Page 233 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

Her step faltered slightly as that idea burst into her mind.

Loved?

It wasn’t about love. Not with Zeus. Making love, sure. Passion. Pleasure. Respect. She enjoyed his company.

But she couldn’t—wouldn’t—love him.

How impossibly complicated, not to mention outrageously stupid, would that be? This was the man who’d been—admittedly unwittingly—an instrument of Lottie’s pain all her life. How often had they stared daggers at him, whenever there’d been a photo of Zeus and Aristotle attending an event together? Lottie, glutton for punishment that she was, had set up a news alert on her phone and got emailed any time Aristotle or Zeus were mentioned, so there was never a shortage of information to devour and despise.

Like a good best friend, or an excellent foot soldier dragooned into a war out of loyalty alone, she’d hated Zeus, too. She’d hated Aristotle more, because his choices had wounded both Lottie and her mother, Mariah, but Zeus had committed the unforgivable crime of having held the place in life that should have been Lottie’s. Whereas Lottie had had to live with the ignominy of knowing that her very existence was a burden and a regret, that she was so shameful to the Papandreos her mother had been paid millions of pounds to keep quiet.

Never mind that Aristotle had been the love of Mariah’s life, and her heart had been broken beyond repair by his cruelty. Never mind that her heart had been too badly broken to properly accept her daughter into it.

It was just such an awful mess.

Even knowing all that, though, Jane couldn’t bring herself to hate Zeus like she once had. She couldn’t bring herself to think of him with anything other than…not love.She couldn’t be stupid enough to make that mistake again. It had been bad enough with Steven, but at least then she’d had the defences of youth and naivety on her side. Now what?

She’d come into this with her eyes wide open.

She knew more than enough about him, and his predilection for short-term, meaningless flings. And she knew all the emotional baggage—even if he didn’t—that made any kind of real relationship between them impossible.

So why did she walk with him, hand in hand, on that small island in the south of Greece, and smile as though she was the happiest woman in the world? She smiled, she realised, like a woman in love—apparently, some parts of her just hadn’t quite gotten the memo.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Long,sun-drencheddaysbled 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 myyaya.’

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.