‘You were a virgin,’ Leo repeated. ‘We will therefore be married as soon as I can arrange it. I am honour-bound to offer you this.’

‘Stuff your honour.’ Heaving in a deep breath, Natasha climbed off the other side from where he was sitting, trailing the sheet around her as she went. ‘Having just escaped one sleazy marriage by the skin of my teeth, I am not going to fall into another one!’

‘It will not be a sleazy marriage.’

‘Everything about you and your terrible family is sleazy!’ She turned on him savagely. ‘You’re all so obsessed with the value of money you’ve lost touch with what’s really valuable in life! Well, I haven’t.’ She tossed her chin up, eyes like blue glass on fire with contempt. ‘We made a deal in which I give you sex for six weeks until I can give you back your precious money. Show a bit of your so-called honour by keeping to that deal!’

Michelle Reid grew up on the southern edges of Manchester, the youngest in a family of five lively children. But now she lives in the beautiful county of Cheshire, with her busy executive husband and two grown-up daughters. She loves reading, the ballet, and playing tennis when she gets the chance. She hates cooking, cleaning, and despises ironing! Sleep she can do without, and produces some of her best written work during the early hours of the morning.

Recent titles by the same author:

THE DE SANTIS MARRIAGE THE MARKONOS BRIDE

THE GREEK’S FORCED BRIDE

BY

MICHELLE REID

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

LOUNGING in his chair at the head of the boardroom table, Leo Christakis, thirty-four-year old human dynamo and absolute head of the Christakis business empire, held the room in a state of near-rigid tension by the sheer power of his silence.

No one dared to move. All dossiers resting on the long polished table top remained firmly closed. Except for the folder flung open in front of Leo. And as five minutes edged with agonising slowness towards ten, even the act of breathing in and out became a difficult exercise and not one of those present had the nerve to utter so much as a sound.

For Leo’s outwardly relaxed posture was dangerously deceptive, as was the gentle way he was tapping his neatly clipped fingernails on the polished surface as he continued to read. And anyone—anyone daring to think that the sensual shape of his mouth was relaxed in a smile needed a quick lesson in the difference between a smile and a sneer.

Leo knew the damn difference. He also knew that the nasty stuff was about to hit the fan. For someone around here had pulled a fast one with company money and what made him really angry was that the fiddle was so badly put together anyone with a rudimentary grasp of arithmetic could spot it a mile away. Leo did not employ incompetents. Therefore the list of employees who might just dare to believe they could get away with ripping him off like this could be shortlisted to one.

Rico, his vain and shallow, gut-selfish stepbrother, and the only person employed by this company to earn his place in it by favour alone.

Family, in other words.

Damn, Leo cursed within the depths of his own angry thinking. What the hell gave Rico the idea he could get away with this? It was well known throughout this global organisation that each branch was hit regularly by random internal audits for the specific purpose of deterring anyone from trying a stunt like this. It was the only way a multinational the size of this one could hope to maintain control!

The arrogant fool. Was it not enough that he was paid a handsome salary for doing almost nothing around here? Where did he get off believing he could dip his greedy fingers in the pot for more?

‘Where is he?’ Leo demanded, bringing half a dozen heads shooting up at the sudden sound of his voice.

‘In his office,’ Juno, his London based PA quickly responded. ‘He was informed about this meeting, Leo,’ the younger man added in case Leo was living with the mistaken belief that Rico had not been told to attend.

Leo did not doubt it, just as he did not doubt that everyone sitting around this table believed that Rico was about to receive his just desserts. His stepbrother was a freeloader. It went without saying that the people who worked hard for their living did not like freeloaders. And all it took was for him to lift his dark head with its hard, chiselled bone structure, which would have been stunningly perfect if it weren’t for the bump in the middle of his slender nose—put there by a football boot when he was in his teens—and scan with his rich, dark velvet brown eyes half a dozen carefully guarded expressions to have that last thought confirmed.

Theos. There was little hope of him managing to pull off a cover-up with so many people in the know and silently baying for Rico’s blood, he concluded as he hid his eyes again beneath the thick curl of his eyelashes.

Did he want to cover up for Rico? The question flicked at the muscle that lined his defined jawbone because Leo knew the answer was yes, he did prefer to affect a cover-up than to deal with the alternative.

A thief in the family.

Fresh anger surged. With it came a grim flick of one hand to shut the folder before he rose to his feet, long legs thrusting him up to his full and intimidating six feet four inches immaculately encased in a smooth dark pinstripe suit.

Juno also jumped up. ‘I will go and—’

‘No, you will not,’ Leo said in tightly accented English. ‘I will go and get him myself.’

Everyone else shifted tensely as Juno sank down in his seat again. If Leo had been in the mood to notice, he would have seen the wave of swift, telling glances that shifted around the table, but he was in no frame of mind to want to notice anything else as he stepped around his chair and strode out through the door without bothering to spare anyone another glance.

Just as he didn’t bother to look sideways as he strode across the plush hushed executive foyer belonging to the Christakis London offices. If he had happened to glance to the side, then he would have seen the lift doors were about to open—but he didn’t.

He was too busy cursing the sudden heart attack that took his beloved father from him two years ago, leaving him with the miserable task of babysitting the two most irritating people it had been his misfortune to know—his high-strung Italian stepmother, Angelina, and her precious son, Rico Giannetti.

Ah, someone save me from smooth, handsome playboys and hypersensitive stepmothers anxiously besotted with their beautiful sons, he thought heavily. Family loyalty was the pits, and the day that Rico’s ever-looming marriage took place and he took his life and his gullible new wife back to his native Milan to live with Angelina, could not come soon enough for Leo.

If he could get Rico out of this mess without compromising his own reputation and standing in this company that was, or Rico would not be going anywhere but a prison cell.

A sigh hurt his chest as Leo chose to suppress it, the knowledge that he was already looking for a way out for Rico scraping the sides of his pride in contempt.

What was Natasha going to do if she found out she was about to marry a thief?

Though why the hell his stepbrother had chosen to marry Miss Cool and Prim Natasha Moyles was a mystery to Leo. She was not the nubile celebrity stick-like variety of female Rico usually turned on for. In fact, she lived inside a pretty much perfect long-legged and curvy hourglass shape she ruined by hiding it with her lousy dress sense. She was also cold and polite and irritatingly standoffish—around Leo anyway.

So why Natasha had fallen in love with a life-wasting playboy like Rico was just another puzzle Leo could not work out. The attraction of opposites? Did the cool and prim disguise fall apart around Rico?

Perhaps she became a bodice-ripping sex goddess in the bedroom, because she sure had the potential to be a raging sex goddess with her soft feminine features and her wide-spaced, too-blue eyes and that lush, sexy mouth she could not disguise, which just begged to be kissed out of its—

Theos, Leo cursed yet again as something familiarly hot gave a tug low down in his gut to remind how Natasha Moyles’s mouth could affect him—while behind him the object of his thoughts walked out of the lift only to pull to a shuddering halt when she caught sight of his instantly recognisable, tall, dark suited shape striding into the corridor across the other side of the foyer.

Natasha’s heart did a funny little squirm in her chest and for a moment she actually considered giving in to the sudden urge to leap back into the lift and come back to see Rico later when his stepbrother wasn’t about.

She did not like Leo Christakis. He had an uncomfortable way of always making her feel tense and edgy with his hard-nosed, worldly arrogance and his soft, smooth sarcasms that always managed to make such accurate swipes at just about every insecurity she possessed.

Did he think she never noticed the sardonic little smile he always wore on his mouth whenever he was given an opportunity to run his eyes over her? Did he think it was great fun to make her freeze with agonising self-consciousness because she knew he was mocking the way she preferred to hide her curves rather than put them on show like the other women that circled his wonderful self?

