Читать книгу Hot Nights with a Greek: The Greek's Forced Bride / Powerful Greek, Unworldly Wife / The Diakos Baby Scandal - Michelle Reid - Страница 7

NATASHA froze for a second. Then, ‘The police?’ she edged out blankly.

‘The Fraud Squad, to be more accurate,’ Leo confirmed.

‘Fraud…?’

His mouth gave a twitch at the way she kept on echoing him. ‘As in swindler and charlatan,’ he provided, driving his gaze down her body as if to say the crime was that she looked the way she did yet could turn on so hotly the way she had.

Natasha quivered, her cheeks turning pink with shamed embarrassment. ‘I don’t usually…’

‘Turn on for a man just to pull the wool over his eyes…?’

Untangling her fingers from his, she fell back a couple of steps and really looked at him, catching on at last that he was leading somewhere with this that she was not going to like.

‘Since I don’t have a single clue what it is you’re trying to get at, I think you had better explain,’ Natasha prompted finally.

‘Does that mean you do want to go to bed with me and it is not a sham act?’

Natasha tensed, lips parting then closing again, because the true answer to that taunt was just not going to happen. ‘I was in shock when I—’

‘In a state of fright, more like,’ he interrupted, ‘as to what Rico had done to all your plans, with his crass bit on the desk today.’

‘Plans for what?’ Lifting a hand into her hair, she pushed the tumbling mass back from her angrily bewildered face. ‘I was planning to marry him—well, there’s one plan gone down the tubes,’ she choked out. ‘And as you’ve just kindly pointed out to me, I caught him having sex with my own sister—so there’s my pride gone the same way along with any love for my sister!’ The hand dropped to fold along with the other hand tight across her front. ‘Then I surrendered to some mad desire to be wanted by anybody and you happened to be in the right place at the right time,’ she pushed on, ‘but that was just another plan sent off down the tubes when you changed your mind about w-wanting me!’

‘And now your carefully creamed nest egg is about to go the same way,’ Leo added without a hint of sympathy. ‘So I would say that you are having a very bad day, today, Natasha. A very bad day indeed.’

‘Nest egg?’ Natasha picked up. ‘What is it you are talking about now?’

Wearing that smile on his lips that she didn’t like, Leo levered himself away from the doorframe and moved away, leaving her to turn and watch as he headed for the drinks cabinet.

He needed something strong, Leo decided as he poured neat whisky into a glass. He took a good slug, then turned back to look at her, ‘I have just been talking to my PA,’ he enlightened. ‘Juno has been very busy investigating where Rico stashed the money he stole from me and has managed to trace it to an offshore bank account in your name, so lose the bemused expression, Natasha. I’m on to you….’

Nothing happened. She didn’t gasp, she didn’t faint, she didn’t jump in with a flood of denials or excuses aimed to defend what it was he was talking about now. Instead, Leo stood there and watched while something cold struck into him because there it was, the dawning of honesty taking over her lying, cheating, paling face.

That mouth was still a killer though, he observed—and slammed the glass down, suddenly blisteringly angry with himself for being so easily duped by her challengingly prim disguise!

‘I think you had better sit down before you fall down,’ he advised her flatly.

And she did, which only helped to feed his anger all the more. The flowing-haired witch dropped like a stone into the nearest chair, then covered her guilty face with her light-fingered thieving hands!

Rico had stolen the money, Natasha was busily replaying over and over. He’d placed stolen money in an offshore bank account in her name! One of her hands twisted down to cover her mouth as the nausea returned with a vengeance. In the dragging silence blanketing the space separating them she could feel Leo Christakis’s ice-cold anger and blistering contempt beating over her in waves.

If he’d made this declaration yesterday, she would not have believed him. But now, with everything else she’d been forced to look at today, Natasha didn’t even see a chink of a question glimmering in the nightmare her mind had become as to whether there had been some kind of mistake.

