well: he had guessed that she was nervous of alcohol now.
She snatched up her glass and sipped. ‘So, you said we had something to discuss… I seem to recall,’ she managed to say, relieved that she had stopped squirming and blushing like a teenager over that episode in the car.
‘Ne…yes,’ Leo translated for her as he subsided into Greek and seemed to hesitate as he searched for words, which was sufficiently unlike him to command her full attention and etch a frown between her fine brows. ‘It relates to our future as a couple…’
‘Yes, I’m sure there must be lots of little things we still have to iron out,’ Letty conceded with innate practicality.
‘This is not a little thing,’ Leo contradicted, studying her with dark golden eyes that were pure golden enticement in the candlelight.
‘Oh?’ Letty prompted, sipping her wine assiduously, irritated that Leo had guessed how she felt about alcohol after the virtual assault she had mounted on him. She pinned her attention to her plate and worked through the delicious first course and a silence that stretched much longer than she had expected.
Finally, Letty looked up again to catch Leo still studying her as though she were a complete mystery to him in some way. ‘You were saying?’
Leo breathed in deep and threw back his handsome dark head, his eyes gleaming. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever enter “sacred bond” territory in the manner that you meant,’ he murmured smoothly. ‘But I have reached the conclusion that it would only be practical for us to at least have a go at making this a real marriage.’
Letty literally froze with her glass halfway to her mouth. ‘A real marriage?’ she exclaimed.
‘A marriage in which we have sex,’ Leo specified with unashamed clarity.
Letty breathed in so deep she was surprised that she didn’t spontaneously combust into flames of outrage. ‘You have a mistress,’ she reminded him tartly.
Leo didn’t bat a single eyelash. ‘Not currently.’
‘That’s a lie!’ Letty shot back at him. ‘Elexis pointed Mariana out to me at the wedding.’
A dark frown formed on Leo’s lean strong face. ‘That was spiteful,’ he breathed with visible annoyance. ‘But I’m not lying. I was last with Mariana before I met you and I finished with her after I met you.’
‘Which is…what? All of four short weeks ago?’ Letty sniped, unimpressed. ‘So, why was she at our wedding?’
‘She wasn’t invited. She came with a male guest who was,’ Leo clarified. ‘I was irritated when I saw her too.’
Letty recognised the truth when she was hearing it and absolved Leo of inappropriate behaviour because, evidently, Mariana Santos had become old history. Not that that had the slightest cooling effect on her growing anger. That Leo could simply sit there and just proclaim that they should ‘have a go’ at being married as if it were a casual takeaway meal he could sample at will shocked her to the core.
The main course was brought out and Letty started eating again, although she was barely able to chew and swallow because she was so very angry with him.
‘You have nothing to say to my suggestion?’ Leo finally pressed in frustration.
‘Nothing you’d want to hear,’ Letty assured him curtly, pushing her plate away and lifting her glass because she needed a vat of wine, she told herself, to deal with Leo, who was twisty and manipulative and clever and utterly unaccustomed to any form of rejection from a woman.
‘Allow me to decide that,’ Leo urged.
Letty leapt out of her chair with her glass in one hand, unable to sit still any longer, and she crossed the room to stand by the patio doors. ‘We signed a legal agreement in which I agreed to overlook your infidelity,’ she reminded him stubbornly. ‘Now you want something else from me, something completely different.’
Leo sprang upright. ‘I want you, so kill me for it!’ he urged with sardonic bite, spreading his arms and splaying his expressive hands as part of the gesture.
‘You’ll want me for all of five minutes!’ Letty told him tartly.
‘I last longer than five minutes,’ Leo assured her, refusing to take that comeback seriously.
And at that provocative sally something Letty had never felt before erupted inside her like a volcano spewing lava. It could only have been described as hissing, spitting rage. She flung what remained of her wine at him. ‘You bastard!’ she launched at him as the clear liquid splashed his face. ‘I trusted you to keep your word but now you’re trying to move the goalposts, which is totally unfair to me. And over what? Sex?’ Letty grimaced in dismissal of that paltry motivation. ‘Just because you’re between mistresses? What else would suddenly make me so irresistible?’
‘It’s not like that,’ Leo delivered harshly. ‘I wanted you the first time I met you and I fought it. Now we’re married and it doesn’t make sense for me to go out and look for another mistress when the only woman I want right now is my wife.’
‘Don’t you dare call me your wife!’ Letty fired back at him hotly. ‘I married you to be a mother to your sister’s children and that was all you asked of me. I’m entitled to receive the agreement I signed up to and the terms I legally approved. You are not entitled to demand anything more from me. Is that clear?’
Shocked, Leo scrutinised her, registering that her passion that night in the limo should have forewarned him that she could have a much more tempestuous nature than he had initially appreciated.
‘Yes, I can see you’re shattered by that news. You know why, Leo? Women are too easy for you. Today, in the space of a few short hours, I had Mariana, Katrina and my Aunt Elexis all drooling over you and hating me for marrying you.’
‘Is that my fault?’ Leo asked with the first hint of anger he had shown. ‘Is it my fault that two women I have never been intimate with lust after me? Am I supposed to apologise for that? Clearly, it annoyed you, but—’
‘I didn’t say it annoyed me,’ Letty bit out in haste, recognising that she had hit the wall with that comment because it really wasn’t fair to blame him for being gorgeous and rich and highly desirable to other women. ‘What annoys me is that with clear forethought and planning you brought me here to a house with one bed and one bedroom in expectation of a positive answer!’
‘Theé mou…there’s nothing positive about your attitude,’ Leo acknowledged grimly, his lean dark face set in forbidding lines. ‘In fact, everything you think about yourself and my interest in you and our marriage is incredibly negative in tone. I didn’t mention my intentions before the wedding because I had to stay in Greece until shortly before it and it was scarcely a subject I could tackle on the phone.’
‘Whatever!’ Letty waved an angrily dismissive hand and hauled open the patio doors to walk down onto the sand, desperate for some fresh air and the space to think after that incredibly volatile rush of rage that had so disconcerted her, never mind him.
‘It’s dark out there!’ Leo asserted in warning from behind her.
Letty