Not that it mattered what Leo Christakis thought about her, Natasha then told herself quickly, while refusing to acknowledge the way her eyes continued to cling to him, or that one of her hands was nervously slotting a loose golden strand of hair back to her neatly pinned knot and the other hand clutched her little black purse to the front of her pale blue suit as if the purse acted like a piece of body armour meant to keep him at bay.

She wasn’t here to see him. He was just the arrogant, self-important, overbearing stepbrother of the man she was supposed to be marrying in six weeks. And unless Rico had some very good answers to the accusations she was about to fire at him, then there wasn’t going to be a wedding!

Natasha felt herself go pale as she recalled the scene some kind person had relayed to her mobile phone this morning. Why did some people take pleasure in sending another person images of their fiancé locked in the arms of another woman? Did they think that because she was attached to the pop-music industry she couldn’t possibly have feelings to wound?

Well, look at me now, Natasha thought bleakly as she dragged her eyes away from Leo to stare at the way her trembling fingers were gripping her purse. I’m not just wounded, I’m dying! Or her love for Rico was dying, she revised bleakly. Because this was it, the final straw, the last time she was going to turn blind eyes and deaf ears to the rumours about his cheating on her.

It was time for a showdown.

Pale lips pressed together now, eyes fixed on the expanse of grey carpet spread out in front of her, Natasha set herself walking across the foyer and into the corridor that led the way to Rico’s office in the now-forgotten wake of Leo Christakis.

The door was shut tight into its housing. Leo didn’t bother to knock on it before he twisted the handles and threw it open wide, then took a long step forwards, ready to give Rico Giannetti hell—only to find himself freezing at the sight that met his flashing dark gaze.

For the next few numbing seconds Leo actually found himself wondering if he was dreaming what he was seeing. It was so difficult to believe that even Rico could be this crass! For standing there in front of his desk was his handsome stepbrother with his trousers pooled round his ankles and a pair of slender female legs wrapped around his waist. The very air in the room seethed with gasps as Rico’s tight and tanned backside thrust forwards and backwards while soft groans emitted from the naked and not-so-prim female spread out on the top of the desk.

Clothes were scattered all over the place. The smell of sex was strong and thick. The very floor beneath Leo’s feet vibrated to Rico’s urgent gyrations.

‘What the hell—?’ Leo raked out in a blistering explosion of grinding disgust at the precise moment that an entirely separate sound hit him from behind and had him wheeling about.

He found himself staring into the shock-frozen face of Rico’s fiancée. Confusion locked onto his hard golden features because he had believed the blonde ranging about on the desk must be her!

‘Natasha?’ he ground out in a surprise-driven rasp.

But Natasha didn’t hear him. She was too busy seeing her worst nightmare confirmed by the two people who were beginning to realise they were no longer alone. As she watched as if from a strange place somewhere way off in the distance she saw Rico’s handsome dark head lift up and turn. Sickness clawed at the walls of her stomach as his heavy-lidded, passion-glazed eyes connected with hers.

Then the woman moved, dragging Natasha’s gaze sideways as a blonde head with a pair of blue eyes lifted up to peer around Rico’s blocking frame. The two women looked at each other—that was all—just looked.

‘Who the—?’ Leo spun back the other way to discover that the two lovers were now aware of their presence.

The woman was trying to untangle herself, levering herself up on an elbow as she pushed at Rico’s bared chest with a slender hand. Shifting his eyes to her, Leo felt true hell arrive as the full horror of what they were witnessing slammed like a truck into his face.

Cindy, Natasha’s sister. Two blondes with blue eyes and an age gap that made Cindy seem still just a kid.

His stomach revolted. He swung back to Natasha, but Natasha was no longer standing behind him. Her tense long-legged curvy shape in its stiff pale blue suit was already halfway back down the corridor, making as fast as she could for the lift.

Anger on her behalf roaring up inside him, Leo twisted back to the two guilty lovers. The serious questions Rico should be answering suddenly flew right out of his head. ‘You are finished with me, Rico,’ he raked out at the younger man. ‘Get your clothes on and get the hell out of my building before I have you thrown out—and take the slut with you!’

Then he walked out, pulling the door shut behind him before taking off after Natasha at a run and feeling an odd sense of disorientating empowerment now that Rico had given him just cause to kick him right out of his life.

The lift doors closed before he got there. Cursing through his clenched teeth, Leo turned and headed for the stairs. One flight down and the single lift up to the top floor became three lifts, which fed the whole building. Glancing up to note that Natasha was going down to the basement just before he strode inside another lift, he hit the button that would take him to the same place.

His insides were shaking. All of him was pumped up and pulsing because—Theos, sex did that to you. Even when what you’d seen sickened and disgusted, it still had a nasty way of playing its song in your blood.

Striding out of the lift, Leo paused to look around the basement car park. Natasha’s Mini stood out like a shiny red stain in a murky world of fashionable silver and black. He saw her then. She was leaning heavily on the car and her shoulders were heaving. He thought she was weeping but as he approached her he realised that she was being violently sick.

‘It’s OK…’ he muttered for some stupid reason because nothing could be less OK, and he placed his hands on her shoulders.

‘Don’t touch me!’ She jerked away from him.

Offence hit Leo full on his chiselled chin. ‘I am not Rico!’ he raked back in sheer reaction. ‘Just as you are not your slut of a sister—!’

She turned and slapped him hard on the face.

The stinging slap rang around the basement as Leo rocked back on his heels in surprise. Natasha was quivering all over, nothing going on inside her burning brain but the remains of that searing surge of violence that had made her turn and lash out. She had never done anything like it before, not in her entire life!

Then she was suddenly having to reel away and double up to retch again, while sobbing and shaking and clutching at the car’s bodywork with fingernails that scraped the shiny red paint.

Rico with Cindy—how could he?

How could she?

A pair of long fingered hands dared to take hold of her shoulders again. She didn’t pull away, but just sagged like a quivering sack into his grasp as the final dregs of her stomach contents landed only inches away from her low-heeled black shoes. By the time it was over she could barely stand upright.

Grim lips pressed together, Leo continued to hold her while she found a tissue in her jacket pocket and used it to wipe her mouth. Beneath the grip of his fingers he could feel her trembling. Her head was bowed, exposing the long, slender whiteness of her nape. That hot sensation flicked at his insides again and he looked away from her, flashing an angry look around the car park like a man being hunted by an invisible quarry and wondering what the hell he was going to do next.

She was not his problem, one part of his brain tried telling him. He had a meeting to chair and a serious financial discrepancy to deal with, plus a dozen or so other points of business to get through before he flew back to Athens this evening and…

A man suddenly appeared from the lurking shadows where the security offices were situated in a corner of the basement. It was Rasmus, his security chief, eyeing them curiously. Leo dismissed him with a frowning shake of his dark head that sent the other man melting back into the shadows again.

His next thought was to coax Natasha back into the lift and take her up to his own office suite to recover. But he could not guarantee that he could get her in there without someone—Rico or her sister—seeing them and starting up another ugly scene.

‘OK now?’ he dared to question once her trembling started to ease a little.

She managed a single nod. ‘Yes. Thank you,’ she whispered.

‘This is not a moment for polite manners, Natasha,’ he responded impatiently.

Natasha jerked away from him, hating him like poison for being here and witnessing her complete downfall like this. Receiving picture evidence that Rico was cheating on her was one thing, but to actually see him doing it with her own sister was absolutely something else.