Everything about Rico had been a lie from start to finish. The way he’d used his looks and his charm and his fabulous blinding-white smile to lure her to him, the way he’d poured soft words of love over her too-susceptible head and refused to make love to her because he wanted to protect her innocence, while all the time he’d been cynically planning to turn her into a thief!

Pulling her fingers away from her mouth, ‘I’ll give you the money back just as soon as I can access it,’ she promised.

‘Sure you will,’ Leo confirmed. ‘Once you have recovered your composure, we will go and see to it straight away.’

That brought her face up, whiter than white now so her eyes stood out bluer than blue. ‘But you don’t understand. I can’t touch it yet.’

‘Don’t play the broken doll with me next, Natasha,’ Leo bit out impatiently. ‘It won’t alter the fact that you are going to give me my money back now—today.’

‘But I can’t!’ Anxiety shot her quivering to her feet. ‘I can’t touch it until the day before I was supposed to be marrying Rico! He said it was a tax loophole he’d discovered—that you had told him about! He said we had to lock the money up under my name in an offshore account until end of business the day before we marry, then transfer it to another account in our m-married name!’

Leo suddenly exploded spectacularly. ‘I do not appreciate you trying to involve my name in your filthy scam!’ he bit out at her furiously, ‘and telling me stupid lies about access to the money is not going to get you out of trouble, Miss Moyles! So cough up the cash or watch me call the damn police!’

In a state of nerve-numbing terror, Natasha backed away as he took two long strides towards her with a murderous expression clamped to his face. The backs of her legs hit the chair she’d just vacated and she toppled back into it. He came to stand over her as he’d done in the bedroom, only this time Natasha put up her hands in an instinctive need to keep him at bay.

Watching her cower in front of him sent Leo into an even bigger rage. ‘I don’t hit women,’ he rasped, then turned on his heel and walked away—right out of the room.

The police—he’s going to call the police! Out of her mind with fear now, Natasha scrambled upright and chased after him, terrified of going anywhere near him but even more terrified of what would happen if she didn’t stop him from carrying out his threat! He’d crossed the hall and entered a room opposite, which turned out to be a book-lined study.

Coming to a jerky halt in the doorway, she stared as he strode up to the desk and picked up the phone.

Panic sent her heart into overdrive. ‘Leo, please…’ The pleading quaver in her voice made him go still, wide shoulders taut. ‘You have got to believe me,’ she begged him. ‘I didn’t know the money was stolen! Rico conned me into banking it for him as much as he conned you out of it in the first place!’

The last part didn’t go down too well because he began stabbing numbers into the telephone with a grim resolve that sent Natasha flying across the room to grab hold of his arm.

Warm, hard muscles bunched beneath her clutching fingers, anger and rejection pouring into his muscular frame. ‘He s-said it was to ensure our f-future,’ she rushed on unsteadily, ‘He said it was a bequeath to him from your father you had been holding in trust! He s-said you…’

‘Wanted to see the back of him so badly I was prepared to break the law to do it?’ Leo suggested when her scramble of words dried up.

‘Something like that,’ Natasha admitted. Then—Oh, dear God, what had she let Rico do to her? ‘Now you are telling me he lied, which means he lied to me about absolutely everything and I—’

The phone went down. Leo turned on her so suddenly Natasha was given no chance to react before she found herself trapped in his arms. His mouth arrived. It took hers with an angry heat that offered nothing but punishment yet she responded—responded to him like a crazy person, clinging and kissing him back as if she’d die if she didn’t! When he pulled away again she was limp with shock at her own dizzying loss of control!

‘Take my advice,’ he rasped. ‘Keep with the seduction theme; it works on me a whole lot better than the innocent pleading does.’

Then his fingers gripped her arms like pincers, which he used to thrust her right away from him, and he was reestablishing his connection with the phone.

Natasha’s heart lodged like a throbbing lump of fear in her throat. ‘Please,’ she begged him, yet again having to swallow to be able to speak at all. ‘I did not know that Rico had stolen your money, Leo! I can give you back every penny in six weeks if you’ll only wait, but, please—please don’t ring the police—think of the effect it will have on Rico’s mother if you have him arrested! She will—’

‘You love the bastard,’ Leo bit out roughly. Cutting into what she had been trying to say and making Natasha blink.

