All the billionaire wants for Christmas is…a wife!

Greek tycoon Leo is a businessman, not a family man. Yet becoming guardian to his orphaned nieces and nephews leads him to make the ultimate sacrifice—finding a wife! And kindhearted Letty is the perfect bride for the job.

Letty can’t let her family fall into financial ruin. A convenient Christmas wedding with Leo is the ideal solution! Until their paper-only arrangement is scorched…by the heat of their unanticipated passion! Which awakens innocent Letty to the inescapable truth: she wants more from Leo than she signed up for…

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married, to an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, who knocks everything over, a very small terrier, who barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

Also by Lynne Graham

His Queen by Desert Decree

The Greek’s Blackmailed Mistress

The Italian’s Inherited Mistress

His Cinderella’s One-Night Heir

Billionaires at the Altar miniseries

The Greek Claims His Shock Heir

The Italian Demands His Heirs

The Sheikh Crowns His Virgin

Vows for Billionaires miniseries

The Secret Valtinos Baby

Castiglione’s Pregnant Princess

Da Rocha’s Convenient Heir

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Greek’s Surprise Christmas Bride

Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08846-6

THE GREEK’S SURPRISE CHRISTMAS BRIDE

© 2019 Lynne Graham

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

LEO ROMANOS, BILLIONAIRE shipping heir, woke up at dawn with four children in his enormous bed.

He had freaked out the first time it had happened, bought pyjamas for the first time ever and hired a twenty-four-hour, round-the-clock rota of nannies.

But the nanny rota wasn’t working. His late sister’s traumatised kids still got out of bed in the middle of the night and slunk into his, and they brought the babies as well.

It was a wonder that he wasn’t traumatised, Leo reflected in wonderment. Five-year-old Popi had ten-month-old Theon tucked in her arms, and three-year-old Sybella had two-year-old Cosmo clasped next to her. His nephews and nieces weren’t happy, weren’t secure—in spite of all his efforts to make a home for them.

And for their benefit alone Leo was willing, finally, to make the ultimate sacrifice. He would take a wife prepared to be a mother to his four inherited children.

His father and stepmother had refused to take charge of their grandkids and had signed over their guardianship to Leo, his stepmother insisting that his father was too old for the task. And, in truth, Leo hadn’t appreciated the extent of the challenge he was taking on.

He had assumed that the nannies would enable him to return to his normal life: workaholic hours followed by the occasional party or dinner, and regular visits to his very sexy mistress. Only somehow it wasn’t working out that way. Leo’s wonderfully smooth and self-indulgent life had gone to hell when his five-year-old niece had sobbed as if her heart was breaking because he’d said he wouldn’t be home for dinner.

Guilt and more guilt had dogged him in spades ever since.

The children needed more than he was capable of giving them—which meant he had to step up, take a wife, and give the kids a mother who would do all the things he didn’t want to do and keep them happy while allowing him an uninterrupted night of sleep.

He suppressed a groan, knowing exactly where he would head to find that wife. Six years ago he had been offered a bride from the Livas family—a practical dynastic marriage which would have ended the competition between the two shipping companies, amalgamated them and made him the heir to both empires. The alliance had offered him an enormous profit and tremendous prospects and the proposed bride had been a beauty…

But even so he had hesitated. Leo had loved his freedom and still did, and the potential bride had hinted at a dangerous desire for his fidelity and he had baulked at that tripwire and backed off fast.

Leo had been raised in the belief that marriage was for business, property and heirs, all that sort of legal stuff. There was no room in marriage for the adventurous sex and variety which Leo considered to be an absolute essential of life, so he had stepped back. But four troubled, needy children crawling into his bed made him far less exacting in his expectations. As far as he knew, Elexis Livas was still on the market and suddenly he was willing to consider a deal…

Isidore Livas met him in his Athens office, a very traditional setting, far removed from Leo’s very contemporary place of business in the City of London. He was quick to inform Leo that his daughter, Elexis, was on the brink of an engagement and no longer available. Leo suppressed a sigh, not of disappointment because his current mistress was considerably sexier than Elexis; however, he had warmed to the concept of marrying her because she was vaguely familiar to him.

‘However, I have a granddaughter,’ Isidore admitted grudgingly, surprising Leo with that information. ‘As I’m sure you’re aware, my son went off the rails…’

Leo nodded, for the world and his wife were aware that Julian Livas, product of his father’s first marriage, had taken to drugs and drink and manic bad behaviour from an early age. He had died in his twenties from his excesses. Isidore had Elexis later in life, with his second wife.

‘Two months ago, I learned to my surprise that Julian did have a child with a woman in London. He didn’t marry the woman concerned, so my grandchild was born out of wedlock,’ Isidore revealed with old-fashioned distaste. ‘Letty is twenty-four and single. You can still become my heir if you take her as a bride… I have no one else, Leo. Elexis’s chosen husband is a television presenter with no interest in taking over my business, and I would very much like to retire.’

‘And this… Letty?’ Leo questioned with a frown, for he considered it an ugly name.

The older man grimaced. ‘You couldn’t compare her to Elexis. She’s plain and plump but she’d marry you like a shot because she needs money for her family.’

‘Plain and plump’ didn’t exactly thrill Leo either. He mightn’t want a wife for entertainment in the bedroom but, understandably, he wanted a presentable woman. His black brows drew together in complete puzzlement. ‘Why aren’t you helping her family?’

The expression on Isidore’s thin face shuttered. ‘She approached me for help but, as far as I’m concerned, if my son wasn’t prepared to marry her mother, I shouldn’t be expected to provide for their child, now that the girl’s an adult.’

‘And yet you’re willing to make this girl your heiress,’ Leo remarked wryly.

‘If she marries you. That’s different. She has Livas blood in her veins and I will accept her then. But she’s lowborn,’ Isidore murmured broodingly. ‘She doesn’t speak Greek. She has not been raised with our traditions and you may not find that palatable. She works as a care assistant in a home for the elderly.’

