Michelle Reid - Hot Nights with a Greek

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.

‘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.’