He could tell she was still taken aback by his change in plan, though.
“You’re angry with me,” Leander surmised.
“No. Why would I be?”
“Because I didn’t tell you what I wanted to do.”
“Because you didn’t trust me to go through with the wedding tomorrow,” she extrapolated. “You don’t trust me.”
“I can’t,” he said bluntly, steeling himself against the bloom of hurt in her eyes. “The dominoes I’ve set in place are so delicate, it would only take one false breath to wreck it all.”
“Don’t tell me what else you’re planning, then. Let it be a surprise for me as well as him.” She moved into the bedroom, peeling off her jacket as she went.
Leander sighed, but he had no regret. The cascade toward Midas’s downfall would start now and there was nothing the other man could do about it.
Midas would try, of course. Leander had no doubt about that. There would be some attempt to disrupt tomorrow’s wedding, but it would not only fail, Midas would expose himself as the villain he was.
That was the first prong of Leander’s attack. The second was to put the screws on Midas financially. Midas lived beyond his means—which was saying something considering the depth of the family fortune. Most of his assets were either leveraged to the hilt or bought on credit he couldn’t pay down. Leander had been quietly positioning himself to buy up the other man’s debts and loans so he could call them. That, too, began tomorrow.
The third and fourth tine on his barbed fork were aimed at Hercules and Odessa. By taking them out, Midas would lose his most loyal supporters and have little to fall back on.
Hercules had made himself an easy target by spending the last two years painting for a gallery showing. The gallery in question had recently been purchased by a shell company owned by Leander. It would close its doors indefinitely, locking all of Hercules’s work inside, tying up any funds or acclaim he might have earned from those sales. Hercules could sue to have them released, but it would cost him a pretty penny to do so.
As for Odessa, did she think she was the only one who could grind gossip through the rumor mill? Misuse of charity funds wasn’t even an unfounded lie. Leander literally had the receipts showing a profound difference in the actual costs of catering and the amount claimed against the raised donations. All of Odessa’s pet caterers and planners would think twice about allowing her stink to attach itself to their reputations in future.
Within a few weeks, the entire family would be in such a shambles it would be an easy sell to the board that Leander should take Midas’s place at the helm of Pagonis—especially if his wife was carrying the heir to the company by then.
I don’t want you to have a baby with me for any reason than that you want one.
He did want one. Ilona might not believe it, but he wasn’t thinking of their child as an instrument of vengeance. Only as a signpost of where the future was headed. Ilona’s children would inherit the company and thus the board’s allegiance should fall to her.
More than that, he wanted a baby for her. She wasn’t the spoiled heiress he had originally judged her. She was privileged, but deprived. Strong as hell, yet vulnerable. Isolated. He wanted to give her the family she craved.
He wanted to give her things no one else had. Freedom from fear. Security. Orgasms.
He closed his eyes, still astounded she hadn’t had any lovers. It was a crime that she had denied herself all this time and, if he delved around in his bucket of motivation, he knew his rush to marry her wasn’t purely about revenge, either. He wanted her.
Why? He didn’t harbor any secret fetishes for an untouched innocent.
But something about being with her while she discovered her sexuality pleased him. It turned him on and made him feel protective and indulgent and proud. It made him hungry. He wanted to show her everything they could do, make her tremble and moan and cry out in joy.
Maybe he did have a secret fetish.
Maybe he just wanted to have sex with a woman who had been on his mind constantly from the moment he’d met her.
He followed her to the bedroom.
Ilona was in a state of confused anticipation. She was angry with Leander. She was hurt that he didn’t trust her. She was also nervous.
They were married. That meant they could have sex. Which wasn’t to say she had been waiting for some sort of permission. She had only set that deadline because she was so darned daunted by the prospect and now that excuse was gone.
Which didn’t put her off. She wanted to sleep with him. They had hours before the rehearsal dinner. A prickly heat coated her skin with something akin to urgency, but what if she wasn’t good at it? What if they were both disappointed? The first time was always said to be a letdown. Anticlimactic.
Who had come up with that stupid pun?
How did she even make overtures to get things started? What would he think of her if she did?
She was standing in her robe, trying to work out what to put on so she might look enticing without looking desperate, when the bedroom door opened and he came to prop his shoulder against the open door of the closet.