Leo’s brain could not even encompass the concept of a wife who worked in so humble a capacity. Born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth to a family who had enjoyed wealth for generations, he had no experience whatsoever of what it was like to be born poor. ‘In your opinion is your granddaughter likely to be the maternal type?’

‘If you can judge her by the way she fights and argues in favour of her siblings’ welfare, I would say so…’

Leo was frowning again. ‘Siblings? Julian had more than one child with her mother?’

‘No. Only Letty is Julian’s child. Her mother had the two younger boys with another man,’ Isidore clarified with compressed lips. ‘I gather that relationship didn’t last either and now the mother is ill or disabled or something.’

‘Tell Letty what I have to offer and send her to me,’ Leo advised with all the arrogance of his wealthy forebears. ‘I am willing to marry her if I find her acceptable but, for the children’s sake, she must be a good woman.’

An unexpected laugh erupted from Isidore, startling the older man almost as much as it startled Leo, who had always viewed Isidore as humourless. ‘Leo…what would you know about good women?’

Faint colour accentuated the high exotic slant of Leo’s cheekbones and he lifted a brow and nodded in grudging acknowledgement of that accurate question. Even so, he was very conscious of his duty towards his nephews and nieces and he was determined not to land them with a nasty stepmother, such as he had had to endure. In truth, however, he knew much more about calculating, cruel and greedy women than he knew about the other type.

On his flight back to London, Leo decided to look into Letty and have her investigated but was instead forced to have her late father’s history explored because Isidore had neglected to give him Letty’s surname. By the time he arrived back in London, a file awaited him and the information within was unexpectedly interesting. Juliet, known as Letty, Harbison was a much more thought-provoking bride-to-be than her socialite Aunt Elexis had ever been. Leo’s rarely roused curiosity was stimulated.

Unaware of the high-flying plans afoot for her future, Letty stared at the loan shark on their doorstep. ‘You’re breaking the law,’ she told him sharply. ‘You are not allowed to harass and intimidate your debtors.’

‘I’m entitled to ask for my money,’ he told her fiercely, a thin little man in a crumpled suit, another man, unshaven and thuggish in shape, poised behind him, his sidekick, Joe, who had attempted to thump her little brother for trying to stand up to him on his last visit. He had backed off when Letty wielded the cricket bat she kept behind the door.

‘You’ll have your payment as soon as I get paid, just like last month and the month before,’ Letty responded, squaring her shoulders, honey-blonde hair caught up in a ponytail bouncing with the movement, her green eyes clear and steady. ‘I can’t give you what I don’t have.’

‘A little bird told me you have rich relations.’

An angry flush illuminated Letty’s creamy skin as she wondered if one of her brothers had let that dangerous cat out of the bag. ‘I asked. He wouldn’t help.’

‘He might help soon enough if you was unlucky enough to have an…accident,’ Joe piped up ungrammatically, baring crooked teeth in a smile that was a grimace of threat.

‘But if I were to have an accident, you wouldn’t be getting any money at all,’ Letty pointed out flatly and closed the door swiftly, seeing no advantage to continuing the dialogue.

‘Rich relations’, she thought wryly, thinking back to her one meeting with her Greek grandfather, when he had visited London on business. A cold, unfriendly man more hung up on the reality that she was illegitimate rather than showing any genuine interest in her actual existence. No, contacting Isidore Livas had been a dead end. She had soon worked out that no rescue bid would be coming from him. He had shaken her off like the poor relation she was.

While her mother, Gillian, hobbled painfully round the tiny kitchen of their council flat on crutches and tried to tidy up, Letty made a cheap but nutritious evening meal for her family. Her two brothers sat at the table in the living room, both of them engaged in homework. Tim was thirteen and Kyle was nine. Letty considered her half-brothers marginally less useless than she considered the rest of the world’s men.

There were no towering heroes in Letty’s depressing experience of men. Her father, Julian, had been a handsome, irresponsible lightweight, incapable of fighting his addictions to toxic substances. He had lived with her mother and her only once and for a brief period, after a more than usually successful stay in a rehab facility, but within months he had fallen off the wagon again and that had been the last Letty had seen of him.

Yet, tragically, meeting Julian Livas had derailed her mother’s entire life. Gillian had been a middle-class schoolgirl at the exclusive co-educational boarding school where she had met Julian. A teenage pregnancy had resulted and when Gillian had refused to have a termination her parents had thrown her out and washed their hands of her. Letty had always respected the hard struggle Gillian had faced, simply to survive as a young mother. As a single parent, Gillian had subsequently trained as a nurse and life had been stable until Gillian fell in love again.

Letty grimaced as she thought of her stepfather, Robbie, a steady worker and a likeable man but, underneath the surface show of decency and reliability, a hopeless womaniser. When Gillian could no longer live with his lies and deceptions, they had had to move on and inevitably their standard of living had gone downhill with the divorce. In his own way, Robbie had been as feckless as her father, although he did maintain a stable relationship with his two sons.

Letty had worked very hard at school, determined that she would never have to rely on a man for support. And what good had it done her? she asked herself ruefully. It had given her a scholarship to a top sixth form college and the chance to study medicine at Oxford but, within a few years, just as Letty was starting to stretch her wings into independence and the promise of a satisfying career, misfortune had rolled back in and her family had needed her back at home to bring in a living wage.

She had been three years into her medical degree when Gillian’s worsening arthritis had forced her to give up work and live on benefits. Undaunted, Gillian had retrained as a drug and alcohol counsellor, who could work from a wheelchair, but all it took was a broken lift in their tower apartment block—and it was frequently out of order—and she was trapped indoors and unable either to work or to earn. That one very bleak Christmas, when Letty was in the fifth year of her course, Gillian had got involved in the murky underworld of unsecured loans and had fallen into debt as the interest charges mushroomed.