‘At first, y-yes,’ she admitted it. ‘He flattered me and…’ she swallowed again ‘… and I know it sounds pathetic but I fell for it because…’

Oh, because she’d been a blind fool! She knew it—probably everyone knew it!

‘Because things were becoming really bad between me and Cindy and I think I was unconsciously searching for a way out.’

Rico had provided it. It was easier to believe she’d fallen in love with him than to admit to herself that she was so unhappy with her life that she’d grabbed the first opportunity handed to her to get out of it without having to cause ructions within her family. It had been so easy to turn blind eyes to what Rico was really like.

She was a coward, in other words, unwilling to take control of her own life without a nice acceptable prop with which to lean upon as she did.

‘I’d already realised Rico wasn’t w-what I wanted,’ she forced herself to go on. ‘I was on my way to tell him so today when we—when we caught him with Cindy. It was—’

‘Juno…’

Natasha blinked as Leo’s voice cut right through what she had been trying to tell him.

‘Put a stop on your investigation of Miss Moyles,’ he instructed. ‘There has been a—mistake. Have my plane for Athens put on standby and add Miss Moyles’s name to the passenger list.’

The phone went down. Natasha tugged in a tense breath. ‘Why did you say that?’

‘Why do you think?’ He turned a hard look on her. ‘I want my money back and since you’ve just told me it will be six weeks before you can give it back to me, I am not letting you out of my sight until you do.’

‘But I don’t want to go to Athens!’ Natasha shrilled out. ‘I don’t want to go anywhere with you!’

‘In your present situation that was not the cleverest thing you could say to me right now, Natasha,’ Leo said dryly.

‘W-what did you mean by that?’

‘Sex,’ Leo drawled as if that one shocking word were the answer to everything. ‘It is your only bargaining chip, so telling me you don’t want me is not going to get you out of this sticky situation, is it?’

A sudden dawning as to where he was going with this shot Natasha’s trembling shoulders back, sending her loosened hair flying around her face. ‘I am not paying you back with sex!’ she protested.

‘I should think not,’ the cold devil answered. ‘No woman, no matter how appealingly she presents herself to me, is worth a cool two million to bed.’

‘No…’ Yet again Natasha found herself sinking into a thick morass of confusion, the intended insult floating right over her as this new revelation struck a blow to her head. ‘F-Five hundred thousand pounds,’ she insisted through lips so paper dry now it stung to move them. ‘Rico opened the account w-with…’

Her voice trailed away when she saw the expression of mocking contempt that carved itself into this man’s face. ‘Four separate instalments of five hundred thousand adds up to a cool two million—your arithmetic is letting you down,’ Leo spelled out the full ugly truth for her.

‘Are you sure?’ she breathed.

‘Grow up, Natasha,’ Leo derided the question. ‘You are dealing with a real man now, not the weak excuse for a man you fell in love with—’

‘I don’t love him!’

‘So here is the deal.’ He kept going as if she hadn’t made that denial. ‘Wherever I go from now on, you will come with me. And to make the pill sweeter for me to take, you will also share my bed as I wait out the six long weeks until you can access my money, when you will then hand it back to me before you get the hell out of my life!’

Real skin-crawling panic had to erupt some time because Natasha had been struggling for so long to keep it in. But now the wild need to get away from this ruthless man and the whole situation sent her spinning around and racing out of the room and back across the hall.

Once again she found herself searching for her bag.

‘Going somewhere?’ that cruel voice mocked her—again.

‘Yes.’ She dived on the offending article that kept getting away from her without her knowing it had. ‘I’m going to find Rico. He’s the only person who can tell you the truth.’

‘You think I would believe anything he said to me?’

Swinging around, Natasha almost threw her bag at him! ‘I will give you back—every single penny of your rotten two million pounds if it kills me trying!’ she choked out.

