Page 4 of Greek's Temporary "I Do"

She and Kate paused outside the large doors that would open to the nave of the church, listening for a moment to the gentle hum of conversation and the soft sounds of string music. Helena wasn’t religious, but she couldn’t help but wonder if it was sacrilegious to marry in this way, in this place, for reasons that had nothing to do with love.

‘We could run, you know. I’ve got the car keys,’ Kate whispered as if sensing her hesitation.

Helena laughed and turned to see Kate’s reassuring smile, the easy confidence she had radiating over Helena like a balm.

‘No. I’m good. But thanks though,’ Helena said.

‘Loves ya,’ Kate said, causing Helena to grin at the favourite phrase passed back and forth between them.

‘Loves ya,’ Helena replied. ‘Now, let’s do this.’

The wedding march started up and unseen hands opened the doors from the inside. Kate began her procession down the aisle and Helena’s heart started to pound. Even though it was silly, it wasn’t ever going to be a real marriage, nerves dotted her skin with pinpricks. Helena locked her gaze firmly on the bouquet in her hand, which was why she didn’t see the way that Kate stiffened and almost missed a step.

Helena didn’t, in fact, see much until she was nearly halfway up the aisle because it was only when Kate stepped to the side, glancing in panic between her and the man at the top of the aisle, that Helena realised that something was wrong.

Something was terribly, horribly wrong.

Because standing at the top of the aisle, the six-foot-four-inch dark-haired, bronzed Adonis wasn’t the man who had promised that he’d do everything in his power to help her. No.

Standing at the top of the aisle was the last man she’d ever expected to see.

Leonidas Liassidis.

Leo stared at the closed doors of the church, silently cursing his arrogant, reckless brother to hell and back, utterly uncaring that he did so in a church.

He was furious. How dared Leander do something like this?

If Leo hadn’t picked up the message his brother had left him little less than three hours ago, he wouldn’t have even been here. As it was, he’d barely made it on time.

Leo cursed silently again.

He hadn’t spoken to Leander in five years and this was the first thing his brother had asked of him?

‘Be me.’

There had been more on the message, but now as he stood at the top of a church aisle in front of one hundred and fifty guests, it was all Leo heard.

‘Be me, be me, be me.’

They hadn’t pulled this stunt since they were boys. Back when he’d still considered Leander his brother, before his lies had betrayed the future that Leo had thought he would have with Leander by his side. The future Leo had wanted.

Time hadn’t dulled the memory of the day they had turned eighteen, when their father had offered them a choice: inherit Liassidis Shipping, beginning a three-year handover period from him to them, or take a sizeable fortune and strike out on their own.

They’d spent years of their teenage lives talking about what they would do with Liassidis Shipping. Years, planning how to make it the industry number one, how they would rule together, side by side, sharing all decisions and doing it all together.

And right up until that moment, Leo would have sworn he knew his brother better than he knew himself. But when their father made the offer that had been made to him by his father, Leo had looked at Leander and seen a stranger staring back at him.

Even the thought of it rippled tension across the muscles of his back. Betrayal, fury, a potent phosphoric taste in his mouth. Leo clenched his teeth together, painfully aware that he was the sole focus of the entire congregation at that moment in time. And in that congregation were his parents, staring at him, looking horrified.

Because although he and Leander were truly identical—to the point where the number of people that could tell them apart could be counted on one hand—his parents had recognised him the moment he had entered the church.

But he had been ushered immediately up to the top of the aisle before he could tell them what was going on. And even if he had been able to speak to them, what would he have said? Would he have repeated what his brother had said when he’d left his message?

That Leander had ‘needed time’?

Time for what, the maláka had not even bothered to explain.

Leander had insisted that he would be back by the end of the honeymoon, but Leo didn’t believe him for one second.

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