Letty rode into work on the elderly motorbike she had restored. Parking her bike and securing it, she walked into the Sunset Home for the Elderly, where she worked as the permanent night shift manager. She was on a good salary and had no complaints about her working conditions or colleagues. She had every intention of completing her medical studies as soon as it was possible but, right at that moment, that desired goal seemed worryingly distant. Her mother was too frail to be left alone with two active boys until she received the double hip replacement she needed. Sadly, the waiting lists for free treatment were too long and private surgery was unaffordable. In the short term, more accessible accommodation would have much improved Gillian’s lot and her ability to work but the large debt that she had accrued with that iniquitous loan had to be cleared before moving could even be considered.

As Letty changed out of bike leathers into work garb, her phone started ringing and she answered it swiftly, always fearful of her mother having suffered a fall, which would exacerbate her condition. But it wasn’t one of her brothers calling to give her bad news, it was, amazingly, her grandfather.

‘If you’re willing to do whatever it takes to help your family, Leo is the man to approach. I will text you the phone number. Furthermore, if you were to reach an agreement with Leo, I will invite you into my home and introduce you to Greek society,’ the older man informed her loftily in the tone of someone who believed he was offering her some great honour.

‘Er…right. Thanks for that,’ Letty responded ruefully, wondering why her grandfather would think that she was interested in being introduced to Greek society and what sort of agreement he believed she could reach with this guy, Leo, that was likely to benefit her or her family. Maybe the older man wasn’t as cold a fish as she had assumed, and he was genuinely trying to help her. She was too much of a cynic for a wannabe doctor, she scolded herself, she really had to start trying harder to see the good in human beings.

The next morning, before she headed home to bed after her shift, she took out the number and phoned it.

‘VR Shipping,’ a woman answered.

‘My name is Letty Harbison. I have to make an appointment with someone called Leo?’

‘If you will excuse me for a moment…’ the woman urged.

Letty groaned at the sound of voices fussing in the background. Was this Leo likely to offer her better paid employment? He was obviously a businessman in an office environment. When she got home, she would look him up online, although she would need more than his first name to accomplish that, she reflected wearily.

‘Mr Romanos will see you at ten this morning at his London office.’ The woman then read out the address of his building.

‘I’m sorry, I’m a night shift worker and it would need to be a little later in the day,’ Letty began apologetically.

‘Mr Romanos will not be available later. He is a very busy man.’

Letty rolled her eyes. ‘Ten will be fine,’ she conceded, reasoning that it was only sensible to check the man out because her grandfather could genuinely be attempting to do her a good turn. And pigs might fly, her inner cynic sniped as she remembered the single cup of black coffee she had enjoyed in the fancy restaurant where she had met her father’s father for the first time for a twenty-minute chat which had consisted of his barked questions and her laboured replies.

It had been a painful meeting because she had truly hoped that there would be some sense of family connection between them, but there had been nothing, only an older man, evidently still very bitter about his only son’s early death. Even worse, any reference Letty had made to her family’s problems had only seemed to increase her grandfather’s contempt for her and her mother and brothers.

Dragging herself out of the recollection of that disheartening conversation, she checked the time and suppressed another groan. There was no way on earth she could get home, freshen up and change and then catch the bus to make that appointment in time. Oh, to heck with that, she thought in sudden rebellion, she would attend the appointment as she was, in her bike leathers, and explain that she had just left work and had nothing else to wear. After calling her mother to warn her that she would be late back, Letty climbed back on her bike.

‘Have you a parcel?’ the receptionist asked Letty on her arrival in the building.

‘No, I have an appointment with Mr Leo… Romanos, is it? At ten,’ she recited uncertainly because she had been so drowsy when she had made that initial call that her concentration and powers of recall were not operating with their usual efficiency.

The top floor receptionist’s eyes rounded as she took in Letty in her biker leathers because she was a gossip and, according to the grapevine, Leo Romanos had unexpectedly cancelled a very important meeting to clear a last-minute space for a female visitor. The usual lively speculation about his sex life had duly erupted in a frenzy. Only, sadly, Letty did not fit the bill because Leo was a living legend for his taste in beautiful women, who were invariably models or socialites, spiced with the occasional actress. Nobody looking at Letty could possibly have placed her in any of those categories.

Letty sank down on a squashy and very comfortable sofa in the reception area and the exhaustion she suffered by never ever getting enough rest simply engulfed her in a drowning tide. Her sleepy eyes executed one last final sweep of the ultra-modern, very luxurious floor of offices and wonderment assailed her. Why on earth had her grandfather sent her to such a place? Yes, she had the usual office skills but she seriously doubted they would be on a par with the kind of commercial skills employees needed to have in a business environment. Even worse, she was dressed all wrong, had only just managed to get out of the lift before being asked if she had brought the pizzas someone was awaiting. She had been mistaken for a takeaway delivery person.

‘Your ten o’clock appointment is asleep in Reception,’ one of Leo’s assistants informed him.

Asleep? Theos…how was she contriving to sleep on the brink of potentially meeting her future husband? It did not occur to Leo that Isidore Livas would have been foolish enough to send his granddaughter to see him without that all-important proposal having being outlined in advance. He hadn’t expected to meet her quite so quickly, however, had assumed it would take at least a week to set up such a meeting. He was allowing the necessary time for Letty to make whatever effort she could to look her best to meet the expectations of a billionaire seeking a bride.

Leo strode out to Reception, disconcerting everyone, turning every head, and then he saw her, lying full length along the sofa, very nearly merging with the black upholstery in her leathers. Leather? Why was she dressed from top to toe in leather and wearing chunky motorbike boots?

