Page 88 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
CHAPTER ONE
Jane’s legs were wobbling a week later, as she strode into the sleekly glamorous bar in the expensive business district of central Athens.
Not from nerves, but from the experience of wearing sky-high heels for the first time in years.
In fact, the whole outfit was well and truly outside of Jane’s comfort zone.
She’d borrowed the whole ensemble from Lottie—who was far more at home in the latest fashions and had an eye for snatching things up from thrift shops, to meet her self-imposed budgetary restraints.
At first, she’d thought she would be overdressed in the silky gold camisole top tucked into a white miniskirt, with strappy leather stilettos and a chunky golden necklace, but two steps into the bar and she saw that Lottie had chosen the perfect outfit.
This was not like their local Clapham pub, that was for sure. This place screamed highbrow, from the leather banquettes to the classy art on the walls and the subdued lighting.
She fought an urge to bite onto her lip, the gesture one of uncertainty that didn’t belong with this persona.
Tonight she was Jane Fisher, confident daughter of one of the world’s most renowned human rights lawyers, graduate of an elite British public school and university, ready to take on the world.
Or rather, Zeus Papandreo.
‘I just need you to flirt with him a bit,’ Lottie had explained. ‘Make him, you know, fall in love with you.’
Jane had immediately balked. ‘I can’t just make him fall in love with me!’
Lottie snorted then. ‘Tell me the last time you looked at a guy twice who didn’t immediately want you to have his babies?’
Jane’s cheeks had flushed at her friend’s description. For Jane, who hated attention, she’d cursed the fact, many times over, that she’d inherited her socialite mother’s looks. Especially after Steven. ‘You know I don’t do serious.’
‘I know that, but he doesn’t. And he’ll be just as fallible to your charms as everyone else, I promise.’
‘How long do I need to do this for?’
‘Until I’m married,’ Lottie promised. ‘And believe me, I plan to work fast.’
Jane’s jaw had dropped. ‘You’re serious?’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll find someone suitable.’
‘Suitable? In weeks?’
‘How hard can it be? You get proposed to all the time,’ Lottie teased, then winced, because Jane had been proposed to twice, and both times had been disastrous—for Jane, who hated hurting anybody. ‘Sorry.’
She shook her head. ‘So, I just have to…’
‘Well, the way I see it, he’s going to be looking to get married, too,’ Lottie explained.
‘So, you just need to make him think you’re swallowing his act.
He’ll probably be super charming, move quickly, so it won’t be hard.
Just get him to think you’re buying it, that you’re keen to get married, but keep coming up with reasons to put it off—wanting your parents to meet him, that kind of thing. Basically, stall. Stall, stall, stall.’
And Jane had nodded, because how hard would that be? She just had to stop him from trying to hook up with anyone else and get them to marry him. Surely, she could do that?
‘You’ll have him eating out of the palm of your hand within hours—right where I need him. And I’ll owe you forever. I am sorry to ask this of you, Jane. I know… I know it will be hard for you. But you’re the only person I can trust. The only person who loves me enough to help me.’
Surreptitiously, Jane scanned the bar, looking for a glimpse of the man she now knew like the back of her hand, courtesy of Lottie and her wine-fuelled internet searching.
They knew this bar was around the corner from his office, and that he’d been photographed leaving here with many beautiful women over the past few years, since he’d taken over as CEO of the Papandreo Group.
Unseating him from that role was the first thing on Lottie’s list, and Jane couldn’t say she blamed her friend.
For the more she’d read about Zeus Papandreo, the less she liked him.
While she was motivated primarily by helping her friend, she also couldn’t resist the idea of taking him down a peg or two, for the sake of womankind.
Men like him, who went through women as though they were worthless and good for one thing only, definitely deserved to have the tables turned from time to time.
Out of nowhere, she thought of Steven—damn it, the last man she wanted to think of here and now—and her heart gave a familiar twist of pain, as sharp as it had been back then, as a seventeen-year-old, when he’d shattered it—and her—into a million pieces.
There was that old adage about time healing all wounds, but that was certainly not the case for Jane.
That particular emotional bruise was as tender now as it had been six years earlier. So, too, the pain her parents had inflicted over the years.
