Page 5 of Modern Romance January 2025 1-4

For the first time in his life, Nic wanted to deny that reality, wanted to be able to sincerely empathise with a woman, and yet he, a Diamandis from birth, couldn’t. He had been born into a very wealthy Greek dynasty of high achievers. He had developed his first app at university and made a fortune out of it. He might have learned to cook as a student, but he had never in his life had to worry about paying for anything. Everything he had ever wanted was his...except a happy family, something he had longed for as a kid, growing up in a very tense and often hostile atmosphere, striving to avoid his perpetually angry and argumentative and violent father and his demands as best he could. But that was something hecouldshare and at least it would get them off the controversial money topic.

‘My father ruined my childhood by continually demanding that I compete against my half-brother from his first marriage. He was obsessed with me surpassing him and my brother is a clever guy and that wasn’t easy,’ he confided.

Her delicate brows pleated, blue-green eyes as wide and open as the Greek sky. She struck him as strangely blunt for a woman, unsophisticated, and yet she had a charm all of her own because he knew he was fascinated and he had always believed that it would take a very special woman to fascinate him. Yet here she was, the very first to do so and she appeared to have no womanly wiles whatsoever, which Nic considered even odder. He was accustomed to women who were only frank about sex but quite happy to lie, blur the truth and fake everything else in an effort to impress him. The name Diamandis was like a dramatic price tag wherever he went, signifying the riches his family had acquired over generations of inherited wealth.

‘Why would he have wanted his two sons to compete with each other?’ she asked in confusion.

‘Because he didn’t raise my brother and he didn’t see him either. In fact, he acted like he hated him, yet it was very important to him that I performed better than my brother did, which was a serious challenge.’

‘Parents can be weird,’ she acknowledged as she ate and sipped her water, having refused more wine. ‘When my father divorced my mother, he tried to rid himself of responsibility for me as well, telling the judge that he shouldn’t have to pay support for me because he had never had much of a relationship with me. Of course, that didn’t fly, but the money he did have to pay was a drop in the ocean to him. It was as if, once he decided on the divorce, he wanted to put Mum and mebothbehind him as if we’d never existed.’

‘How did we end up talking about deep stuff like this?’ Nic enquired, elevating one ebony brow like a question mark. ‘More wine?’

‘No, thanks.’ Lexy busied herself filling the dishwasher, wiping up.

‘You cooked. I should clean up.’

‘But you’re stillsittingthere so you’re notthatkeen to muck in!’ Lexy shot back at him without hesitation.

His amused dark eyes danced like black diamonds in starlight and he grinned. ‘Rumbled,’ he conceded, wondering when a woman had last treated him like a regular man and indeed if it had ever happened before. Billionaires didn’t get teased or mocked by women very often.

In fact, thinking about it, Nic could not recall a single woman treating him with anything less than deadly gravity when he spoke. He got special treatment. He didn’t get called out on his quirks, his oversights, his short temper or his impatience. Everybody handled him with kid gloves as though he were a precious fifteen-carat diamond.

Lexy felt as though she was reeling from that wicked grin of his. It wasn’t just his striking good looks, she reasoned hesitantly, it was more something to do with that insanely compelling smile of his. It unleashed girlie butterflies in her tummy, left her strangely breathless and just about destroyed whatever brain power she possessed. Disconcerted by her own reaction, she turned away again and began to clean the counters, finding occupying her hands a great remedy for her increasing self-consciousness.

Her reactions made her feel like a stupid adolescent, too innocent for her own good. But she wasn’t innocent, only in the most basic physical way, she thought ruefully. Being a virgin who had never even been on a proper date was humiliating. Sooner or later, she would have to move her life on in that line, but it would have to be with someone who was genuinely interested in her, someone with some even small degree of caring towards her. She had no plans to waste her time or her body on some guy looking only for a one-night stand.Or had she?Shooting a sidewise glance at Nic, she reckoned that if it were him, she could probably consider the idea, because she had never been so attracted to anyone before and opportunities didn’t exactly come knocking on her door.

‘Let’s move upstairs. I have a cosier reception room up there with a terrific view.’

Lexy laughed. ‘Is this your “come up and see my etchings” speech?’ she joked.

‘No, those immortal words have never passed my lips.’ Nic grabbed the wine and a couple of glasses. ‘More in the realms of Netflix and chill.’

‘Well, it’s not like your terrific view is likely to be visible in the dark,’ she pointed out quietly.

‘I don’t tell lies,’ Nic declared as they reached the top of the imposing staircase and she was shocked enough by the room that lay before her to gasp in delighted astonishment.

With only the flickering light of the log burner in one corner, the room was basically all glass, all view, and she could see the snow and the stars and the moon. It was absolutely beautiful, like some surreal dream. ‘This is amazing.’

‘I built it for the view.’

‘Yet you don’t live here the whole time, do you?’ she said quite naturally.

Nic flashed shrewd dark eyes to her tranquil face. ‘Why do you have that idea?’

Lexy shrugged, quite blind, it seemed, to his suspicion. ‘It doesn’t seem that lived in. It just doesn’t have the vibe or any existing clutter. Initially I thought it could be a luxury let but then you had said you planted the trees, so I knew that wasn’t right. So I thought maybe you travelled a lot for work.’

‘I do,’ Nic conceded, relaxing again as he hit a button to reveal the television screen and handed her the remote. ‘Pick your own personal poison. I’m feeling generous.’

Nobody could have been more surprised than Nic when she put on an ancient episode ofFriends. ‘I thought for sure you’d put on a reality show... This is really old,’ he complained.

‘But this is more relatable than gorgeous chicks in bikinis at exotic locations...or baking or fashion. I watched it growing up. It’s my comfort choice.’

‘I wasn’t allowed to watch TV growing up. My father was convinced it would interfere with my studies.’

‘Sounds like he was...a bit of a pain?’

‘A lot of a pain,’ Nic countered, sinking down on the sofa beside her.

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