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