‘Euros…’

Leo’s smooth drawl sent her still with her blue eyes relaying her next complete daze as to what he was talking about!

‘The money will have been converted into Euros,’ he pointed out helpfully, then he named the new figure in Euros, freezing Natasha where she stood. ‘Of course it means the same when converted back into pounds sterling so long as the exchange rate remains sound, but…’ His shrug said the rest for him—that the figure was growing and growing by the minute in the present financial climate. ‘And then there is the interest I will charge you for the—loan.’

‘I hate you,’ was all she could manage to whisper.

‘Fortunate for you, then, that you fall apart so excitingly when I kiss you.’

‘I need to speak to Rico,’ Natasha insisted.

‘Still hoping the two of you can escape from this?’

‘No!’ She shot up her chin, eyes flashing, hair fascinatingly wild around her tense face. ‘I need him to tell you the truth even if you do refuse to believe it!’

Leo observed her from an outwardly calm exterior that did not reflect what was crawling around his insides. He was blisteringly angry—with himself more than anyone because he would have been willing to swear that the prim, cool and dignified Natasha Moyles he’d believed he knew had been the genuine article.

No sign of her now, he observed.

‘You will have to catch him first,’ he told her dryly. ‘Juno tells me that Rico has already left the country. He hitched a ride on a friend’s private plane out of London airport. He was quicker than you were at realising what was going to come out of his fevered love fest today, you see. A one-minute telephone conversation with Juno after he left here and he knew he’d been sussed. He’s left you to carry the can for him, Natasha.’ He spelled it out for her in case she had not worked that out for herself.

Feeling as if the whole weight of the world had just dropped onto her shoulders, ‘Then you might as well shop me to the Fraud Squad,’ she murmured helplessly.

Leo grimaced. ‘That is still one way for me to go, certainly,’ he agreed, and watched the telling little flinch that she gave up. ‘However, you do still have the other way to pull this around, Miss Moyles…’She even flinched at the formal Miss Moyles now. ‘You could still try utilising the only asset you have as far as I am concerned and make me an offer I won’t want to refuse?’

He was talking sex again. Natasha went icy. ‘The money is peanuts to you, isn’t it?’

He offered a shrug. ‘The difference between the two of us being that I am wealthy enough to call it peanuts, whereas you are not.’

That was so very true that Natasha did not even bother to argue the point. Instead she made herself look at him. ‘So you want me to pay the money back with—favours—’ for the life of her she could not bring herself to call it sex ‘—and in return you will promise me you will not take this to the police?’

Leo smiled at the careful omission of the word sex and for once the smile actually hit the dark of his eyes. ‘You do the prim stuff exceptionally well, Natasha,’ he informed her lazily as he began to walk towards her, putting just about every defence mechanism she possessed on stinging alert. ‘Shame that your hair is floating around your face like a siren’s promise and your lips are still pumped up and hot from my kisses, because it forces me to remember the real you.’

Fighting not to flinch when he reached out to touch her, ‘I want your promise that if I do what you w-want me to do, you won’t go to the police,’ she insisted.

His fingers were drifting up her arms. ‘You do know you don’t have anything left to bargain with, don’t you?’

Pressing her lips together, Natasha nodded, her heart pounding in her chest when his fingers reached her shoulders and gripped. ‘I’m relying on your sense of honour.’

‘You believe I have one?’ He sounded genuinely curious.

She nodded again. ‘Yes,’ she delivered on a stifled breath. She had to believe it because it was the only way she was going to cope with all of this.

He drifted those light caressing fingers along her shoulders until they reached her smooth skin at her nape, making her jump as a long thumb arrived beneath her chin to tilt up her face. His warm, whisky-scented breath had her lips parting like traitors because they knew what was coming next.

‘Then you have my promise,’ he said softly.

It was the most soul-shrivelling thing Natasha had ever experienced when she fell into that deal-sealing kiss.