Just thinking about it had fresh nausea trying to take a grip on her stomach. Working desperately to control it, Natasha fumbled in her bag for her car keys, then turned to unlock the Mini so she could reach inside it for the bottle of water she always kept in there. She wanted to dive into the car and just drive away from it all, but she knew she didn’t have it in her yet to drive herself anywhere. She was still too shaken up, too sick and dizzy with horror and shock.

As she straightened up again she had to step around the mess she had ejected onto the ground. He didn’t move a single inch so she brushed against him in an effort to gain herself some space. It was like brushing against barbed wire, she likened as a hot-rod prickle scraped down through her body and forced her to wilt backwards with a tremor of flayed senses against the side of the car.

Keeping her eyes lowered and away from Leo, she twisted the cap off the bottle of water and put it to her unsteady lips so she could take a couple of careful sips. Her heart was pounding in her head and her throat felt so thick it struggled to swallow. And he continued to stand there like some looming dark shadow, killing her ability to think and making her feel the insignificance of her own diminutive five feet six inches next to his overpowering height.

But that was the great and gloriously important Leo Christakis, she mused dismally—a big, tough, overpowering entity with a repertoire in sardonic looks and blunt comments that could shrivel a lesser person to pulp, and a brain that functioned for only one thing—making money. Even as she stood here refusing to look at him she could feel him fighting the urge to glance at his watch, because he must have more important things to do with his time than to stand here wasting it on her.

‘I’ll be all r-right in a minute,’ she managed. ‘You can go back to work now.’

She’d said that as if she believed work was the only thing he lived for, Leo picked up. His chiselled chin jutted. Natasha Moyles always had a unique way of antagonising him with her polite, withdrawn manner or her swift, cool glances that dismissed him as if he were nothing worthy of her regard. She’d been doing it to him from the first time they were introduced at his stepbrother’s London apartment.

Leo thrust his clenched hands into his trouser pockets, pushing back the flaps of his dark pinstripe jacket to reveal the pristine white front to his handmade shirt. She shifted jerkily as if the action threatened her somehow and he was suddenly made acutely aware of his own long, muscled torso and taut, bronzed skin. Even the layer of hair that covered his chest prickled.

‘Take some more sips at the water and stop trying to outguess what I might be thinking,’ he advised coolly, not liking these sensations that kept on attacking him.

‘I wasn’t trying to—’

‘You were,’ he interrupted, adding curtly, ‘You might dislike me intensely, Natasha, but allow me a bit more sensitivity than to desert you here after what you have just witnessed.’

But he did not possess quite enough sensitivity to hold back from reminding her of it! Natasha noted as the whole sickening horror of what she had seen sucked her right back in. Her inner world began to sway dizzily, the groan she must have uttered bringing his fingers back up to clasp her arms. She wanted to shrug him off, but she found that she couldn’t. She needed his support because she had a horrible feeling that without it she was going to sink into a great dark hole in the ground.

An eerie-sounding beep suddenly echoed through the car park. It was the executive lift being called back up the building to pick up new passengers. Leo bit out a curse at the same time that Natasha’s head shot up to stare at him, her wide, blue eyes clashing full on with his dark brown eyes. For a long moment neither of them moved as they stood trapped by a strange kind of energy that shimmered its way through Natasha’s body right down to her toes.

Theos, she’s beautiful, Leo heard himself think.

She made a sudden dive towards her open car door. Moving like lightning, Leo managed to get there before her, one set of fingers closing around her slender wrist to hold her back while he closed the car door, then took the keys from her hand.

‘W-what—?’

Her stammered half-question was cut short by a man used to making snap decisions. Leo turned and all but frogmarched her across the basement to where his own low sleek black car was parked.

‘I can drive myself!’ she protested when she realised what he was doing.

‘No, you cannot.’

‘But—’

‘That could be Rico about to walk out of the lift,’ he turned on her forcefully. ‘So make your mind up, Natasha, which one of us would you prefer to be with right now!’

So very brutal in its delivery. Natasha’s mind flooded yet again with what she had witnessed upstairs and she turned into a block of ice.

Opening the car door, Leo propelled her inside. She went without protest, accidentally dropping the water bottle as she did. Jaw set like a vice now, Leo closed the door as, like a man born with special mental powers, Rasmus reappeared not far away. Leo tossed her keys at him and didn’t need to issue instructions. His security chief just slunk away again, knowing exactly what was expected of him.

Ignoring the fallen water bottle, Leo strode around the car and got in behind the wheel. She was huddled in the passenger seat, staring down at her two hands where they knotted together on the top of her little black purse and she was shivering like crazy now as the classic reaction to shock well and truly set in.

Pinning his lips together, Leo switched on the engine and thrust it into gear, then sent the car flying towards the exit on an ear-shattering screech of tires. They hit daylight and the early afternoon traffic in a seething atmosphere of emotional stress. A minute later his in-car telephone system burst into life, the screen on his dashboard flashing up Rico’s name. A choice phrase locked in the back of his throat and he flicked a switch on the steering wheel that shut the phone down.

Ten seconds later and Natasha’s phone started to ring inside her bag.

‘Ignore it,’ he gritted.

‘Do you think I am stupid?’ she choked out.

Then they both sat there in thick, throbbing silence, listening to her phone ring until her voicemail took over the call. Her phone kept on ringing repeatedly as they travelled across London with the two of them sitting there like waxwork dummies waiting for her voicemail to keep doing its thing while anger pumped adrenalin into Leo’s bloodstream making his fingers grip the steering wheel too tight.

Neither spoke a word to each other. He didn’t know what to say if it did not include a string of obscenities that would probably make this woman blanch.

Natasha, on the other hand, had closed herself off inside a cold little world filled with reruns of what she had witnessed. She knew that her sister’s behaviour was out of control, but she’d never thought Cindy would sink so low as to…

She had to swallow to stop the bile from rising again as she replayed the moment when Cindy had seen her standing in the door. She saw the look of triumph hit her sister’s face followed by the oh-so-familiar pout of defiance that revealed the truth as to why she was doing that with Rico.

Cindy didn’t really want him. She did not even like him that much, but she could not stand the thought that Natasha had anything she hadn’t first tried out for herself.

Selfish to the last drop of blood, Natasha thought painfully. Spoiled by two parents who liked to believe their youngest daughter was the most gifted creature living on this earth. She was prettier than Natasha, more outward-going than Natasha. Funnier and livelier and so much more talented than Natasha ever could or wanted to be.

Blessed, their parents called it, because Cindy could sing like a bird and she was the latest pop discovery promising to set the UK alight. After a short stint on a national TV singing competition, Cindy’s was the face that everyone recognised while Natasha stood in the background like a shadow. The quiet one, the invisible one whose job it was to make sure everything ran smoothly in her talented sister’s wonderful life.

Why had she allowed it to happen? she asked herself now when it all felt so ugly. Why had she agreed to put her own life on hold and be drawn into playing babysitter to a self-seeking, spoiled brat who’d always resented having an older sister to share anything with?

Because she’d known their ageing parents couldn’t cope with Cindy. Because from the moment that Cindy’s singing talents had been discovered she’d realised that someone had to attempt to keep her from going right off the egotistic rails.

And, face it, Natasha. At first you were excited about being part of Cindy’s fabulous life.

Cindy, of course, resented her being there. Riding on her coat-tails, she’d called it. Natasha was unaware that she’d said it out loud until Leo flicked a gruff-toned, ‘Did you say something?’

‘No,’ she mumbled—but it was exactly what she’d let herself become: a pathetic hanger-on riding on the coat-tails of her sister’s glorious popularity.

Meeting Rico had been like rediscovering that she was a real person in her own right. She’d stupidly let herself believe he had actually fallen in love with her in her own right and not just because of whom she was attached to.

