Page 234 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

‘It has always been promised to me, when I marry,’ he said. ‘It’s tradition.’

When he marries.

Someone else.

A reality that was far closer than Jane dared to think about. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

‘Some wedding present,’ she said, the words rushed and a little high-pitched. ‘I thought crystal bowls were the norm.’

‘Or candlesticks,’ he responded, squeezing her tighter around the waist.

‘Or at least registering for gifts. And I don’t think you could put a Greek island on your registry without people thinking you were a little touched in the head. Then again, perhaps in the circles you move in…’ She let the sentence taper off because she had no way of finishing it. She didn’t want to contemplate Zeus marrying, belonging—in the sense that any human could belong to another—to someone else. Coming home to her, holding her, kissing her, making love to her.

Jane squeezed her eyes shut, her back to him, before forcing the thoughts from her mind.

‘What’s it like?’

‘I haven’t been there in years,’ he admitted. ‘But I remember it as being quite beautiful.’

They began to walk once more.

‘It’s overgrown and lush, with forests from one side to the other, though my father did add a very nice home and a nine-hole golf course.’

‘As one does,’ Jane drawled, earning an indulgent smile from Zeus.

‘He stopped going there, once my mother was too ill to travel.’

‘It must have been so hard on you both,’ she murmured.

And perhaps because their time together was drawing to a close, he glanced down at her and said, ‘It was, at first. I didn’t know how to handle it. Seeing her like that. She’d always been so vibrant, so alive. And then she got sick, and the treatments were worse than the cancer. She slept almost all the time. I couldn’t go near her in case I had a cold or flu. It was almost impossible to understand, as a boy. All I wanted was to be able to click my fingers and make her well.’

‘Oh, Zeus,’ she said, shaking her head a little.

‘I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. They were very good at trying to keep everything as normal as possible for me, but I knew. I knew how sick she was, and that there was nothing I could do to help her.’

She squeezed his hand.

‘I hated it,agapeméni. I hated feeling as though I was powerless to do a damned thing. Seeing her in pain, my father heartbroken, my whole world slipped through my fingers. I could do nothing.’

She shook her head, tears threatening. ‘That’s not true. You were there, for your father, and your mother. You stepped in and helped with the business, you read her stories, you grew into the kind of man she must have desperately hoped you would be. She would have been so proud of you, Zeus. She got to see you become this.’ She squeezed his hand again, in the hope it would show him how much she meant it.

‘I think she would have liked to see me take a different path than this.’

‘In what way?’

He was quiet for several long strides, and then, on a long exhalation, ‘From a very young age, the company became my entire life. At first, it was an interest, a passion rather than anything else. But as she became more and more sick, it became a tangible distraction. Somewhere I could go and be useful. I had no power to heal my mother, but with the company, I was able to dosomething.I was good at it, too. I stepped into my father’s shoes. I saw problems and I fixed them. I saw opportunities and took them. I became obsessed and gradually, it became my whole life.’

Something hard and sharp opened up inside Jane. A shape that was almost impossible to accommodate, and every step she took seemed to jag it against her ribcage.

‘But it’s just a business,’ she said eventually, the words a little breathless. ‘And isn’t the point of business to make money? Clearly, you have enough money.’ She sounded desperate to her own ears.

‘Money is the last thing I care about,’ he contradicted.

‘Then why does it matter so much?’ She couldn’t meet his eyes. She couldn’t look at him without the dark, all-consuming sense of betrayal rearing up and swallowing her alive. Lottie was going to take the business from him. She was going to move heaven and earth to achieve that—anyone who knew Lottie knew that she always, always achieved what she set her mind to. And Zeus was going to loseeverything.

‘Where do I begin?’ he said with a lift of one shoulder. ‘It gave me a sense of control. When things at home were spinning wildly away from me, and I could do nothing to help, in the business, I could pull levers to effect change. It was my sense of purpose when I needed one most. My mother’s death hasn’t changed that. If anything, it makes me more determined to build the Papandreo Group into the best it can be.’

Jane lifted a hand to her lips, pressing it there. The telltale gesture simply slipped out, but Zeus didn’t appear to notice.