Page 42 of Modern Romance January 2025 1-4

‘He was delighted to meet me. It was the best day of my life, discovering him. I have a family now.’

Despite her pain, she couldn’t begrudge him that. Though he’d always been stoic, she’d witnessed what life was like with his difficult mother and knew how he’d yearned to discover the truth about his father.

She’d heard the taunts, not just from her father, who’d claimed he was shifty and idle, inheriting bad ways from an unknown traveller father. Taking their lead from her father, half the locals had been prejudiced against the precocious boy with dark olive skin and a mother who refused to comply with village expectations.

‘I’m glad for you both.’ Was that a flicker of surprise? ‘So you took his name.’

‘Actually, I always had it. It turns out my mother lied. She was married when she had me.’

Portia felt her eyes widen. Lex had grown up with a single mother, using her surname when all the time he was entitled to another. They’d lived in straightened circumstances, sharing a tiny cottage belonging to his mother’s ageing uncle by marriage who worked in the stables at Cropley Hall.

‘I don’t understand.’

He shrugged, the fluid movement dragging her gaze to those imposing shoulders.

‘She left my father without warning. He searched for us for years, mainly in Ireland where she came from and America where she had relatives. He wondered if she’d run away because of postnatal depression and an inability to adjust to a new life in a foreign country.’ He paused. ‘We’ll never know now she’s dead. But she lied and caused us both tremendous pain. Some people are like that.’

Bright eyes bored into hers. There it was, the contempt she expected.

She opened her mouth to explain but words wouldn’t come. How could she explain to this judgemental stranger, this man who’d been so hurt because of her?

Portia had been strong for so long, but the reality of Lex’s disdain punctured something inside her. She felt unbearably weary. What was the point, anyway? He wouldn’t believe her and even if he did it wouldn’t change anything.

But one thing she had to know. ‘Did you come to the auction because you knew I’d be there?’

His grimace answered her. ‘I had no idea you’d be there. I saw the painting of Cropley Hall and decided to buy it.’

She swallowed, the movement jerky. Maybe, after all, he had some fond memories of that time. ‘Why?’

Another shrug. This time the movement looked somehow Mediterranean. As if the boy she’d known had never existed and Alexandros Tomaras had lived all his life in the Greek sunshine.

‘A whim.’ He held her gaze for a long moment. ‘But I’m having second thoughts. I won’t keep it. I never did like the place. Maybe I’ll burn it.’

His tone was soft and even, the look in his eyes deliberately cruel. He knew how much she’d always loved the place, even in those last years under her father’s increasingly stern rule. He understood her love of art too, and how the idea of destroying it horrified her.

Realisation swamped her. Coming here was a mistake. Talking with him would bring no closure, only hurt.

Portia understood his anger but refused to be a whipping boy. She’d had enough of cruel men.

She blotted her lips with a linen napkin and slid from her seat. ‘Thanks for the drink, Alexandros.’ Lex, the boy she’d known, was long gone. ‘I’m glad things worked out well for you.’

She turned and threaded her way through the tables towards the exit, back straight, chin up and without daring to look back.

CHAPTER TWO

LEXSTOODATthe windows that lined one side of the conference room. From here he could see the dark blue Aegean Sea beyond Athens.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels, annoyed at his inability to concentrate. The meeting had gone well and he should be following up with his staff, confirming their next steps. There was so much to do, given his expansion plans.

But it wasn’t business on his mind. It was a pair of dark, pansy-brown eyes, wide with hurt. A narrow jaw clenched as if to hold in a spill of emotion.

The moment he’d seen Portia hurry from the auction room, exiting via a back door, everything had changed. Slid off track. As if the world he knew abruptly shifted sideways so that even the most familiar things looked different.

Feltdifferent.

He shook his head. Even viewing her from behind, with her partly obscured by the crowd, recognition had been instantaneous. Like a slamming fist to the gut.

Seeing her after all these years shouldn’t have altered anything. Their time together was ancient history. She’d made a fool of him. He should have known, given her background, not to believe in her.

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