thank you,’ Letty responded warmly, thinking that coffee, which she rarely drank, might wake her up because, after that short burst of sleep, her brain cells felt as though they were drowning in sludge. ‘I take it black, no sugar.’
Leo had a vague unrealistic hope that Juliet would reappear looking rather more conventional and even wearing a little make-up and carting a bag of some kind like a normal woman. Instead, she came through the door, carrying her jacket with her hair loose. And what hair it was, Leo marvelled, watching the luxuriant honey-blonde strands flick against her shapely hips as she turned to shut the door behind her. She spun back, eyes as green as fresh ferns in sunlight, alert and questioning now, and she gripped her jacket even closer to her chest, as though she was trying to conceal the undeniably magnificent swell of her breasts below the plain black T-shirt she wore.
Leo liked curvy women, but he loved the female breast in all sizes and, as she settled down in the chair set in front of his desk, he was enchanted by the very slight bounce of her bosom as she sat down. Natural curves, he was convinced, not bought and paid for, shaped by some talented surgeon. Encountering her gaze, Leo went as hard as a rock and it shocked him, sincerely shocked him, because that didn’t happen to him any more in public. He strode around his desk to take a seat, disconcerted by that juvenile response to a woman who was fully clothed, bare of make-up and, so far, not even a little flirtatious or suggestive.
His assistant entered with a tray of coffee and poured it.
‘I don’t usually drink coffee, but I need it to wake me up this morning,’ Letty admitted with a rueful smile that lit up her oval face. ‘I apologise for not being more smartly dressed but I only finished work at eight and there wasn’t time to go home and change and get back here in time.’
‘Why the biker leathers?’
‘I use a motorbike to get around. It’s cheap to run and perfect for getting through rush hour traffic,’ Letty explained, sipping the coffee she held between her cupped hands. ‘I don’t know why my grandfather insisted that I should come and see you. Do you have some sort of work that I could do? A job to offer?’
Leo froze, belatedly registering that Isidore had not done the footwork for him. ‘I have a proposition that you may wish to consider.’
‘Did Isidore mention that I’m in need of money?’ Letty had to force herself to ask, her creamy skin turning pink with self-consciousness.
‘Your grandfather asked you to call him Isidore?’ Leo remarked in surprise.
‘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
