Page 16 of Greek's Temporary "I Do"

Frowning at the message from Helena that could just have easily been said in person, he typed back irritably.

Yes?

The car is coming in thirty minutes.

His hackles rippled at her clipped tone, but he restrained the urge to snipe back. Yes, Helena needed him. But he also needed her. If he alienated her, he might never get hold of those shares, and he’d never have what he’d always wanted: complete control of Liassidis Shipping.

He reached his room and peered at the wardrobe, filled with clothes that belonged to his brother. Clearly, when Leander had left, it had been with nothing but his phone and presumably a passport.

But the moment Leo caught himself wondering what had possibly made his brother do such a thing, he stopped himself. It made no difference to him. He no longer allowed himself to be tormented by the whys of his brother’s behaviour.

He showered quickly, dressed and was buttoning up the crisp white shirt when he realised he was standing in the one place in his room where he could see through his own door, down the hallway and into Helena’s room.

From this exact point, he could see the corner of her bed, and Helena looking at her reflection in a floor-length mirror.

Leo turned his attention to the cuffs of his sleeves. At home, Leo had rows and rows of cufflinks on display. They were the final touch on an appearance that mattered to him as the face of Liassidis Shipping. And while Leo knew Leander wouldn’t wear them, he purposefully retrieved the pair he’d worn the day he’d arrived at the wedding and fastened them in place.

He glanced back up to catch Helena putting in an earring. Her head was tilted to one side, her hair styled in a pretty, messy knot high on her head, showing off the slender arch of her neck. It was such a simple moment, but one that felt oddly private, as if it were something he shouldn’t be witnessing.

But his gaze still consumed the sight of her, dressed in the floor-length, high-necked green velvet dress, as if she were a feast. His hungry imagination, delighting in this moment of voyeurism, offered up suggestions for what his eyes couldn’t see and what his subconscious desperately wanted.

Inches of pale skin glowing beneath jade-coloured lingerie filled his mind. He saw his hand slide across that skin, felt it shiver beneath his touch, tasted the heady scent of her as he pressed open-mouthed kisses to her breasts, relished the damp, wet heat of her as he delved between her legs.

His pulse tripped and sweat broke out across his neck. Locked in that moment of erotic images, his famously quick brain made a million and one connections, all hurtling towards fierce arousal as if it were a race.

So attuned to her body, he felt the moment she realised that he was watching her, the way that tension pulled like a thread across her shoulders. He forced his gaze away and stepped from view, taking ruthless control over his wayward body.

Helena was a means to an end. Nothing more. She could never be anything more. And he didn’t want anything more, he told himself. This was nothing but an aberrant response to the female form. And it wouldn’t happen again, he warned himself.

By the time he’d regained his composure, Helena had retrieved her clutch and was making her way towards him down the corridor.

‘You shouldn’t be wearing cufflinks.’

Biting back a response, because right now anything that came out of his mouth would either sound petulant or lecherous, he simply stated, ‘We’ll be late.’

‘Leander is always late,’ she dismissed easily. ‘You shouldn’t be wearing cufflinks.’

‘I should be about two hundred and eighty kilometres away and not here, involved in this farce, but...’ And he shrugged as if to say, here we are.

Helena glared at him. ‘Fine. But please remember. If people don’t believe that you are Leander and that we are happily married, you can kiss your shares goodbye.’

The car pulled up at the red-carpeted entrance to the gallery in Kalamata for the opening night of an exhibition by an up-and-coming artist garnering deserved amounts of attention for her unique subversion of the male gaze. Helena had been more than happy to support the event when Leander had chosen it, but with Leo beside her she wanted to be anywhere else but here.

She just couldn’t imagine how he would respond to the detailed and graphic images that had prompted extreme responses in both the media and the public. But, Helena supposed, she would soon find out.

Leo slipped wordlessly from the car and came round to her door, holding it open and offering his hand. The smile on his face shocked her for a moment after the cold silence between them since leaving the villa, but then the first of many flashbulbs erupted and she remembered that he was supposed to be Leander.

She stood and he placed her hand in the crook of his arm and gestured towards the length of red carpet, where the three-deep crowd of paparazzi waited impatiently. As always, she felt assaulted by the bright flashes of light directed their way. In England, her family wealth and name had always drawn attention, but her marriage to a Liassidis had launched the attention into a whole new stratosphere.

‘Leander, over here!’

‘Helena, Helena!’ another called.

From somewhere in the mass of dark shapes looming behind the bright flashes, questions were hurled their way.

‘How’s the honeymoon going, Helena?’ one voice jeered, but she kept her smile.

‘Is it true what they say about him, Helena?’

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