Michelle Reid - Hot Nights with a Greek - The Greek's Forced Bride / Powerful Greek, Unworldly Wife / The Diakos Baby Scandal

Feeling her shiver, Leo flicked a glance at her, then frowned as with a smooth grace he bent and scooped up the robe she had been wearing and draped it around her shoulders. ‘Shut up now, Gianna,’ he commanded grimly. ‘You sound like a shrieking cat.’

To Natasha’s surprise the shouting stopped. ‘You were supposed to be at Boschetto’s tonight,’ Gianna switched to condemning English. ‘I waited and waited for you to arrive and I felt the fool when you did not turn up!’

‘I made no arrangement to meet up with you,’ Leo said, bending a second time to pick up his towel, which wrapped back around his hips. ‘So if you made a fool of yourself, you did it of your own volition.’

‘You were expected—’

‘Not by you,’ Leo stated. ‘Here, let me help you…’

Trying to push her arms into the robe sleeves, Natasha found Leo taking over the task, but, ‘I’ll do it myself,’ she breathed tautly, and pushed his hands away.

She couldn’t look at him—did not want to look at his ex-wife. Embarrassment was crawling around her insides and she felt so humiliated she was trembling with it.

Speaking earned Natasha Gianna’s attention; she felt the other woman scythe a skin-peeling look over her. ‘So you like them short and fat now?’ she said to Leo.

Fat? Natasha burned up inside with indignation, huddling her size-ten figure into the all-encompassing bathrobe.

‘Much better than a rake-thin whore with a sluttish heart,’ Leo responded, reaching out to stroke one of his hands down Natasha’s burning cheek as if in an apology for his witch of an ex-wife’s insult. ‘Now behave, Gianna, or I will have Rasmus throw you out of here. In fact,’ he then drawled curiously, ‘I will be very interested to hear how you got in here at all?’

Daring a glance at the other woman, Natasha saw that she was standing there with her slender arms folded across her slender ribs. She had to be six feet tall and the way she’d been poured into that red satin dress said everything there was to say about the differences between the two of them.

No wonder she still claimed super-model status, she concluded, flicking her eyes up to Gianna’s fabulous bone-structure to see that her almond-shaped, Latin black eyes were gleaming defiance at Leo, her lush red mouth set in a provoking pout.

Leo released a soft, very cynical laugh as if he understood exactly what the look was conveying.

‘So, who is she?’ Gianna flicked another snide look at Natasha. ‘Yet another attempt you make to find a substitute for me?’

Natasha flinched. Leo drew her back into his arms again and ignored her when she tried to pull back. ‘Never in a thousand years could anyone substitute you, my sweet-tongued angel,’ he mocked dryly. Then he looked down at Natasha and, with the silken tone of a man about to rock her world off its axis, ‘In the form of a heartfelt apology to you, agape mou ,’ he murmured soft to Natasha, ‘I must introduce you to Gianna, my ex-wife.’

‘I am your ex-nothing!’ Gianna erupted.

‘Gianna.’ He spoke right across the shrill protest. ‘Nothing in this world has ever given me greater pleasure than to introduce you to Natasha, my very beautiful future wife.’

As a cool, slick way of dropping a bombshell, it was truly impressive. Staring up at his totally implacable face, Natasha almost fell backwards in shock.

The beautiful Gianna turned deathly white. ‘No,’ she whispered.

‘You wish,’ Leo responded.

‘But you love me!’ Gianna cried out in pained anguish.

‘Once upon a time you were worth loving, Gianna. Now…?’ He gave a shrug that said the rest, then apparently committed the ultimate sin in Gianna’s eyes and leant down to capture Natasha’s shock-parted lips with a kiss.

Without any warning it was about to happen, fresh pandemonium broke out with a keening wail that spliced up the atmosphere, then Gianna was coming at Natasha like a woman with murder in mind. Natasha jumped like a terrified rabbit. Leo spat out a curse and stepped right in front of her, taking the brunt of Gianna’s fury upon himself.

It was horrible, the whole thing. Natasha could only stand there behind him, shocked into shaking while Leo contained his ex-wife’s wrists to stop her long nails from clawing his face.

Then he bit out a terse, ‘Excuse us…’ to Natasha, and he was manhandling the screaming woman out of the bedroom.

The door thudded shut in his wake. Natasha found that her legs couldn’t hold her up a moment longer and she sank in a whooshing loss of energy down onto the edge of the bed.

Beyond the door, Rasmus was just stepping out of the lift. Leo sent him a glancing blow of a look and his security chief paled. ‘I’m sorry, Leo,’ he jerked out. ‘I don’t know—’

‘Get her out of here,’ Leo gritted. ‘Take her home and sober her up.’

Gianna had stopped fighting and screeching now and was sobbing into his chest and clinging instead. Disgust flayed Leo’s insides when it took the controlled strength of both men to transfer her from himself to Rasmus and get her into the lift.

‘I don’t know how she got in here,’ Rasmus said helplessly.

‘But you will do,’ Leo lanced out. ‘Then see to it that whoever it was on your staff she laid in return for the favour is gone from here,’ he instructed, then stabbed the button that shut the lift doors.

Alone in the hallway, he spun round in a full circle, then grabbed the back of his neck. Anger was pumping away inside him, contempt—repugnance. Having taken a telephone call from Gianna when he first arrived here, he’d told her that she had to get the hell off his back!

Her barging in here had been deliberate. Even the angry shrieking had been a put-up job. And the fact that she would not think twice about seducing one of his staff to get what she wanted was just another side to her twisted personality that filled him with disgust!

‘Theos,’ he muttered, long legs driving him through the apartment and pulling him to a halt outside the closed bedroom door, the knowledge that he’d lost the towel again having no effect on him at all.

He wasn’t stupid. He knew that Gianna’s nicely timed interruption had been a set-up, just as he knew the comparison Natasha had drawn from the moment it all kicked off.

Rico with her sister.

A curse ripped from him, followed by another. He paced out the width of the hall trying to clamp down on the anger still erupting inside him because—how the hell did he explain a sex-obsessed feline like Gianna, who only functioned this side of sane while she knew that he was always going to be around to help pick her up when she fell apart?

You didn’t explain it. It was too damn complicated, he recognised as he took in a grim breath of air, then threw open the bedroom door.

Natasha was back in the blue suit, and she was stuffing her things back into her bag.

‘Don’t you pull a hysterical scene on me,’ he rasped, closing the door with a barely controlled thud.

His voice sent a quiver down Natasha’s tense spinal cord. ‘I’m not hysterical,’ she responded quietly.

‘Then what do you call the way you are packing that bag?’

The searing thrust of his anger shocked even Leo as Natasha swung round to stare at him. Miss Cold and Prim was back with a vengeance, Leo saw, and she was stirring him up like…

She saw it happen, and lifted a pair of frosty blue eyes to his. ‘Is that response due to her by any chance?’ And her voice dripped disdain.

Hell , Leo cursed. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, not sure exactly what it was he was apologising for—the snarling way he had spoken to her or his uncontrolled…

She spun her back to him again. Snapping his lips together, he strode over to the bank of glossy white wardrobes and tugged open one of the doors. A second later he was pulling a pair of jeans up his legs.