by Lynne Graham
‘Not here,’ she muttered tautly.
* * *
His body screaming for release, Leo snatched in a ragged breath. He should never have left the island, he recognised, because he couldn’t keep his hands off her. That hadn’t happened to him with a woman in more years than he could count, and he didn’t want it to happen with her. Control was important to Leo. Anything excessive in any aspect of his life set up warning markers he heeded. His father loved his stepmother obsessively and it had meant that the older man made some very bad decisions. Not that Leo was afraid that he could be falling in love—no, far from it. He almost smiled at the idea, knowing himself to be too battle-hardened by far to be prone to that weakness. On the other hand, obsessive lust was dangerous as well.
‘We’ll get back to Ios,’ Leo agreed. ‘I’ll have the rest of your new wardrobe sent out to the island for you to choose from there.’
Letty seemed transfixed by the idea and her eyes widened. ‘I’ll get dressed.’
‘Yes, that would be sensible,’ Leo murmured as if he had never asked her to model the lingerie for him or, indeed, had followed her into the changing room.
* * *
Letty was restive in the limo that returned them to the airport because Leo had withdrawn from her. Because she had said no? She didn’t think so. She suspected Leo had also succumbed to a moment of temptation and taking account of their surroundings had reined back his desire for her. But she knew he had an apartment in Athens and he didn’t suggest heading there and he didn’t approach her in the limo either.
Finally, shortly before they reached the airport, she asked him a question that had been playing heavily on her mind. ‘I’ve been wondering...’ she began tautly. ‘When will you be changing the terms in the prenuptial contract I signed?’
Dark brows pleating, Leo frowned at her in apparent astonishment. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because everything between us has changed,’ Letty pointed out simply. ‘This is not the detached marriage we originally agreed, and I do not accept your right to be unfaithful now.’
That assurance fell into a bottomless pit of silence. Leo’s dark gaze was hooded and cool. His jawline clenched hard. ‘We’ll discuss it later, although I should warn you that we have different viewpoints.’
Letty swallowed hard, not liking the sound of that for she couldn’t imagine what he could think they could have to discuss in the circumstances. He had radically changed the terms of their marriage and she had rights too...didn’t she?
CHAPTER EIGHT
LETTY REFUSED TO be intimidated by Leo’s forbidding coolness on the flight back to the island and she was surrounded by the children when they walked into the big house. Popi, as lively as though that nightmare had never happened, wanted to know where they had been, what they had done, what they had bought. Cosmo had a car to show her. Sybella was lugging around a doll almost as big as she was and Theon just held out his arms to her, always eager for a cuddle.
‘We’re dining at the beach house,’ Leo decreed, unable to hang onto his reserve with Sybella trying to climb up him as if he were a tree.
‘Yes,’ Letty agreed. ‘Later. I’ll see the children to bed first...if that’s all right with you?’
Leo studied her, a muscle pulling at the edge of his taut jaw. His spectacular bone structure was visible beneath his bronzed skin, his dark golden eyes bright with a glint of impatience. And anger? Well, if he was angry, too bad, Letty reasoned. The prenup stuff had to be dealt with, whether he liked it or not. He jerked his chin in acknowledgement of her plans and swung round, bending to let Sybella slide down from his arms. ‘I’ll catch up with some work.’
* * *
Why did she want to mess around with the prenup? he was asking himself grimly. It was there as a safeguard, nothing more. Could she already be contemplating divorcing him? Why the urgency? Had he made a crucial mistake choosing Letty as a wife? Why should she hang around, playing mother to four kids who weren’t her own, when she could be living the life of a millionaire, free and clear? A dark brooding expression set his lean strong features hard. Why had he been so sure that she was different from other women? Money, after all, was the most persuasive power on the planet for many, many people. It made them turn their back on moral scruples. Yet the children were already attached to Letty, and Popi was finally behaving more like a little girl without the worries of the world weighing down her tiny shoulders.
