by Lynne Graham
‘That’s two stumbling blocks dealt with,’ Leo proclaimed briskly. ‘What are the other two?’
‘As soon as possible I would like to return to studying medicine,’ Letty admitted.
‘Why not? When I told you that I wanted a wife to be a mother to my sister’s children, I didn’t mean to suggest that I expected you to become a stay-at-home wife. I employ an ample staff to take care of the children on a day-to-day basis. You would be free to return to your studies,’ he assured her levelly. ‘I am not an unreasonable man, Juliet.’
‘Don’t call me that... I’ve always been Letty.’
‘I don’t like the name,’ Leo declared calmly. ‘To me, you will always be Juliet and I don’t know how it ever got shortened into something as ugly as Letty.’
‘My mother called my father, Julian, Jules and, although she named me for him, she could never stand to call me Juliet because it made her think of him. That’s how I became Letty.’
‘But you’re not a Letty, you’re a Juliet,’ Leo told her stubbornly.
Letty shrugged a shoulder in dismissal. She had no intention of changing her name back to please him. Having drunk her tea, she set the cup back tidily on the cabinet top. ‘I have to get back to work.’
‘You still haven’t told me the fourth stumbling block,’ Leo protested, dark glittering eyes full of frustration pinned to her.
‘My sex life,’ Letty said bluntly, abhorring the heat she could feel warming her cheeks.
‘Your...sex life?’ Leo demanded as if those two words were an incompatible combination. ‘You won’t have one, unless it’s with me.’
In the act of climbing out of the car, Letty came to a sudden halt and scornful green eyes slammed back into his. ‘That won’t be happening as long as you have other interests in your life,’ she assured him tartly. ‘And while I’m not currently in a hurry to have a sex life, I imagine the time will come when I feel differently.’
Leo was transfixed. It was a major obstacle and he hadn’t foreseen it. In fact, he had been so wrapped up in his own selfish desire to maintain his usual lifestyle and boundaries that he had utterly ignored the obvious. Obviously, Juliet would have the same needs as he did. He wasn’t one of those outdated men who believed that women had a smaller appetite for the physical pleasures of life. But the thought of his wife getting into bed with another man, the thought of another man touching and enjoying what Leo instinctively saw as his property alone, genuinely appalled him. He paled below his bronzed skin. It was hypocrisy, complete hypocrisy, and he knew it and sealed his wide sensual mouth closed before he said something he knew he should not say. That feat of control established, he breathed again.
‘We’ll discuss that on Saturday,’ Leo informed her with finality, knowing he had less than forty-eight hours in which to come up with a miraculous alternative that would prevent her from seeking sexual satisfaction outside their marriage.
‘I thought you might say that,’ Letty confided, a wry little smile curving her generous mouth. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t think of that angle.’
And with that final mocking little sally, Letty walked back into the nursing home, her head held high while Leo tried to work out how the hell she had contrived to become the very first woman to turn the tables on him.
CHAPTER THREE
ON THE SATURDAY MORNING, Leo travelled up in the smelly lift of the tower block. It was not a salubrious experience but meeting his future bride’s family as soon as possible was essential to the smooth running of his plans. He had dressed down for the occasion in jeans, deeming that appropriate attire for informal weekend wear and children, even though he rarely wore casual clothing.
Letty was stunned when the knock on the door disclosed Leo himself because she had been expecting his chauffeur or one of the bodyguards she had seen hovering at a discreet distance in the care home car park to come upstairs and collect her. And there he stood, all sleek and dark and sophisticated in a cashmere sweater in a soft oatmeal shade that accentuated his bronzed skin tone, designer jeans outlining his long powerful legs and narrow hips, teamed with the less subtle hint of a slim eye-wateringly expensive watch at a masculine wrist which suggested that he came from a class of society far removed from her own.
‘Leo!’ she heard herself say abruptly, taut with disconcertion and discomfiture at being faced with him sooner than she had expected.
‘I believe it’s time that I met your family,’ Leo told her smoothly.