Bemused, Leo came to a halt and stared down at her, noticing the long messy ponytail, so long it almost brushed the floor. She had long honey-blonde hair. All the Livas tribe were some shade of blonde, he recalled abstractedly as his roaming attention mounted the curve of a lush pouting derrière sleekly outlined by leather and a long slender thigh. Her face was pillowed on her hand, sleep-flushed, her lips full and pink. She wasn’t very tall. In fact she was short in stature, another Livas trait. She might be lucky to reach his chest, even in high heels. But she wasn’t plain and she certainly wasn’t plump. She was simply wonderfully curved in all the right feminine places and only a man with a wife and a daughter the size and shape of toothpicks could have deemed Letty plump, Leo reflected wryly. Involuntarily, he was still staring because he wanted to know what lay below the leather jacket she had zipped up tight and he was ridiculously tempted to scoop her up and just carry her into his office. Courtesy, however, would be the wiser choice and Leo was usually wise.

‘Letty…’ Leo intoned in his deep dark drawl. ‘Letty…’

Theos, he hated that name, which was more suited to an Edwardian kitchen maid and Juliet was so much prettier. He would call her Juliet.

Letty shifted position and her lashes fluttered as she forced her unwilling body back to wakefulness when all it wanted to do was sleep. She began to push herself up on her arm and her eyes widened on the man poised at the end of the sofa. He was so disconcerting a vision that she blinked, expecting him to vanish like the illusion he had to be. But he stayed steady, a very tall, lean and powerful figure, garbed in a business suit so exquisitely tailored to his exact physique that he looked like a model, a male supermodel who would have looked more at home with the backdrop of a vast yacht behind him.

He had black cropped hair, razor-edged cheekbones and a perfect nose and mouth. As for the eyes, well, Letty, who never went into raptures, could’ve gone into raptures over those dark deep-set eyes glimmering with rich honey accents and framed by ridiculously long lashes. Letty wasn’t even surprised that she was staring, she, who never stared at a man, unless it was in an attempt to intimidate him. He was an outrageously beautiful male specimen and quite dazzlingly noticeable.

He stretched down a hand. ‘I’m Leo Romanos,’ he informed her with quiet hauteur.

She couldn’t wait to look him up online and find out all about him, although it was clear that he shared her grandfather’s arrogance even if he wore it differently. Leo Romanos, she sensed, was a man accustomed to having others leap to do his bidding and he took it quite for granted. Isidore Livas, however, didn’t project quite the same level of expectation and intimidation, and felt the need to frown and pitch his voice louder to make a similar impression.

‘Letty Harbison…’ Letty said, belatedly recalling her manners, heated embarrassment momentarily claiming her as she realised she had been sleeping full length along the sofa in a public place. Then, in common with most junior doctors, Letty could’ve fallen asleep standing up on one leg, particularly after several sessions spent observing, fetching and carrying in a busy emergency unit.

‘Is there somewhere I could…freshen up?’ she asked, evading that shrewd dark gaze of his, her defences kicking in because she had stared at him—she didn’t stare at men and didn’t feel comfortable with the fact that she had stared at him.

He indicated the cloakroom behind the waiting area and she shot upright, learning that he was even taller than she had suspected and surprised even more to learn that there were men around who could make her feel positively small and dainty.

She vanished into the cloakroom at speed, grimacing when she caught her pink and tousled reflection. In an effort to tidy her hair she tugged off her hairband and it snapped, leaving her with a wealth of honey-blonde tresses spilling untidily over her shoulders. She cursed and threw her head back to shift her mane of hair down her back before unzipping and removing her jacket because she was much too hot. She washed her hands, briefly wished she had brought a lipstick with her and suppressed the idle thought again. It would take more than a dash of lipstick to make her look like an efficient and elegant office worker in VR Shipping, where even the receptionist resembled a Miss World contender.

‘This way, please…’ another employee greeted her when she emerged. ‘I’ll show you to Mr Romanos’s office. Would you like some coffee?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ Letty responded warmly, thinking that coffee, which she rarely drank, might wake her up because, after that short burst of sleep, her brain cells felt as though they were drowning in sludge. ‘I take it black, no sugar.’

Leo had a vague unrealistic hope that Juliet would reappear looking rather more conventional and even wearing a little make-up and carting a bag of some kind like a normal woman. Instead, she came through the door, carrying her jacket with her hair loose. And what hair it was, Leo marvelled, watching the luxuriant honey-blonde strands flick against her shapely hips as she turned to shut the door behind her. She spun back, eyes as green as fresh ferns in sunlight, alert and questioning now, and she gripped her jacket even closer to her chest, as though she was trying to conceal the undeniably magnificent swell of her breasts below the plain black T-shirt she wore.

Leo liked curvy women, but he loved the female breast in all sizes and, as she settled down in the chair set in front of his desk, he was enchanted by the very slight bounce of her bosom as she sat down. Natural curves, he was convinced, not bought and paid for, shaped by some talented surgeon. Encountering her gaze, Leo went as hard as a rock and it shocked him, sincerely shocked him, because that didn’t happen to him any more in public. He strode around his desk to take a seat, disconcerted by that juvenile response to a woman who was fully clothed, bare of make-up and, so far, not even a little flirtatious or suggestive.

His assistant entered with a tray of coffee and poured it.

‘I don’t usually drink coffee, but I need it to wake me up this morning,’ Letty admitted with a rueful smile that lit up her oval face. ‘I apologise for not being more smartly dressed but I only finished work at eight and there wasn’t time to go home and change and get back here in time.’

‘Why the biker leathers?’

‘I use a motorbike to get around. It’s cheap to run and perfect for getting through rush hour traffic,’ Letty explained, sipping the coffee she held between her cupped hands. ‘I don’t know why my grandfather insisted that I should come and see you. Do you have some sort of work that I could do? A job to offer?’

Leo froze, belatedly registering that Isidore had not done the footwork for him. ‘I have a proposition that you may wish to consider.’

