Page 32 of Modern Romance January 2025 1-4

Nic’s hair was damp, a fresh shirt hanging open as he pulled on jeans.

‘It’s funny,’ Lexy said ruefully. ‘I get dressed up for dinner, you get dresseddown. It shows what a bad match we are.’

‘We’re not.’ Nic watched her perch at the foot of the bed, her hands linking together in a tight grip that told him she was very tense and anxious. He breathed in deep and strong. ‘You know, I missed you—’

‘You could’ve taken me with you,’ she reminded him.

‘It’s just as well that I didn’t. I got very, very drunk the night before last and I’m still feeling the effects. I found out a whole lot of distressing things over the past two days and I didn’t handle it well.’

Her smooth brow furrowed. ‘Distressing?’

‘Very distressing and very much a blueprint of my own flaws, so I probably wouldn’t have been good at trying to explain it all to you in the frame of mind I was in. I’m not saying that I’ll do it any better tonight but at least I’m desperate enough totry,’ he completed grimly.

‘I’ve been wondering if maybe we should be thinking of...of a er...friendly separation...even if we’re living under the same roof,’ Lexy proposed shakily. ‘I don’t want to deprive you of the kids and it’s not like I hate you or anything...or you hate me.’

Nic lost all the colour in his bronzed complexion and stared back at her as if she had punched him. ‘I don’t want a separation—’

‘But perhaps it’s what we bothneed,’ Lexy qualified. ‘You’re not happy right now and I can see that—’

‘Shelve this discussion for now but let me say first that that’s not true. I will explain why. Obviously you’re unhappy and I don’t blame you,’ Nic declared flatly. ‘But that could change if other things changed—’

‘People don’t change,’ Lexy sighed.

‘That depends on their motivation. Let’s eat and I’ll tell you about Angeliki,’ he urged, grasping her hand to tug her up and head her downstairs.

‘Angeliki?’she questioned in bewilderment.

‘Yes, and my office manager, Leigh, and my mother. I’ve been talking to all of them in the last couple of days and it was an eye-opening, very unpleasant experience.’

A maid delivered the starter beneath Dexter, the butler’s watchful gaze. Lexy lifted her wine glass while Nic pushed his glass away and poured himself some water.

‘Angeliki...’ Lexy prompted uneasily.

‘We grew up together. Her mother, Rhea, is my mother’s best friend. It was inevitable that I saw a great deal of Angeliki. She was like a little sister to me. She’s a couple of years younger than I am. I...’ He hesitated, his lean dark features tightening. ‘I loved her as a part of my family. As a teenager, I was quiet, good-living and a disappointment to my father, who would’ve been delighted if I’d gone wild like Jace did but that was never me. Angeliki was colourful, adventurous and everything I was not, an entertaining companion for the adolescent years.’

‘But the friendship remained—’

‘Yes, until she tried to get into bed with me a couple of months before I met you and I rejected her. I was shocked by her approach, totally unprepared for that.’

Lexy almost winced because, in some ways, he was still innocent, certainly not always good when it came to reading the room. ‘Angeliki has always wanted you for herself. I saw that in her the very first time I met her. So,’ she pressed, helpless not to ask. ‘Did you sleep with her?’

Nic studied her in wonderment. ‘Of course I didn’t. It was always platonic on my side of the fence, and she reacted badly to rejection.’

‘I can imagine,’ Lexy muttered in relief that her own reading of that relationship had been correct.

‘For weeks, she wouldn’t answer my calls and I felt bad about it. Then my father died and, being Argus, he left a bombshell letter for me, which I received after the will reading. A letter telling me that Angeliki was my half-sister.’

‘Good grief!’ Lexy gasped, unprepared for that revelation.

‘I couldn’t face telling her straight after that getting-into-my-bed episode, so I thought I’d let the memory of that fade before I told her the truth.’

Lexy nodded, following that reasoning but shaken too by the sudden awareness that Angeliki, the shrew, was actually a member of Nic’s family.

‘And then I metyou,’ Nic informed her. ‘And that was like casting a stone in a very deep pond because Angeliki got in touch with me again and I told her about meeting you.’

‘You toldherabout me?’ Lexy repeated in surprise at that admission.

‘Yes. Total idiot about women here,’ Nic quipped with a curled lip. ‘I raved about you like a teenager, according to her, and she realised that I’d finally met what she saw as competition.’

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