The Greek's Surprise Christmas Bride / Proof Of Their One-Night Passion

At the top of the stairs, only vaguely aware of Darius approaching him, Leo came to a sudden unrehearsed halt, transfixed by the sight of Letty spinning effortlessly round the pole, blonde mane of hair flying as she dipped and flipped upside down and then went off into a handspring that took his breath away.

Certainly, she wasn’t going to embarrass herself, he conceded in shock, his attention locking to the tight denim defining her curvaceous hips and the extension of one long shapely leg that revealed a creamy stretch of inner thigh. Her chest heaved below the light top she wore, the firm swell of her breasts pushing against the fabric as she sucked in oxygen, her tiny waist and flat stomach revealed as the top lifted. It was the most erotic thing Leo had ever seen and there was nothing visually arousing that some woman somewhere, some time hadn’t already treated him to.

‘So, how are you planning to handle this diplomatically?’ Darius prompted with unhidden curiosity.

‘Like a caveman,’ Leo admitted thickly, fighting the nagging pulse of arousal with the greatest difficulty because lust was surging through him in a volatile wave.

He strode through the crush, forcing everyone to yield to let him past, and pounced on Letty without hesitation. He lifted her before she could get a hold on the pole again and walked back to the table Darius indicated to sit down in the midst of the chattering women with Letty sprawled across his lap.

‘I’m Leo,’ he said cheerfully.

‘This is a girls’ night out,’ one of the women told him tartly.

‘Letty’s tired,’ Leo murmured, rearranging his bride like the floppy rag doll she resembled when her legs threatened to slide off him again.

‘Leo…’ Letty looked up at him with a sunny laidback smile.

Letty wasn’t tired: she was drunk.

‘I’m taking you home.’

‘Party pooper,’ she mumbled, burying her face in his neck. ‘You need a shave but gosh, you do smell amazing…’

Disconcerted, Leo grinned.

‘Letty never drinks. We egged her on,’ someone said.

‘We wanted her to have fun.’

Leo gazed down at her, long brown fingers brushing her tousled hair off her brow. ‘Did you have a good time?’

Letty made an admirable effort to sit up without the support of his arm. ‘I had a fabulous time,’ she told her companions with careful diction. ‘Thank you all for coming.’

‘I’m dizzy,’ she complained on the stairs.

‘Of course you are,’ Leo assured her.

‘I’m not drunk.’

‘Only well-refreshed,’ Leo incised.

‘I don’t want to go home like this.’

‘I’m taking you home with me,’ Leo told her smoothly. ‘It’s too late to phone your mother.’

‘I’ll text her. She won’t sleep until I’m home or she’s heard from me.’ Letty sighed, pulling out her phone and discovering that she was all fingers and thumbs and that it was a battle to focus.

While she texted she swayed and Leo breathed in deep and slow. She was a vision, honey-blonde hair tangled and falling round her, crystal tiara lurching to one side, green eyes myopic in their intensity, her classic profile taut with concentration.

When she had finished, Leo scooped her off her feet and she exclaimed, ‘I can walk perfectly well!’

‘Not in those heels you can’t,’ Leo assured her as he settled her into the limousine, relieved that no paparazzi had been awaiting them outside. ‘Imagine if you broke an ankle—’

‘And then we couldn’t get married!’ Letty pointed out. ‘Let me go back and break an ankle before we make the biggest mistake of our lives!’

‘I don’t make big mistakes,’ Leo intoned, recognising the hint of panic in her wide gaze before stretching across her to grab the seat belt and secure it firmly around her, the fingers of one lean brown hand brushing against a slender thigh as he did so. ‘All you’re suffering from is an attack of cold feet.’

Letty shivered, goosebumps breaking out at that fleeting and entirely accidental touch. She looked up into smouldering dark golden eyes and her breath was held suspended in her throat for a long timeless moment. Close up, his eyes were stunning, an absolutely riveting mixture of tawny shades and those lashes made her weak at the knees. The portrait of the beautiful brunette on the landing in his house was of his late mother. The resemblance between mother and son was arresting, particularly around the eyes. She wondered what his father looked like because, having had a glimpse of Leo’s mother, she wasn’t at all surprised that Leo had the flawless beauty of a dark angel.