What a joke, she thought now. What a sick, rotten joke.

Rico with Cindy…

Hurt tears scalded the back of her throat.

Rico doing with Cindy what he had always held back from doing with her…

‘Oh,’ a thick whimper escaped.

‘OK?’ the man beside her shot out.

Of course I’m not OK! Natasha wanted to screech at him. I’ve just witnessed my fiancé bonking the brains out of my sister!

‘Yes,’ she breathed out.

Leo brought his teeth together with a steel-edged slice. He flashed her a quick glance to find that she was still sitting there with her head dipped and her slender white fingers knotted together on top of her bag.

Had Rico ever taken this woman across his desk the way he’d been having her sister?

As if she could hear what he was thinking, her chin lifted upwards in an oddly proud gesture, her blue eyes staring directly in front. She possessed the flawless profile of a chaste Madonna, Leo found himself thinking. But when he dropped his eyes to her mouth, he was reminded that it was no chaste Madonna’s mouth. It was a soft, very lush, very sexy mouth with a short, vulnerable upper lip and a fuller lower lip that just begged to be—

That sudden burn grabbed hold of him right where it shouldn’t—residue from what had happened to him as he’d travelled down in the lift, he stubbornly informed himself.

But it wasn’t, and he knew it. He had been fighting a hot sexual curiosity about Natasha Moyles from the first time he’d met her at her and Rico’s betrothal party. Her sister had been there, claiming centre stage and wowing everyone with her shimmering star quality, wearing a flimsy flesh-coloured dress exclusively designed for her to show off her stem-like figure and her big hairstyle that floated all around her exquisite face, accentuating her sparkling baby-blue eyes.

This sister had worn classic black. It had shocked him at the time because it was supposed to be Natasha’s party yet she’d chosen to wear the colour of mourning. He remembered remarking on it to her at the time.

One of his shoulders gave a small shrug. Maybe he should not have made the comment. Maybe he should have kept his sardonic opinion to himself, because if he had done it to get a rise out of her, then he’d certainly got one—of buttoned-lipped, cold-eyed ice.

They’d exchanged barely a civil word since then.

So, she’d taken an instant dislike to him, Leo acknowledged with a grimace that wavered towards wry. Natasha didn’t like tall, dark Greeks with a blunt, outspoken manner. He didn’t like loud pop-chicks with stick figures and big hair.

He preferred his woman with more softness and shape.

Rico didn’t.

Natasha had both.

Leo frowned as he drove them across the river. So what the hell had Rico been doing with Natasha, then? Had the stupid fool started out by playing a game with one sister to get him access to the other one, only to find he’d got himself embroiled too deep? Natasha wasn’t the type you messed around with. She just would not understand. Had his bone-selfish stepbrother discovered a conscience somewhere between hitting on Natasha and asking her to marry him within a few weeks?

If so, the bad conscience had not stretched far enough to make him leave the other sister alone, he mused grimly as he shot them through a set of lights on amber and spun the car into a screeching left turn.

‘Where are you going?’ Natasha burst out sharply.

‘My place,’ he answered.

‘But I don’t want—’

‘You prefer it if I drop you off at your apartment?’ Leo flicked at her. ‘You prefer to sit nice and neat on a chair with the bag on your lap waiting for them to appear and beg you to forgive?’

His English was failing, Leo noticed—but not enough to mask the sarcasm from his voice that managed to shock even him.

‘No,’ she quivered out.

‘Because they will appear,’ he persisted nonetheless. ‘She needs you to keep her life running smoothly while she struts about playing the pop-chick with angst. And Rico needs you to keep his mama happy because Angelina likes you, and she sees you as her precious boy’s saviour from a life of wild women and booze.’

Was that it? Had Rico been using her to appease his old-fashioned mother who’d taken a liking to her on sight? Natasha felt hot tears fill her eyes as she replayed the relieved smile Angelina had sent her when they’d happened to bump into her at a restaurant one night. ‘Such a nice girl,’ Angelina had said later.

Was that the moment when Rico decided that it might be a good idea to make her his wife? He’d asked her to marry him only a few days later. Like a fully paid-up idiot, she had jumped at the chance. They’d barely shared a proper kiss by then!

And no wonder. She wasn’t Rico’s type, she was his mother’s type. Cindy was Rico’s type.

Her heart hurt as she stared out of the car window. Beside her, Leo felt the truth hit him hard in the gut.

He had his answer as to what had made Rico want to marry this sister while lusting after the other one. He was keeping his mother happy because Angelina had been making stern warning noises about his lifestyle and Rico saw his loving mama as his main artery source to the Christakis coffers—next to Leo himself, of course.

Which made Natasha Rico’s love stooge as much as Leo was his family stooge. From the day eight years ago when his father had brought Angelina home as his new bride with her eighteen-year-old son in tow, Leo’s life had become round after round of making Rico feel part of the family because Angelina was so hypersensitive to the differences between the two sons. And his father would do anything to keep Angelina happy and content. When Lukas died so suddenly, Leo continued to keep Angelina, via Rico, happy because she’d been so clearly in love with his father and naturally devastated by his death.

Well, not any longer, he vowed heavily. It was time for both Angelina and Rico to take control of their own lives. He was sick and tired of sorting out their problems.

And that included the money Rico had stolen from him, Leo determined, a black frown bringing his eyebrows together across the top of his nose because he’d allowed himself to forget the reason he’d gone into Rico’s office in the first place.

Natasha was yet another of Rico’s problems, he recognised, winging another swift, frowning glance her way. She was sitting there with her face turned the colour of parchment, looking as if she might be going to throw up in his car.

What, this woman? he then cruelly mocked. This ultra-composed creature would rather choke on her own bile than to allow herself to do anything so crass as to throw up on his Moroccan tan leather.

Which then brought back the question—what had such a dignified thing seen in a shallow piece of manhood like Rico?

Fresh anger tried to rip a hole in his chest.

‘Think about it,’ he gritted, wishing he could keep his mouth shut, but finding out he could not. ‘They are more suited to each other than you and Rico. He famously likes them like your sister—surely you must have known that, heard some of his history with women? He’s been playing the high-rolling playboy right across fashionable Europe for long enough. Did you never stop to ask yourself what it was he actually saw in you that made you stand out from the flock?’

The hurt tears gathered all the stronger at his ruthless barrage. Feeling as if she’d just been knocked over by a bus then kicked for daring to let it happen, ‘I thought he loved me,’ Natasha managed to push out.

‘Which is why he was enjoying your sister over his desk when he should have been attending my board meeting, defending himself.’

‘Defending?’ she picked up.

Leo didn’t answer. Clamping his lips together, he climbed out of the car, annoyed with himself for wanting to beat her up for Rico’s sins. Rounding the car bonnet, he opened her door, then reached in to take hold of one of her wrists so he could tug her out, even though he knew she didn’t want to get out. Her phone started ringing again, distracting her long enough for him to get her into his house.

He pulled her into the living room and pushed her down into a chair then strode off to the drinks cabinet to pour her a stiff drink.

His hands were trembling, he noticed, and frowned as he splashed neat brandy into a glass. When he walked back to Natasha, he saw that she was sitting on the edge of the chair, all neat and prim with the bag on her lap as he’d predicted she would do.

Fresh anger ripped at him. ‘Here.’ He handed her the glass. ‘Drink that, it might help to loosen you up a bit.’

What happened next came without any warning at all that he was about to receive his just desserts when Natasha shot to her feet and launched the full contents of the glass at his face.

