Page 122 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Lydia assured her. ‘I’ll find him.’
Alexis was so tall he should have been easy to spot, but after scanning all the faces on the ground floor, trying to blend in and be unobtrusive so as not to catch the attention of anyone who knew her, she’d seen no sight of him. A small group of guests, though, were climbing the wide stairs from the basement, and, seeing another guest descend them, she decided to follow suit.
The basement was a vast, open space that covered the whole footprint of the house with artfully decorated pillars structurally supporting it running across its centre. She saw two snooker tables in one section, gambling tables, a large fully stocked bar manned by three staff, comfortable sofas, caught a peek of a home cinema behind velvet curtains, but no Alexis. Ready to cut back across the basement and go up and explore the gardens, she suddenly glimpsed a couple leaning against one of the pillars. Or, rather, the man wearing the navy embroidered suit and holding a glass of champagne was leaning back against it. The woman, taller, blonder and more beautiful than Lydia, was leaning into him, their torsos a feather away from touching, coquettish delight alive on her face. Laughing, she put her hands around his neck, pressed her breasts into his chest and leaned in for a kiss.
Lydia’s chest turned to ice.
How the hell had he allowed himself to become trapped? Alexis wondered. He still hadn’t spoken to Hans, and now Angeliki Poulis, an old flame, had made a beeline for him and was under the impression that he wanted to hear every last detail about her recent trip to Marrakech and that he would find every last detail as scintillating as she believed it to be.
Refusing to respond in kind to her flirtatious smiles and giggles, he simply waited with barely concealed impatience for her to stop talking so he could extract himself without having to cause a scene. Angeliki was a spoilt daddy’s girl who thrived on drama. Alexis didn’t want any drama, wanted only to find Hans, have a good talk with him, and then go home to Lydia. But, of course, he couldn’t tell Angeliki that. Angeliki had the biggest mouth in Athens.
When she put her hands around his neck and leaned her face closer for a kiss, his patience snapped. Clasping the hands, he was about to pull them off him when the hairs on the nape of his neck lifted.
Turning his head, he saw the small, curvy figure in the taupe dress some distance away, her gaze fixed on him with an expression that could only be described as agonised horror.
The drumming of blood in Alexis’s head and disbelief at the apparition before him froze him into place and froze his reactions, and now he was the one watching in horror as Lydia’s open mouth closed into a tight line and her beautiful face contorted.
She’d already reached the stairs when he pulled himself out of his stupor.
Disentangling himself from Angeliki like he’d been scalded, he hurried after his wife, taking the stairs three at a time and then taking the quickest, longest strides of his life to catch her as she stepped into the central reception room, overtaking her and then spinning around to block her path.
If it were possible for fire and brimstone to be fired from eyes then he was a damned man.
‘That was not what it looked like,’ he said immediately and firmly.
She folded her arms across her chest and gave a shrug of contemptuous nonchalance. With a smile so brittle the slightest knock would shatter it, she said, ‘It really doesn’t matter. I just came here to tell you that Lucie did come back to save Antoniadis Shipping—it appears she’s as madly in love with my brother as he is with her. The investors believe she’s spent the last week in hospital with a relapse of her head injury. A statement will be issued in the morning about the new date for the wedding. Antoniadis Shipping has been saved and I imagine the knock-on effect will benefit Tsaliki Shipping too. I just thought you’d want to know all that.’ Her smile widened. ‘Looking at all the guests here, you’re going to be spoilt for choice over who to celebrate the hardest with. Enjoy the rest of your night.’
Lydia had barely taken three steps past him when Alexis caught her wrist and spun her back round.
‘What the hell, Lydia?’ he said tightly, his face dark with anger.
Drawing herself as tall as she could get, knowing the entire fabric of her being was a thread away from unravelling, she hissed, ‘Take your hand off me.’ And then she snatched her wrist away with such force that she stumbled, would have gone sprawling if he hadn’t caught her with one deft hook of his arm.
Before she could pull herself away a second time, he was frogmarching her through the reception room whilst simultaneously using the hand not trapping her to him to call his driver.
Once outside and away from the prying eyes of the other guests, Lydia pulled herself out of his hold and held tightly to her belly, as if she could protect the growing life from the cauldron of nausea bubbling and broiling inside her, the euphoria of her mother’s call all gone.
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ he demanded. ‘Nothing happened. Nothing was going to happen. I was about to extricate myself from the situation when I saw you standing there.’
‘I don’t care! I’m not your keeper!’
‘If you don’t care then why are you shouting and why the hell did you run away?’
‘Because it was humiliating!’
Because after the coldness of shock had come the heat…red-hot jealous heat.
She, the woman who’d never experienced an ounce of jealousy in her life, had wanted to fly at that woman with her arms around Alexis and physically drag her off him, and then batter her fists into his chest and scream in his face until he swore he would never look at another woman again.
‘Humiliating?Angeliki didn’t know I was married—no one knew because you insisted we keep it a secret, but do you seriously think I was encouraging her?’
‘I don’t know!’ All Lydia knew was how she’d felt in the moment when all the fears she’d tried so hard to bury had been realised and the future she’d been dreading had revealed itself more sharply and painfully than she’d ever allowed herself to imagine.
Oh, God, tears were burning the backs of her eyes, her heart thumping so hard the beats pounded like drums between her ears. She wasn’t just close to unravelling, she was close to disintegrating and she needed to get a grip on herself right now.
Large hands clasped her shoulders, his stare boring so hard into her that it compelled her to lift her gaze to the tight fury etched on his handsome face. ‘Do you seriously think I would try to hook up with someone else the first minute your back’s turned? When we’ve only been married five minutes?’
‘But that’s just it, isn’t it?’ she cried. ‘Five minutes or five weeks or five months, we both know it’s going to happen, especially when the baby comes!’ When she was sore and tired and needing her bed for sleep and only sleep.