In her experience, some hurts just couldn’t be eased. It was better to accept that than try to fight it.
A low whistle caught her attention, and she glanced towards the bar, where two suited men were looking at her as though they’d just fronted up to a buffet and she was the main attraction. ‘Can we buy you a drink?’
‘No, thank you.’ She glanced beyond them.
No sign of Zeus, so far. She strode beyond the men, not looking at them again, and found an empty spot down the other end.
She ordered a mineral water—all the better to keep her wits about her.
She opened up one of the news apps on her phone and began to read a long article on an overseas war, her gut rolling as the atrocities were described, and she felt that same yearning she’d known all her life to help.
‘You’re just like your father,’ her mother had cooed once, and Jane had shied away from the comparison, even when it had, on some level, pleased her.
Because her father had definitely wanted to help the world.
He had taken cases all over, fighting for the underprivileged, doing everything he could to make their lives better.
But his calling for justice was so strong that he’d forgotten all about the daughter he was leaving to be raised in utter luxury—by nannies, household staff and boarding-school mothers.
It wasn’t much later when something made the hairs on the back of Jane’s neck stand on end.
Though the crowd in the bar didn’t actually stop talking, she felt an eerie sense of silence descend, or her ears grew woolly, and she glanced up towards the door and saw the moment Zeus Papandreo strode in, every bit as world-owning as she had expected.
Only, in that moment of crossing the threshold, before entering the bar, she saw something else, too.
Something she was perhaps projecting onto him.
A look of burden.
A sense that he was carrying more than his fair share of worries.
A sense of brokenness.
It was gone in an instant, so thoroughly replaced by a look of arrogant command, that she thought she must have imagined it. He strode to the bar, easily clearing the way despite how crowded it was, gesturing towards the top of the shelves at a bottle of Scotch.
The barman, dressed in a white button-up shirt and vest turned, retrieved the bottle and poured a measure, sliding it across to Zeus with a polite nod.
Zeus took it, rested one elbow on the bar top and began to survey the room, just as Jane had done when she’d entered.
She watched as he took notice of a group of women in the corner dressed in corporate clothes, so she presumed they’d come straight from the office.
She saw the way his eyes lingered there a moment, one corner of his mouth lifting appreciatively, and her heart skipped a beat.
Showtime.
She straightened a little, pulling her silky blond hair over one shoulder, and positioning herself so the generous curve of her breasts against the silk of her camisole would be easily noticeable.
Sure enough, the two men who’d offered to buy her a drink earlier glanced her way and she felt heat infuse her cheeks.
For all she was willing to play the part of the vixen for Lottie, it was not a role Jane was particularly comfortable with.
She ran a finger down the side of her mineral water, making a show of tracing the condensation, then lifting her moist finger towards her mouth at the exact moment Zeus’s glance shifted over her.
And back again. Their eyes met, but she didn’t slow her finger’s progress, even when the charge of realisation was akin to an electric shock.
His eyes.
His eyes were so…intense.
Dark and brooding, and beautifully shaped, with the kind of lashes she thought only existed in romance novels and movies, thick and dark and curling, giving the impression that he wore eyeliner.
They bore into her as though with just one look he could see the finer points of her soul.
She pressed her fingertip to her lips, let it hover there a moment before dropping it to the bar and offering a slightly dismissive smile.
Coming on too strong with a man like Zeus wouldn’t work, she guessed.
He was someone who liked to be in charge, who liked to do the chasing, and she somehow just knew that he would have been prey to enough money-hungry gold diggers in his time to spot one a mile off.
Play it cool, Lottie had advised, echoing Jane’s own judgement. Let him think he has to work for you. It will kill him. And he’s so damned stubborn, he won’t give up until he thinks he’s got you right where he wants you.
Jane sipped her mineral water, manicured nails curved around the cut-crystal glass, as the nearest bartender uncorked a bottle of expensive champagne and placed it in a cooler with two glasses.
Jane returned her attention to her phone, but it didn’t last long.
A moment later, the champagne ice bucket was placed directly in front of her.
‘Compliments of the gentleman over there,’ the barman said, nodding towards Zeus.