by Lynne Graham
That thorny question occupied her brain throughout the reception that followed. It swept her through the wedding speeches and her mother’s brief tribute, which brought tears to her daughter’s eyes. She strayed into a polite conversation with Leo’s father, Panos, and her own grandfather, who it seemed was in a rather glum mood because Leo had recently uncovered some financial irregularities within his company, which Isidore felt he should’ve discovered for himself.
‘Leo’s got fantastic financial ability,’ Panos Romanos contended with a clear pride in his son’s abilities that warmed Letty towards the older man.
‘Oh, I’m not denying that,’ Isidore responded. ‘Our businesses couldn’t be in stronger hands than his.’
Leo spanned a lean hand across Letty’s stiff spine. ‘It’s time for us to open the dancing,’ he murmured softly in her ear. ‘One more hour and then we’re out of here.’
Letty twisted her head, eyes wide with surprise. ‘Only an hour... Where are we going?’
‘Ios...the island,’ Leo told her as he urged her on to the dance floor, wondering why she was pulling back from him to ensure a large space separated them.
‘But we can’t both leave the children!’ Letty exclaimed.
‘They’re coming too,’ Leo soothed, long brown fingers smoothing down her arms in a curiously caressing motion that sent the oddest little shiver shooting down her taut spinal cord. ‘The kids, the nannies, the whole shebang... Happy now?’
‘But I didn’t do any packing for them and they probably need new clothes and—’ she began in bemusement.
‘That’s why I employ staff. It’s all taken care of for us,’ Leo soothed, lowering his dark head, tawny eyes ablaze with gold below the lights, enhanced by the black lace frame of his lashes. ‘And once we arrive I will finally have you all to myself, yineka mou.’
Letty stared up at him in confusion, questioning why he would make such a statement and ducking her head to peer around him to see if there was someone nearby for whom he might be putting on an act. Why else would he say such a thing? Coincidentally, Mariana Santos was only a couple of feet away, dancing in the arms of another man, and Letty received a frozen look from the brunette, who had clearly been watching the bridal couple closely. Of course she was, Letty reflected ruefully. Leo was much more Mariana’s property than he would ever be his wife’s but in public he would pretend otherwise. She marvelled that Mariana had attended the wedding to watch her lover becoming the husband of another woman.
Indeed, so busy was Letty’s brain that when Leo kissed her she didn’t even see it coming. One minute she was wondering what it was like to be a mistress...and the next? Leo was crushing her parted lips under his with an urgency that shocked her rigid, all that explosive passion of his smouldering and burning through her cool front and smashing it to broken pieces. She swayed, knees turning weak, the sudden pulse of answering heat low in her pelvis a treacherous self-betrayal.
It was just one little kiss and she swiftly tugged free of him and grabbed the back of a convenient chair to steady herself. For a split second she had been shattered by an urgent desire to flatten Leo to the nearest horizontal surface and have her way with him so thoroughly that he would never look at another woman again. And that dangerous thought stayed with her as she recovered from his sensual onslaught. Physically she was fine but mentally she was in another place, she recognised unhappily. He had only kissed her as part of the wedding show. Possibly he had kissed her too because Mariana was nearby, and he intended to make some sort of statement.
But as Letty went upstairs to the room where she was to change, she was much more bothered by her own response to Leo. There was the lust she evidently couldn’t suppress and that thought she had succumbed to in the same moment...an utterly pathetic and inappropriate desire to have Leo all to herself. In other words, while she was thinking with disdain of all the other women still caught in the trap of craving Leo’s blazingly sexual energy, she was no better and had absolutely no reason to feel even slightly superior...
CHAPTER SIX
IN THE BIG villa sited on the hill above the bay, Leo grabbed Letty’s hand when she would have followed the children and the nannies upstairs. ‘No, they’ve had enough of your attention for one day. Those kids were a nightmare to travel with,’ he said with a decided wince.
‘Because,’ Letty replied with emphasis, ‘they were overtired and overexcited and the journey totally disrupted their routine.’
