Was that it? Had Rico been using her to appease his old-fashioned mother who’d taken a liking to her on sight? Natasha felt hot tears fill her eyes as she replayed the relieved smile Angelina had sent her when they’d happened to bump into her at a restaurant one night. ‘Such a nice girl,’ Angelina had said later.
Was that the moment when Rico decided that it might be a good idea to make her his wife? He’d asked her to marry him only a few days later. Like a fully paid-up idiot, she had jumped at the chance. They’d barely shared a proper kiss by then!
And no wonder. She wasn’t Rico’s type, she was his mother’s type. Cindy was Rico’s type.
Her heart hurt as she stared out of the car window. Beside her, Leo felt the truth hit him hard in the gut.
He had his answer as to what had made Rico want to marry this sister while lusting after the other one. He was keeping his mother happy because Angelina had been making stern warning noises about his lifestyle and Rico saw his loving mama as his main artery source to the Christakis coffers—next to Leo himself, of course.
Which made Natasha Rico’s love stooge as much as Leo was his family stooge. From the day eight years ago when his father had brought Angelina home as his new bride with her eighteen-year-old son in tow, Leo’s life had become round after round of making Rico feel part of the family because Angelina was so hypersensitive to the differences between the two sons. And his father would do anything to keep Angelina happy and content. When Lukas died so suddenly, Leo continued to keep Angelina, via Rico, happy because she’d been so clearly in love with his father and naturally devastated by his death.
Well, not any longer, he vowed heavily. It was time for both Angelina and Rico to take control of their own lives. He was sick and tired of sorting out their problems.
And that included the money Rico had stolen from him, Leo determined, a black frown bringing his eyebrows together across the top of his nose because he’d allowed himself to forget the reason he’d gone into Rico’s office in the first place.
Natasha was yet another of Rico’s problems, he recognised, winging another swift, frowning glance her way. She was sitting there with her face turned the colour of parchment, looking as if she might be going to throw up in his car.
What, this woman? he then cruelly mocked. This ultra-composed creature would rather choke on her own bile than to allow herself to do anything so crass as to throw up on his Moroccan tan leather.
Which then brought back the question—what had such a dignified thing seen in a shallow piece of manhood like Rico?
Fresh anger tried to rip a hole in his chest.
‘Think about it,’ he gritted, wishing he could keep his mouth shut, but finding out he could not. ‘They are more suited to each other than you and Rico. He famously likes them like your sister—surely you must have known that, heard some of his history with women? He’s been playing the high-rolling playboy right across fashionable Europe for long enough. Did you never stop to ask yourself what it was he actually saw in you that made you stand out from the flock?’
The hurt tears gathered all the stronger at his ruthless barrage. Feeling as if she’d just been knocked over by a bus then kicked for daring to let it happen, ‘I thought he loved me,’ Natasha managed to push out.
‘Which is why he was enjoying your sister over his desk when he should have been attending my board meeting, defending himself.’
‘Defending?’ she picked up.
Leo didn’t answer. Clamping his lips together, he climbed out of the car, annoyed with himself for wanting to beat her up for Rico’s sins. Rounding the car bonnet, he opened her door, then reached in to take hold of one of her wrists so he could tug her out, even though he knew she didn’t want to get out. Her phone started ringing again, distracting her long enough for him to get her into his house.
He pulled her into the living room and pushed her down into a chair then strode off to the drinks cabinet to pour her a stiff drink.
His hands were trembling, he noticed, and frowned as he splashed neat brandy into a glass. When he walked back to Natasha, he saw that she was sitting on the edge of the chair, all neat and prim with the bag on her lap as he’d predicted she would do.
Fresh anger ripped at him. ‘Here.’ He handed her the glass. ‘Drink that, it might help to loosen you up a bit.’
What happened next came without any warning at all that he was about to receive his just desserts when Natasha shot to her feet and launched the full contents of the glass at his face.
‘W-who do you think you are, Mr Christakis, to dare to think you can be this horrid to me?’ she fired up. ‘Listening to you, anyone would be f-forgiven for thinking that it had been you who’d been betrayed back there! Or is that it?’ she then shot out. ‘Are you being this downright nasty to me because you wished it had been you doing that with my sister instead of Rico—is that what your foul temper is about?’
Standing there with brandy dripping down his hard golden cheekbones, Leo Christakis, the dynamic and cut-throat head of one of the biggest companies in the world, heard himself utter…
‘No. I wished it had been you with me.’
CHAPTER TWO
IN THE thick, thrumming silence that followed that mind-numbing declaration, Natasha stared up at Leo’s liquor-drenched face—and wished that the brandy were still in the glass so she could toss it at him again!
‘H-how dare you?’ she shook out in tremulous indignation, eyes like sparkling blue diamonds darkening to sultry sapphires as the tears filled them up. ‘Don’t you think I’ve been h-humiliated enough without you poking fun at me as if it’s all been just a jolly good joke?’
‘No joke,’ Leo heard himself utter, then grimaced at the full, raw truth in his answer. There was definitely no joke to find anywhere in the way he had been quietly lusting after Natasha for weeks.
No, the real joke here was in hearing himself actually admit to it.
Turning his back on her, Leo dug a hand into his jacket pocket to retrieve the never-used handkerchief his various housekeepers always insisted on placing in his suits. Wiping the brandy from his face, he flicked a glance at the way Natasha was standing there in her neat blue suit and her sensible heeled shoes but with her very expressive eyes now blackened by shock.
‘You have a strange idea about men, Natasha, if you believe that the scraped-back hair and the buttoned-up clothes stop them from being curious about what it is you are attempting to hide.’
She blinked at him.
Leo laughed—oddly.
‘We don’t all go for anorexic pop-stars barely out of the schoolroom,’ he explained helpfully. ‘Some men even like a challenge in a woman instead of seeing it all hanging out and handed to us on a plate.’
His gaze dropped to the rounded shape of her breasts where they heaved up and down inside her jacket. It was pure self-defence that made her pull in her chest. His eyes darkened as he flicked them back to her face and Natasha knew then what it was he was talking about.
‘You want to unwrap yourself and fulfil my curiosity?’ he invited. ‘I didn’t think so.’ He smiled at her drop-jaw gasp.
‘Why are you doing this—s-saying these things to me?’ she whispered in genuine bafflement. ‘Do you think that because you witnessed what I witnessed it gives you the right to speak to me as if I am a slut?’
‘You would not know how to play the slut if your life depended on it,’ Leo grimly mocked. ‘It is a major part of your fascination to me that with a sister like yours, you are like you are.’
Natasha