Page 8 of Greek's Temporary "I Do"

Helena swallowed. ‘I can inherit those shares earlier than my twenty-eighth birthday if I marry.’

Leo felt as if he’d been slapped. Shock poured into every cell of his being.

‘Why do you need the shares, Helena? What are you going to do with them?’ he asked, realising suddenly that, no matter what played out here today, no matter where his brother was, whether he came back at the end of the honeymoon or not, his own life was about to change irrevocably.

Helena squared lean shoulders and faced up to him.

‘I’m going to sell them,’ she declared mutinously. ‘As is my right.’

Helena had heard the phrase a face like thunder, but never actually seen it until now.

‘You’re going to sell the shares,’ Leo repeated, almost word for word, as if making absolutely sure that he’d heard her right. ‘Do you have any idea how that could impact Liassidis Shipping?’ he demanded hotly. ‘Any at all? How could you be so—’

‘Keep your voice down,’ Helena hissed.

He inhaled an angry breath and turned around, but Helena didn’t miss the way that his fists clenched as if he’d hoped they were wrapped around her neck, before he plunged them into his trouser pockets.

She watched the shift of the wool suit jacket over the shoulders he rolled and as he cricked his neck from one side to the other. He stood so tall within the vestry, he nearly took up all the space.

‘Who?’ he asked, without bothering to turn and look at her.

‘Who what?’ she responded, not quite sure what he meant.

His exasperated sigh echoed around the room. ‘Who are you selling the shares to?’

Helena frowned. To be honest, she hadn’t thought that far ahead. She didn’t need her business degree, or her master’s, to know that the moment she had access to the shares there would be a feeding frenzy. People would bite her hands off for Liassidis Shipping shares.

She should have been pleased, but she wasn’t. The thought of selling the shares her father had left her in a company he and Giorgos had built from the ground up devastated her. It was her father’s legacy—the only thing of his that she had left, after her mother had sold the house and everything in it while she’d been away in her last year at boarding school, ‘desperate to move on with my life,’ she’d explained in the phone call that had taken away the last of what had once been Helena’s entire life.

‘You haven’t decided yet,’ he accurately guessed, pulling her back into the present.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose in warning. She could see the wheels turning behind Leo’s fierce eyes. The intensity in them was as hypnotic as it was unbearable and she had just realised what he was about to say when the words came out of his mouth.

‘Sell them to me.’

‘No.’

Leo laughed, cruelty masked by remarkable beauty. ‘It’s not as if you’re in a position to refuse me.’

‘What are you going to do?’ she demanded. ‘Marry me? It’s Leander’s name on the register, not yours,’ Helena pointed out.

‘And the only people that know I’m not my brother are you and my parents. And it’s in none of our interests to reveal the kind of fraudulent activity we’re about to embark on.’

‘You’re mad. Crazy. You would never put Liassidis Shipping in such a risky position. What if we were discovered?’ she demanded.

‘The reward is worth it.’

To have you removed from anywhere near my company, she all but heard him add in the silence.

An ache bloomed deep within her heart from one too many rejections but she told herself it didn’t matter.

‘And you’re desperate,’ he pressed. ‘I don’t need to know what you need the money for, whether you spent too much on pretty clothes, or whether Gwen has tried to destroy another company,’ he dismissed, uncaring of the effect his words had on her. ‘All that’s important is that you need to sell the shares, and I am in the position to buy them the quickest. So, tell me what you need in exchange for them.’

And at that moment she truly hated Leonidas Liassidis. Of all the things he’d ever said about her, of all the things he’d done after her mother had made an easy mistake for someone utterly new to business, this was what Helena would resent him for the most.

Making her feel weak and vulnerable, to him.

‘It’s not just the wedding,’ she finally admitted through gritted teeth. ‘It needs to be unquestionably a marriage. Leander...before he left, arranged for us to attend events throughout the next week—’

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