Page 236 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
‘No.’ He stared down at her now with eyes that were black with fierce determination, and she shivered; this was a side to him Jane hadn’t seen. ‘Betrayal is the one thing I cannot forgive, not from someone I trust.’
Jane’s heart turned to ice and her skin stung all over. Panic flared through her.
‘The worst of it is because of the way our company is structured, she has it in her power to take it away from me. All of it.’ The words were clipped, his tone short. A lump formed in Jane’s throat. ‘I can’t let that happen.’
She wanted to agree with him. If she didn’t know Lottie, she would have readily nodded and told him that of course he couldn’t. She knew what the company meant to Zeus; she understood why it was so special to him.
‘Surely, you can work out a way to incorporate her into your life, your company…’ Though she doubted Lottie would want that. It was all so useless.
‘You cannot be serious?’ His face held that same expression, that ruthless, bitter anger, so Jane flinched a little.
He softened immediately, lifting a hand to her cheek.
‘You see goodness in everyone. I see only the risk of what could go wrong by involving the wrong person. Just because my father had an affair over two decades ago doesn’t mean I have any interest in bonding with the woman he insists on calling mysister. As for the business, it is mine, Jane, and I will do whatever I can to ensure it stays that way.’
Jane spun away from him before he could see the heartbreak on her face, because she knew what it would take for him to secure the business. As soon as she left, he’d find someone to propose to and would marry as swiftly as the laws would allow. He would be someone else’s husband, and Jane would be alone, licking her wounds, having failed Zeus and her best friend.
Only, later that night, back on the boat, Jane realised that maybe she could do something to fix this, after all. When she’d come to Greece, it had been with a simplistic and ill-thought-out plan to delay Zeus’s marriage plans. To complicate things for him. She wasn’t even surehowthey’d thought she’d do that. It had been a knee-jerk reaction to the news Lottie had received about the company. Years and years of her hurt at having been hidden away by Aristotle Papandreo, paid off to stay silent, had culminated in a fierce, angry plan to make them pay.
But now Jane knew so much more. She’d seen behind the curtain, and she understood Zeus so much better. She understood his heart, his mind, his goodness and decency. What if she could convince Lottie to abandon her plans to take over the company, to force them into a meeting?
Zeus would never forgive her, Jane recognised. Her betrayal would make that impossible—he’d said as much, and she couldn’t blame him. But so what? If it meant the two people she loved most—and she could no longer deny that she had fallen in love with him—could be made happy, could be united, then wasn’t it worth sacrificing her own happiness?
Wasn’t that her duty?
When you loved, you did what was right for the person you loved, even if it hurt.
And it would hurt, she recognised. It would hurt like the devil, but she would do it. Just as soon as this week was over, she’d fly to Lottie and she’d convince her—she’d use every last word in the dictionary until Lottie understood that Zeus was not the monster they’d always built him up to be. He was, in every way, the total opposite.
When the sun came up the next morning, there was a heaviness inside Jane. It was their last day together. After this, everything between them would change. As soon as she forced a meeting between the two half siblings—which she now knew she absolutely must move heaven and earth to accomplish—Zeus would know that she’d been lying to him all along and he would never again look at her with eyes that seemed to promise he’d climb into heaven and pick out the stars if she asked it of him.
She sat up groggily in the bed, looking towards the window to see a lot of trees on the shore of a sweet little cove. The boat must have moored here overnight; she could hardly keep track of all the islands they’d hopped to.
‘I thought we could take a look up close,’ he said. ‘Start getting your land legs back.’
She glanced down at Zeus, who was awake, but reclined in the same pose he’d been in a moment ago, his bare chest exposed to her, his face so sharply angular and beautiful. She took a moment to commit this to memory and to fold the memory in a little space inside her brain.
‘What is it?’
‘Prásino Lófo.’
‘Your family’s island?’
He nodded.
‘I’d love to see it,’ she said, though the words were heavy, because she knew what the island meant to him and his family. If her plan to unite Lottie and Zeus didn’t work, then the marriage wars would be back on, and this island would be Zeus’s gift from his father. To enjoy with his new bride.
Bitterness soured her mouth.
‘We’ll have lunch there,’ he said, his hand reaching out for her waist and pulling her towards him, oblivious to her inner turmoil. ‘There’s no need to rush—we have plenty of exploring we can do here first.’ He kissed her as though he had not a care in the world. As though the walls weren’t all coming crashing down around them. And, Jane supposed, for him, they weren’t. This was still just a simple week-long fling. She surrendered to his touch, his kiss, to the feelings he could evoke, partly because they drove the guilt from her mind temporarily, but mostly because she simply couldn’t—and didn’t want to—resist him.
He was taunting himself, and he knew it. Bringing Jane to this island so he could always imagine her here. Jane, who might have been his perfect, ideal wife, in a parallel universe. In a universe where he could open himself up to the uncertainties of life, to the idea of loving someone who might leave him, who might hurt him.
In that world, she belonged here.
In this world, too, he thought, watching as she strolled onto the large timber balcony that hung, cantilevered from the house, over a cliff atop the ocean. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ she said, shaking her head a little, so her blond hair, naturally wavy, he’d discovered this week, flew loose around her face, reminding him of gold.
‘It was a labour of love for my parents,’ Zeus admitted, remembering the way they’d pored over the plans when his mother was well enough. ‘They would talk about coming here with their grandchildren.’ His smile was grim. They’d all known his mother wouldn’t live to see grandchildren, particularly when marriage had been the last thing on Zeus’s mind. But it had given her pleasure to imagine, to hope.
