The Greek's Surprise Christmas Bride

‘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 I knew he was an out-of-date old codger, but I didn’t realise he was insane!’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 (#u48948b63-fcbe-511e-bd22-6d5ef3751fe9)

‘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.