Rebecca Winters - Latin Lovers - Greek Tycoons

‘I’m fine,’ she murmured.

It was the answer Leon wanted and slowly he lowered her to her feet. He turned off the water and cupped her head in his hands and gently swept back the tangled mass of her hair from her face before placing a soft kiss on her lush lips.

‘Good. Me too,’ he admitted huskily. ‘So no more arguments about sharing my bed, hmm.’ He lifted her out of the shower and, taking a towel from the rail, he wrapped it around her back.

She was everything he remembered from the very first time he’d set eyes on her years ago. Her breasts were high and firm with perfect pink tips, her waist tiny, and now he knew she was a natural blonde. She was so much more than he had expected. From the very beginning he had sensed her awareness of him, known he could have her, but he had never imagined she would be so wildly responsive to him.

‘And no more flinging cups of chocolate.’ He knotted the towel between her breasts and stepped back. ‘I am not easy to anger, but I do have a temper,’ he admitted and, taking another towel, he wrapped it around his hips.

Helen gazed at him helplessly. He was so cool, so in control it was incredible, whereas she did not know herself any more, her emotions were all over the place. Honesty forced her to admit it was her temper that had started the confrontation and his temper that had got them in here. As for what had happened afterwards, it was as much her fault as his, she thought, glancing around the small, steamy room.

‘Oh, my God! I can’t believe I did that in a bathroom.’ Not realising she was speaking the thought out loud.

‘I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,’ Leon mocked, his lips parting in a broad grin, his dark eyes sparkling with amusement colliding with hers.

‘Hardly,’ she cried, shocked, but his humour and his grin were irresistible and her own lips quirked at the corners in a reciprocating smile. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’ And she was fast losing her mind again; Leon looking relaxed and happy was a seductive sight.

‘Let me do the thinking for both of us, and in future I think we should stick to our bedroom,’ he declared, swinging her up in his arms. ‘That way we will have a long and contented marriage.’

‘That is the most chauvinistic comment I have ever heard,’ Helen stated. ‘And will you stop sweeping me off my feet all the time? I can walk,’ she almost wailed.

Held in his arms she felt helpless and vulnerable and a whole host of emotions she did not want to face. So much for her vow never to let him touch her again.

‘I love the way you walk, but it is so much quicker carrying you to bed,’ he said with a wicked grin, carrying her out of the bathroom.

‘Please put me down. I need to pick up my clothes.’ She glanced around the room and began to struggle. ‘Anna will be horrified at the mess we have made.’

‘You worry too much,’ he mocked. ‘Anna won’t mind; she has plenty of staff to help her clean up.’

He glanced around the room, and paused. He had been too angry to notice the room when he had stormed in, his whole attention on the woman in the bed, but now he looked around. Some furniture was shoved against one wall, and an easel stood in front of the window with books, paints and other stuff littering the deep window sill.

‘You paint,’ he said in astonishment, and some memory niggled at the back of his mind. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I’m an illustrator,’ she snapped, wriggling in his arms. ‘I thought it was obvious. I told you my wedding dress was Nicholas’ choice. It was the same style as the one the fairy is wearing in the picture on his bedroom wall at home, the one I did for a children’s book. I am not the useless little woman you seem to think, and will you put me down?’

Leon’s eyes flared. Of course, the drawing in the boy’s room. He looked down into her flushed face with barely concealed amusement in his. That was why he had thought she looked familiar on their wedding day, her dress had been a replica of the one the fairy wore, he realised, though on Helen it had looked sexy, but, yes, a little fey.

‘I didn’t believe you when you said Nicholas had chosen your dress.’ He shook his head in wonder. His wife was a talented artist along with her more obvious talents. She never ceased to surprise him.

He tightened his hold on her and pressed a swift kiss on top of her head. ‘You and I need to talk. I want to know what other secrets you are keeping from me. But not here.’ He strode forward.

She glanced around the messy bedroom as he headed for the door and for some reason she felt as if she owed him an explanation. ‘I asked Anna for a room for a studio. She didn’t know I was going to sleep here.’

‘I am sure she didn’t,’ Leon drawled, striding into the hall. ‘Anna is a hopeless romantic and I see no reason to disillusion her.’ He glanced down at her flushed face. ‘Luckily you and I have no such illusions, correct?’

‘I am not sure I know what you mean,’ Helen murmured as he elbowed the door open into the master suite and gently lowered her to her feet, his hands loosely clasping her waist.

His dark eyes narrowed astutely on her guarded face. ‘Anna has romantic notions of love and marriage out of all proportion to reality. Probably because she has never married,’ he said cynically. ‘Take it from one who knows: what you and I have is so much better.’

‘And what exactly do we have?’ Helen asked, her heart sinking. The passionate lover of moments ago, the man who had awakened her body in a way she had never dreamt possible, was once again looking at her with cold, mocking eyes. And it crossed her mind to wonder why he was so hardhearted, or if he had a heart at all.

‘We have a child to care for, and we have this.’ As his mouth took hers in a kiss that left her lips tingling and her temper rising.

‘Sex,’ she spat.

‘Don’t be so quick to knock it, Helen. Great sex is a hell of a lot more than some so-called love matches ever achieve,’ he stated decisively.

‘And however much your conservative little mind wishes it was otherwise, the physical chemistry between us is dynamite.’

For her, yes, but for Leon she wasn’t so sure. He was a sophisticated, experienced lover and he had not got that way being celibate, she thought bitterly.

‘I have to take your word for that as I have no experience except you to draw on. According to Delia, not something the Aristides men ever suffer from much past puberty. They are noted for their obedient wives and countless mistresses,’ she drawled derisively.

‘Damn Delia,’ he swore. ‘She got an idea in her head and stuck with it to the end, just like our mother.’

‘Your mother?’ she queried, momentarily diverted from her seething resentment of the man.

His mouth twisted in a cold smile. ‘Your interest in my family has been long but flawed, sweetheart. Maybe it is time you heard the truth.’ Leading her to the bed, he sat down and pulled her down beside him, a long arm sliding around her waist to keep her there.

‘You and I need to have a talk to get a few things straight. As you said I was labouring under the illusion you did nothing except look after children, and now I know different. You’re an artist in your own right. Tomorrow a proper studio will be provided for you. But by the same token your concept of me is totally coloured by Delia’s opinions of her family and not necessarily true.’

‘Says you,’ she snorted.

He ignored her jibe and continued, ‘Contrary to what you think, my father never blamed Delia for our mother’s suicide. If anyone was to blame it was probably me.’

‘You?’ His statement surprised and intrigued her.

‘Yes. After I was born she had a mental breakdown.’ A wry smile twisted his hard mouth at her shocked expression. ‘She was in and out of hospital for years. Why do you think there was a fifteen-year gap between Delia and I?’