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Oh, she had to get out of here! Natasha almost screeched that need at herself as she looked around the floor for her shoes and couldn’t find them. Then she remembered the vague echo of them falling off her feet and hitting the floor when Leo had picked her up. Her hair fell forward, tumbling in long waves around her face as if to taunt how she’d been so wrapped up in what she’d been doing with him that she hadn’t even noticed before now how her hair had sprung free of its restraints!
Like herself. She shuddered, turning like a drunk not knowing where she was going and heading for the door. She made it out onto the landing and even found her way back down the stairs without coming face to face with anyone else. The door to the living room still hung wide-open and the wretched tears almost broke free when she saw the way her jacket lay in a pale blue swish of fabric on the floor by the chair she had been sitting on before she…
Swallowing, she hurried forward to snatch up the offending garment, pulling it on and fastening it up while she scrambled her feet into her shoes.
He arrived in the doorway, lounging there and filling it with his lean, dark, overbearing presence and…
Her phone started to ring in her purse.
With what tiny bit of control she had left, Natasha bent down to scoop up the purse, then dragged the phone out with trembling fingers and just slammed the wafer-thin piece of shiny black plastic forcefully down on the floor.
It stopped ringing.
The sudden rush of silence throbbed like the beat of a drum in her head, and the tears were really threatening now like hot, sharp shards of flaming glass hitting the backs of her eyes and her throat. She spun towards the door to find Leo was still there, blocking her only exit.
Her mouth began to work, fighting—fighting the tears. ‘Please,’ she pushed out at him on a thick broken whisper. ‘I need you to move out of my way so I can leave.’
Silence. He said nothing. He did not attempt to move. His eyes were half hooded, his lips straight and tight. And there was just enough narrow-eyed insolence in the way he was casually standing there with his arms folded across his front like that to make Natasha realise that something about him had altered dramatically.
‘W-what—?’ she shook out.
Leo wondered how she would react if he accused her of being a play-acting little thief?
‘I am just curious,’ he posed very levelly. ‘Leave here for where?’
But inside he didn’t feel level in any other way. Inside he was feeling so conned he didn’t know how he was managing to hold it all in!
Rico’s little accomplice—who would have thought it? Apparently Miss Cool and Prim was not so prim when it came to letting her greedy, grasping, slender fingers scoop up the cash Rico had stolen from him!
‘To find Rico, perhaps?’ he suggested when she didn’t say anything.
‘No!’ She even managed to shudder. ‘H-home,’ she said, ‘to my apartment.’
‘You don’t have your keys.’
‘I’ll get the janitor to let me in.’
‘Or your loving sister,’ Leo provided. ‘I predict she is already there, waiting to pounce on you the moment that you arrive.’
Was the other sister in on the scam, too?
And look at this one, he thought as he shuttered his eyes that bit more before running them down her front. She was back to being buttoned up to the throat as if the passionate interlude they’d just shared had never taken place—if you didn’t count the flowing hair and the flush on her cheeks and the kiss-swollen bloom on her lips that he had put there.
‘What does it matter to you if she is?’ Natasha asked. ‘This was never your problem,’ she informed him stiffly. ‘You should not have become involved. I don’t even know why you did or why you had to bring me here at all!’
‘You needed a safe place to recover,’ Leo said dryly.
‘Safe?’ Natasha choked out. ‘You’d barely dragged me through your front door before you were coming on to me!’
His careless shrug shot Natasha into movement, wanting, needing to get away from the insufferable devil so badly now she was prepared to risk the feeble strength in her shaky legs to walk towards him—aware of the way his eyes followed her every footstep—aware that at any second now she was going to fall down in a screaming hot puddle of tears on the floor.
And still he did not move out of her way so she could get out of here, so the closer she came to him, the more her senses went wild, fluttering in protest in case he dared to touch her again—and at the same time fizzing with excitement in the hope that he did!
I don’t know myself any more, Natasha thought helplessly. ‘Move,’ she demanded, resorting to a bit of his own blunt way of speech.
The slight tug his mouth gave was an acknowledgement of it, but he didn’t shift. ‘You cannot leave,’ he coolly informed her.