Letty froze, further taken aback, faint colour running up into her cheeks. ‘Er... I...’
‘Not something we can avoid,’ Leo declared, cool and outrageously serene at the prospect.
It made Letty wonder what it took to unnerve Leo Romanos and once she found out she knew she would use it against him in punishment.
And little more than two minutes later he was dominating their tiny living room with his broad-shouldered height and positive buckets of charm. He accepted a cup of black coffee and engaged her mother in conversation. He came up with an entirely fictitious old lady whom he supposedly visited at the care home from time to time, a former employee of his father’s who had been kind to him as a boy.
‘Letty... I thought you said that Leo was related to...’
‘Your daughter and I kept on bumping into each other in the corridor late at night. She doesn’t always listen well,’ Leo proclaimed forgivingly.
Dear heaven, he could act, and he lied like a trooper without a soupçon of evasiveness or unease, Letty registered in consternation, seeing that she would have to sharpen her skills to have any hope of ever outwitting Leo. And that quickly she appreciated that she was already thinking as though she was planning to marry him and that shook her because so many of her misgivings had still to be settled and she wasn’t a woman who acted on impulse.
It had been years since she had seen her mother smile so much and he’d even coaxed some attention out of her brothers by showing them a nifty trick with the video game they were engaged in continuing to play in spite of their mother’s strictures.
Leo perused his bride-to-be in the lift. She was the right type: he could feel it in his bones even though she was not at all the kind of wife he had once dimly envisaged. Clad only in worn jeans and a black roll-neck sweater, she still somehow contrived to hold his attention. Her hair was braided at the front and long and loose at the back, tiny tendrils curling round her classic oval face, those wide sea-green eyes welded warily to him. There was no flesh on show and he wasn’t used to that. He was accustomed to seeing everything a woman had to offer at a glance and inexplicably that covered-up look of hers, that modest mode of dress inflamed him. It made him look closer and turn away slightly from her as the hum of unwelcome arousal pulsed at his groin.
The full sweep of her breasts and the curvaceous swell of her derrière still swam before his inner eye and that lingering image vexed him. He didn’t fantasise, he didn’t imagine women naked. That was a teenage boy trait or the mark of an unsuccessful lover and even as a boy Leo had been skilled at getting what he wanted from the opposite sex. He didn’t have to fantasise; he generally only had to show interest in a woman to know that satisfaction would be easily obtained. Yet one glance at Juliet in any garb and he was speared by sheer lust, wanting to touch, wanting to taste, wanting to ride to satisfaction between those slender thighs.
And yet she was the one woman whom he should be determined not to take. But maybe that was the secret of her appeal, he reasoned in frustration—the knowledge that she was out of bounds and forbidden. Maybe sex had become too easy, too available to fully engage his libido. Maybe what he really needed was some sort of diversion to direct his energy elsewhere. Clearly his current mistress was past her sell-by date and no longer able to attract him. That was what was wrong with him, he decided in a stark burst of relief; he had simply got bored with the current woman in his bed.
Letty ba
rely breathed in the lift because the edgy atmosphere unsettled her. She focused on the dark shadow of stubble outlining Leo’s strong jaw, the clenching of the muscles there, the sheer tension he emanated. Her breasts expanded as she snatched in a shuddering breath and stepped out into the foyer. The lace of her bra chafed her nipples and, as Leo clamped a guiding hand to her spine to urge her out of the building, she was engulfed in a wave of his scent, an achingly appealing medley of designer cologne and raw masculinity. Instantly, she stiffened, aware of the spurt of heat low in her pelvis and the uncomfortably damp sensation that followed. Annoyed that her body was betraying her with reactions she didn’t want, she gritted her teeth. She couldn’t afford to be attracted to Leo. It would be like walking through a minefield without any form of protection and she would be setting herself up for emotional damage.