Nothing was going quite as Leo had planned and he hated that. For a start, he was aware that he had underestimated the importance of the woman he had married and the value of the role she would play in his life. His sex drive had got in the way of pragmatism and possibly put everything else at risk, which was crazy, he acknowledged broodingly. Letty had warned him that she would make demands and have expectations and he hadn’t really listened. His sole focus had been on getting her into bed and, even worse, it still was. He hadn’t counted on wanting Letty as much as he did. Somewhere in the back of his mind he had wondered if a couple of weeks of her would sate him and if he would then eventually return to his former way of life...
* * *
Letty resolved to encourage Leo to get more involved with the children’s bedtime routine but acknowledged that perhaps today wasn’t the right day to make that suggestion. Turning a sophisticated tycoon into a get-down-and-dirty father would be a project and a half, she reflected, but his nieces and nephews did need more than the occasional hug from him.
The children all tucked up, Letty sped down to the beach house with Darius at the wheel of the buggy. He told her about his wife and children who lived on Ios, admitting that his wife refused to move because her family was there, and he travelled a great deal with Leo.
Arriving at the beach house, Letty hurtled upstairs for the shower she was desperate to enjoy. Her suitcases had been unpacked and she rifled through the slender collection of clothes hung for her, recognising that she had seriously misjudged the number of outfits she would need. Of course, that wasn’t likely to be a problem once she picked out new clothes. Selecting a flouncy skirt and cotton sweater, she went for a shower and broke out her even smaller collection of cosmetics. A lick of mascara, a touch of blusher and clear lip gloss and she was done. She scrutinised her reflection as she blow-dried her hair.
There was no point in kidding herself that she could compete in the looks department with women like Dido and Mariana. They were dark, she was fair. They were tall, she was short. They were well-groomed and sophisticated, she was more the girl next door, put together in a hurry and on a wing and a prayer. Would he even notice if she put on nail varnish? It would get chipped when she was messing about with the kids. What on earth was that man doing to her priorities? Why she was looking so critically at herself? Why was she only seeing flaws? Well, how was she to help doing so? Right now, she seemed to be continually meeting women like Elexis or Katrina panting for Leo’s interest, or exes like Dido and Mariana, more than ready for a sexual rerun with him!
And possibly she had always lacked confidence in herself, she acknowledged for the first time, hiding behind the needs of her family and putting them first. In a sense that attitude and intensive study had provided a shield between her and the world, but that shield was gone now that she was with Leo.
Leo awaited her downstairs, a balloon glass of brandy between his fingers. Just seeing him stopped her dead in her tracks. His luxuriant black hair was still damp and, like her, he had changed, the exquisitely cut designer suit he had worn earlier now replaced by narrow black pants and a white linen shirt left open at the neck.
‘A drink?’ he enquired.
‘Something soft if you have it.’ Letty knew that she needed to keep her head clear for the conversation they had to have.
‘We don’t need drama twenty-four hours into our marriage,’ Leo murmured with measured cool. ‘You’re not giving us a fair crack of the whip.’
Leo shifted a shoulder in a fluid shrug of brazen disagreement, lean muscles flexing beneath his shirt, and she dragged her attention away from him again, embarrassed by her need to savour him like a star-struck teenager. There would never be another Leo in her life. That went without saying. But she also knew that if their relationship was to have any chance of survival, she had to fight for that chance and ensure that he understood that she was serious.
‘In the prenup there was a clause relating to your freedom to sleep with whomever you chose and that not being grounds for divorce,’ she reminded him doggedly.
His shrewd gaze widened a little and lingered. ‘That was the deal.’
‘Was being the operative word,’ Letty stressed. ‘That was the deal until you changed it last night, when I understood that you are now prepared to commit to this marriage. If that is the case, why do you still need that clause?’
‘Commitment is a rather strong word,’ Leo countered, sipping his brandy. ‘In fact, it gives me chills. I’ve never been committed to anybody but my family.’
