Page 34 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

‘So I believe.’

‘Oh?’ She looked at him in confusion. ‘Do you have spies patrolling the island, or something?’

But the unsmiling set of his mouth made clear that her feeble attempt to lighten the atmosphere hadn’t worked. ‘I heard the sound of his motorbike roaring up the cliff road and I saw you. With your hair streaming behind you,’ he added softly.

Grace frowned, because surely the detail about her hair was superfluous. And was thatcensureunderpinning his words? She should have let it go, but some stubborn voice of objection was stirring up inside her and refusing to be silenced. ‘Why do you say it like that?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Like what?’

‘Oh, come on, Odysseus.’ Suddenly all the frustration and fear she’d been suppressing since her wedding night came bubbling to the surface and now it started rushing out in a hot and angry torrent. ‘You might do your best never to engage in normal human interaction and most of the time you succeed, but I can tell you’re bluffing. You know exactly what I mean. Like you disapprove.’

There was a pause. ‘Maybe because I do.’

She drew in an unsteady breath. ‘Why?’

‘Why do you think, Grace?’ He rose to his feet, dominating every atom of space around him, and suddenly some of his habitual composure had slipped. ‘You are my wife and it is entirely inappropriate for you to accept rides from the housekeeper’s son!’

She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I thought—given your experience of life—that the last thing you’d be was a snob!’

‘This is nothing to do with snobbery,’ he iced out furiously. ‘It’s about the messages you’re sending out.’

‘And what messages might they be?’ she goaded as his words halted because wasn’t there something almostthrillingabout the anger she could see on his face?

A muscle had begun to work at his temple. ‘You don’t think that feeling your arms around his waist and knowing the whip of the wind is exposing your creamy thighs might make him regard you differently?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ Her mouth fell open. ‘He’s years younger than me!’

‘And?’ he demanded dangerously. ‘You didn’t stop to think that he might get the wrong idea when you leapt onto the back of his motorbike like someone he’d just picked up in a nightclub?’

Maybe it was the unexpectedness of his response which made a slew of thoughts rush through Grace’s mind and not all of them were negative. Why, Odysseus soundedjealousof the university student and if that were the case, wouldn’t it imply he cared about her more than he was letting on? The hopeful stab of her heart lasted only as long as it took to think it through.

Because caring implied thoughtfulness, didn’t it? And sensitivity. And neither of those qualities were evident in the forbidding set of her husband’s powerful shoulders, or the suddenly rigid composition of his features. This was all about possession, she realised suddenly. As if she were something he owned, just as he owned a plane and a colossal villa and a stack full of stocks and shares. As if she were an object, not a person.

‘What are you imagining is happening here?’ she whispered. ‘That I’m making love to you by night, and plotting to have Marinos in my bed by day, when you’re not around? That I’ve gone from virgin to whore in a few short weeks? Is that what you think, Odysseus? That I’m planning to be unfaithful to you?’

For possibly the first time in his life, Odysseus found himself lost for words, because he didn’t know what was happening to him. Only that he had suddenly found himself in the grips of something he didn’t recognise. Something he hadn’t allowed himself to think about and thus, to identify. But he certainly didn’t intend rising to her bait and turning this into the kind of emotional ping-pong he despised.

‘No, of course I don’t think that,’ he conceded coldly.

‘How good of you!’ she declared sarcastically. ‘What is it, then? Should I have run it past you first? Is that what you wanted, which you forgot to lay down in those pre-weddingrulesof yours? Did you intend to police every single person I speak to? Should I have sought your permission like a good, docile wife? No wonder Evangelia looked so shocked when she discovered I was actually leaving the villa without telling you. I know we’re married now but this kind of expectation is positivelymedieval!’

‘Now you’re just being ridiculous.’

‘I am not being ridiculous!’ she howled.

He frowned, taken aback by the fervour of her attack, and instinct made him step away from it, to coat his words with reason, to behave as if he were in an irksome meeting with a client who was refusing to see sense. But it wasn’t easy, not when she looked so magnificent in her righteous rage and all he wanted to do was to kiss her. But not just kiss her, he realised grimly. He wanted to quieten her too. He wanted to quash this kind of discussion and ensure it never happened again. He sucked in a steadying breath. ‘It just might have been courteous if you’d let me know.’

‘How?’ she demanded. ‘When you’re holed up in your office all day—bringing new meaning to the term workaholic—and you practically have a sign on the door, telling me to keep out!’

‘You know that I have a whole heap of things I need to do before our trip,’ he thundered.

‘So you keep telling me. So rather than waiting around here all day until themasterdeigned to grace me with his presence, I decided to go for a walk. Is that such a big deal—that I didn’t want to get it signed off in triplicate? It was a spur-of-the-moment thing and you’re just not a spur-of-the-moment man, Odysseus, are you?’

‘Oh, aren’t I?’ he questioned as her words sank in and every warning cry which was engaging his brain was silenced as he began to walk towards her. In the pin-drop silence which followed he could read the anger blazing from her eyes, but he could see the hunger too, her pupils darkening with desire and making them resemble two big chunks of burning coal. The atmosphere between them was so hot it was almost combustible, but he didn’t touch her—dampening down his own desire with characteristic composure. Let her wait, he thought furiously. Just as he had waited—going out of his mind with worry that she might have fallen over the edge of those damned cliffs. As he waited every single day, counting down the cruelly lingering seconds until he could have her in his arms again, because only that way could he reassure himself that he was stillin control.

‘Perhaps, in future, you might let me know your travel plans,’ he told her coolly. ‘And if you’re planning on going out walking, I can easily provide you with a map.’

Grace stared at him with growing incredulity as she silently listed his most irritating faults. His studied politeness. His growing distance from her. His outrageous controlling demands that she keep him informed of her movements at all times. But more than that, his icy control, evident now in the way he was looking at her. As if he were a machine, not a man. A cold and unfeeling machine. ‘Why, you…you…’ she breathed.

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