Then her mobile phone started ringing, shocking them apart with Natasha turning to stare down at the phone in surprise because she thought she’d killed it when she’d thrown it to the floor.

Leo went to pick it up, since she didn’t seem able to move a single muscle, stepping around her and reminding her of a big, sleek giant cat, the way he moved with such loose-limbed grace. Without asking her permission, he sanctioned the call and put her phone to his ear.

It was some fashion designer wanting to know why Cindy had not turned up for a fitting. ‘Natasha Moyles is no longer responsible for her sister’s movements,’ Leo announced before cutting the connection.

Natasha stared up at him in disbelief. ‘What did you say that for?’

He turned a mocking look on her. ‘Because it is the truth?’ She went to take her phone back. He snatched it out of her way, then slid it into his jacket pocket. ‘Think about it,’ he insisted. ‘You cannot continue play your sister’s doormat while you are in Athens with me.’

And just like that he brought the scene in Rico’s office pouring back in. Rico hadn’t only involved her in his thieving scam, but he’d been treating her like his doormat, too! Natasha turned away, despising herself for being so gullible—despising Rico for making her see herself like this! And then there was Cindy, her loving sister Cindy playing the selfish, spoiled brat who took anything she felt like because she always had done and been allowed to get away with it!

Then another thought arrived, one that hit her like a brick in the chest. Cindy didn’t even need Natasha to keep her life running smoothly because arrangements were already in place to hand her singing career over to a professional agency. One of those big, flashy firms with the kind of high profile Cindy had loved the moment its name was mentioned to her. From as early as next week, Natasha would no longer be responsible for Cindy at all, in effect, to free her up to concentrate on her wedding preparations and her move to Milan!

And she’d just found the reason why Cindy had been doing that with Rico. Cindy was about to get everything she’d always wanted—a high-profile management team that was going to fast-track her career and more significantly her absolute freedom from the restraints the sister she resented imposed.

She lifted a hand up to cover her mouth. Her fingers were trembling and she felt cold through to the bone.

‘What now?’ Leo Christakis shot at her.

She just shook her head because she couldn’t speak. Cindy being Cindy, she just could not let Natasha walk off into the sunset with her handsome Italian without going all out to spoil it. I’ve had your man, Natasha. Now you can trip off and marry him. She could hear Cindy’s voice trilling those words even though they had not yet been said!

Cindy’s little swansong. Her wonderful farewell.

‘She set me up,’ she managed to whisper. ‘She knew I was going to meet Rico today so she made sure she got to his office before I did and set me up to witness her doing—that with him.’

‘Why would your own sister want to set you up for a scene like that?’

‘Because I’m not her real sister.’ Natasha slid her fingers away from her mouth. ‘I was adopted…’ By two people who’d believed their chances of having a child of their own had long passed them by. Five years later and their real daughter had arrived in their arms like a precious gift from heaven. Everyone had adored Cindy—Natasha had adored her!

A firm hand arrived on her arm to guide her down into the chair again, then disappeared to collect a second brandy. ‘Here,’ he murmured, ‘take this…’

Natasha frowned down at the glass, then shook her head. ‘No.’ She felt too sick to drink anything. ‘Take it away.’

Leo put the glass down, but remained squatting in front of her as he’d done once before. Strong thighs spread, forearms resting on his knees. His suit, she saw as if for the first time, was made of some fabulously smooth fabric, expensive and creaseless—like the man himself.

And his mouth might look grim, but it was still a mouth she could taste; she felt as if she already knew it far more intimately than any other man’s mouth—and that included Rico.

‘Stop looking at me as if you care what’s happening inside my head!’ she snapped at the way he was squatting there studying her as if he were really concerned!

He had the grace to offer an acknowledging grimace and climbed back to his full height. So did Natasha, making herself do it, feeling cold—frozen right through, because it had also just hit her that she was on her own now. No sister. No fiancé. Not even a pair of loving parents to turn to because, although they’d loved her in their own way, they had never loved her in the way they loved Cindy. Cindy was always going to come first with them.