‘I’m supposed to be your family now,’ Letty pointed out stiffly as he passed her a drink.
‘Committing to a woman is a tall order. I said I was willing to try being married.’
‘And I said I wouldn’t be part of a “try before you buy” experiment!’ Letty riposted in sudden anger. ‘This isn’t a fluid situation, Leo. You can’t keep on changing the terms. You don’t want to commit? You don’t want to promise fidelity?’
‘No. I don’t want to hear either of those words,’ Leo admitted harshly, thinking of his father’s devotion to Katrina and her constant betrayal of his trust, not to mention the many other infidelities he had witnessed in both sexes over the years. ‘I will promise not to lie to you. I will promise never to go behind your back. But the best I can do on the fidelity front is to promise that I will always be honest. As I said once before, I can’t foretell the future.’
Letty felt as if she had been crushed against a brick wall and suddenly she was reeling with a sense of betrayal. Had she misunderstood him the night before? Surely she had been plain about what she wanted and needed? Her oval face tightened, her eyes veiling. ‘You know what? That’s fine, Leo...’ she said limply, turning with relief as the first course of their meal arrived and using the hiatus to take a seat at the beautifully set table.
Leo’s tension evaporated. He had been expecting all sorts of things from her other than what he had received. She was still hung up on the fidelity stuff, still striving to idealise their marriage into some perfect picture, but she wasn’t thinking of divorce. He refused to label the sensation strongly reminiscent of relief travelling through him. Obviously, he was grateful that she had staying power for the children’s sake. But she was still wilfully misunderstanding him, he reasoned in exasperation. It wasn’t as though he had any plans to cheat on Letty; he simply preferred complete honesty because he was a cynic about the promises of fidelity that people blithely made and then broke.
Letty shook out her napkin with a flourish, slight colour slowly returning to mantle her cheeks. ‘As I said, that’s fine. You do what you need to do. But you have to accept that I have certain requirements as well. If you’re not prepared to have that clause eliminated from the prenup, then you’re clearly not prepared to make a concrete commitment to our marriage. Sorry, did I use that nasty word again?’ she said as his arrogant head came up, dark eyes ablaze with gold challenge.
‘Letty...’ Leo began.
Letty faked a greater interest than she truly felt in her tiny portion of red pepper, feta and olive frittata. In fact, hungry as she was, she was feeling nauseous about the situation she was in and crushingly, horribly hurt. As if Leo’s refusal to commit was a personal rejection.
‘You’re making far too much of that clause.’
‘I saw it being deleted from the agreement as a pledge, as proof that you were serious in your intentions.’
‘I am serious in my intentions!’ Leo snapped back at her in frustration. ‘I said I would try.’
Letty leant back in her chair, the delicious bite of pie turning to ashes in her dry mouth. ‘And that’s not enough for me. We’re at a crossroads here. I suggest that we agree to differ, rather than argue a non-negotiable point and—’
Leo thrust away his plate untouched, his dark golden eyes mirroring his turbulent emotions. Letty was putting him through the mill and he hadn’t expected that, but this time around he didn’t mistake his sense of reprieve for anything other than what it was. ‘That would be sensible,’ he conceded.
Letty sighed. ‘You didn’t let me finish, Leo. For us both to be happy in this relationship, we have to compromise. But, since I can’t share a bed with a man I can’t trust, you will have to embrace your sexual freedom...and we’ll never discuss this thorny and distasteful subject again.’
Leo was shattered. He certainly hadn’t seen that offer coming. He breathed in deep and slow. ‘That’s not a reasonable compromise, Letty.’
‘I can’t be reasonable about everything,’ Letty said quietly. ‘We’re compromising. You’re getting what you want.’
‘How? I want you!’ Leo slung back at her wrathfully, the temper he controlled rigidly breaking free.
‘Not as much as you want a get-out clause for when you get bored with me,’ Letty qualified without a shade of expression. ‘That’s how it is. I’m not going to quarrel with you about it.’
