The Greek's Forced Bride

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

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

‘No, you cannot.’

‘But—’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Ignore it,’ he gritted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rico with Cindy…

Hurt tears scalded the back of her throat.

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

‘Oh,’ a thick whimper escaped.

‘OK?’ the man beside her shot out.

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

‘Yes,’ she breathed out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They’d exchanged barely a civil word since then.

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

He preferred his woman with more softness and shape.

Rico didn’t.

Natasha had both.

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

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

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

‘My place,’ he answered.

‘But I don’t want—’