Page 89 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

Her pulse flickered to life as she made a point of slowly, oh, so slowly, scanning the guests assembled at the bar before letting her gaze land on his face.

One of his brows quirked upwards in a silent, flirtatious question.

She responded in kind, offering a wry half smile and a ‘please explain’ expression.

No need to ask twice.

He strolled through the busy bar easily, but the bar itself was busy enough that in order to be next to her, he had to slide in close.

So close she could feel his warmth and smell his tangy aftershave.

So close she could see those magnificent eyes up close and marvel at the obsidian darkness of them.

For a moment, she felt a rush of guilt for the deception she was about to try to perpetrate.

But only a moment. Because wasn’t he doing exactly the same thing?

Lottie had explained the arcane inheritance clause very carefully.

It wasn’t just Lottie who needed to get married in order to legally inherit the Papandreo Group, but Zeus as well.

Meaning he was out here, no doubt looking for some poor woman he could con into agreeing to marry him, never mind how that might end up breaking her heart.

If anything, Jane was doing her sisters a solid by foiling those plans.

Because it would be much more devastating for a woman to be used by Zeus Papandreo than it could ever be for a man to be disappointed by Jane.

‘I haven’t seen you here before,’ he said, voice lightly accented, deep and husky. The hairs on her arms stood on end and she bit back a shiver, as he reached across her and took the champagne from the cooler, along with one of the glasses. ‘May I?’

Her pulse was strangely throbbing—courtesy of the plan, she assured herself. It didn’t matter why she felt all lightheaded, though. She could make him believe the reason was his proximity, his masculine strength, his obvious attractiveness.

‘Thank you,’ she agreed, nodding once.

‘So,’ he asked, pouring the glass, ‘who are you?’

‘Isn’t that a little direct?’ she asked, a half smile on her lips as he finished pouring the champagne and held it towards her.

She stared at the glass for a moment, working out how she could take it without touching his hands, but they were big hands, and they gripped almost the entire fragile glass.

In the end, she stopped hesitating and reached out, ignoring the frisson of shock that ran through her veins when her flesh connected with his. Her eyes, though, lifted, and her mouth went dry. His smile was knowing and arrogant. The perfect antidote to her natural, genuine reactions.

He thought he’d already won her over. He was used to this—walking into the bar, being all suave and gorgeous and getting whatever the hell he wanted from whomever he met. Well, he was about to meet his match.

‘I happen to like direct,’ he said, lifting one shoulder. ‘Don’t you—?’ He let the sentence hang, midconstruction, in the air between them, and when she didn’t fill the gap, he asked, ‘What is your name?’

She pulled her lips to the side, thinking how commanding he was, how he seemed to think he could walk up to anyone and begin interrogating them.

‘You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine,’ she said, enjoying the way his features briefly reflected surprise.

‘You don’t know who I am?’

‘Should I?’ She batted her lashes then sipped the champagne, enjoying the rush of ice-cold bubbles as they filled her mouth and then flooded her body.

He frowned. ‘I suppose not.’

‘Are you famous?’ she pushed, enjoying teasing him.

‘No.’

‘Then why would I know who you are? Or have we perhaps met?’

His laugh then was a gruff sound of genuine amusement. ‘I think we’d both remember.’

‘You’re certainly not lacking in confidence, are you—?’ She used his intonation, inflecting a slight question at the end of her words.

‘Zeus,’ he responded, almost brushing aside his name. ‘And I think you’ll find I’m not lacking in lots of things.’

Her own laugh was—to her chagrin and surprise—also genuine. ‘Does this usually work for you?’ she purred, taking another sip of champagne before placing the glass down and putting her elbow on the bar, propping her chin in her palm so she could lean a little closer to him.

He scanned her face. ‘Are you saying you’re not interested?’

Careful, Jane.

She wanted to push him, without pushing him away. ‘Hmm,’ she murmured, reaching for her hair and stroking it. ‘I’m not saying that, exactly,’ she said, after a pulse had throbbed between them. ‘I did ask your name, after all.’

‘That’s true and promised your own in exchange.’

‘Jane,’ she said, wondering why it seemed as though the simple act of uttering her name was somehow akin to the throwing down of a gauntlet.

Blood seemed to pound far too fast through her veins, so she was intimately familiar with the fragility of her body’s construction, the paper-thin vascular walls that suddenly might not be able to contain the torrent of her body’s pulse.

‘Jane,’ he repeated, and the same pulse she’d been worried about seconds earlier seemed to rush even faster. He said it like a promise; he said it like a curse. ‘It doesn’t suit you,’ he said, tilting his head a little.

Her stomach dropped to her toes. Only Charlotte knew that Jane had, in fact, been christened Boudica Jane—a glimpse into her parents’ aspirations for her. To save the world, by following in their footsteps. If only they’d held her hand and allowed her to walk a little more closely.

‘Disappointed?’ she deflected, in no way interested in revealing her true name to this man. She had dropped the Boudica in the third grade, when a girl in her class had taken to calling her ‘booger digger’—naturally, it had caught on and she’d lived with the moniker for years.

‘No. I’m sure I can think of something else to call you.’

His tone was undeniably intimate, husky with promise.

She glanced away, cheeks flushing at the imagery his nearness and voice were provoking, so her eyes landed on one of the two men down the bar who’d offered to buy her a drink earlier.

Zeus hadn’t offered, she realised, so much as bought the drink and walked over as though that were his God-given right.

The difference between him and mere mortals, she thought with a hint of a sneer.

The man down the bar winked at her.

‘Friends of yours?’

She turned back to Zeus. ‘No.’

‘Though they wish they were?’

She lifted a shoulder. ‘I can’t say.’

‘Why do I get the feeling I’m dealing with someone who’s left a trail of broken hearts behind her?’

‘Why do I get the feeling I’m dealing with someone who doesn’t believe in a heart’s function?’

He laughed again and she ignored the whisper of delight that breathed through her at that, at how much she liked hearing his spontaneous humour.

‘ Touché ,’ he said, reaching not for the empty champagne flute and topping it up, but rather lifting hers and taking a sip from it, whilst holding her gaze. Her pulse went into dangerous territory now. ‘What if you’re wrong?’

‘I don’t think I am.’

‘I thought you didn’t know who I am?’

‘I’ve known men like you before.’

‘I doubt that.’

‘Arrogant, handsome, successful,’ she enumerated, but with a slow smile to show that she was teasing. Flirting. Baiting… ‘Tell me I’m wrong.’

‘Why tell you, when showing you would be so much more fun?’

Her heart galloped along. ‘How do you suggest doing that?’

‘Well,’ he said, leaning closer, holding her champagne flute. ‘Let’s start with a drink and go from there.’

The promise in the latter part of that sentence was exactly what she both dreaded and needed.

A promise for more, because that was how she was going to hook Lottie’s nemesis and keep him distracted, but also, now that she was face-to-face with Zeus Papandreo, she freely admitted that it was going to be harder to control this thing than she’d initially anticipated.

Jane had considered her heart—and libido—to have been iced over six years earlier, with that awful heartbreak in her final year of school, but in fact, she was learning, on this night of all nights, that there was at least one man who was capable of reviving the latter.

For there was no denying the heat flooding her body was pooling between her legs, and that if he were to glance down, she suspected he’d notice the way her nipples had grown taut beneath the flimsy material of her bra.

‘A drink,’ she heard herself purr, glad that love and loyalty to Lottie had reasserted itself. ‘And after that, we’ll see…’