‘Sometimes schedules have to be disrupted,’ Leo countered lazily, tugging her inexorably back to the entrance door and the darkness outside, which had prevented her from seeing much of the island as they flew in on a helicopter. ‘This was a special day and you wanted to share it with them. The downside of that decision was their exhaustion.’
Letty nodded, silently conceding that but more curious about where he was trying to take her. ‘Where on earth are we going?’
Leo recalled the flight out to Greece and the cross crying, continual demands and screaming from the children and gritted his teeth. Parenting was tougher than he had ever imagined but he was adapting because he hadn’t once contemplated leaving his nieces and nephews behind in London. Instead he had come up with a compromise for their honeymoon that would give Letty and him some much-needed space. Not for the first time that day his head spun with a definite sense of wonderment at the commitment he was about to make—one he had never anticipated. It was a huge step for him and he was still marvelling at the awareness that such an idea had even occurred to him.
‘There’s a guest cottage on the beach. We’re staying there.’
‘But we have to be here with the children,’ Letty began afresh.
Leo froze and turned back to her. ‘I am delighted that you have already become so fond of the children,’ he admitted truthfully. ‘But it would be good if you could concentrate...occasionally...on my needs.’
Her lashes fluttered in sheer bewilderment. ‘But why would I want to do that?’ she whispered as he urged her into the beach buggy awaiting them outside the villa.
‘We’ll discuss that over dinner,’ Leo assured her smoothly as the driver took off down a sloping trail.
Why on earth would he ask her to concentrate on him and his needs? Letty was utterly bewildered. Did he see that as some fundamental rule for an award-winning wife? Was she supposed to be considering his comfort ‘occasionally’ more than the well-being and security of the children? That was very possible, she conceded with a faint sigh of relief that she had finally grasped what he was driving at in his expectations of her. Really, sometimes, Leo was hopeless at communication! She supposed it was a reasonable request that she not put the kids first in every case and allow that now and again, much as Leo clearly loved the children and rejoiced in a wealth of nannies, he would appreciate some adult freedom and peace. In any case, she resolved, she could get up early in the morning and join the children for breakfast.
‘So, what’s this guest cottage all about?’ she asked as they climbed out of the buggy and had their luggage offloaded and carried into the substantial natural stone building sited on the edge of the beach.
‘My mother liked to paint and it was originally built as an art studio. Katrina renovated it and used it for guests. She had a great need to eradicate anything that reminded her that she was my father’s second wife,’ he stated grimly. ‘Strictly speaking, any changes to the properties here were illegal because even as a child the island was mine but, realistically, I was never going to prosecute my father.’
‘I suppose you would’ve liked to inherit it as your mother left it,’ Letty gathered quietly, picking up on Leo’s innate protectiveness when it came to anything relating to his mother’s memory. ‘But you knew your father couldn’t stand up to Katrina’s more forceful character.’
‘In a nutshell,’ Leo agreed as the door to the softly lit interior was opened and the luggage was piled in and carted upstai
rs. ‘Dad’s a wimp when it comes to Katrina.’
In silence Letty raised a brow, able to recognise how much Leo despised his father’s weakness when it came to Katrina and belatedly grasping that over the years he had come to regard his dead mother as a complete saint and a wronged woman.
The accommodation might not have been in the state which Leo would have preferred to inherit but it was contemporary and very stylish and, in Letty’s humble opinion, quite beautiful, with floor-deep windows overlooking the sea and the shore. The table at the far end was already set for a candlelit meal. She wondered who was providing the food and then heard noises of activity emanating from what appeared to be a kitchen to the rear. She was relieved not to have to cook because she was tired and she doubted that Leo, raised with attentive staff from birth, even knew how to switch on a kettle. He genuinely had grown up in a different world from hers.
‘Have I time to freshen up?’ Letty asked, already halfway up the spiral staircase.
‘Yes. I could use a shower too,’ Leo admitted, following her.
