you’re here…you can make yourself useful. Are you still taking me to that club opening on Saturday?’
Leo raised an ebony brow, clearly surprised that she had assumed that he might have changed his mind on that score. ‘Is it still your birthday on Saturday? Then yes, but don’t pick a black dress. You need something more…’ He rifled through the rack of clothes and dragged out a scarlet dress that she wouldn’t have considered in a thousand years for her wardrobe. It was stretchy, glittery, low-necked and low-backed, in short everything she avoided.
‘Er…no…’ She didn’t want to hurt his feelings when he was trying to help. ‘That’s a little daring for me. I mean, look at that neckline.’
‘I’m a man—of course I’m looking at the neckline,’ Leo reasoned. ‘You’ve got a terrific figure. Wear colours and show it off.’
Letty flushed. ‘I’ll try it on and see,’ she conceded, still doubtful but knowing that that accolade from him would make her more than consider wearing it. Was she a people-pleaser? Or a Leo-pleaser? She only knew that she craved his admiration, which was childish and rather unfair to him when she had refused to sleep with him again.
Leo lifted the house phone and spoke in Greek. ‘I’ve called your maid. Use the staff. That’s what they’re here for,’ he urged.
Letty grimaced. ‘It’ll take a while for me to get used to having staff around but I’ll work on it… OK?’
‘OK.’ Leo studied her with a totally unreadable expression but his dark golden eyes were alight and she felt that scrutiny make her nipples peak inside her bra and force her to press her thighs together on the ache that stirred in her pelvis.
Of course she was still attracted to him and that was going to happen, she reminded herself, but eventually she would get a handle on such responses, wouldn’t she? And, under all the surface sophistication, he was a really decent guy, she acknowledged. He wasn’t holding spite. He wasn’t fretting or doing anything to make her uncomfortable because she had made a decision that he disagreed with and that was a pretty special ability in such a strong and volatile man, wasn’t it? But the real problem was, she reckoned, as she watched him leave the room, tall and dark and totally, breathtakingly gorgeous, that the situation they were in would be much easier for her if he behaved badly and made her hate him a little more.
Over the remainder of the week Leo continued to confound her innately low expectations of the male sex. He joined her for a rather windblown picnic on the beach with the children and played ball with Cosmo, who shrieked with excitement and hugged his uncle’s knees as if he would never let him go. He read a bedtime story to Popi and even tried a few baby-animal-lost-in-the-jungle noises that made both Popi and Sybella go off into whooping giggles. He was making an effort to spend more time with the children and without being asked or encouraged, finally admitting to her when they were talking about it afterwards that on his own he had felt swamped by the kids and their attention had felt too full-on for him to handle.
Recognising that she was in the mood to offer him sex just for pleasing her, Letty took herself off safely to bed early that night. She also stopped lingering over dinner in the evening when he joined her at the house and made absolutely no comment when he too abandoned the beach house and moved back into his usual room across the corridor from hers. They were discovering a new and better way to be with each other, she told herself—friends, partners, whatever anyone wanted to call it. She had wanted more but had had to settle for less, which she could live with perfectly well, she reasoned, noting the dark golden intensity of Leo’s eyes with what she assured herself was only academic interest.
The day of the club opening rolled up and Letty spent the afternoon getting ready for her first social appearance as Leo’s wife. She was keen to look the part. Her maid did her hair for her, straightening it into a luxuriously conditioned smooth blonde mane and Letty knew that it had never looked that good in her life before. She had ordered cosmetics online and boned up on eye shadow application and she made a major effort there too, before donning the scarlet dress and sliding her feet into the sort of very high heels she had always laughed about. All for Leo, a snide little voice whispered at the back of her head and she ignored the voice, telling herself that presenting herself polished up occasionally was only what her position as Leo’s wife demanded.
As she had promised, Letty stepped into the girls’ bedroom to show them her dress.
‘You look pretty, Mummy Letty,’ Popi pronounced, bouncing on top of her bed in her pyjamas and failing to notice how Letty momentarily froze at that designation, tears burning the back of her eyes at the compliment.
‘Mummy Letty,’ Sybella repeated obediently.
Leo watched Letty come downstairs and immediately regretted choosing the dress because she looked fantastic and incredibly sexy in it and he was tempted enough without the sight of her superb breasts showcased in red and her shapely legs on show. The pulse at his groin which rarely quit around Letty kicked up into a dull throb and he ground his teeth together.
‘You look amazing,’ Leo murmured hoarsely. ‘But you forgot your jewellery…’
‘I have my rings on.’
He urged her into his office and opened a big wooden box, full of smaller boxes and a tangled array of other gold and jewels untidily stored. ‘My mother’s collection. It’s all yours to wear now. I would suggest the rubies with that dress.’
Letty stood still as Leo attached a ruby pendant to her throat and handed her earrings to put on. When he was this close and she could smell the wonderfully familiar scent of him she felt light-headed and she gulped in steadying air as she donned the earrings. Leo handed her a gold watch.
‘My goodness,’ she muttered uneasily. ‘I’ll look like a Christmas tree.’
‘No, you’ll look like a Romanos wife…my wife,’ Leo completed with distinct pride as he removed a ruby and diamond bangle from its protective box and watched her slide it over her hand.
Letty allowed him to escort her out to the helicopter waiting for them before sharing with him that Popi had called her ‘Mummy Letty’.
‘That’s wonderful!’ Leo exclaimed with his brilliant flashing smile before he lifted her into the helicopter. ‘They’ve accepted you.’
Letty thought it was rather more of a first step on that road but she didn’t deflate him. Loving the children had come as easily to her as loving her own family. Her mother had made a really good recovery from her surgery and was no longer in pain. The boys were back home from their father’s as well and everyone was missing her. Popi started back to school after half-term the following week, so she would be back in London soon enough, she reminded herself wryly.
Infinity, Leo’s new club in Athens, was surrounded by paparazzi and Leo strode down the red carpet between the crash barriers restraining the crowds, past the surge of flashing cameras and shouted questions, quite unbothered by the attention, while Letty was tempted to pull her hem down to her ankles and haul her neckline up to her chin but didn’t have sufficient fabric to achieve either wish.
As she joined Leo at a crowded table of well-wishers, she asked him if his father had arrived yet and he rolled his eyes at the question. ‘No, it’ll be another no-show on his part.