‘W-who do you think you are, Mr Christakis, to dare to think you can be this horrid to me?’ she fired up. ‘Listening to you, anyone would be f-forgiven for thinking that it had been you who’d been betrayed back there! Or is that it?’ she then shot out. ‘Are you being this downright nasty to me because you wished it had been you doing that with my sister instead of Rico—is that what your foul temper is about?’

Standing there with brandy dripping down his hard golden cheekbones, Leo Christakis, the dynamic and cut-throat head of one of the biggest companies in the world, heard himself utter…

‘No. I wished it had been you with me.’

CHAPTER TWO

IN THE thick, thrumming silence that followed that mind-numbing declaration, Natasha stared up at Leo’s liquor-drenched face—and wished that the brandy were still in the glass so she could toss it at him again!

‘H-how dare you?’ she shook out in tremulous indignation, eyes like sparkling blue diamonds darkening to sultry sapphires as the tears filled them up. ‘Don’t you think I’ve been h-humiliated enough without you poking fun at me as if it’s all been just a jolly good joke?’

‘No joke,’ Leo heard himself utter, then grimaced at the full, raw truth in his answer. There was definitely no joke to find anywhere in the way he had been quietly lusting after Natasha for weeks.

No, the real joke here was in hearing himself actually admit to it.

Turning his back on her, Leo dug a hand into his jacket pocket to retrieve the never-used handkerchief his various housekeepers always insisted on placing in his suits. Wiping the brandy from his face, he flicked a glance at the way Natasha was standing there in her neat blue suit and her sensible heeled shoes but with her very expressive eyes now blackened by shock.

‘You have a strange idea about men, Natasha, if you believe that the scraped-back hair and the buttoned-up clothes stop them from being curious about what it is you are attempting to hide.’

She blinked at him.

Leo laughed—oddly.

‘We don’t all go for anorexic pop-stars barely out of the schoolroom,’ he explained helpfully. ‘Some men even like a challenge in a woman instead of seeing it all hanging out and handed to us on a plate.’

His gaze dropped to the rounded shape of her breasts where they heaved up and down inside her jacket. It was pure self-defence that made her pull in her chest. His eyes darkened as he flicked them back to her face and Natasha knew then what it was he was talking about.

‘You want to unwrap yourself and fulfil my curiosity?’ he invited. ‘I didn’t think so.’ He smiled at her drop-jaw gasp.

‘Why are you doing this—s-saying these things to me?’ she whispered in genuine bafflement. ‘Do you think that because you witnessed what I witnessed it gives you the right to speak to me as if I am a slut?’

‘You would not know how to play the slut if your life depended on it,’ Leo grimly mocked. ‘It is a major part of your fascination to me that with a sister like yours, you are like you are.’

Natasha just continued to stare at him, trying to work out what it was she must have done to deserve any of this. ‘Well, you are being loathsome,’ she murmured finally. ‘And there is nothing in the least bit fascinating about being that, Mr Christakis.’

Her bag had fallen to the floor when she’d jumped to her feet. Natasha bent to recover it, then with as much dignity as she could muster, she turned to leave.

‘You’re right,’ he responded.

‘I know I am.’ She nodded, taking a shaky step towards the door, and heard him suck in his breath.

‘All right,’ he growled. ‘I’m sorry. OK?’

For mocking her situation just to get the clever quips in?

Straightening her trembling shoulders, ‘I didn’t ask you to bring me here,’ Natasha pushed out in a thick voice. ‘I have never asked you to do anything for me. So my sister is a slut. Your stepbrother is a slut. Other than that you and I have nothing in common or to say to each other.’

With that she took another couple of steps towards the door, just wanting to get out of here as quickly as she could do now and willing her legs to continue to hold her up while she made her escape.

Her mobile phone started ringing.

It was like chaos arriving to further agitate havoc because yet another telephone started ringing somewhere else in the house and Natasha’s feet pulled her to a confused standstill, the sound of those two phones ringing shrilly in her head.

Behind her he wasn’t moving a muscle. Was he—was Leo Christakis really as attracted to her as he’d just made out? Her jangling brain flipped out.

Then a knock sounded on the door and the handle was turning. Like a switch that kept on flicking her brain from one thing to another, Natasha envisaged Rico about to walk in the room and her feet were taking a stumbling step back. Maybe she swayed, she didn’t know, but a pair of hands arrived to clasp her upper arms and the next thing she knew she was being turned around and pressed against Leo Christakis’s shirt front.

‘Steady,’ his low voice murmured.

Natasha felt the sound resonate across the tips of her breasts and she quivered.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mr Christakis,’ a female voice exclaimed in surprise. ‘I heard you come in and assumed you were alone.’

‘As you see, Agnes, I am not,’ Leo responded.

Blunt as always. His half-Greek housekeeper was used to it, though her eyes flicked curiously to his stepbrother’s fiancée standing here held against his chest. When Agnes looked back at his face, not a single hint showed in her expression to say that what she was seeing was a shock.

‘Mr Rico keeps ringing, demanding to speak to Miss Moyles,’ the housekeeper informed him.

Natasha quivered again. This time he soothed the quiver by tracking a hand down the length of her spine and settling it in the curvy hollow of her lower back. ‘We are not here,’ Leo instructed. ‘And no one gets into this house.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The housekeeper left the room again, leaving a silence behind along with a tension that grabbed a tight hold on Natasha’s chest. Just totally unable to understand what it was she was feeling any more, she took a shaky step away from him, confused heat warming her cheeks.

‘Sh-she’s going to think w-we—’

‘Agnes is not paid to think,’ Leo cut in arrogantly and moved off to pour another brandy while Natasha sank weakly back down into the chair.

‘Here, take this…’ Coming to squat down in front of her, he handed her another glass. ‘Only this time try drinking it instead of throwing it at me,’ he suggested. ‘It is supposed to be better for you that way.’

His dry attempt at humour made Natasha flick him a brief guilty glance. ‘I’m sorry I did that. I don’t even know why I did.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ Leo’s smile was sardonic. ‘I am used to having my face slapped in car parks and drinks thrown at me. Loathsome guys expect it.’

He added a grimace.

Natasha lowered her eyes to watch his mouth take on that grimacing tilt. It was only as she watched it settle back into a straight line again that she realised it was actually a quite beautifully shaped mouth, slender and firm but—nice.

And his eyes were nice, too, she noticed when, as if drawn by a magnet, she looked back at them. The rich, dark brown colour was framed by the most gorgeous thick, curling black eyelashes that managed to add an unexpected appeal to his face she would never have allowed him before. That pronounced bump in the middle of his nose saved his face from being a bit too perfect. A strong face, she decided, hard hewn and chiselled yet very good-looking—if you didn’t count the inbuilt cynicism that was there without her actually knowing how it was there.

OK, so he was a lot older than her. Older than Rico by eight years, which made him older than her by a very big ten. And those extra years showed in the blunt opinions he had no problem tossing at people—her especially.

But as for his looks, they weren’t old. His skin was a warm honey colour that lay smooth against the bones in his face. No age lines, no smile lines, not even any frown lines, though he did a lot of frowning—around her anyway.

Unaware that she was taking short sips at the brandy as she studied him, Natasha let her eyes track the width of his muscled shoulders trapped inside the smooth fit of his jacket, then let them absorb the fact that his torso was very long and lean and tight. When standing up, he was taller than Rico by several inches and his dark hair was shorter, cut to suit the stronger shape of his face.

She was asking for trouble, Leo thought severely as he watched that lush, pink, generous mouth adopt a musing pout while she looked him over as if he were a prime piece of meat laid out on a butcher’s slab.

‘How old are you, Natasha?’ he asked curiously. ‘Twenty-six—twenty-seven?’

Her spine went stiff. ‘I’m twenty-four!’ she iced out. ‘And that is just one more insult you’ve hit me with!’