At the top of the staircase, Letty gazed in astonishment at the huge bedroom. Only one bedroom? Only one bed? Surely not? She slowly turned and watched Leo calmly stripping off his suit jacket and yanking off his tie as if she were invisible. She bent down to open a case and extracted a change of clothing, wondering if they were only to dine at the guest cottage and sleep up at the house, but there was something awfully like a statement about the fresh flowers on display and what looked like herbs or something scattered across the fancy silk cover on the bed. Of course, the staff would assume it was a normal marriage with a normal wedding night, Letty conceded, quelling her unease as Leo got naked right in front of her as if that too was quite normal.
Maybe he assumed that because she was training as a doctor she had few inhibitions about the human body, but Letty was shy, sexually inexperienced, and the sight of Leo’s lean, bronzed and very muscular physique naked brought her out in goosebumps of awareness. She hastened into the bathroom, considered locking the door and then abandoned the concept because she wasn’t a child or a frightened teenager, was she? He could use the shower—she could share the facilities, couldn’t she?
In haste she used the shower, scared the door would open but it didn’t, and then, in even greater haste, she donned a blue cotton maxi dress that she had bought with her own money to relax in. Leo’s credit cards had purchased all the wedding finery as if money were no object and she supposed to him it wasn’t. But expressing that little bit of independence had helped her come to terms better with the prospect of a new moneyed lifestyle which she hoped to become used to one small step at a time because spending was still so foreign to her. She had never had money to spend freely, had always had to live on a strict budget. She unwound her hair from its elaborate upswept bridal style and massaged her stiff neck muscles before walking out to the bedroom again.
Leo was out on the balcony beyond the bedroom, still stark naked and nonchalant as he gazed out to sea. Her breath feathered in her throat. He was like...perfect—she selected the word inwardly, her cheeks burning. A flawless pinup for an anatomy lesson. No longer need she wonder at the attachment women developed for him. Clothed, he was a very sexy box of tricks. Unclothed, he was undeniably gorgeous, every honed powerful line of him revealed.
‘You’re very shy...’ Leo breathed in apparent surprise when her flushed face met his and she glanced hurriedly away again, terrified her thoughts were showing in her expression. ‘I’m sorry... I didn’t think—’
He was more sensitive than she had given him credit for, Letty acknowledged, and she smiled. ‘No harm done. We’re supposed to be married. I’m sure there’ll be occasions when we have to share...er...stuff.’
‘We are married,’ Leo reminded her as if she might forget.
‘I’ll see you downstairs,’ Letty breezed with determination, mortified by the reality that she was behaving like a shrinking violet simply because he had undressed. Naturally, he wouldn’t have been expecting that, probably having assumed that she had had a man or two in her bed, and she wasn’t going to admit that she was a virgin because there was no reason for her to share such an irrelevant fact with him.
Unsurprisingly, Leo was accustomed to experienced women—women who probably stared and mentally oohed and aahed over his magnificent body. Modesty wasn’t a skill he had ever needed to learn, and he had, she strongly suspected, few inhibitions in the bedroom. As she sat down at the exquisitely set table, she smiled to herself. She needed to practise being less hidebound and conventional around Leo.
Leo came down again, garbed in jeans and a black shirt and still barefoot, black hair damp from the shower. He had shaved though, the dark stubble that had started to noticeably shadow his strong jawline gone. His lean, darkly arresting features held her gaze and only when she registered that she was staring did she hurriedly look away and address herself to the food now being brought to the table.
‘It feels so weird being waited on all the time,’ she confided.
‘You won’t mind it once you return to your studies,’ Leo forecast. ‘By the way, how is that going?’
‘Hopefully, I’ll be able to take up my studies again in London next year,’ Letty told him cheerfully. ‘I didn’t have time to get in more than my application before the wedding and there’ll be interviews and probably refresher classes and various hurdles to get past before I can start back. I’m lucky my academic record is good.’