‘Besides, I’d take you even with a broken ankle,’ Leo told her huskily. ‘Popi says you read much better stories than I do.’

‘Sybella likes the same one over and over again but Popi needs more stimulation,’ Letty muttered unevenly, oxygen seesawing in and out of her lungs as though she had been running because, that close to Leo’s raw masculinity, she felt weak and breathless. ‘And Cosmo only listens if you put pictures of cars or trains in front of him.’

Leo studied her flushed face, the languorous fresh green eyes welded to his, and he tensed and shifted in his seat, disturbingly aware of how aroused he was by her. The sight of her, so relaxed and confiding, was incredibly sexy. He was striving very hard not to relive those few staggering moments when he had seen her twirling round that pole with fluid grace and a sensuality that had taken him wholly by surprise.

‘I’d listen if you were on that pole,’ Leo muttered in a driven undertone. ‘Sexiest show I ever saw.’

Letty frowned at him, her disapproval palpable. ‘It was exercise, Leo. I went to classes for years and found it a great way of keeping fit and strong. It’s not sexy, except to a certain type of man.’

‘You were sexy,’ Leo told her before she could christen him a pervert.

Her eyes widened because no man had ever given her that label before and it knocked her off balance. She had always been the sensible, practical one in her circle of friends, the one who looked after her mates and guarded the drinks and the handbags. She didn’t know how to be sexy, had occasionally envied those to whom it came naturally but had ultimately decided that she was happier having her brains.

‘Incredibly sexy,’ Leo purred, threading a straying strand of hair back behind one small ear. ‘But if you dance like that again in a public place…well, you won’t like my reaction. I don’t want other men perving over your body like that.’

Leo was so close that her head swam. Her throat tightened and her mind went blank and her chest heaved as she pulled in as deep a breath as she could manage. ‘I don’t think you should be saying that to me.’

Leo’s hand came up to curve to her cheekbone. ‘It’s said. It was the truth. Don’t argue with the truth.’

‘But it sounded possessive, territorial,’ Letty whispered in troubled rebuke.

‘I’m not possessive,’ Leo muttered thickly as his head lowered. ‘But I probably am territorial. I can’t change who I am to fit some perfect male blueprint.’

‘Not asking, not expecting perfection,’ she mumbled, mesmerised by the golden glitter of his eyes on hers and the trail of fireworks sparking off somewhere deep down inside her.

One hand wound into her hair to turn her face, the other curving to her spine to ease her closer.

And then his mouth came down on hers with a fierce lancing urgency that took Letty by storm. His tongue tangled with hers and it was as if every kiss she had ever dreamt of was being delivered all at once. He tasted of mint and brandy. With that first little taste, the power of his demanding mouth was on hers, pausing to stroke her lips wider apart and nibble seductively on the lower lip before invading the moist interior of her mouth for a second time. His explosive passion sent her spinning with her heartbeat thundering in her ears and her body flushing and heating in reaction. He was very passionate, teasing one moment, carnally sensual the next. Her fingers speared into his dark hair, delving into the thickness, marvelling at how silky it was.

Her other hand braced on a long muscular thigh to hold herself steady. She wanted more—for the first time ever with a man, she wanted more. A stampede of angry elephants wouldn’t have dragged her out of Leo’s powerful hold. Her fingers trailed down his neck and clawed into his jacket, her heart racing, the very blood in her veins on fire with a hunger that hurt. Every sensitive spot on her body seemed to ache and throb. In a sudden movement, she released her seat belt with jittery fingers and clambered clumsily over him, needing to be closer, needing that full body contact to settle her racing pulse.

