Page 3 of Modern Romance January 2025 1-4

‘And they hurt. Definitely not shoes made for walking in,’ she quipped, bending down to remove the shoes and set them neatly by the wall before straightening again to take in her surroundings.

Wow, she thought at first glimpse of the metal sculpted starburst lights hanging far above, the sort of signature piece that only a designer created. Double wow, she thought as she noted a sleek bronze sculpture and the stone and metal staircase leading off the big limestone-tiled entrance hall. Triple wow, she thought, feeling the warmth of underfloor heating unfreeze the soles of her feet.

Thee mou, she literally shrank when she took off the heels. Nic stared down at her and realised that she reminded him of a fairy ornament on a Christmas tree. Light, airy, insubstantial in some ethereal way. It made her incredibly feminine. Registering that he was staring, relieved that she hadn’t noticed his absorption in her, he looked away, wondering just why he found her so fascinating.

‘I’ll stow your case in the guest room. It’s second left down the corridor,’ he advised, tugging open a door into a reception room. ‘I suggest you go into the drawing room and warm up by the fire. The cloakroom’s across the hall.’

Only rich people had drawing rooms, Lexy reflected uneasily as she tactfully took his advice, rather than follow him around like a tracker. Barefoot, she hurried over to the blaze in the log burner and defrosted in front of it before removing his coat and padding back out to the hall to enter the cloakroom and hang it up. Nothing else hung there and she assumed he lived alone. She freshened up at the sink, critically studying her wan, anxious expression in the mirror, dabbing away the streak of blood to note the tiny cut below her cheekbone. She had been lucky, really, really lucky, not to suffer a more serious injury, she reminded herself as she drove a brush through her long snarled-up hair and winced, reckoning that she had a bump at the side of her head.

Tugging out her phone, she made the necessary calls, one to the car-hire firm to report the accident and the location of the car and the second to her boss, Eileen, who ran the interpreter/translator company where she worked, to explain that she was currently marooned in the snow. There was a text from her friend, Julia, reminding her of her pick-up time in thirty-six hours for her lift down to Cornwall with Julia’s mother. She winced, afraid she wouldn’t make it back to London in time because of the weather. But she decided not to warn Julia of her current predicament and stress her out. A godmother had to turn up at a christening, after all, when it was such an honour to be chosen. Even so, Lexy was still surprised by her own selection for the role as she had only seen Julia once since university, after her friend had dropped out, married and moved to the country.

Warning her boss had been automatic even though her absence was unlikely to affect business, Lexy reflected wryly, as she received less work than some of her colleagues. The languages she specialised in, Korean and French, were not in as high demand as the likes of Spanish or Chinese would have been. Of course, it wasn’t as though she had had much choice about the languages she had acquired through her own background, she conceded wryly.

Lexy had grown up in South Korea, where her banker father worked, and her French-speaking mother had provided her with her second language. Her decision to study languages had been purely practical. After her parents’ contentious divorce and her mother’s subsequent breakdown following their return to the UK, finding stable employment as soon as possible had been her sole motivation. She had studied for her language degree while working in an unofficial capacity whenever Eileen requested her services at the same time as working numerous jobs in the catering trade to make ends meet.

And at the end of the day, where had sacrificing her own choices got her? That unwelcome thought slunk in no matter how hard she tried to stifle it. Her mother had passed away in any case, unable to appreciate her daughter’s efforts to sustain her, exhausted by the agonies of living without domestic staff and without a man to tell her what to do. Admittedly, Agathe Taylor had been a fragile personality. The most daring thing she had ever done had been to marry a much older man against her parents’ wishes.

Lexy had never met her late mother’s French family but had since learned that they too were dead. Her mother’s sense of failure after the divorce had been strong enough to ensure that Agathe had not wished to get back in touch with her relatives. As for her father’s family, they were now fully engaged with his much younger second wife and the son he had long craved. A son as opposed to a daughter, Lexy, whom he had never wanted. And he had not even attempted to hide those feelings from his daughter, ensuring that Lexy was always aware of his disappointment in her.

Suppressing those wounding memories, Lexy emerged into the hall to find her host waiting for her.

‘I’ll show you to your room. Like me, you probably want a shower, after your...experience,’ he assumed.

Lexy simply assumed he wanted her out from under his feet in his own home, a reality she could easily understand. Her cheeks warmed with embarrassment as she questioned whether or not to make the offer she had already decided on.

‘I was planning to offer to make dinner as a thank you for your help...that is, assuming there’s food in the larder,’ she admitted uncomfortably.