There was no luck about it, Leo reflected wryly, wondering why she was so diffident about her achievements. Letty was extremely clever, had been top of her class in just about every subject at Oxford and had won several awards during her time there.
‘Let’s drink to that,’ Leo suggested, nudging her untouched glass with his own. ‘Go on, a couple of glasses isn’t likely to have a dangerous effect on you.’
Letty coloured to the roots of her hair, knowing that both of them were recalling that encounter in the limousine after her hen party. Leo read her well: he had guessed that she was nervous of alcohol now.
She snatched up her glass and sipped. ‘So, you said we had something to discuss... I seem to recall,’ she managed to say, relieved that she had stopped squirming and blushing like a teenager over that episode in the car.
‘Ne...yes,’ Leo translated for her as he subsided into Greek and seemed to hesitate as he searched for words, which was sufficiently unlike him to command her full attention and etch a frown between her fine brows. ‘It relates to our future as a couple...’
‘Yes, I’m sure there must be lots of little things we still have to iron out,’ Letty conceded with innate practicality.
‘This is not a little thing,’ Leo contradicted, studying her with dark golden eyes that were pure golden enticement in the candlelight.
‘Oh?’ Letty prompted, sipping her wine assiduously, irritated that Leo had guessed how she felt about alcohol after the virtual assault she had mounted on him. She pinned her attention to her plate and worked through the delicious first course and a silence that stretched much longer than she had expected.
Finally, Letty looked up again to catch Leo still studying her as though she were a complete mystery to him in some way. ‘You were saying?’
Leo breathed in deep and threw back his handsome dark head, his eyes gleaming. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever enter “sacred bond” territory in the manner that you meant,’ he murmured smoothly. ‘But I have reached the conclusion that it would only be practical for us to at least have a go at making this a real marriage.’
Letty literally froze with her glass halfway to her mouth. ‘A real marriage?’ she exclaimed.
‘A marriage in which we have sex,’ Leo specified with unashamed clarity.
Letty breathed in so deep she was surprised that she didn’t spontaneously combust into flames of outrage. ‘You have a mistress,’ she reminded him tartly.<
br />
Leo didn’t bat a single eyelash. ‘Not currently.’
‘That’s a lie!’ Letty shot back at him. ‘Elexis pointed Mariana out to me at the wedding.’
A dark frown formed on Leo’s lean strong face. ‘That was spiteful,’ he breathed with visible annoyance. ‘But I’m not lying. I was last with Mariana before I met you and I finished with her after I met you.’
‘Which is...what? All of four short weeks ago?’ Letty sniped, unimpressed. ‘So, why was she at our wedding?’
‘She wasn’t invited. She came with a male guest who was,’ Leo clarified. ‘I was irritated when I saw her too.’
Letty recognised the truth when she was hearing it and absolved Leo of inappropriate behaviour because, evidently, Mariana Santos had become old history. Not that that had the slightest cooling effect on her growing anger. That Leo could simply sit there and just proclaim that they should ‘have a go’ at being married as if it were a casual takeaway meal he could sample at will shocked her to the core.
The main course was brought out and Letty started eating again, although she was barely able to chew and swallow because she was so very angry with him.
‘You have nothing to say to my suggestion?’ Leo finally pressed in frustration.
‘Nothing you’d want to hear,’ Letty assured him curtly, pushing her plate away and lifting her glass because she needed a vat of wine, she told herself, to deal with Leo, who was twisty and manipulative and clever and utterly unaccustomed to any form of rejection from a woman.
‘Allow me to decide that,’ Leo urged.
Letty leapt out of her chair with her glass in one hand, unable to sit still any longer, and she crossed the room to stand by the patio doors. ‘We signed a legal agreement in which I agreed to overlook your infidelity,’ she reminded him stubbornly. ‘Now you want something else from me, something completely different.’
Leo sprang upright. ‘I want you, so kill me for it!’ he urged with sardonic bite, spreading his arms and splaying his expressive hands as part of the gesture.