‘And you’re counting.’ His eyes narrowed.

‘Yes!’ she heaved out.

With her blue eyes flashing indignation at him she looked pretty damn fantastic, Leo observed as he knelt there, trying to decide what to do next.

He could leap on her and kiss her—strangely enough she seemed to need him to do that. Or he could gently remove the glass she was crushing between her slender fingers, ease her down on her knees in front of him, then encourage her to just get it over with and use his shoulder to have a good weep.

Something twisted inside him—not sexual this time, but an ache of a different kind. Did she know how badly she was trembling? Did she know her slender white throat had to work like crazy each time to swallow some of the brandy and that her hair was threatening to fall free from its knot?

‘I th-think I w-want to go home now,’ she mumbled distractedly.

To the apartment she shared with her sister? ‘Drink the rest of your brandy first,’ Leo advised quietly.

Natasha glanced down at the glass she was holding so tightly between her fingers, then just stared at it as if she was shocked to find it there. As she lifted it to her mouth Leo watched her soft lips take on the warm bloom of brandy and the ache inside him shifted back to a sexual ache.

The doorbell rang.

Rico called her name out.

Natasha’s head shot up, the brandy glass falling from her fingers to land with a thunk on the carpet, sending brandy fumes wafting up.

‘Natasha—’ Leo reached out to her, thinking she was going to keel over into a faint.

But once again Natasha Moyles surprised him. He did not need to pull her to her knees because she arrived there right between his spread thighs with her arms going up and over his shoulders to cling to his neck, those vulnerable blue eyes staring up at him with a helpless mix of pleading and dismay.

‘Don’t let him in,’ she begged tensely.

‘I won’t,’ Leo promised.

‘I h-hate him. I never want to see him again.’

‘I will not let him in,’ he repeated gently.

But Rico called out her name again hoarse with emotion and Leo felt her fingernails dig into the back of his neck while the two of them listened to his housekeeper make some stern response.

‘My heart’s beating so fast I can’t breathe properly,’ Natasha whispered breathlessly.

A spark of challenge lit Leo’s eyes. He should have contained it—he knew that even as he murmured the challenging, ‘I can make it beat faster.’

If he’d said it to distract her attention away from Rico, it certainly worked when her mouth parted on a surprised little gasp. Leo raised a ruefully mocking eyebrow, feeling the buzz, the loin heating, sex-charging, challenging buzz.

And he leant in and claimed her mouth.

It was like falling into an electrified pit, Natasha likened dizzily as not a single part or inch of her missed out on the high-voltage rush. She’d never experienced anything like it. He crushed her lips to keep them parted, then slid his tongue into her mouth. The sheer shock feel of that alien wet contact stroking across her own tongue made her shiver with pleasure, then stiffen in shock. He did it again and this time she whimpered.

Leo murmured something, then slid his arms around her so he could draw her closer to him and deepen the kiss. The next few seconds went by in a fevered hot rush. She felt plastered against his muscled torso. She could hear Rico shouting. Something hard and ridged was pushing against her front. The wildly disturbing recognition of what that something was sent her deaf to everything else as her own senses bloomed with an excited sparkle in response.

It was crazy, she tried telling herself. She didn’t even like Leo Christakis yet here she was drowning in the full on power of his heated kiss! In all of her life she had never kissed anyone like this—never felt even remotely like this! It was like throwing herself against a rock only to discover that the rock had magical powers. His hand skated the length of her spine to her waist, then pressed her even closer, at the same time that he increased the pressure on her mouth, sending her neck arching backwards as he used his tongue to create a warm, thick chain reaction that poured through her entire body like silk.

Natasha heard herself groan something. He muttered a very low, sensual rasp in response. Then Rico called out to her again, harsh and angry enough to pierce into her foggy consciousness, and she wrenched her mouth free.

Trembling and panting with her heart pounding wildly, she stared up at this man while her mind fed her an image of the way Rico had been enjoying Cindy across his desk.

As if her sister knew what she was thinking, her phone began to ring in her purse.

The scald of betrayal burned her up on the inside.

‘For God’s sake, Natasha, let me talk to you!’ Rico’s rasping voice ground out.

Revenge lit her up.

Leo saw it happen and knew exactly where it was coming from. Sanity returned to him with a gut-crushing whoosh. She was going to offer herself to him, but did he want her like this, bruised and heartbroken and throbbing with a desire for revenge on Rico, who could easily charge in here and catch them?

As they had walked into Rico’s office and caught him.

Natasha leant away from Leo and began unbuttoning her jacket with shakily fumbling, feverish fingers.

Leo released a sigh. ‘You don’t want to do this, Natasha,’ he said heavily.

‘Don’t tell me what I don’t want,’ she shook out.

The two pieces of fabric were wrenched apart to reveal a white top made of some stretchy fabric that crossed over and moulded the thrusting fullness of her two tight breasts.

Leo looked down at them, then up into her fever-bright eyes, and wanted to bite out a filthy black curse. As she wrenched the jacket off altogether, he reached out to try and stop her, only to freeze when he read the helpless plea that had etched itself on her paper-white face.

If he turned her down now, the rejection was going to shatter her.

Her smooth white throat moved as she swallowed, those kiss-warmed lips parting so she could whisper out a husky little, ‘Please…’

And he was lost, Leo knew it. Even as she took the initiative away from him by winding her arms around his neck again, he knew he was not going to stop this. Lifting his hands up to mould her ribcage, he stroked them down the tight white fabric to the sexy indentation of her waist in an exploring act that rolled back the denials still beating an urgent tattoo in his head.

Her mouth was a hungry invite. Leo raked his hands back up her body again and this time covered the full perfect globes of her breasts. She fell apart on a series of gasps and quivers that sent her body into an acute sensual arch, fingernails digging into his neck again, hair suddenly tumbling free in a glorious roll of fine silken waves down her back. She was amazing, a stunningly complicated mix of prim, straight-lace and pure untrammelled passion with her lily-white skin and her lush parted mouth, and her breasts two sensational mounds that filled his hands and…

The front door slammed.

Rico had gone.

If Natasha recognised what the sound meant she did not make a response. Her eyes still burned into him with the fevered invitation she was offering.

Time to make a decision, Leo accepted grimly. Continue this or put a stop to it?

Then her fingernails dug deeper to pull his mouth back down onto hers and the decision was made for him.

Natasha felt his surrender and took it with a leap of triumph that bordered on the mad. She became aware of the power of his erection pressing against her again, instinct made her move against it. He muttered a low, throaty response and he was suddenly tightening his hold of her and drawing her to her feet. Next he was swinging her up into his arms and carrying her, the kiss still a seething hot fuse that frazzled her brain and had her heart pounding to the beat of his footsteps echoing on oak flooring as he headed across the hall and began climbing the stairs.

It was the moment that Natasha saw a small chink of sanity. Her head went back, rending the kiss apart as she opened her eyes to look deep into Leo Christakis’s heavily lidded dark eyes before she glanced around her as if she’d been woken up suddenly from a dream.

It was only then that she realised that the hallway was empty. No one was there. No Rico witnessing his betrayed fiancée being carried to bed by her soon-to-be new lover. No housekeeper containing her disapproval and shock.

‘Changed your mind now you don’t have a witness?’ Leo’s hard voice swung her eyes back to him again.

He’d gone still on one of the stairs and the look of cold cynicism was back, lashing his skin to the bones in his face.

‘No,’ Natasha breathed, and she discovered that she meant it. She wanted to do this. She wanted to be carried to bed and made love to by a man who genuinely wanted her—she wanted to lose every single old-fashioned and disgustingly outmoded inhibition she possessed!