Taken aback by that change in attitude from the most buttoned-up bride a man had probably ever contemplated marrying, Leo absolutely froze for a split second. He knew he couldn’t do anything because only alcohol had released her inhibitions. He knew she would never forgive him if he took advantage of her. But he also knew that a rejection of any kind when she had made the first move would bury him deeper than Australia because he knew women. At the same time, he was fiercely aroused and sheet lightning couldn’t have prevented the groan that escaped him when she ground down on him in a basic approach that was shockingly effective. As her pelvis pressed down on his, Leo was electrified by hunger.

‘Leo…’ Letty pronounced with distinct satisfaction as she studied him, pale soft hands cradling his cheekbones, fingertips gently smoothing the skin.

Leo thought she was waiting for him to do something, and he had sworn he would do nothing, so he was entirely unprepared for Letty to lean back where she perched on him and tug off her crop top, revealing the scorchingly lush swell of her breasts in an unexpectedly pretty embroidered bra. He had expected serviceable white cotton. A slight shudder ran through him as he contemplated those pale full mounds of flesh and he closed his hands to her hips in protest—hands somehow sliding down over those pert swells to flirt with the hem of her shorts. Shorts—Letty in short shorts—he thought in abstracted wonderment, fighting for the control he lacked.

‘I thought you’d be all over me like a rash,’ Letty confided hoarsely, big green eyes wide with surprise and innocence. ‘I thought you were a player…but maybe I just don’t do it for you.’

In desperation, Leo kissed her with urgent force and she ground down on him again, dredging a grudging groan of appreciation from his wide muscular chest as his fingertips grazed the soft silky skin of her inner thighs in an attempt to hold her still and prevent her from teasing him further. The tip of a finger slid beneath the hem and learned the damp silky welcome of her there and a breathless moan parted her lips beneath his and Leo was lost in the magic of her response. In all his life Leo had never been in such a state of excitement over so little and his control broke.

Letty was in a heaven without boundaries, her body seduced and sensation seducing her. Nothing had ever felt so physically good to her before, no previous experience had ever lit her up like a star from the inside out. He was touching her and she liked it, dear heaven, she liked it, indeed loved how with every mesmerising skim of those clever fingers she shivered and shook on the edge of something she didn’t know but had somehow always secretly craved. Her hips were moving of their own accord, little sounds brimming beneath the erotic pressure of his mouth still on hers. And then suddenly the pressure tightening in her pelvis became unbearable and she was flying sky-high and inwardly screaming from the sheer glory of sexual delight that engulfed her.

Well, now you’ve done it, a snide little voice announced to Leo inside his swimming head. He shifted Letty into a more comfortable position until a faint little snore that brought a grin to his taut mouth warned him that fate had taken care of the problem for him. He would put her to bed and say nothing, make his usual dawn start at the office and thereafter act as though nothing had happened. Ignore, ignore, he urged himself firmly. She had called him a player and, in terms of what he estimated to be her level of experience, perhaps she saw that as an apt label, even if it wasn’t.

Leo was perplexed when he settled Letty down on a guest room bed and removed her shoes only, before spreading a quilt over her. What was it about her that turned him on so hard and fast? He behaved like a sex-starved teenager with Letty and, while it was true that he was currently between mistresses and without a woman in his life, no other woman had ever made him lose focus and control as he had in the car with her. Hunger and need had overwhelmed him and he didn’t like it. In retrospect, he didn’t like that at all. Leo was careful never to lose control, never to want a woman too much. He wouldn’t risk falling in love with the wrong woman, as his father had with his vindictive stepmother, who had loathed Leo purely because he truly knew what a slut she was, one who had tried to climb into her stepson’s bed when he was twenty-one…

Loving the wrong woman could blind a man to his family’s needs and make him weak and treacherous. It had happened to Leo’s father, Panos Romanos. He had married a much younger woman. Katrina had wed him only for his wealth and had never loved him back. That marriage had slowly but surely destroyed Leo’s family. As soon as she could, his sister Ana had fled that unhappy background and married far too young, desperate to create a happy family life. Leo, less vulnerable than his sibling, had merely decided that sex and marriage should always remain separate entities. He didn’t need to love a wife to be a good husband, he only needed to like and respect and care for her. But then, had it not been for Ana’s four needy children, he might never have married at all, he acknowledged grimly.

