Page 17 of Modern Romance January 2025 1-4

‘My room is through the communicating door but it’s locked. I’m afraid I can’t conserve your privacy tomorrow night because there is no way Yaya will put a bride and groom into separate bedrooms and as they’re holding the wedding for us—’

‘It’s fine. We’ll survive,’ Lexy hastened to soothe even though her brain was exploding with confused questions.

This was the guy she had first met. Considerate, thoughtful and kind. Where had that guy gone during her barrage of phone calls, letters and office visits over eighteen months? Had Nic Diamandis simplypanickedat the news of her pregnancy? Had he blocked her calls and dumped her letters because he couldn’t face the problems her pregnancy would create? What else was she supposed to think if she was no longer able to think of him as an inherently bad, irresponsible man who thought only of himself?

Of course, he couldn’t defend himself for such reprehensible behaviour, but if he was trying to make good now and make up for it, shouldn’t she at least recognise the effort he was making to redress the damage he had done?

‘It’s a family dinner this evening hosted by Jace and my grandmother at their place.’

‘What do I wear?’

‘Something long and glam,’ Nic advised as he departed again. ‘I’ll send in some jewellery for you to choose...a couple of things to use. My mother sent it here. Bang a ring on your engagement finger. It will look better.’

‘Your mother knows we’re fake?’

‘No, my mother thinks we’re real and that we ran out of time, choosing to skip the engagement phase,’ Nic murmured ruefully. ‘She’s a romantic.’

And I was as well, until I met you and then you let me down, Lexy reflected in suppressed anguish.

She had fallen in love in the space of an evening. Who did that? Which sane, intelligent woman would do that? But she had paid the price for that foolishness, hadn’t she? She had had many months to agonise over her disillusionment.

She went back to the nursery to spend time with her babies and get to know the nannies a little better. Beth, Susie and Indira were young, active and chatty and Ethan, Ezra and Lily were calm and content in their care, which was fortunate when it was the wedding tomorrow and they would see little of her, she reminded herself. For a while she strolled around the house, getting acquainted with rooms, and when she had wasted enough time, she went back to her room to dress for dinner.

A large handsome jewellery box sat on the dresser awaiting her. From Nic’s mother, she assumed, thinking that it was a very generous woman who just offered her own possessions to a future daughter-in-law she had yet to meet. A farm girl, fancy that. But possibly Bianca Diamandis mightn’t like to be reminded of her more humble beginnings and Nic should have kept that info to himself.

Thinking such thoughts, Lexy picked out a kind of blingy diamond and emerald ring and threaded it on her ring finger to try before setting it aside to wear. Evidently, Nic had told his mother that she didn’t own any jewellery. What a very kind gesture! She picked a slender diamond necklace for the neckline of the dress she planned to wear before heading for a shower and a thorough grooming.

Finding her babies already sleeping in their cots, she sighed, wishing she had made it in time for a goodnight cuddle, but she would be up very early the next morning to attend to them all. Fully gowned and feeling incredibly opulent but ill at ease in a long silvery blue dress with its mermaid skirt, which made it impossible to take anything other than very small steps, she descended the sweeping staircase to where Nic awaited her in a dinner jacket and bow tie, looking exactly as he looked in all those online photos.

Except just for once he lacked that recurring arm ornament, Angeliki Bouras, a woman who in normal circumstances Lexy would have asked a lot about. What was so special about the exquisite blonde apart from the obvious? Why did Nic’s relationship with her appear to survive when other women seemed to last mere weeks in his company? Unfortunately, Lexy was aware that she had no right to ask such nosy, personal questions of a man about to make a fake marriage to her.

Nic was enthralled by the vision of Lexy in that dress with diamonds glittering at her throat and on her hand. ‘You look amazing,’ he said.

‘I look like a gold-digger,’ his future bride told him tartly. ‘All got up in a designer dress sporting all this bling.’

Nic grinned, that breath-stealing grin she remembered, and her heart hammered. ‘Maybe I’ve got a thing for sexy little gold-diggers...who knew?’

‘Stop it or I’ll laugh and I’m trying so hard to be refined and serene,’ she admitted.

‘They’re only people, good and bad, friendly or unfriendly. Wealth doesn’t make them one whit better than you and that’s the only difference,’ he said soothingly as he tucked her into a low-slung scarlet sports car and drove off.

The massive villa at the other end of the island had an elegance that his father’s house did not. Nic parked outside it and handed her out. ‘Show’s on now. Fake it until you make it.’

‘But you haven’t even told me what our story’s supposed to be.’

‘I kept it simple. Lost your phone number, lost touch, turned the city upside down trying to find you and then, bullseye, here you are with my children,’ Nic proffered lightly. ‘The love of my life.’

‘Do we have to exaggerate?’

‘The only people here who matter are my immediate family. Jace and Gigi. My mother, Yaya. Oh, yes, and my best friend, Angeliki.’

Wow,bestfriend, well, she hadn’t guessed that likelihood very well, had she? Relieved by that news, Lexy smiled. ‘I’ll do my best.’

But from the first frozen glance from Angeliki’s fine dark eyes, Lexy registered that the beautiful blonde might be her bridegroom’s best friend, but she was never going to be equally chummy with his bride-to-be. Clad in a fabulous bronze evening gown, the Greek heiress outshone every other female present and Lexy was relieved to be warmly hugged by Nic’s mother, Bianca, a diminutive brunette with a bubbly, positive personality and a bunch of chatter.

Bianca refused to be thanked for the loan of her jewellery. ‘I remembered how overpowered I felt by the Diamandis tribe just after Argus married me and I couldn’t have my daughter-in-law feeling the same way,’ she chattered cheerfully with an openness that was utterly unexpected in such a glittering array of high-society guests. ‘I’m relieved that my son saw through the façade of the often spoiled, entitled little madams he meets and married a young woman with a job and independence.’

‘That’s great,’ Lexy said weakly as she was enthusiastically grabbed into a hug, thinking that it was not the time to mention that independence and a proper job were a long way behind her since the birth of her sons and her daughter.

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