‘Please,’ she breathed softly as she leant in to brush a kiss across the hard line of his mouth. ‘Make love to me, Leo.’

There was another moment of hesitation, a glimpse of fury in the depths of his eyes. Then he was moving again, allowing her to breathe again though she had not been aware of holding her breath. He finished the climb up the stairs and carried her into a sultry summer-warmed bedroom with pale walls and big dark pieces of furniture. A red Persian rug covered most of the polished oak floor.

Then he really shocked her by dumping her unceremoniously on the top of a huge soft bed.

As Natasha lay there blinking up at him Leo stood looking down at her, his expression as hard and cynical as hell. ‘Stay there and pull yourself together,’ was all he uttered before he turned around to walk back to the door.

‘Why?’ Natasha shook out.

‘I will not play substitute to any man,’ the cold brute answered.

Natasha sat up. ‘Y-you said you wanted me.’

‘Strange—’ he turned, his kiss-heated mouth taking on a scornful twist ‘—but seeing you getting off on the possibility of Rico witnessing us together was a real turn off for me.’

Natasha sat up with a jolt. ‘I was not getting off on it—!’

‘Liar,’ he lashed back, then really startled her by striding back to the bed to come and lean over her—close enough to make her blink warily because she just didn’t know what was going to come next.

‘To keep things clear between us, Natasha,’ he murmured silkily, ‘if you loved what we were doing downstairs so much you forgot all about Rico, then ask yourself what that tells me about Miss Betrayed and Broken-hearted, hmm—?’

It was as good as a cold, hard slap in the face. Natasha just stared up at him because the worst thing of all was that he had only told it how it was! She had been thinking about Rico when she’d invited what she had downstairs. And she had no excuse for the way she had begged him to bring her up here!

But had he behaved any better? ‘You cruel, h-hateful swine,’ she breathed, and pulled up her knees so she could bury her face.

Leo agreed. He was behaving like an absolute beast feeding her all the blame for whatever had erupted in both of them downstairs. It was still erupting inside him, he admitted as he turned away again and strode back to the door, wishing that he had stayed in Athens this morning instead of…

Telephones started ringing again, piercing through the high-octane atmosphere—his phone in his jacket pocket and another phone ringing somewhere else in the house. Retrieving his mobile, Leo glared at the display screen, expecting it to show Rico’s name.

But it was Juno, his PA. Leo sanctioned the connection. ‘This had better be important,’ he warned as he stepped out of the bedroom and pulled the door shut.

Natasha lifted her head at the sound of the door snapping into its housing. He’d gone. He’d left her sitting here in a huddle on his bed and just walked away from her—because he could.

On a sudden pummelling punch of self-hatred she scrambled up off the bed, hurt beyond sense that yet another man had humiliated her in the space of one horrible day.

Oh, she had to get out of here! Natasha almost screeched that need at herself as she looked around the floor for her shoes and couldn’t find them. Then she remembered the vague echo of them falling off her feet and hitting the floor when Leo had picked her up. Her hair fell forward, tumbling in long waves around her face as if to taunt how she’d been so wrapped up in what she’d been doing with him that she hadn’t even noticed before now how her hair had sprung free of its restraints!

Like herself. She shuddered, turning like a drunk not knowing where she was going and heading for the door. She made it out onto the landing and even found her way back down the stairs without coming face to face with anyone else. The door to the living room still hung wide-open and the wretched tears almost broke free when she saw the way her jacket lay in a pale blue swish of fabric on the floor by the chair she had been sitting on before she…

Swallowing, she hurried forward to snatch up the offending garment, pulling it on and fastening it up while she scrambled her feet into her shoes.

He arrived in the doorway, lounging there and filling it with his lean, dark, overbearing presence and…

Her phone started to ring in her purse.

With what tiny bit of control she had left, Natasha bent down to scoop up the purse, then dragged the phone out with trembling fingers and just slammed the wafer-thin piece of shiny black plastic forcefully down on the floor.

It stopped ringing.

The sudden rush of silence throbbed like the beat of a drum in her head, and the tears were really threatening now like hot, sharp shards of flaming glass hitting the backs of her eyes and her throat. She spun towards the door to find Leo was still there, blocking her only exit.

Her mouth began to work, fighting—fighting the tears. ‘Please,’ she pushed out at him on a thick broken whisper. ‘I need you to move out of my way so I can leave.’

Silence. He said nothing. He did not attempt to move. His eyes were half hooded, his lips straight and tight. And there was just enough narrow-eyed insolence in the way he was casually standing there with his arms folded across his front like that to make Natasha realise that something about him had altered dramatically.

‘W-what—?’ she shook out.

Leo wondered how she would react if he accused her of being a play-acting little thief?

‘I am just curious,’ he posed very levelly. ‘Leave here for where?’

But inside he didn’t feel level in any other way. Inside he was feeling so conned he didn’t know how he was managing to hold it all in!

Rico’s little accomplice—who would have thought it? Apparently Miss Cool and Prim was not so prim when it came to letting her greedy, grasping, slender fingers scoop up the cash Rico had stolen from him!

‘To find Rico, perhaps?’ he suggested when she didn’t say anything.

‘No!’ She even managed to shudder. ‘H-home,’ she said, ‘to my apartment.’

‘You don’t have your keys.’

‘I’ll get the janitor to let me in.’

‘Or your loving sister,’ Leo provided. ‘I predict she is already there, waiting to pounce on you the moment that you arrive.’

Was the other sister in on the scam, too?

And look at this one, he thought as he shuttered his eyes that bit more before running them down her front. She was back to being buttoned up to the throat as if the passionate interlude they’d just shared had never taken place—if you didn’t count the flowing hair and the flush on her cheeks and the kiss-swollen bloom on her lips that he had put there.

‘What does it matter to you if she is?’ Natasha asked. ‘This was never your problem,’ she informed him stiffly. ‘You should not have become involved. I don’t even know why you did or why you had to bring me here at all!’

‘You needed a safe place to recover,’ Leo said dryly.

‘Safe?’ Natasha choked out. ‘You’d barely dragged me through your front door before you were coming on to me!’

His careless shrug shot Natasha into movement, wanting, needing to get away from the insufferable devil so badly now she was prepared to risk the feeble strength in her shaky legs to walk towards him—aware of the way his eyes followed her every footstep—aware that at any second now she was going to fall down in a screaming hot puddle of tears on the floor.

And still he did not move out of her way so she could get out of here, so the closer she came to him, the more her senses went wild, fluttering in protest in case he dared to touch her again—and at the same time fizzing with excitement in the hope that he did!

I don’t know myself any more, Natasha thought helplessly. ‘Move,’ she demanded, resorting to a bit of his own blunt way of speech.

The slight tug his mouth gave was an acknowledgement of it, but he didn’t shift. ‘You cannot leave,’ he coolly informed her.

Was he mad? ‘Of course I can go.’ Shoulders tense, Natasha tried to push him out of her way by placing her hands on his chest. It didn’t happen. It was like trying to move a fully grown tree, and in the end Leo caught up her fingers to lift them away from his chest.

‘When I said you cannot leave, Natasha, I meant it,’ he informed her very seriously. ‘At least not until the police arrive to take you away, that is…’

CHAPTER THREE

NATASHA froze for a second. Then, ‘The police?’ she edged out blankly.

‘The Fraud Squad, to be more accurate,’ Leo confirmed.

‘Fraud…?’

His mouth gave a twitch at the way she kept on echoing him. ‘As in swindler and charlatan,’ he provided, driving his gaze down her body as if to say the crime was that she looked the way she did yet could turn on so hotly the way she had.