After all, nobody knew better than Letty what it was like for a woman to love an unfaithful man. She had watched her mother with her stepfather, standing on the sidelines while Gillian suppressed her suspicions and accepted her husband’s lies when he was late home or when phone calls came he couldn’t explain or which he wouldn’t answer around his family. The lies and evasions had been endless, and her mother had wanted to believe the lies because she loved Robbie and she hadn’t wanted to credit the ugly truth that he had other women in his life.
But it wouldn’t be like that with Leo, a cool inner voice reminded her soothingly. Leo wasn’t prepared to lie. Leo preferred to be open and honest about his sexual preferences. He thought sex caused a lot of grief in marriage and that unusual outlook made Letty wonder how he had grown up and what his parents’ relationship had been like. What experiences had taught Leo to think that way? Certainly, he didn’t associate sex with the warmer emotions. It might even be true that he preferred sex without emotion getting involved at all, she reasoned. The more she thought about what motivated Leo, the more annoyed she became with herself for wondering and questioning everything about him as though he were some source of fascination. Of interest certainly, not fascination, she assured herself circumspectly. She wasn’t that much of an idiot, was she?
‘You’re a very good liar,’ she remarked in a brittle voice as the limousine drove off.
‘We have to roll out an acceptable back story for your family’s sake,’ Leo fielded without skipping a beat. ‘Unless, of course, you plan to tell them the truth—that you’re only prepared to marry me for my money?’
In receipt of that stinging challenge, Letty shot him an outraged glance, green eyes sparking fire. ‘Of course I’m not going to tell them that! It would break my mother’s heart if she knew how I’m thinking and feeling right at this moment!’
‘So, we’re fortunate that I’m a good dissembler then,’ Leo responded with satisfaction. ‘But you need to work on being more convincing. At this point, a few lovelorn glances in my direction would be a good idea.’
‘I don’t do lovelorn!’ Letty snapped, wanting to slap him hard enough for that teasing smile to die on his lips. ‘I mean, why would I?’
‘Because we don’t have time to waste on a long engagement. I want the wedding to take place as soon as possible.’
‘But I haven’t agreed.’
‘You’re on the brink. You don’t have any other options and you know that our marriage makes sense,’ Leo countered with infuriating conviction.
Letty didn’t appreciate the reminder that she had no other options. She felt as though she had tried to spread her wings, only for him to drag her cruelly back to solid earth again. Unfortunately, he was right: she was going to marry a man she didn’t know on terms that appalled her because, from what she knew, the good that that marriage would bring far outweighed the bad. She could help her family and, in so doing, pay back some of the loving support and encouragement she had received from them over the years. And hadn’t she long understood that most major gains in life entailed major sacrifices as well?
‘I’m still thinking it over,’ Letty fielded, her cheeks pink with annoyance, her eyes bright as she encountered dark golden eyes fringed with spiky black lashes that remained resolutely unimpressed by her stubborn response.
Mercifully the car was already pulling in to park. She gazed out at the frontage of the most magnificent mansion she had ever seen outside a movie. Her eyes wide, it felt entirely normal to stare at the rows of gleaming windows and the porticoed entrance which once would have sheltered guests climbing out of carriages drawn by horses. ‘This is where you live...or was this your sister’s house?’ she queried.
‘It’s mine. I sold my sister’s townhouse and stored the contents.’
‘That must’ve been disruptive for the children...to lose their home and their parents at pretty much the same time.’
Leo sighed, long brown fingers flexing as he spread his hands. ‘I’m not a saint. I’ve given up a lot, but I wasn’t prepared to give up my home as well. There’s a lot more space here too and four kids and a bunch of nannies take up an enormous amount of space. My sister didn’t have nannies. She was a devoted mother, determined to do everything herself.’
‘She was younger than you...right?’
‘Five years younger. Our mother died bringing her into the world,’ Leo confided. ‘Although my father remarried soon afterwards, we didn’t have a happy family life as children. Ana met her husband, Ben, young and they were both crazy about kids. A large contented family was Ana’s dream.’
Letty picked up on the slight hoarseness of his voice. He had loved his sister and he missed her, regretting that the younger woman had not survived to live her dream.
