Modern Romance December 2019 Books 1-4. Maisey Yates

frilly trappings of the day were confusing her. Certainly, Leo in a morning suit was a sight to behold with his sleek dark angel beauty, his perfect features bronzed and composed, those dark eyes steady and serious, not softened or bright with the love he might have felt for a genuine bride. Inwardly, Letty swore at the tenor of her thoughts.

      ‘You look fantastic,’ Leo told her as she reached the altar.

      Of course, he had to say something like that, it was expected of him, and it was almost as if someone had yelled ‘Showtime!’ in Letty’s ear. She switched on her approximation of a bright bridal smile because Leo had made it clear that their agreement was private, and the rest of the world were to be left to believe that they were a normal couple. As if she would ever have captured a guy with Leo’s looks and wealth in the real world, Letty found herself thinking with helpless cynicism, reckoning that it was little wonder that people were curious and staring while they wondered how she had contrived such a miraculous feat.

      The beautiful words of the ceremony were something she tried not to dwell on or feel even slightly bitter about because, all else aside, this was not how Letty had once vaguely imagined her wedding day would be: with a groom by her side who loved and cared for her as she cared for him, a true partnership of hearts and souls. She reminded herself sternly of the benefits that the wedding had already brought to her family and would bring to Leo’s orphaned nieces and nephews. It was foolish to crave some starry-eyed ideal, she told herself firmly, because that craving was a fantasy—a fantasy that Leo would definitely never deliver.

      ‘Diávolos…’ Leo whispered the curse in her ear as they progressed back down the aisle. ‘That’s the worst bit over.’

      Letty laughed. Yes, that sentiment was very much Leo. He had as much sensitivity as a brick thrown at a window. Airy, feminine, finer feelings about weddings were foreign to him. Cosmo clutched at her skirts and she bent down and lifted him up, pressing a kiss to his troubled little face. ‘You don’t like the crowds, do you?’ she gathered, holding him close, enjoying the sweet baby smell he still retained.

      ‘I warned you that this might be too much for them,’ Leo declared.

      ‘They need the memory of being part of this,’ Letty told him gently and only then registered that she was having her first conversation with Leo since that shameful little episode in the limousine. Her face warmed but she buried the recollection deep again. She had been brazen and silly and she had embarrassed herself, but that was human and it would be pointless to punish herself about something she could not change.

      Leo was hoisting Sybella to his shoulder when a tall, slender blonde in a blue dress approached them. ‘What on earth are your nannies doing, Leo?’ she demanded imperiously. ‘The kids should be out of sight and out of mind at such an occasion.’

      Reluctant to offend a stranger, Letty swallowed back a sharp retort.

      ‘We want them with us today,’ Leo stated smoothly in direct contradiction of his words to Letty only seconds earlier. ‘Katrina, meet Letty… Letty, this is my father’s wife, Katrina.’

      Grateful then that she hadn’t snapped out a tart response, Letty absorbed the reality that Leo’s stepmother, Katrina, was much younger than she had expected and English into the bargain. She smiled.

      But the pretty blonde wasn’t even bothering to look her way. Indeed, all her attention, her curiously avid attention, was for Leo. ‘I just can’t believe the size of the sacrifice you’re making for those kids…actually getting married,’ she said in an incredulous tone. ‘Your father and I were astonished.’

      Katrina’s very blue eyes were locked on Leo, her fascination with him so strong it was tangible. Dear heaven, his stepmother was in love with him, Letty registered with shocked distaste. Luckily the photographer wanted a few shots at that point and Katrina was forced to back off while the nannies reclaimed the children. In the crush around the porch steps she watched a white-haired older man with a hint of Leo’s cast of feature join Katrina, undoubtedly his father.

      ‘I didn’t realise your stepmother was much closer to your age than your father’s,’ Letty admitted simply on the drive to the hotel where the reception was being staged.

      Leo compressed his lips. ‘She’s fourteen years older than me. She was twenty when my father married her. I was six. Ana was a baby. After her arrival in our lives I don’t have one good memory of my childhood. She doesn’t like kids, but she wanted one of her own to cement her position in the family. When she failed to conceive, she resented Ana and me even more.’

      ‘She doesn’t resent you now,’ Letty pointed out, not being a woman to ignore a controversial topic, in spite of the warning signs that Leo’s harsh diction and grim expression put out. ‘In fact I’d say she’s in love with you.’

      Leo’s big shoulders tensed and his teeth gritted but he said nothing, deeming it a topic better left untouched.

      ‘No comment?’ Letty looked at him in disbelief. ‘I suggest that your stepmother is in love with you and you have nothing to say at all?’

      ‘I wouldn’t call it love,’ Leo countered between clenched teeth, feeling that he had no choice other than to be honest about the situation since Letty was too astute to be fooled and left ignorant. ‘Katrina began flirting with me when I was sixteen and by the time I was twenty-one she was trying to seduce me!’

      ‘Oh, my goodness!’ Letty exclaimed with shocked distaste, registering that she had had to pressure him to surrender that truth about his father’s wife because naturally such a sordid secret must have put a huge burden on Leo. ‘Did you tell your father?’

      ‘Of course not… It would have destroyed him!’ Leo framed harshly. ‘He adores her. Whatever faults I have, I am at least loyal and I care about my father even though he has been pretty hopeless as a parent. Katrina, however, disgusts me.’

      ‘I shouldn’t have pried,’ Letty muttered ruefully, watching the anger she had ignited fade from his taut, lean dark features while noting the pain he was striving to bury about his disturbing past. ‘But I sort of felt I had to know the family background so that I didn’t put my foot in it.’

      ‘Don’t worry. We won’t see much of either of them. My father and Katrina live in New York,’ Leo informed her. ‘He’s devoted to her. Whatever she wants, she gets. I remember a huge row many years ago about the diamond set you’re wearing. Katrina wanted them but they belonged to my mother and her jewellery was left to her children in her will. Katrina couldn’t get past the law.’

      ‘Is that why I’m wearing it today?’

      ‘Only one of the reasons. You’re my wife. You’re a Romanos now and you are entitled to wear my mother’s diamonds.’

      ‘You’ve never told me anything about your mother either,’ Letty remarked.

      ‘I have few memories of her. She died having Ana. In those days, we lived on her family’s island… My mother was an heiress from a far wealthier family than my father,’ Leo stated wryly. ‘Ios, the island, now belongs to me, along with everything else that was my mother’s. Her inheritance was protected by an unbreakable family trust. Katrina was not best pleased to marry my father and learn that he wasn’t as rich a man as she had naively assumed.’

      ‘Serves her right if that’s all she cared about,’ Letty said roundly.

      ‘I’ve always believed that she was his mistress before she was his wife. My mother may have died before her time, but I suspect that if she had lived my father would have divorced her for Katrina because he was and still is besotted with her.’

      ‘There must be a huge age gap between them.’

      ‘Twenty-odd years.’

      Letty raised a brow but knew that it worked for some couples even though it clearly hadn’t worked for Leo’s father and stepmother. ‘I wonder if your mother knew your father had a mistress.’

      Leo took