‘No!’ Leo rasped, expelling his breath and thrusting his hands down to rise from his seat, a deep sense of injustice powering him. ‘You’re only kicking me out of the marital bed for a sin I haven’t committed yet!’
‘Yet.’ Letty stressed his use of that word. ‘You see, in your mind you’re still a free man, not a married man. Even worse, you view yourself as a man who cannot be faithful. I would have to be a very stupid woman not to steer clear of that accident waiting to happen...and I’m not stupid, Leo.’
Tied into knots by her words and his own and infuriated by her tranquil attitude when he was ready to punch holes in walls, Leo scrutinised his wife with outraged, dark as jet eyes, faint colour scoring his hard cheekbones. ‘I’ll have your stuff moved back up to the main house immediately.’
‘There’s no rush,’ Letty told him uneasily.
Leo ate with appetite, even offered occasional conversation. To give him his due, he didn’t brood or give her the silent treatment. Letty, however, was under no illusion that what still powered him was anger: he was determined to keep his freedom and she wanted to take it away. There was no possible conciliation between such far-removed objectives. Maybe he needed time and space to consider those facts before he would be willing to acknowledge the good sense of leaving sex out of their marriage. That was what he had first wanted and what she had been happy to accept, but then he had changed his mind and decided he wanted her...and fatally, foolishly, she had decided to give him a chance.
Why? She wanted to box her own ears for her stupidity. She had taken a risk on him, but he had quickly brought her crashing down to earth again.
Her luggage was discreetly carted out while they finished their meal with coffee. It was all very civilised but Letty still felt as though she were the one being kicked out and when Darius drove her back up to the main house his diplomatic silence warned her that, like the rest of the staff, he also knew that the brief honeymoon was over and Letty was mortified by Leo’s intransigence and his disinterest in what other people might think. Evidently the pretence that theirs was a normal marriage was already over.
Tears leaked out of the corners of Letty’s eyes and stung her quivering cheeks that night as she lay in her new bed. She wouldn’t let herself sob or grieve for what had proved to be an empty illusion. She was hurt and she acknowledged that while also acknowledging that she had already
become far too attached to Leo in spite of his ferocious stubbornness. She was doing the sensible thing in protecting herself, she told herself.
* * *
Leo couldn’t sleep. He paced the bedroom floor, trying to pin down the exact moment when everything had gone pear-shaped. It was the first time in his life that that had happened to him with a woman. He was accustomed to calling all the shots, to having exactly what he wanted but Letty didn’t work that way. She wanted pledges, sacred bonds, all the rest of that nonsense, he fumed in measured annoyance as he fought a growing sense of injustice.
He couldn’t imagine being faithful all his life to one woman. But his overriding belief remained that he did not want to hurt Letty or any other woman! As he suspected his mother must often have been hurt by his father’s infidelities. Leo had never in his life cheated on any woman, choosing to be honest when he knew he wanted to move on, had never had a desire to have more than one woman at a time in his life.
None of his ancestors, his grandfather or his father, had pledged fidelity. Even so, as far as he knew, his father had always been slavishly faithful to his stepmother, Katrina. But that was only because his father, weak and pathetic man that he was, worshipped the ground that Katrina walked on. And look where that had got the older man: a wife who was well known for her extra-marital affairs! No, he certainly wasn’t ready to follow that unpleasant and humiliating example as a blueprint for his future, he assured himself squarely, while stamping firmly down on the knowledge at the back of his mind that Letty wasn’t that sort of woman.
Letty had given him one fantastic night and he would have to be content with that. He studied the bed that they had shared and gritted his teeth. He wanted her, he wanted her there now, ached just at the thought of reliving that pleasure. But he would get over that, the sneaky type of sexual infatuation she had somehow plunged him into. Because he had been her first? Was that the secret of her intense attraction for him? He didn’t know; he only knew he felt angry, frustrated and frazzled and most unlike himself and he hated it—absolutely bloody hated it!