‘I’m doing my best with Ana’s kids but it’s not working out well,’ Leo admitted stiffly.
‘It’s only been six months since they lost their parents. It takes a long time for a wound like that to heal,’ Letty said gently as she slid out of the car, suddenly feeling seriously underdressed for her grand surroundings.
The hall was huge, with a marble floor and a grand staircase with a wrought iron balustrade. A massive painting dominated the landing, a portrait of a beautiful smiling brunette. Leo urged her into a drawing room that was so opulent it took her breath away. The décor was country house stylish with wallpaper that looked hand-painted, capacious velvet sofas and a massive fireplace but there was a definite contemporary edge to the sculpture in the window embrasure and the glass tables. Absolutely no allowance had been made in the room for a family with young children, she realised wryly. It was an elegant showpiece room for adults and had the air of a space rarely used.
‘Unc’ Leo!’ a childish voice trilled.
Letty spun in time to see a small dark-haired child break free of a uniformed nanny’s hold and rush across the room to embrace Leo’s legs.
‘Letty, this is Popi,’ Leo announced as a smaller child bounded over to greet him, another little girl in a princess net outfit. ‘And this little minx is Sybella.’
The other nanny settled the baby in her arms down on the carpet with some toys and the little boy tugged his hand loose of hers and moved closer.
‘Cosmo!’ Popi hissed, grabbing his hand as she moved over to station him and herself behind her baby brother.
‘Cosmo and Theon,’ Leo completed with a frown as he dismissed the hovering pair of nannies with a quiet word.
Letty absorbed Popi’s defensive stance with her siblings and understood. As the eldest, Popi had taken on the role of protecting her younger siblings and Letty was perceived as a threat. She went down on her knees in front of the baby, who gave her the most adorable wide gummy smile of welcome, unaffected by his sister’s disapproval. He held up his arms to be lifted and Letty couldn’t resist the invitation, but she was very much aware of Popi’s dismay.
‘I’ll just sit here,’ she promised, gathering up Theon and settling into a seat beside the little girl. ‘You stay close in case he wants you.’
‘He won’t. He’s j
ust a baby. He doesn’t even know who you are,’ Popi fired back at her, unhappy at her baby brother’s friendliness.
‘Popi...’ Leo’s intervention was clipped and cool and the little girl stiffened and dropped her head. ‘What did we talk about over breakfast?’
‘It’s fine,’ Letty interposed gently. ‘Change is always threatening.’
‘I don’t want a new mother,’ Popi whispered chokily.
‘I’m Letty and you can call me that. Nobody can take the place of your mother,’ Letty said softly, shooting Leo a warning glance when his lips parted as though he was on the brink of firmly disagreeing with that statement. ‘But I do hope that when you get to know me we can be friends.’
‘I have lots of friends,’ Popi told her.
‘It never hurts to have one more,’ Letty contended calmly as Theon clutched at her and went in for a kiss. She kissed him back, looked into his big dark trusting eyes and felt her heart literally thump because he was adorable.
Cosmo sidled over and leant back against her knee while he ran a plastic car over the arm of her chair. He ignored Popi’s calls to return to her side. Sybella clutched at Leo’s jeans and then ran over to twirl in her princess dress and be admired. Popi stood alone, frozen in the centre of the rug, and her expression of loss and anxiety almost broke Letty’s heart.
‘Would you like to show me your bedrooms?’ Letty asked, eager to leave that awkward moment behind as she stood up, cradling Theon on her hip. The minute the baby laid eyes on his uncle, he lifted his arms out and lurched in his direction instead.
‘Show you toys...’ Sybella offered, dancing and hopping on one leg like a tiny brightly coloured flamingo.
Upstairs they went, with Popi trailing reluctantly in their wake. Letty now understood Leo’s concern about his sister’s children. Popi was so busy trying to parent and protect her siblings that she couldn’t relax and simply be a child. It was equally obvious that Leo was the children’s place of safety, but possibly he wasn’t around enough to make them feel secure.