‘Did Isidore mention that I’m in need of money?’ Letty had to force herself to ask, her creamy skin turning pink with self-consciousness.

‘Your grandfather asked you to call him Isidore?’ Leo remarked in surprise.

‘Oh, he didn’t invite me to call him anything,’ Letty parried with rueful amusement. ‘To be frank, he didn’t want to acknowledge the relationship.’

‘That must’ve been a disappointment,’ Leo commented wryly.

‘Not really. I wasn’t expecting a miracle but, considering that my father never paid any child support, it’s not as though I’ve cost that side of my family anything over the years,’ she responded quietly. ‘My mother has always been very independent but right now that’s not possible for her, so I’ve had to step in…’

‘Which is where I enter the equation from your point of view,’ Leo incised. ‘Your grandfather wants to amalgamate his shipping firm with mine and retire, leaving me in charge. For me, the price of that valuable alliance is that I marry you.’

A pin-drop silence fell.

‘You would have to marry me to get his shipping business?’ Letty exclaimed in disbelief. ‘I’ve never heard anything so outrageous in my life! I knew he was an out-of-date old codger, but I didn’t realise he was insane!’

‘Then I must be insane too,’ Leo acknowledged smoothly. ‘Because I am willing to agree to that deal, although I also have more pressing reasons for being currently in need of a wife…’

Letty felt disorientated and bewildered. ‘You need a wife?’ she almost whispered, wondering why there wasn’t a stampede of eager women pushing her out of their path to reach him and then suppressing that weird and frivolous thought, irritated by her lapse in concentration.

‘Six months ago, my sister and her husband died in a car crash. I am attempting to raise their four children. I need a wife to help me with that task,’ Leo spelt out succinctly.

‘Four…children?’ Letty gasped in consternation.

‘Aged five and under.’ Leo decided to give her all the bad news at once. ‘The baby was a newborn, who was premature at birth. Ben and Anastasia were on the way to pick him up and finally bring him home from the hospital when they were killed.’

In the stretching heavy silence, Letty blinked in shock. ‘How tragic…’

‘Yes, but rather more tragic for their children, with only me to fall back on. They need a mother figure, someone who’s there more often. I work long hours and I travel as well. The set-up that I have at the moment is not working well enough for them.’

Letty shrugged a slight fatalistic shoulder. ‘So, you make sacrifices. You change your lifestyle.’

‘I have already done that. Bringing in a wife to share the responsibility makes better sense,’ Leo declared in a tone of finality as though only he could give an opinion in that field.

‘And you and my grandfather, who doesn’t really want to be my grandfather,’ Letty suggested with a rueful curve to her soft mouth, ‘somehow reached the conclusion that I could be that wife?’

‘You are Isidore’s only option, his sole available female relative. His daughter’s about to get engaged.’

‘So, my Aunt Elexis wasn’t ready to snap you up,’ Letty observed.

Leo compressed his wide sensual mouth at her slightly mocking intonation. ‘Isidore first approached me on her behalf six years ago. I said no.’

‘You said no,’ Letty echoed weakly, struggling without success to get into the thought patterns of rich Greeks, prepared to marry purely to unite their companies and families.

‘I’m only willing to marry now to benefit the children,’ Leo told her.

‘But marriage is a lot more intimate in nature than an agreement to raise children together,’ Letty pointed out.

Leo lounged fluidly back in his chair. ‘In our case, it would be less intimate. Sex wouldn’t be involved. I would satisfy my needs elsewhere.’

Letty turned bright red and she didn’t know why. After all, she knew everything there was to know about the mechanics of sex, hormones and physical needs, even if she did lack actual experience. ‘So, you wouldn’t require sex from your wife?’ she checked, not quite sure she could credit that.

‘No. I keep a mistress for that purpose. It’s more convenient,’ Leo informed her without shame or an ounce of embarrassment.

Letty shook her head as if to clear it. Possibly it was to convince herself that this unusual conversation between her and a man she had met only minutes earlier was actually taking place. ‘Well,’ she breathed thoughtfully, ‘you’ve told me what you would be getting out of such a marriage—another shipping company, presumably greater wealth, a dutiful mother to your sister’s children and the continuing freedom to sleep with whomever you like. That’s a lot.’

Leo surveyed her with dark golden eyes and slowly smiled, his chiselled dark features more appealing than ever. ‘It is…’

‘I can see why the arrangement would appeal to you. But what would I be getting out of it?’ Letty asked gently.

And she thought, I’m not asking that—seriously I’m not. I can’t possibly be considering such a crazy proposition from a man I don’t even know! An unscrupulous, immoral man at that, one who prefers a mistress to a wife in his bed and makes no bones about it either! Absolutely and utterly shameless in his honesty.

Leo studied her, wishing he could read her better, but the smooth oval of her face was unrevealing. Indeed, they could have been discussing something as bland as the weather.

‘Let me tell you the benefits of becoming my wife,’ Leo urged in that husky accented drawl of his, which was both exotic and sensual.

CHAPTER TWO

‘I DON’T KNOW how important money is to you,’ Leo remarked deadpan.

‘When you don’t have money, but you need it, it’s very important,’ Letty countered with a toss of her head and a lift of her chin because she was telling the truth and didn’t care if he judged her for it.

Leo rose from his seat and spread his lean brown hands in an expressive gesture that was wonderfully fluid. ‘If you marry me, you will be able to have anything that you want. I am a very rich man,’ he told her bluntly. ‘I assume that you would want to organise private surgery for your mother and find a safer place for your family to live. You will also want the thugs, who are harassing your mother for payment of her loan, dealt with. Those are the difficulties that I can easily settle on your behalf. Only you can tell me what else you would want.’

Letty was astonished by how much he already knew about her life and her family’s problems. ‘Where did you get all that information? From Isidore?’