Letty wakened with a splitting headache. A hangover, she registered in dismay, sitting up in bed and noticing the glass of water and the painkiller set on the cabinet beside her. She reached for both with a groan, her brain a swirl of tangled images. She had got on that pole in public, she recalled in dismay and embarrassment, and then she recalled kissing Leo…and more.

Dear heaven, in the grip of urges stronger and more primal than she had ever dreamt existed, she had flung herself at him like a nymphomaniac, she recalled in horror. She had an image of peeling off her crop top and throwing it. And she remembered every second of what had followed with shuddering accuracy. Her sense of humiliation was so intense that she moaned out loud with self-loathing. How could she have done that? How could she have behaved like that?

He had been aroused too. She shifted in the bed, a mortifying heat warming her pelvis at the knowledge that she had had that effect on him. But she needn’t be feeling like some wildly sexy seductress, she censured herself bitterly. Just about any man would’ve been put in that state by what she had been doing. It was certainly not a compliment to her personal attractions, such as they were. She wanted to blame him for what had happened but knew it would be unfair when she had offered so much encouragement. She couldn’t imagine how she would ever look Leo in the eye again, which wasn’t good when it was their wedding day in less than twenty-four hours.

It was a huge relief to go downstairs in her embarrassing shorts and discover that Leo had left for the office hours before. Popi’s giggles at her appearance were somehow healing, the little girl’s innocence soothing, and by the time Letty had cuddled Theon, set Cosmo’s cars out in a line for him and done Sybella’s hair in a princess style adorned with the bridal tiara from the night before, Letty was well on the road to recovery and telling herself that she was too sensitive, too naïve…

Leo, however, was having a difficult morning. No matter how hard he tried to shut it out and regain his usual deep concentration, he kept on remembering the feel and look of Letty on his lap in the limo and the taste of her on his lips. He was fantasising about a woman he had sworn he would leave untouched, he acknowledged grimly. A woman who set him on fire. A woman who had broken down his disciplined barriers and subjected him to a long, hot, sleepless night craving what he couldn’t have. He had chemistry with Letty to a level that inflamed him. But he was not ready to embrace anyone’s sacred bond.

Those two words said it all to Leo. He was not and would never be a one-woman man. Look at what that obsession for Katrina, his stepmother, had done to his spineless father! It had brought his father low, blinding the older man to his beloved’s flaws.

And while Leo agonised and regretted, with a series of curses that he was rarely driven to use because sexual frustration was new to him, the solution finally came and it was stunningly simple. His brain had thrown out the obvious answer.

He blinked, the lush black lashes that enthralled Letty shooting up, a glow of satisfaction and relief warming the tawny depths of his eyes… Of course—the only answer that made sound practical sense and it would surely appeal to Letty as much as it appealed to him.

CHAPTER FIVE

SEATED IN HER CHAIR, Gillian flipped open the jewellery box that had been delivered and gasped out loud. ‘Oh, my word, Letty… Come here and see!’

Letty rustled over in her bridal gown and was almost blinded by the flashing white fire of the diamond tiara, earrings and necklace laid out in the wide velvet-lined box. She flipped up the note enclosed in the box, in which Leo informed her that the set had belonged to his mother and he would be pleased if she wore the pieces. ‘A little extravagant for me,’ she began uncertainly.

‘Nonsense, this is going to be a big fancy wedding attended by a lot of well-heeled people,’ her mother told her roundly. ‘And when a man hands over the family heirlooms before the wedding, you say “Thank you very much indeed” and wear them!’

Letty reddened and lifted out the tiara to anchor it into the thick mass of her upswept hair. Unlike the fake one she had worn on her hen night, it fixed in with ease. Adorned in the diamonds, she studied herself in the mirror, her hands trembling a little as her fingers dropped from attaching the last earring. In truth she barely recognised herself. She had had her hair and make-up done earlier that day at a local salon but, because she didn’t own a full-length mirror, she could only see herself from the waist up.

