Page 239 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
Childhood best friends making waves in the not-for-profit sector, was the subtitle.
Childhood best friends.
Charlotte Shaw, his half-sister, was Lottie. Jane’s Lottie. The best friend he’d praised and been inwardly glad Jane had in his corner!
Nausea rolled through him. Disbelief was quickly followed by shock, then acceptance. And then, finally, fury.
Fury because he’d been played. But to what end? A part of him wanted to cling to the fanciful notion that this was all some big, silly coincidence. Something they could laugh about together. After all, Jane was the woman he loved. A part of him wanted to hold fast to the dreams he’d started to walk towards, to the future he’d envisaged only minutes ago.
But Zeus was not one to run and hide.
Jane had lied to him, and he had to know why. Boxing away the love he felt for her, telling himself it was based on falsity and pretence, he sat at the table and stared straight ahead, ordering his thoughts, making a plan and waiting. For when Jane woke up, they’d have this conversation, and he wouldn’t rest until he knew everything.
‘Good morning,’ she said, trying to hide her ambivalence about whether or not the morning was, in fact, good or not. Ambivalence? She wished she felt ambivalent. The truth was she knew this was going to be one of the hardest days of her life. The only thing getting her through was the certainty that she was leaving Zeus to fly to Lottie, whom she would sit down and make see sense about this whole situation. Just imagining the truce she could bring about between the two of them was almost enough to ease her pain. Almost, but not quite.
And maybe, just maybe, when it was all out in the open, and things had calmed down, Zeus might even understand…
‘Are you packed?’
His voice was strange. Dark and heavy. His eyes met hers, but they were ice-cold, utterly different to how he’d looked at her the night before, with something that had felt almost like love to her silly wishful heart.
Perhaps he was just finding the emotion of the day too much, like she was? He was standing across the room, hips pressed to the kitchen counter, mug of coffee in hand, and he looked good enough to eat.
‘I— Not yet.’ She’d been putting it off, naturally. She wanted to eke out as much of this day together as she possibly could.
‘I’ve organised for my helicopter to take you to Athens from the island. It will be ready in ten minutes.’
She gaped. ‘Ten…minutes?’
He nodded once. ‘Which should be just long enough for you to explain to me exactly how you know Charlotte Shaw, and exactly what the plan was in coming to Athens?’
Jane gasped, her eyes filling with stars, the world growing black, so for a fearsome moment she thought she might pass out. He was staring at her as though she were something disgusting on his shoe, as though he could barely stand to breathe the same air as her. ‘How did you—?’
How he’d found out was hardly the most important thing to ask, but it was a reasonable question.
Nonetheless, his eyes flashed with fury that she’d immediately asked that, rather than something else.
‘That’s irrelevant. And I’ll be the one posing the questions.’
She shuddered. He wasn’t angry, she realised. She’d been wrong to perceive fury in his eyes. Disgust, yes, and coldness, which was somehow so, so much worse.
‘You knew about the marriage clause of my family’s business all along.’
She closed her eyes on a wave of panic. ‘Zeus, let me explain—’
‘Did you know about it?’ he interrupted, staring her down, so when she blinked her eyes open, she was lanced by the intensity of his gaze.
‘Yes.’ A whispered admission; a death knell. His own eyes closed then, briefly, on a wave of acceptance, so she realised that up until that moment, he’d been holding out some form of hope that maybe she hadn’t known. That maybe the marriage clausewasn’twhy she’d come to Athens.
‘And you were supposed to, what? Tempt me into marriage then stand me up at the altar?’
‘No.’ She spat the word like a curse.
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘It wasn’t a particularly well-thought-out plan,’ she whispered. ‘Lottie—’
At the mention of Charlotte’s abbreviated name, he cursed softly so she grimaced.