‘From a very discreet investigation agency. I had to know exactly who you were before I could consider allowing you near the children,’ Leo pointed out without a shade of remorse.

Annoyed by his invasion of her privacy and yet simultaneously understanding his reasons for doing so, Letty was bemused. ‘And what did you think that you learned about me?’ she prompted.

‘That you put family loyalty over personal ambition and that no one you have worked with or studied with or enjoyed a friendship with has anything bad to say about you,’ Leo recounted levelly. ‘I was very impressed and immediately keen to meet you. Such fine qualities are rare.’

Not entirely untouched by that accolade, Letty coloured and watched him move restlessly across the room. He drew her eyes to him, no matter how hard she tried to look away. He had an intensity to him she had not met with in a man before. Leo Romanos was so much more. He emanated physical energy in an aura of power. A very strong character, a mover and shaker, a pretty dominant personality, but it would be a dominance laced with intelligence and control. Emotional, very emotional—she had seen that emotion flashing in his eyes when he’d referred to his late sister and the children in his care. When he was in a bad mood, she imagined people walked on eggshells around him. Women, she imagined, fell in the aisles around him, stunned by the raw sexual charisma he exuded.

And no, she was not impervious to his masculine appeal, she conceded ruefully. She doubted that many women were impervious to Leo and she was no different, her attention veering involuntarily to the pull of fabric across his long muscular thighs as he moved, the swell of his broad chest below his shirt as he breathed, the muscles there evident. Even fully clothed he was a disturbingly physical man, who would always attract attention and admiration.

‘You talk about acquiring a wife much like you’re shopping for a fine wine,’ she commented quietly. ‘It’s not the same.’

‘Isn’t it? I can purchase the finest wine at the highest price and I still may not like the taste of it,’ he fenced smoothly.

‘I consider marriage to be,’ Letty murmured levelly, ‘a sacred bond between two people.’

‘Yes, you are a practising Christian.’ Leo acknowledged that detail, shifting his expressive hands again. ‘But you are practical as well and you must know that sex causes a lot of grief in relationships. Take the sex out of the marriage and you have a working, reasonable partnership.’

‘And an unfaithful husband,’ Letty chipped in, again inwardly denying that she was having such a dialogue with him while wondering how she could possibly be intrigued by his attitude.

Leo shrugged a wide shoulder. ‘Is that so important in the grand scheme of things? It’s not as though you’re in love with me. It’s not even as though you know me.’

Letty’s head was beginning to ache with the stress of the meeting to which she had walked in totally unprepared. She was too tired to think with clarity and her mind was increasingly awash with irrelevant but seductive images, such as her mother able to walk again, her brothers attending a less crowded and tough school and being able to eat what they liked, rather than what was cheapest. Lack of money, she registered unhappily, controlled their lives, limited it and removed all the choices. But the escape that Leo Romanos was offering carried risks as well.

‘I’ve been up almost twenty-four hours,’ Letty admitted. ‘I need to sleep to process all this.’

Leo swung back to her, spectacular dark golden eyes locking to her. ‘But you’re not saying no out of hand,’ he breathed with satisfaction.

‘A drowning swimmer doesn’t reject a lifebelt unless it comes anchored to a crocodile,’ Letty responded wryly.

‘I’m not a crocodile,’ Leo told her.

‘You have strong aggressive instincts,’ Letty informed him.

‘I am not violent…in any way,’ Leo intoned, looking shaken that she might suspect otherwise.

‘But who knows what damage you could do in other ways?’ Letty fielded as she rose from her chair. ‘Right now, I’m going home to bed.’

‘You’re too tired to bike it back,’ Leo stated. ‘I will have you driven home and one of my security team will return your motorbike for you.’

‘I’m not into bossy men, Leo,’ Letty warned him.

‘I am considering your welfare,’ he parried.

‘My welfare is not your business.’

‘Yet…’

‘It’s childish to always need to have the last word,’ Letty said as she reached the door.

‘So, that’s why you’re having it, is it?’ Leo gibed, disconcerting her and pulling the door open for her with a smooth civility that she found equally surprising.

He escorted her all the way to the lift, the eyes of his employees swivelling in their direction. He stabbed the call button at the same time as he settled a business card into her hand. ‘My number. Let me know if you’re prepared to move forward with this. If you are, I will collect you on Saturday morning at ten and introduce you to the children,’ he announced.

Letty turned exasperated eyes onto his chest and then tilted her head back to study his lean strong face and the resolve etched there. ‘I don’t know how I feel but there is only a one in ten chance that I will agree! I don’t want to get married. I’m not ready to be a mother…and I loathe promiscuous men!’

‘I would take issue with that word,’ Leo framed, his strong jawline clenching hard. ‘But we will not discuss that insult in a public place.’

Breathing in deep to prevent herself from snapping back at him, Letty stepped into the lift. ‘Goodbye, Leo. It’s been…interesting.’

The most bloody frustrating woman he had ever met! Leo strode back to his office, his brain buzzing at top speed. So stubborn, so rigid. How dare she label him promiscuous? He was not and never had been promiscuous. Yes, there had been many women in his bed over the years, but he was thirty-one years old and a certain level of experience was natural. He was prepared to concede that keeping a mistress was a little less common but he never stayed with the same woman for longer than three months and while she was in his life, the arrangement was exclusive. He hadn’t had a one-night stand since he was a teenager and even then he hadn’t slept around.

Isidore’s granddaughter was fiercely intelligent though, not a woman to be pushed into a premature decision…but coaxed? Leo didn’t know how to coax a woman because he had never had to make that much effort with a member of her sex, but he also knew that he had just met a woman he would be satisfied to call his wife. As far as he was concerned the deal was made and only the date needed to be set. She didn’t have a choice, did she? Her life had been overwhelmed by family difficulties and, much as he admired her loyalty, it annoyed him that she had swerved from her own agenda and had allowed her mother’s foolish decisions and misfortunes to restrict her.