Even so, she still cherished the image she had seen when she’d picked her dress from the designer studio Leo had instructed the wedding planner to escort her to. It was a simply glorious dress and she had fallen for it before it had even been removed from the hanger. It reminded her of an Edwardian tea dress except it was much more finely tailored, the styling accentuating her small waist and smoothing over the generous breasts and hips she preferred to conceal. Except when you got the goods out for Leo, a snide little voice reminded her at the optimum wrong moment because she had been training herself very thoroughly to totally bury and disremember that little incident in the limousine.

After all, Leo had been around the block a few times and he was not innocent. Since she had not seen him since then, he evidently wanted to overlook that wanton little episode and so did she, so forget, she instructed herself impatiently. In terms of their agreement, what was a meaningless little kerfuffle in a car to do with anything?

The previous week, Letty had signed a prenuptial document that ran to many pages of impenetrable legalese. But she had read and digested and ensured that she understood every word of it because she wasn’t the kind of woman who signed anything on trust. She had agreed that Leo’s infidelity would not be grounds for a divorce and that clause had had a sobering effect on her because it etched his future betrayal in stone for her. No sacred bond on offer from Leo, she recalled cynically. If their marriage did break down, however, she would retain some access to the children and a financial settlement that ran to lottery win figures. Nothing whatsoever was being left to chance in their marriage. In addition, she would have to have a child fathered by Leo for her baby to qualify for the Romanos name and inheritance.

Literally tormented by nerves, Letty climbed out of the limousine, winter sunshine glittering over the beautiful beaded lace on her gown and firing up the diamonds. She had never felt so self-conscious in her life and only the sight of her mother and Jenna, her closest friend from university, waiting with the children in the church porch settled her down again.

Popi and Sybella were resplendent in dresses that matched the bridesmaid, Jenna’s, the little girls twirling with pleasure in their floaty skirts and chattering while Cosmo, quite indifferent to his smart little outfit and any sense of occasion, was clambering all over a stone bench. Leo had been amazed that she wanted to include the children in the bridal party while Letty had seen their inclusion as a necessity. While Leo might be too empathetically dim to appreciate the fact that what they were really trying to achieve with their marriage was the creation of a new family to make his nieces and nephews feel secure, Letty was not.

The walk down the aisle in the big packed church full of staring strangers disturbed Letty because she was uncomfortable being the cynosure of attention. She kept her hand resting lightly on her mother’s shoulder and focused on Leo, utterly, effortlessly and flawlessly gorgeous, awaiting her at the altar. If only it had been their real wedding, she found herself thinking and she flushed, hastily squashing that foolish notion, assuming that all the frilly trappings of the day were confusing her. Certainly, Leo in a morning suit was a sight to behold with his sleek dark angel beauty, his perfect features bronzed and composed, those dark eyes steady and serious, not softened or bright with the love he might have felt for a genuine bride. Inwardly, Letty swore at the tenor of her thoughts.

‘You look fantastic,’ Leo told her as she reached the altar.

Of course, he had to say something like that, it was expected of him, and it was almost as if someone had yelled ‘Showtime!’ in Letty’s ear. She switched on her approximation of a bright bridal smile because Leo had made it clear that their agreement was private, and the rest of the world were to be left to believe that they were a normal couple. As if she would ever have captured a guy with Leo’s looks and wealth in the real world, Letty found herself thinking with helpless cynicism, reckoning that it was little wonder that people were curious and staring while they wondered how she had contrived such a miraculous feat.

The beautiful words of the ceremony were something she tried not to dwell on or feel even slightly bitter about because, all else aside, this was not how Letty had once vaguely imagined her wedding day would be: with a groom by her side who loved and cared for her as she cared for him, a true partnership of hearts and souls. She reminded herself sternly of the benefits that the wedding had already brought to her family and would bring to Leo’s orphaned nieces and nephews. It was foolish to crave some starry-eyed ideal, she told herself firmly, because that craving was a fantasy—a fantasy that Leo would definitely never deliver.