nice! What a weak, watery word to describe Zeus Papandreo.

‘At least, he’s not the complete piece of work we’d always presumed.’

‘I beg your pardon. No one who goes through women like that isnice.’

Jane chewed on her lower lip. ‘I’m not saying he’s perfect—’

‘You hardly know him,’ Lottie pointed out. ‘You’ve only been in Athens a few nights.’

‘I know,’ she said, wondering why inwardly she rebelled against that as a concept. Hardly knew him? It didn’t seem to come close to describing their relationship. ‘I guess I just have a sense for…’

‘Listen,’ Lottie interrupted. ‘Nice or not, he’s my sworn enemy, and you’re my bestest friend.’ Her tone was joking, but Jane didn’t smile. ‘I want that company, and his father—Aristotle—has given me the perfect way to get it. To rip it out frombothof them. It’s not about Zeus. It’s about my mother, what they took from her, took from me. It’s about payback. It’s about what I deserve.’

A single tear slid down Jane’s cheek, because Lottie wasn’t wrong, either. Jane knew what the secret affair had done to Lottie’s mother, who’d never stopped loving Aristotle, even though she did her best to hide it. ‘I know,’ she whispered.

‘Oh, God, Jane. You’re crying. What’s happened? Please tell me… I can’t bear for you to get hurt.’

‘It’s just— I want you to have everything you want, Lottie, you know that. But…’

‘You don’t want to hurt him.’

She squeezed her eyes shut.

‘You’re too kind,’ Lottie groaned. ‘Look, he’ll get over it. He’ll get over you.’

‘But not losing the business,’ she said, remembering the pride in his features when he spoke of his place in the Papandreo legacy. Only that night, she’d hated him for his pride, because it had been stolen from Lottie. Now? It was intrinsic to him.

She toyed with the fabric hem of her shorts.

‘He’ll still be worth a stinking fortune,’ Lottie pointed out. ‘He can rebuild, do something else. He can use the same damned name for all I care.’

Jane swallowed past a bitter lump in her throat. Loyalty to Lottie was her principal duty, but only just.