Letty rode home and Leo need not have worried that exhaustion would make her a less than cautious rider. Leo had set off a chain reaction inside her head. Out of his presence, she could think again, see possibilities and spot the issues he had overlooked. What about her sex life? Was she expected to keep a male version of a mistress somewhere? Or was she supposed to cross her legs like the virgin she was and get by without sex?

In truth, Letty didn’t know if she would ever want sex with a man. Being a high achiever had never helped her social life. The more she had shone at school, the fewer friends she’d had and she had been christened a nerd and a geek. University and competing with her peers had provided a different learning curve but no boyfriend had ever contrived to make Letty want more than kisses and companionship. All of them had wanted more from her than she was prepared to give because she had always put her studies first. She had once toyed with the idea of just having sex with someone purely to find out what it was like, but she wasn’t sufficiently curious and was too cynical to expect fireworks from the experience, so she had retained her ignorance and her innocence.

A man like Leo, however, would have made her want more and would have incited her curiosity. She knew that instinctively and it made her wary of him. He made her feel vulnerable and she didn’t like that either. He was too clever as well, too clever to be trusted. Had she had more respect for her grandfather, she would’ve asked his opinion of Leo Romanos but Isidore Livas was scarcely a disinterested observer and she could not put her faith in him. Presumably her grandfather wanted this alliance to go ahead and he was equally keen for Leo to become his heir. Letty had no doubt that Leo was a blazing success in the business world.

When she arrived home, her mother needed painkillers and she went back out again to collect the prescription. The painkillers were highly addictive and that worried her, for her mother had been on them for quite some time. While she was out, she bought food for dinner and when she returned for the second time her mother was standing rapt in front of the table, on which sat a gorgeous bouquet of flowers, delivered in a vase and ready for display.

‘For you…’ the older woman said with warm appreciation, turning to study her flushed daughter with curiosity. ‘You’ve been keeping secrets. Who’s Leo?’

Letty grabbed the card. It just said ‘Leo’, but that was all it needed to say.

‘Leo?’ she repeated, her mouth running dry. ‘He’s one of the residents’ relatives at the care home,’ she fibbed in desperation.

‘Is he young?’ Gillian pressed.

‘Yes, and good-looking.’

‘Well, don’t freeze this one out, the way that you do when men show an interest in you,’ her mother urged worriedly. ‘Be nice to this one.’

‘Mum, I’m only twenty-four. I’ve got plenty of time to meet someone. Stop worrying about me,’ Letty said wryly, giving the older woman a hug. ‘I’m off to bed.’

She had hoped to climb into bed and go out like a light but her mind had other ideas: visions of her mother restored to mobility and no longer reliant on painkillers, her family in a home in a decent area with furniture that wasn’t worn and shabby and the boys clad in the sports gear of their dreams. Seductive images, she conceded ruefully, cursing Leo Romanos for tempting her before grabbing her laptop to look him up online.

The Greek billionaire, the shipping heir, consummate tycoon…giver of flowers, charming when he wanted to be.

Also a womaniser, she reminded herself, discovering a whole slew of images in which Leo appeared in company with various women but all of them were identikit brunettes. It seemed he had a type and his type was tall, curvy dark-haired women. Of what interest was that to her? Why was she even looking? Scolding herself, Letty returned to trying to sleep while attempting not to recall that Christmas was only just round the corner and that the coming festivities would be just as cheerless as the last.

Christmas was impossible to do on a strict budget and, what with the loan payments due every month and keeping up with the household bills, there was no room for treats or extras. Her brothers were still children and it was hard for them to do without what other boys their age took for granted. If she married Leo, a persuasive little voice whispered inside her head, she could give her family a fantastic Christmas. All their worries would disappear, wouldn’t they?

Of course, she would be taking on a whole fresh set of worries, striving to meet Leo’s high expectations of a wife and mother to four orphans, but if her family was happy and secure, did that really matter? She was good at coping with challenges, in fact the tougher a project was, the harder she worked to complete it. She did her best work under pressure…and Leo would put her under pressure, she had no doubt of that.

Letty pillowed her weary head on her hand and stretched out. Obviously, she would have to deliberate on his proposition because nothing more promising was likely to come her way. If she said no, she would be condemning her family and herself to their current lifestyle for the next few years, at least. That was depressing but it was a fact. Her moral scruples were in conflict with her practical nature. There were too many unknowns for her to reach a decision. What would happen when she wanted a child? Or he did? And how long was he expecting the marriage to last? And what about the medical studies she wanted to take up again?

That Thursday evening, thinking longingly of her approaching weekend off, Letty performed her usual round of the patients, checking who was settled, who might need the attentions of the doctor on call later on, while stopping to speak to regular visitors, who wanted information about their relatives or had requests to make. She returned to her office to take her break at eleven and on her path through the quiet reception area she was shaken to see Leo.

In the sleek cashmere overcoat and red silk scarf he wore over a dark suit teamed with a gold silk tie, he looked exactly like the legendary international business mogul he was. His dark carnal beauty flooded her with mesmerising force and momentarily she felt boneless and her knees wobbled, butterflies careening frantically in the pit of her stomach. Letty froze in reaction, disconcertingly aware of her hair in an unglamorous bun and the plain green nursing-type tunic and trousers she wore with a logo badge on her collar.

‘Time for a break?’ Leo murmured calmly. ‘You look tired.’

‘It’s been a busy week,’ she muttered, colliding warily with glittering dark golden eyes, her breath snagging in her throat.

‘I have coffee and tea out in my car… You didn’t phone,’ he censured.

Her cheeks warmed and she gave a little shake of her shoulders, unsure what to say because she hadn’t made her mind up yet and didn’t want to admit that. In her own head she was a very decisive person but there were too many unknowns attached to Leo Romanos. ‘I haven’t made up my mind yet,’ she admitted grudgingly.