Was he mad? ‘Of course I can go.’ Shoulders tense, Natasha tried to push him out of her way by placing her hands on his chest. It didn’t happen. It was like trying to move a fully grown tree, and in the end Leo caught up her fingers to lift them away from his chest.
‘When I said you cannot leave, Natasha, I meant it,’ he informed her very seriously. ‘At least not until the police arrive to take you away, that is…’
CHAPTER THREE
NATASHA froze for a second. Then, ‘The police?’ she edged out blankly.
‘The Fraud Squad, to be more accurate,’ Leo confirmed.
‘Fraud…?’
His mouth gave a twitch at the way she kept on echoing him. ‘As in swindler and charlatan,’ he provided, driving his gaze down her body as if to say the crime was that she looked the way she did yet could turn on so hotly the way she had.
Natasha quivered, her cheeks turning pink with shamed embarrassment. ‘I don’t usually…’
‘Turn on for a man just to pull the wool over his eyes…?’
Untangling her fingers from his, she fell back a couple of steps and really looked at him, catching on at last that he was leading somewhere with this that she was not going to like.
‘Since I don’t have a single clue what it is you’re trying to get at, I think you had better explain,’ Natasha prompted finally.
‘Does that mean you do want to go to bed with me and it is not a sham act?’
Natasha tensed, lips parting then closing again, because the true answer to that taunt was just not going to happen. ‘I was in shock when I—’
‘In a state of fright, more like,’ he interrupted, ‘as to what Rico had done to all your plans, with his crass bit on the desk today.’
‘Plans for what?’ Lifting a hand into her hair, she pushed the tumbling mass back from her angrily bewildered face. ‘I was planning to marry him—well, there’s one plan gone down the tubes,’ she choked out. ‘And as you’ve just kindly pointed out to me, I caught him having sex with my own sister—so there’s my pride gone the same way along with any love for my sister!’ The hand dropped to fold along with the other hand tight across her front. ‘Then I surrendered to some mad desire to be wanted by anybody and you happened to be in the right place at the right time,’ she pushed on, ‘but that was just another plan sent off down the tubes when you changed your mind about w-wanting me!’
‘And now your carefully creamed nest egg is about to go the same way,’ Leo added without a hint of sympathy. ‘So I would say that you are having a very bad day, today, Natasha. A very bad day indeed.’
‘Nest egg?’ Natasha picked up. ‘What is it you are talking about now?’
Wearing that smile on his lips that she didn’t like, Leo levered himself away from the doorframe and moved away, leaving her to turn and watch as he headed for the drinks cabinet.
He needed something strong, Leo decided as he poured neat whisky into a glass. He took a good slug, then turned back to look at her, ‘I have just been talking to my PA,’ he enlightened. ‘Juno has been very busy investigating where Rico stashed the money he stole from me and has managed to trace it to an offshore bank account in your name, so lose the bemused expression, Natasha. I’m on to you….’
Nothing happened. She didn’t gasp, she didn’t faint, she didn’t jump in with a flood of denials or excuses aimed to defend what it was he was talking about now. Instead, Leo stood there and watched while something cold struck into him because there it was, the dawning of honesty taking over her lying, cheating, paling face.
That mouth was still a killer though, he observed—and slammed the glass down, suddenly blisteringly angry with himself for being so easily duped by her challengingly prim disguise!
‘I think you had better sit down before you fall down,’ he advised her flatly.
And she did, which only helped to feed his anger all the more. The flowing-haired witch dropped like a stone into the nearest chair, then covered her guilty face with her light-fingered thieving hands!
Rico had stolen the money, Natasha was busily replaying over and over. He’d placed stolen money in an offshore bank account in her name! One of her hands twisted down to cover her mouth as the nausea returned with a vengeance. In the dragging silence blanketing the space separating them she could feel Leo Christakis’s ice-cold anger and blistering contempt beating over her in waves.
If he’d made this declaration yesterday, she would not have believed him. But now, with everything else she’d been forced to look at today, Natasha didn’t even see a chink of a question glimmering in the nightmare her mind had become as to whether there had been some kind of mistake.
