Page 7 of Greek's Temporary "I Do"

‘What did he say to you?’ she asked.

‘Here. You can listen for yourself.’

Leo pulled his phone out of the pocket of his trousers and pressed the screen. Within seconds, Leander’s voice filled the small room.

‘It’s me. I know we’ve not spoken for...well. You know how long it’s been. I need you to do something for me. I have to go away. I just need some time... I’ll be back by the end of the honeymoon, but until then I need you to do something for me. I need you to be me. I know you’re not going to want to. But Helena needs this...’

Leo pressed a button on the screen, stopping his brother’s message.

Helena frowned. ‘Is that all there is to the message?’

‘All that’s pertinent to this situation,’ he replied, not entirely sure why he had cut off the message there. But he knew instinctively that she wouldn’t have wanted to hear Leander beg him not to leave her alone on her wedding day. Not because she wouldn’t appreciate Leander’s concern, but because he, Leo, had heard it.

She was staring at his phone as if there was more. As if there was some kind of explanation still to come.

‘He wouldn’t do this to me,’ she said, lost in her thoughts. ‘He knows...’

‘He knows what, Helena? Why you’re performing this absolute scam of a marriage?’ Leo asked, refusing to disguise the scorn and disdain he felt for her and his brother in that moment. He hated lies, detested dishonesty, and it didn’t get much more dishonest than this. ‘What is it? What could you possibly hope to get from this?’ he demanded, finally at the end of his patience.

Helena bit her lip. He could see the struggle in her eyes. Azure blue, misting over with sea spray.

‘The why isn’t pertinent to the situation,’ she had the audacity to throw back at him.

‘Fine. It doesn’t matter anyway. The moment that the priest comes back, I’ll tell him I’m not signing it and I’m done. Out,’ he said, cutting through the air with his hand.

The effect on Helena was instantaneous, as if she’d been burned by fire. She launched herself across the vestry, her hands in little fists, raised as if she was holding herself back from actually clutching onto the lapels of his suit jacket.

‘Please, Leonidas, please. I... You can’t,’ she said hopelessly. ‘I... I need you.’

The words seemed to shock them both.

‘Then tell me what this is all about,’ he demanded.

She nodded fast, and a thin tendril of wheat-blonde hair unwound from the chignon. Helena began to pace and he began to feel uneasy for the first time that day.

‘Helena—’

‘I’m thinking!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m...trying to figure out where to start.’

She turned on him mid-stride.

‘Do you remember the shares my father left me?’ she asked, her eyes bright shards of blue piercing him straight in the chest.

Of course he remembered the shares her father had left her in Liassidis Shipping. They tormented him each shareholder meeting where decisions were made that determined the future success of his company.

After Leander had taken his father’s money and disappeared, Gwen Hadden’s ignorant and stubborn decision had nearly destroyed the company, and it was Leo—alone—who had poured blood, sweat and tears into returning Liassidis Shipping to its rightful place as the number one company in the global industry. He had worked furious hours, with no one and nothing to guide him but his grit, instinct and determination. And he alone was responsible for the outcome.

In the years since he had fully taken over from his father, Leo had built up a global client list, with even more desperate to work with him. But the knowledge that anyone, let alone a Hadden, would one day inherit the thirty percent of Liassidis Shipping shares that her father had left her in his will had tortured him. He hated that, like her mother, Helena could impact the company’s decision-making process. He hated that he didn’t have complete control over a company that should be entirely his.

‘Naí, of course I do, Helena,’ he bit out.

She pulled her top lip beneath her teeth. ‘The terms of my father’s will state that I will inherit those shares—’

‘When you are twenty-eight years old. Yes, I know. Two years’ time.’ The date had been indelibly printed on his brain ever since he’d heard the terms of the will. It had been like a bomb, ticking down until the day he no longer had a decent grasp on his company.

‘Do you remember the caveat?’

Leo frowned. ‘No, I... What caveat?’ he asked, his stomach beginning to shift uneasily.

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