‘Then discuss your concerns with me over tea. It’ll be very civilised and no doubt we can pretend we’re not sitting in a car park,’ Leo pointed out.

Letty went to inform her next in command that she was taking her break outside. A big black and unbelievably long and glossy limousine sat double parked.

‘Why are you here?’ she prompted as his driver pulled open the door of the car for them and stood to attention as though they were royalty.

‘I won’t introduce you to the children unless I know you’re planning to go ahead. I’ve never brought a woman home to meet them before and they’ve had enough upsets in their lives.’

Letty suppressed a sigh as he pressed a button and an incredibly well-stocked refreshment bar complete with refrigerator, hot water and china swung out. The limo was massive and the upholstery was palest pearl grey leather. Her seat was comfier than her bed and, keen to busy her restless hands, Letty selected a cup and a teabag from the wide variety available in a small drawer and added hot water.

‘Would you like anything?’ she enquired politely.

‘No. I’ve just had dinner,’ he responded with an impatient sigh.

Letty sipped her Earl Grey tea and reluctantly glanced at him, encountering the devastating eyes that she would’ve preferred to avoid, hating his effect on her. He was a force of nature, his temperament lava-hot and dangerous. ‘I’ve spotted four major stumbling blocks to your proposition,’ she admitted, her heart suffering a sudden thud as he tensed and his stunning golden eyes narrowed.

‘Four?’ he stressed in disbelief.

‘Yes, you really haven’t thought this marriage idea through thoroughly enough,’ Letty informed him gently. ‘What happens when you decide you would like a child?’

‘I’ve already got four of them. That’s not going to happen at any time in the near future,’ Leo contended dismissively.

‘Unfortunately, I don’t have as big a window of fertility as you will have,’ Letty pointed out quietly. ‘I am likely to want a child of my own some time in the next ten years. I don’t want to leave it too long and risk missing my chance to become a mother.’

Leo frowned, level black brows pleating. ‘So, we use a laboratory and give you what you want when you want. I don’t see a problem.’

Letty noted that he wasn’t suggesting that they consider sex for her to conceive, not that she would’ve agreed to that while he was sleeping with other women, but it really bothered her to recognise the faint sense of disappointment rising inside her. Disappointment allied with curiosity, she acknowledged ruefully. He made her curious in a treacherous way. Letty was not in the habit of looking at a man and thinking of sex but Leo made her think of sex, wonder what it would be like, wonder what it would be like with him. And in that thought progression lay one very good reason why she shouldn’t marry Leo Romanos.

Her breasts were peaking inside her bra, her thighs pressing together in reaction to the dull ache that was infiltrating her. She couldn’t possibly marry a man who awakened her long dormant sensuality but who planned to break his marital vows on a weekly basis, for all she knew even on a daily basis. It would be a recipe for low self-esteem and unhappiness because she would feel rejected.

‘That’s two stumbling blocks dealt with,’ Leo proclaimed briskly. ‘What are the other two?’

‘As soon as possible I would like to return to studying medicine,’ Letty admitted.

‘Why not? When I told you that I wanted a wife to be a mother to my sister’s children, I didn’t mean to suggest that I expected you to become a stay-at-home wife. I employ an ample staff to take care of the children on a day-to-day basis. You would be free to return to your studies,’ he assured her levelly. ‘I am not an unreasonable man, Juliet.’

‘Don’t call me that… I’ve always been Letty.’

‘I don’t like the name,’ Leo declared calmly. ‘To me, you will always be Juliet and I don’t know how it ever got shortened into something as ugly as Letty.’

‘My mother called my father, Julian, Jules and, although she named me for him, she could never stand to call me Juliet because it made her think of him. That’s how I became Letty.’

‘But you’re not a Letty, you’re a Juliet,’ Leo told her stubbornly.

Letty shrugged a shoulder in dismissal. She had no intention of changing her name back to please him. Having drunk her tea, she set the cup back tidily on the cabinet top. ‘I have to get back to work.’

‘You still haven’t told me the fourth stumbling block,’ Leo protested, dark glittering eyes full of frustration pinned to her.

‘My sex life,’ Letty said bluntly, abhorring the heat she could feel warming her cheeks.

‘Your…sex life?’ Leo demanded as if those two words were an incompatible combination. ‘You won’t have one, unless it’s with me.’

In the act of climbing out of the car, Letty came to a sudden halt and scornful green eyes slammed back into his. ‘That won’t be happening as long as you have other interests in your life,’ she assured him tartly. ‘And while I’m not currently in a hurry to have a sex life, I imagine the time will come when I feel differently.’

Leo was transfixed. It was a major obstacle and he hadn’t foreseen it. In fact, he had been so wrapped up in his own selfish desire to maintain his usual lifestyle and boundaries that he had utterly ignored the obvious. Obviously, Juliet would have the same needs as he did. He wasn’t one of those outdated men who believed that women had a smaller appetite for the physical pleasures of life. But the thought of his wife getting into bed with another man, the thought of another man touching and enjoying what Leo instinctively saw as his property alone, genuinely appalled him. He paled below his bronzed skin. It was hypocrisy, complete hypocrisy, and he knew it and sealed his wide sensual mouth closed before he said something he knew he should not say. That feat of control established, he breathed again.

‘We’ll discuss that on Saturday,’ Leo informed her with finality, knowing he had less than forty-eight hours in which to come up with a miraculous alternative that would prevent her from seeking sexual satisfaction outside their marriage.

‘I thought you might say that,’ Letty confided, a wry little smile curving her generous mouth. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t think of that angle.’

And with that final mocking little sally, Letty walked back into the nursing home, her head held high while Leo tried to work out how the hell she had contrived to become the very first woman to turn the tables on him.

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