Everything about Rico had been a lie from start to finish. The way he’d used his looks and his charm and his fabulous blinding-white smile to lure her to him, the way he’d poured soft words of love over her too-susceptible head and refused to make love to her because he wanted to protect her innocence, while all the time he’d been cynically planning to turn her into a thief!
Pulling her fingers away from her mouth, ‘I’ll give you the money back just as soon as I can access it,’ she promised.
‘Sure you will,’ Leo confirmed. ‘Once you have recovered your composure, we will go and see to it straight away.’
That brought her face up, whiter than white now so her eyes stood out bluer than blue. ‘But you don’t understand. I can’t touch it yet.’
‘Don’t play the broken doll with me next, Natasha,’ Leo bit out impatiently. ‘It won’t alter the fact that you are going to give me my money back now—today.’
‘But I can’t!’ Anxiety shot her quivering to her feet. ‘I can’t touch it until the day before I was supposed to be marrying Rico! He said it was a tax loophole he’d discovered—that you had told him about! He said we had to lock the money up under my name in an offshore account until end of business the day before we marry, then transfer it to another account in our m-married name!’
Leo suddenly exploded spectacularly. ‘I do not appreciate you trying to involve my name in your filthy scam!’ he bit out at her furiously, ‘and telling me stupid lies about access to the money is not going to get you out of trouble, Miss Moyles! So cough up the cash or watch me call the damn police!’
In a state of nerve-numbing terror, Natasha backed away as he took two long strides towards her with a murderous expression clamped to his face. The backs of her legs hit the chair she’d just vacated and she toppled back into it. He came to stand over her as he’d done in the bedroom, only this time Natasha put up her hands in an instinctive need to keep him at bay.
Watching her cower in front of him sent Leo into an even bigger rage. ‘I don’t hit women,’ he rasped, then turned on his heel and walked away—right out of the room.
The police—he’s going to call the police! Out of her mind with fear now, Natasha scrambled upright and chased after him, terrified of going anywhere near him but even more terrified of what would happen if she didn’t stop him from carrying out his threat! He’d crossed the hall and entered a room opposite, which turned out to be a book-lined study.
Coming to a jerky halt in the doorway, she stared as he strode up to the desk and picked up the phone.
Panic sent her heart into overdrive. ‘Leo, please…’ The pleading quaver in her voice made him go still, wide shoulders taut. ‘You have got to believe me,’ she begged him. ‘I didn’t know the money was stolen! Rico conned me into banking it for him as much as he conned you out of it in the first place!’
The last part didn’t go down too well because he began stabbing numbers into the telephone with a grim resolve that sent Natasha flying across the room to grab hold of his arm.
Warm, hard muscles bunched beneath her clutching fingers, anger and rejection pouring into his muscular frame. ‘He s-said it was to ensure our f-future,’ she rushed on unsteadily, ‘He said it was a bequeath to him from your father you had been holding in trust! He s-said you…’
‘Wanted to see the back of him so badly I was prepared to break the law to do it?’ Leo suggested when her scramble of words dried up.
‘Something like that,’ Natasha admitted. Then—Oh, dear God, what had she let Rico do to her? ‘Now you are telling me he lied, which means he lied to me about absolutely everything and I—’
The phone went down. Leo turned on her so suddenly Natasha was given no chance to react before she found herself trapped in his arms. His mouth arrived. It took hers with an angry heat that offered nothing but punishment yet she responded—responded to him like a crazy person, clinging and kissing him back as if she’d die if she didn’t! When he pulled away again she was limp with shock at her own dizzying loss of control!
‘Take my advice,’ he rasped. ‘Keep with the seduction theme; it works on me a whole lot better than the innocent pleading does.’
Then his fingers gripped her arms like pincers, which he used to thrust her right away from him, and he was reestablishing his connection with the phone.
Natasha’s heart lodged like a throbbing lump of fear in her throat. ‘Please,’ she begged him, yet again having to swallow to be able to speak at all. ‘I 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.
