She had been three years into her medical degree when Gillian’s worsening arthritis had forced her to give up work and live on benefits. Undaunted, Gillian had retrained as a drug and alcohol counsellor, who could work from a wheelchair, but all it took was a broken lift in their tower apartment block—and it was frequently out of order—and she was trapped indoors and unable either to work or to earn. That one very bleak Christmas, when Letty was in the fifth year of her course, Gillian had got involved in the murky underworld of unsecured loans and had fallen into debt as the interest charges mushroomed.
Letty rode into work on the elderly motorbike she had restored. Parking her bike and securing it, she walked into the Sunset Home for the Elderly, where she worked as the permanent night shift manager. She was on a good salary and had no complaints about her working conditions or colleagues. She had every intention of completing her medical studies as soon as it was possible but, right at that moment, that desired goal seemed worryingly distant. Her mother was too frail to be left alone with two active boys until she received the double hip replacement she needed. Sadly, the waiting lists for free treatment were too long and private surgery was unaffordable. In the short term, more accessible accommodation would have much improved Gillian’s lot and her ability to work but the large debt that she had accrued with that iniquitous loan had to be cleared before moving could even be considered.
As Letty changed out of bike leathers into work garb, her phone started ringing and she answered it swiftly, always fearful of her mother having suffered a fall, which would exacerbate her condition. But it wasn’t one of her brothers calling to give her bad news, it was, amazingly, her grandfather.
‘If you’re willing to do whatever it takes to help your family, Leo is the man to approach. I will text you the phone number. Furthermore, if you were to reach an agreement with Leo, I will invite you into my home and introduce you to Greek society,’ the older man informed her loftily in the tone of someone who believed he was offering her some great honour.
‘Er…right. Thanks for that,’ Letty responded ruefully, wondering why her grandfather would think that she was interested in being introduced to Greek society and what sort of agreement he believed she could reach with this guy, Leo, that was likely to benefit her or her family. Maybe the older man wasn’t as cold a fish as she had assumed, and he was genuinely trying to help her. She was too much of a cynic for a wannabe doctor, she scolded herself, she really had to start trying harder to see the good in human beings.
The next morning, before she headed home to bed after her shift, she took out the number and phoned it.
‘VR Shipping,’ a woman answered.
‘My name is Letty Harbison. I have to make an appointment with someone called Leo?’
‘If you will excuse me for a moment…’ the woman urged.
Letty groaned at the sound of voices fussing in the background. Was this Leo likely to offer her better paid employment? He was obviously a businessman in an office environment. When she got home, she would look him up online, although she would need more than his first name to accomplish that, she reflected wearily.
‘Mr Romanos will see you at ten this morning at his London office.’ The woman then read out the address of his building.
‘I’m sorry, I’m a night shift worker and it would need to be a little later in the day,’ Letty began apologetically.
‘Mr Romanos will not be available later. He is a very busy man.’
Letty rolled her eyes. ‘Ten will be fine,’ she conceded, reasoning that it was only sensible to check the man out because her grandfather could genuinely be attempting to do her a good turn. And pigs might fly, her inner cynic sniped as she remembered the single cup of black coffee she had enjoyed in the fancy restaurant where she had met her father’s father for the first time for a twenty-minute chat which had consisted of his barked questions and her laboured replies.
It had been a painful meeting because she had truly hoped that there would be some sense of family connection between them, but there had been nothing, only an older man, evidently still very bitter about his only son’s early death. Even worse, any reference Letty had made to her family’s problems had only seemed to increase her grandfather’s contempt for her and her mother and brothers.
Dragging herself out of the recollection of that disheartening conversation, she checked the time and suppressed another groan. There was no way on earth she could get home, freshen up and change and then catch the bus to make that appointment in time. Oh, to heck with that, she thought in sudden rebellion, she would attend the appointment as she was, in her bike leathers, and explain that she had just left work and had nothing else to wear. After calling her mother to warn her that she would be late back, Letty climbed back on her bike.
‘Have you a parcel?’ the receptionist asked Letty on her arrival in the building.
‘No, I have an appointment with Mr Leo… Romanos, is it? At ten,’ she recited uncertainly because she had been so drowsy when she had made that initial call that her concentration and powers of recall were not operating with their usual efficiency.
The top floor receptionist’s eyes rounded as she took in Letty in her biker leathers because she was a gossip and, according to the grapevine, Leo Romanos had unexpectedly cancelled a very important meeting to clear a last-minute space for a female visitor. The usual lively speculation about his sex life had duly erupted in a frenzy. Only, sadly, Letty did not fit the bill because Leo was a living legend for his taste in beautiful women, who were invariably models or socialites, spiced with the occasional actress. Nobody looking at Letty could possibly have placed her in any of those categories.
Letty sank down on a squashy and very comfortable sofa in the reception area and the exhaustion she suffered by never ever getting enough rest simply engulfed her in a drowning tide. Her sleepy eyes executed one last final sweep of the ultra-modern, very luxurious floor of offices and wonderment assailed her. Why on earth had her grandfather sent her to such a place? Yes, she had the usual office skills but she seriously doubted they would be on a par with the kind of commercial skills employees needed to have in a business environment. Even worse, she was dressed all wrong, had only just managed to get out of the lift before being asked if she had brought the pizzas someone was awaiting. She had been mistaken for a takeaway delivery person.
‘Your ten o’clock appointment is asleep in Reception,’ one of Leo’s assistants informed him.
Asleep? Theos…how was she contriving to sleep on the brink of potentially meeting her future husband? It did not occur to Leo that Isidore Livas would have been foolish enough to send his granddaughter to see him without that all-important proposal having being outlined in advance. He hadn’t expected to meet her quite so quickly, however, had assumed it would take at least a week to set up such a meeting. He was allowing the necessary time for Letty to make whatever effort she could to look her best to meet the expectations of a billionaire seeking a bride.
Leo strode out to Reception, disconcerting everyone, turning every head, and then he saw her, lying full length along the sofa, very nearly merging with the black upholstery in her leathers. Leather? Why was she dressed from top to toe in leather and wearing chunky motorbike boots?
Bemused, Leo came to a halt and stared down at her, noticing the long messy ponytail, so long it almost brushed the floor. She had long honey-blonde hair. All the Livas tribe were some shade of blonde, he recalled abstractedly as his roaming attention mounted the curve of a lush pouting derrière sleekly outlined by leather and a long slender thigh. Her face was pillowed on her hand, sleep-flushed, her lips full and pink. She wasn’t very tall. In fact she was short in stature, another Livas trait. She might be lucky to reach his chest, even in high heels. But she wasn’t plain and she certainly wasn’t plump. She