From his great height, Nic gazed down at her and paused. ‘That would be very kind of you,’ he told her, unable to suppress that generous response when he saw the anxious light in her clear ocean-coloured eyes. It wasn’t the moment to tell her that he was a perfectly capable cook in his own right.

Geographical distance from his domineering father had given him a freedom he could never have enjoyed in Greece. As a business student in London, he had refused the large staffed apartment and the security that Argus had tried to force on him, protesting that he wanted a more normal experience than the Diamandis wealth had allowed him growing up. Argus had scoffed because he had always revelled in showing off his ‘richer than King Midas’ status and the bragging rights that went with it. Nic, on the other hand, didn’t think he could have become half as successful as he had since been without that grounding understanding of how more ordinary people lived.

‘I’ll get changed first,’ Lexy told him cheerfully, a huge smile transforming her formerly tense face. It reminded him of sunshine breaking out after rain and warmed him.

The big, elegant guest room was as impressive as the foyer and the drawing room. She opened her case and extracted what she needed to explore the private bathroom. Everything was the very last word in luxury. My word, who was this guy? A movie star with the bank account to match? If he was, she didn’t recognise him. Certainly, he had the looks to follow such a career.

She had been close to mesmerised when she’d looked up at him in the hall because he wasthatgood-looking. The stop-you-in-your-tracks-to-stare variety. Blue-black hair, flopping damply against his brow, showcasing perfect brows and a straight, equally perfect nose, not to mention the high cheekbones of a model and a full, superbly modelled mouth. Maybe hewasa model, Lexy reasoned. Or just a random gorgeous guy!

For goodness’ sake, why was she fangirling over him? Well, she could answer that with ease. He was definitely the most handsome man she had ever met, she conceded as she walked into the marble enclosed shower and sheepishly abandoned her own shampoo and conditioner to make use of the much fancier products on offer there for a guest.

It was not as though her life to date had allowed her to gain much experience with the opposite sex. Studying, working and looking after her depressed and distraught parent had consumed Lexy’s life from the age of fifteen when her father had first dropped the bombshell that he’d wanted a divorce and immediately departed, leaving them marooned in London on what her mother had innocently believed was a holiday. And itwasonly a year since her late mother had passed away, leaving Lexy free of concern for the first time in years but also distinctly lonely. After all, she had deeply loved Agathe even while she was guiltily wishing her parent would grow a backbone in her dealings with her husband. Agathe had subscribed to the conviction that a husband was to be waited on hand and foot and never ever challenged. Unsurprisingly, she had received poor treatment in return for her near worship of her other half and that had included being ripped off in the divorce that had followed.

Lexy had become wary of men after growing up on the sidelines of her parents’ dysfunctional relationship. Her father had been scary, cold and a strict disciplinarian. He might not have wanted a daughter but, once he’d had one, she’d had to be perfect in every way from her exam results to her appearance. She shuddered at the very thought of how he would have controlled her had she been a more challenging teenager before he’d departed their lives, but luckily he had been gone by the time she’d developed any rebellious tendencies and her mother had been too lost inside her own head to care what her daughter did, never mind what she wore.

But, even then, Lexy had had too many real-world problems to handle to act like a normal teenager. It had been Lexy who’d had to worry about how the rent was paid, food was bought or what school she attended because her mother might have been there in body, but she had never been there in spirit. Lexy hadn’t had the time to crush on pop idols when by the age of fifteen she’d been an illegal kitchen worker in the back of a local restaurant, toiling all hours to pay bills her mother had ignored.

Only when Lexy had finally graduated to earn a decent wage had she had the time to date, and there just hadn’t been anyone out there, give or take the occasional randy junior chef giving her the eye and making a move. So, it really wasn’t any wonder that she was still inexperienced enough to be fangirling over her fanciable host, she decided ruefully.

After drying her hair, she pulled on the yoga pants and tee she had packed for the previous night but not got to wear because the business conference had run into overtime. Feeling fresh and reaching for her bag, which she went nowhere without, she walked back to the hall. It was already dark and through the glass she could see the snow piling up against the windows. She frowned.

‘The snowfall is very heavy,’ she remarked anxiously when she heard a sound behind her.

‘Yes, it’s quite a storm. Would you like a drink?’ She flipped round to see Nic standing in the doorway of the drawing room. ‘You might as well relax as there’s nothing we can do about the weather.’

‘You’re right,’ she conceded with a little nod of her head.

‘Drink? I have pretty much everything,’ he reminded her with a slanting smile that made her heart go bumpety-bumpety-bump straight away.

‘White wine would be good,’ Lexy responded, feeling the heat rise in her face and hoping he didn’t notice.

---