The Greek's Forced Bride. Michelle Reid

had not been aware of holding her breath. He finished the climb up the stairs and carried her into a sultry summer-warmed bedroom with pale walls and big dark pieces of furniture. A red Persian rug covered most of the polished oak floor.

      Then he really shocked her by dumping her unceremoniously on the top of a huge soft bed.

      As Natasha lay there blinking up at him Leo stood looking down at her, his expression as hard and cynical as hell. ‘Stay there and pull yourself together,’ was all he uttered before he turned around to walk back to the door.

      ‘Why?’ Natasha shook out.

      ‘I will not play substitute to any man,’ the cold brute answered.

      Natasha sat up. ‘Y-you said you wanted me.’

      ‘Strange—’ he turned, his kiss-heated mouth taking on a scornful twist ‘—but seeing you getting off on the possibility of Rico witnessing us together was a real turn off for me.’

      Natasha sat up with a jolt. ‘I was not getting off on it—!’

      ‘Liar,’ he lashed back, then really startled her by striding back to the bed to come and lean over her—close enough to make her blink warily because she just didn’t know what was going to come next.

      ‘To keep things clear between us, Natasha,’ he murmured silkily, ‘if you loved what we were doing downstairs so much you forgot all about Rico, then ask yourself what that tells me about Miss Betrayed and Broken-hearted, hmm—?’

      It was as good as a cold, hard slap in the face. Natasha just stared up at him because the worst thing of all was that he had only told it how it was! She had been thinking about Rico when she’d invited what she had downstairs. And she had no excuse for the way she had begged him to bring her up here!

      But had he behaved any better? ‘You cruel, h-hateful swine,’ she breathed, and pulled up her knees so she could bury her face.

      Leo agreed. He was behaving like an absolute beast feeding her all the blame for whatever had erupted in both of them downstairs. It was still erupting inside him, he admitted as he turned away again and strode back to the door, wishing that he had stayed in Athens this morning instead of…

      Telephones started ringing again, piercing through the high-octane atmosphere—his phone in his jacket pocket and another phone ringing somewhere else in the house. Retrieving his mobile, Leo glared at the display screen, expecting it to show Rico’s name.

      But it was Juno, his PA. Leo sanctioned the connection. ‘This had better be important,’ he warned as he stepped out of the bedroom and pulled the door shut.

      Natasha lifted her head at the sound of the door snapping into its housing. He’d gone. He’d left her sitting here in a huddle on his bed and just walked away from her—because he could.

      On a sudden pummelling punch of self-hatred she scrambled up off the bed, hurt beyond sense that yet another man had humiliated her in the space of one horrible day.

      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