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