‘So what is it you want me to do?’ she murmured finally in a voice that sounded as cold as she felt.

Leo threw her a frowning dark look. ‘I told you what I want.’

‘Sex.’ This time she managed to name it.

‘Don’t knock it, Natasha,’ Leo drawled. ‘The fact that we find we desire each other is about to keep you out of a whole lot of trouble.’

He turned away then, leaving her to stare at his long, broad back. He was so hard she had to wonder who it was that had made him like that.

Then she remembered Rico telling her that Leo had been married once. From what Rico had said, his wife had been an exquisite black-haired, black-eyed pure Latin sex bomb who used to turn men on with a single look. The marriage had lasted a short year before Leo had grown tired of hauling her out of other men’s beds and he’d kicked her out of his life for good.

But he must have really loved her to last a whole year with a faithless woman like that. Had his ex-wife mangled up his feelings so badly she’d turned him into the ruthless cynic she was looking at now?

As if he could tell what she was thinking he glanced round at her, catching the expression on her face. Their eyes maintained contact for a few nerve-trapping seconds as something very close to understanding stirred between them, as if he knew what she was thinking and his steady regard was acknowledging it.

‘OK, let’s go.’ Just that quickly he switched from seeming almost human to the man willing to use her for sex until he could get his precious money back. ‘Take it or leave it, Natasha,’ he cut into the thrumming thick nub of her silence— there because she was finding the switch much harder to make. ‘But make your mind up, because we have a flight to catch.’

A flight to catch. A life to get on with while she put her own on hold—again.

Natasha answered with a curt nod of her head.

It was all he required to have him reach out and pull her back into his arms. The heat flared between them. She uttered a helpless protest as his mouth arrived to claim hers. And worst thing of all was how the whole heady, hot pleasure of it caught hold of her as fast as it took him to make that sensual stroking movement with his tongue along the centre of hers. By the time he drew back, she was barely focusing. Her lips felt swollen and thick—but deep inside, in the core element where the real Natasha lay hidden, she still felt as cold as death.

Leo thought about just saying to hell with it and taking her back upstairs to bed and forgetting about the rest of this. She had no idea—none whatsoever—what that hopeless look on her face teamed with the buttoned-up suit was doing to him.

He turned away from temptation, frowning at his own bewildering inclinations. How had he gone from being a tough business-focused tycoon to a guy with his brains fixed on sex?

More than his brains, he was forced to acknowledge when he had to stand still for a moment and work hard to bring much more demanding body parts under control.

Then she moved, swinging him back round to look at her, and he knew then exactly why he was putting this woman before his cool business sense. She had been driving him quietly crazy for weeks now, though he had refused to look at the reason why until Rico had ruined his chances with her.

Rico’s loss, his gain. Natasha Moyles was going to come so alive with his tutelage she was not going to be able to hide anything from him. And he was going to enjoy every minute of making that exposure take place. Then once their six weeks were over he would get his money back and walk away so he could get on with his life without having her as a distraction that constantly crept into his head.

Maybe it was worth the cool two million to achieve it.

‘I need to speak to m-my parents…’

‘You can ring them—from Athens. Hit them with a situation they cannot argue with.’

‘That wouldn’t be—’

‘You prefer to relay the full ugly details to their faces?’ he cut in on her. ‘You prefer to explain to them that you and Rico have been caught thieving and that their other daughter is a man-thieving tramp?’

The tough words were back. The sigh that wrenched from Natasha was loaded down with defeat. ‘I will need to get my passport from the apartment,’ was all she said.

‘Then let’s go and get it.’ Leo held out his hand to her in an invitation that was demanding yet another surrender—one that sizzled in the short stillness that followed it.

A step on the road to ruin, Natasha recognised bleakly as she lifted her hand and settled her palm against his. His long tanned fingers closed around her slender cold fingers, she felt his warmth strike through her icy skin and his strength convey itself to her as he turned and trailed her behind him into the hallway, then out of the house.