Page 115 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
‘In hindsight, I would do some things differently,’ he acknowledged. He would do everything differently. ‘In our defence, once Rebecca had planted the seed of the lie, it seemed the most logical thing to play along with it precisely to prevent the destruction everyone is now living through.’ Lucie’s own mother had started the lie that Lucie and Thanasis had fallen in love.
‘Not you though. You’re insulated.’ Her smile was grim. ‘You’re the only one of us all who is going to get through this whole mess unscathed.’
‘You forget that though I’m the one with the least to lose, I’m the one who fought the hardest to stop this all from happening.’ He drained his brandy and fixed her with a hard stare. While he appreciated Lydia was upset at everything that was happening to her family, he did not appreciate her attempts to make him the scapegoat for it. ‘Do not forget, marriage between our families was my idea and it was a damn good one—your brother was the one who screwed it up, no one else. He drove Lucie away the first time by behaving like an arsehole to her and then drove her away a second time by discovering his conscience.’
‘At least he has one,’ she bit out pointedly.
He studied her through narrowed eyes wondering when the Lydia who’d been determined to fight any good feeling towards him had made a return. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Apart from my whole life being destroyed? Nothing.’
‘Yournothingfeels very personal. Have I done something to upset you?’
She eyeballed him back with a loathing he hadn’t seen since they’d become lovers and then all the air seemed to puff out of her as she sagged in her seat and hung her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I’m feeling very guilty and emotional today and I’m taking it out on you.’
‘Are you sure that’s all it is?’
She rubbed her face and nodded.
Crossing to her, he sank onto his knees and smoothed her hair off her wan face. ‘You look tired,’ he said softly. ‘How about I run you a bath? Have a long soak before dinner.’
Something agonised flashed over her beautiful face before she dragged up a small smile. ‘How can you be nice to me when I’ve just been all bitchy and mean to you?’
‘I’ve had worse thrown at me.’ Instead of this bringing a proper smile to her face, the smile she had formed fell and her eyes closed. ‘Lydia, you’re pregnant, your family is being destroyed and your whole world is changing. It is understandable that you’re on edge.’
She opened her eyes.
He traced a thumb over her cheekbone. ‘I cannot perform miracles but, whatever happens, I promise I will not let your family fall into poverty.’
A line creased her forehead. ‘Why would you promise that?’
‘Because whether they like it or not, their daughter is my wife and they are my child’s grandparents, and that makes them my family too.’
Lydia stayed in the bath so long her fingers and toes turned into prunes. Two nights of passionate sex had released so many endorphins or whatever the chemical was that she’d basically stopped thinking with her brain and, having tried valiantly not to think too much in Alexis’s absence that day, her thoughts about him now refused to stay tucked away and had returned with a vengeance. And her fears.
This was her life now. What she’d agreed to. She couldn’t start acting like Queen Bitch just because Alexis had recently taken a lover and fallen hard enough to consider marrying her. Whoever the elusive lady was, he hadn’t gone through with it, not only because he’d married Lydia, which he couldn’t have done if married to someone else, but because he’d had flings with at least three other women in the last month, and those were just the ones she’d read about. He’d probably been cock-struck, a term she remembered from her university days when one of the biggest campus players had fallen hard for one of her friends. In the short time they were together, Maya—yes, another Maya—could have asked him to shave all his hair off and he would have slavishly obeyed. Two weeks later he’d come out of his stupor and dumped her. Lydia wished she could tell herself that she was suffering from the female equivalent.
Going to bed with Alexis had been madness but it had been a madness she’d fully embraced and refused to regret. He’d fully lived up to his reputation and more, and she’d walked away on her own terms. Now she got to live that exquisite joy every night and she had no right to feel jealousy at some poor woman whose heart he’d inevitably broken or feel something a lot like rage-fuelled sickness to imagine the next woman whose heart he’d break. She needed to be concentrating on keeping her own future heartbreak to a minimum. She was no longer confident that when Alexis did take a lover she would be automatically cast aside, was feeling increasingly certain that she really would have to emulate Rebecca Tsaliki’s insouciance and turn a blind eye and pretend every minute that his infidelity didn’t hurt.
The next day passed for Lydia much like her first full day. She’d seamlessly imported all her files and apps and contacts from her old computers to the new ones but, again, couldn’t find the head space to concentrate on her work, couldn’t even find the motivation to pitch for the new contracts that had popped up on the networking site in the last few days. She couldn’t shift the sickness in her stomach. If she didn’t know it was all being caused by stress she’d think morning sickness had decided to throw itself at her just as the pregnancy progressed beyond the first trimester.
Restless, bored with being cooped up and not wanting to wallow in self-pity when she had nothing to be self-pitying about considering that, whatever happened, her child’s future was secure just as she’d so wanted, she wandered out of the office Alexis had had created for her. Soon, she found herself studying the pop art hanging on his walls. Such fresh, fun pieces ranging from comically sexy to comically absurd and all brought a much-needed smile to her face.
Moving downstairs, she continued studying them. They suited the man who’d bought them and it made her heart pang to think of him fighting fires to save a business he didn’t even want for the sake of his father and siblings. The businesses he did own and from which he’d made his personal fortune were all in hospitality, an industry that suited him much better than shipping, which to Lydia was the least exciting industry going. He even made suits sexy, which she’d never thought she’d find herself thinking. Suits, she’d always believed, were for serious-minded and dare she say boring men like her father and brother, and it had been this association that had actively seen her choose arty, poetic men as her partners; men who wouldn’t know one end of a tie from the other and who considered reciting sonnets as romantic and the creation of pop art as frivolous. In her quest to not wake up married to a version of her father or brother, for whom the business was everything, she’d inadvertently found herself with men for whom themselves was everything.
Alexis was everything those men were not and far removed from her father and brother. He wouldn’t know one end of a sonnet from another but he had a sense of humour and a zest for life which, combined with his drop-dead gorgeous looks and sexiness, made him irresistible.
But the man who found the shipping industry as exciting as she did was having to delegate the running of his own business to staff so he could concentrate his forensic mind on saving his father’s business from the bankruptcy Antoniadis Shipping was headed for. In just two days, Lydia’s brother would sit in his boardroom with his main investors knowing it would likely be for the final time.
Shockingly, despite all the bad blood between their two families, Alexis had promised not to let her family fall into poverty. More shockingly, she believed him. What she didn’t believe for a second was that her family would accept his help. Her mother, she knew, would rather starve.
On impulse, she pulled her phone out of her back pocket and was a fingerprint away from calling him when she stopped herself. Alexis was working; fighting the fires that he’d never started even if he had stoked the flames…
Damn it, what had she been doing eulogising him? Yes, he had good traits, many of them, but she didn’t need to reinforce them to herself in some kind of daydream like some kind of moon-eyed teenager with a crush. At this rate she’d talk herself into falling in love with him!
‘You look like you’re arguing with yourself.’
A small scream flew from her mouth as she whipped around and found Alexis standing at the doorway of the dining room where she’d been absently studying a wacky painting of an iconic sixties actress with a cigarette holder in her mouth, the limited palette all fluorescent colours. ‘What are you doing home?’