Natasha quivered, her cheeks turning pink with shamed embarrassment. ‘I don’t usually…’

‘Turn on for a man just to pull the wool over his eyes…?’

Untangling her fingers from his, she fell back a couple of steps and really looked at him, catching on at last that he was leading somewhere with this that she was not going to like.

‘Since I don’t have a single clue what it is you’re trying to get at, I think you had better explain,’ Natasha prompted finally.

‘Does that mean you do want to go to bed with me and it is not a sham act?’

Natasha tensed, lips parting then closing again, because the true answer to that taunt was just not going to happen. ‘I was in shock when I—’

‘In a state of fright, more like,’ he interrupted, ‘as to what Rico had done to all your plans, with his crass bit on the desk today.’

‘Plans for what?’ Lifting a hand into her hair, she pushed the tumbling mass back from her angrily bewildered face. ‘I was planning to marry him—well, there’s one plan gone down the tubes,’ she choked out. ‘And as you’ve just kindly pointed out to me, I caught him having sex with my own sister—so there’s my pride gone the same way along with any love for my sister!’ The hand dropped to fold along with the other hand tight across her front. ‘Then I surrendered to some mad desire to be wanted by anybody and you happened to be in the right place at the right time,’ she pushed on, ‘but that was just another plan sent off down the tubes when you changed your mind about w-wanting me!’

‘And now your carefully creamed nest egg is about to go the same way,’ Leo added without a hint of sympathy. ‘So I would say that you are having a very bad day, today, Natasha. A very bad day indeed.’

‘Nest egg?’ Natasha picked up. ‘What is it you are talking about now?’

Wearing that smile on his lips that she didn’t like, Leo levered himself away from the doorframe and moved away, leaving her to turn and watch as he headed for the drinks cabinet.

He needed something strong, Leo decided as he poured neat whisky into a glass. He took a good slug, then turned back to look at her, ‘I have just been talking to my PA,’ he enlightened. ‘Juno has been very busy investigating where Rico stashed the money he stole from me and has managed to trace it to an offshore bank account in your name, so lose the bemused expression, Natasha. I’m on to you….’

Nothing happened. She didn’t gasp, she didn’t faint, she didn’t jump in with a flood of denials or excuses aimed to defend what it was he was talking about now. Instead, Leo stood there and watched while something cold struck into him because there it was, the dawning of honesty taking over her lying, cheating, paling face.

That mouth was still a killer though, he observed—and slammed the glass down, suddenly blisteringly angry with himself for being so easily duped by her challengingly prim disguise!

‘I think you had better sit down before you fall down,’ he advised her flatly.

And she did, which only helped to feed his anger all the more. The flowing-haired witch dropped like a stone into the nearest chair, then covered her guilty face with her light-fingered thieving hands!

Rico had stolen the money, Natasha was busily replaying over and over. He’d placed stolen money in an offshore bank account in her name! One of her hands twisted down to cover her mouth as the nausea returned with a vengeance. In the dragging silence blanketing the space separating them she could feel Leo Christakis’s ice-cold anger and blistering contempt beating over her in waves.

If he’d made this declaration yesterday, she would not have believed him. But now, with everything else she’d been forced to look at today, Natasha didn’t even see a chink of a question glimmering in the nightmare her mind had become as to whether there had been some kind of mistake.

Everything about Rico had been a lie from start to finish. The way he’d used his looks and his charm and his fabulous blinding-white smile to lure her to him, the way he’d poured soft words of love over her too-susceptible head and refused to make love to her because he wanted to protect her innocence, while all the time he’d been cynically planning to turn her into a thief!

Pulling her fingers away from her mouth, ‘I’ll give you the money back just as soon as I can access it,’ she promised.

‘Sure you will,’ Leo confirmed. ‘Once you have recovered your composure, we will go and see to it straight away.’

That brought her face up, whiter than white now so her eyes stood out bluer than blue. ‘But you don’t understand. I can’t touch it yet.’

‘Don’t play the broken doll with me next, Natasha,’ Leo bit out impatiently. ‘It won’t alter the fact that you are going to give me my money back now—today.’

‘But I can’t!’ Anxiety shot her quivering to her feet. ‘I can’t touch it until the day before I was supposed to be marrying Rico! He said it was a tax loophole he’d discovered—that you had told him about! He said we had to lock the money up under my name in an offshore account until end of business the day before we marry, then transfer it to another account in our m-married name!’

Leo suddenly exploded spectacularly. ‘I do not appreciate you trying to involve my name in your filthy scam!’ he bit out at her furiously, ‘and telling me stupid lies about access to the money is not going to get you out of trouble, Miss Moyles! So cough up the cash or watch me call the damn police!’

In a state of nerve-numbing terror, Natasha backed away as he took two long strides towards her with a murderous expression clamped to his face. The backs of her legs hit the chair she’d just vacated and she toppled back into it. He came to stand over her as he’d done in the bedroom, only this time Natasha put up her hands in an instinctive need to keep him at bay.

Watching her cower in front of him sent Leo into an even bigger rage. ‘I don’t hit women,’ he rasped, then turned on his heel and walked away—right out of the room.

The police—he’s going to call the police! Out of her mind with fear now, Natasha scrambled upright and chased after him, terrified of going anywhere near him but even more terrified of what would happen if she didn’t stop him from carrying out his threat! He’d crossed the hall and entered a room opposite, which turned out to be a book-lined study.

Coming to a jerky halt in the doorway, she stared as he strode up to the desk and picked up the phone.

Panic sent her heart into overdrive. ‘Leo, please…’ The pleading quaver in her voice made him go still, wide shoulders taut. ‘You have got to believe me,’ she begged him. ‘I didn’t know the money was stolen! Rico conned me into banking it for him as much as he conned you out of it in the first place!’

The last part didn’t go down too well because he began stabbing numbers into the telephone with a grim resolve that sent Natasha flying across the room to grab hold of his arm.

Warm, hard muscles bunched beneath her clutching fingers, anger and rejection pouring into his muscular frame. ‘He s-said it was to ensure our f-future,’ she rushed on unsteadily, ‘He said it was a bequeath to him from your father you had been holding in trust! He s-said you…’

‘Wanted to see the back of him so badly I was prepared to break the law to do it?’ Leo suggested when her scramble of words dried up.

‘Something like that,’ Natasha admitted. Then— Oh, dear God, what had she let Rico do to her? ‘Now you are telling me he lied, which means he lied to me about absolutely everything and I—’

The phone went down. Leo turned on her so suddenly Natasha was given no chance to react before she found herself trapped in his arms. His mouth arrived. It took hers with an angry heat that offered nothing but punishment yet she responded—responded to him like a crazy person, clinging and kissing him back as if she’d die if she didn’t! When he pulled away again she was limp with shock at her own dizzying loss of control!

‘Take my advice,’ he rasped. ‘Keep with the seduction theme; it works on me a whole lot better than the innocent pleading does.’

Then his fingers gripped her arms like pincers, which he used to thrust her right away from him, and he was reestablishing his connection with the phone.

Natasha’s heart lodged like a throbbing lump of fear in her throat. ‘Please,’ she begged him, yet again having to swallow to be able to speak at all. ‘I did not know that Rico had stolen your money, Leo! I can give you back every penny in six weeks if you’ll only wait, but, please—please don’t ring the police—think of the effect it will have on Rico’s mother if you have him arrested! She will—’

‘You love the bastard,’ Leo bit out roughly. Cutting into what she had been trying to say and making Natasha blink.

‘At first, y-yes,’ she admitted it. ‘He flattered me and…’ she swallowed again ‘…and I know it sounds pathetic but I fell for it because…’

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