CHAPTER SIX
INTHEBIG villa sited on the hill above the bay, Leo grabbed Letty’s hand when she would have followed the children and the nannies upstairs. ‘No, they’ve had enough of your attention for one day. Those kids were a nightmare to travel with,’ he said with a decided wince.
‘Because,’Letty replied with emphasis, ‘they were overtired and overexcited and the journey totally disrupted their routine.’
‘Sometimes schedules have to be disrupted,’ Leo countered lazily, tugging her inexorably back to the entrance door and the darkness outside, which had prevented her from seeing much of the island as they flew in on a helicopter. ‘This was a special day and you wanted to share it with them. The downside of that decision was their exhaustion.’
Letty nodded, silently conceding that but more curious about where he was trying to take her. ‘Where on earth are we going?’
Leo recalled the flight out to Greece and the cross crying, continual demands and screaming from the children and gritted his teeth. Parenting was tougher than he had ever imagined but he was adapting because he hadn’t once contemplated leaving his nieces and nephews behind in London. Instead he had come up with a compromise for their honeymoon that would give Letty and him some much-needed space. Not for the first time that day his head spun with a definite sense of wonderment at the commitment he was about to make—one he had never anticipated. It was a huge step for him and he was still marvelling at the awareness that such an idea had even occurred to him.
‘There’s a guest cottage on the beach. We’re staying there.’
‘But we have to be here with the children,’ Letty began afresh.
Leo froze and turned back to her. ‘I am delighted that you have already become so fond of the children,’ he admitted truthfully. ‘But it would be good if you could concentrate…occasionally…on my needs.’
Her lashes fluttered in sheer bewilderment. ‘But why would I want to do that?’ she whispered as he urged her into the beach buggy awaiting them outside the villa.
‘We’ll discuss that over dinner,’ Leo assured her smoothly as the driver took off down a sloping trail.
Why on earth would he ask her to concentrate on him and his needs? Letty was utterly bewildered. Did he see that as some fundamental rule for an award-winning wife? Was she supposed to be considering his comfort ‘occasionally’ more than the well-being and security of the children? That was very possible, she conceded with a faint sigh of relief that she had finally grasped what he was driving at in his expectations of her. Really, sometimes, Leo was hopeless at communication! She supposed it was a reasonable request that she not put the kids first in every case and allow that now and again, much as Leo clearly loved the children and rejoiced in a wealth of nannies, he would appreciate some adult freedom and peace. In any case, she resolved, she could get up early in the morning and join the children for breakfast.
‘So, what’s this guest cottage all about?’ she asked as they climbed out of the buggy and had their luggage offloaded and carried into the substantial natural stone building sited on the edge of the beach.
‘My mother liked to paint and it was originally built as an art studio. Katrina renovated it and used it for guests. She had a great need to eradicate anything that reminded her that she was my father’s second wife,’ he stated grimly. ‘Strictly speaking, any changes to the properties here were illegal because even as a child the island was mine but, realistically, I was never going to prosecute my father.’
‘I suppose you would’ve liked to inherit it as your mother left it,’ Letty gathered quietly, picking up on Leo’s innate protectiveness when it came to anything relating to his mother’s memory. ‘But you knew your father couldn’t stand up to Katrina’s more forceful character.’
‘In a nutshell,’ Leo agreed as the door to the softly lit interior was opened and the luggage was piled in and carted upstairs. ‘Dad’s a wimp when it comes to Katrina.’
In silence Letty raised a brow, able to recognise how much Leo despised his father’s weakness when it came to Katrina and belatedly grasping that over the years he had come to regard his dead mother as a complete saint and a wronged woman.
The accommodation might not have been in the state which Leo would have preferred to inherit but it was contemporary and very stylish and, in Letty’s humble opinion, quite beautiful, with floor-deep windows overlooking the sea and the shore. The table at the far end was already set for a candlelit meal. She wondered who was providing the food and then heard noises of activity emanating from what appeared to be a kitchen to the rear. She was relieved not to have to cook because she was tired and she doubted that Leo, raised with attentive staff from birth, even knew how to switch on a kettle. He genuinely had grown up in a different world from hers.
‘Have I time to freshen up?’ Letty asked, already halfway up the spiral staircase.
‘Yes. I could use a shower too,’ Leo admitted, following her.
At the top of the staircase, Letty gazed in astonishment at the huge bedroom. Only one bedroom? Only one bed? Surely not? She slowly turned and watched Leo calmly stripping off his suit jacket and yanking off his tie as if she were invisible. She bent down to open a case and extracted a change of clothing, wondering if they were only to dine at the guest cottage and sleep up at the house, but there was something awfully like a statement about the fresh flowers on display and what looked like herbs or something scattered across the fancy silk cover on the bed. Of course, the staff would assume it was a normal marriage with a normal wedding night, Letty conceded, quelling her unease as Leo got naked right in front of her as if that too was quite normal.
Maybe he assumed that because she was training as a doctor she had few inhibitions about the human body, but Letty was shy, sexually inexperienced, and the sight of Leo’s lean, bronzed and very muscular physique naked brought her out in goosebumps of awareness. She hastened into the bathroom, considered locking the door and then abandoned the concept because she wasn’t a child or a frightened teenager, was she? He could use the shower—she could share the facilities, couldn’t she?
In haste she used the shower, scared the door would open but it didn’t, and then, in even greater haste, she donned a blue cotton maxi dress that she had bought with her own money to relax in. Leo’s credit cards had purchased all the wedding finery as if money were no object and she supposed to him it wasn’t. But expressing that little bit of independence had helped her come to terms better with the prospect of a new moneyed lifestyle which she hoped to become used to one small step at a time because spending was still so foreign to her. She had never had money to spend freely, had always had to live on a strict budget. She unwound her hair from its elaborate upswept bridal style and massaged her stiff neck muscles before walking out to the bedroom again.
Leo was out on the balcony beyond the bedroom, still stark naked and nonchalant as he gazed out to sea. Her breath feathered in her throat. He was like…perfect—she selected the word inwardly, her cheeks burning. A flawless pinup for an anatomy lesson. No longer need she wonder at the attachment women developed for him. Clothed, he was a very sexy box of tricks. Unclothed, he was undeniably gorgeous, every honed powerful line of him revealed.
‘You’re very shy…’ Leo breathed in apparent surprise when her flushed face met his and she glanced hurriedly away again, terrified her thoughts were showing in her expression. ‘I’m sorry… I didn’t think—’
He was more sensitive than she had given him credit for, Letty acknowledged, and she smiled. ‘No harm done. We’re supposed to be married. I’m sure there’ll be occasions when we have to share…er…stuff.’
‘We are married,’ Leo reminded her as if she might forget.
‘I’ll see you downstairs,’ Letty breezed with determination, mortified by the reality that she was behaving like a shrinking violet simply because he had undressed. Naturally, he wouldn’t have been expecting that, probably having assumed that she had had a man or two in her bed, and she wasn’t going to admit that she was a virgin because there was no reason for her to share such an irrelevant fact with him.
Unsurprisingly, Leo was accustomed to experienced women—women who probably stared and mentally oohed and aahed over his magnificent body. Modesty wasn’t a skill he had ever needed to learn, and he had, she strongly suspected, few inhibitions in the bedroom. As she sat down at the exquisitely set table, she smiled to herself. She needed to practise being less hidebound and conventional around Leo.
Leo came down again, garbed in jeans and a black shirt and still barefoot, black hair damp from the shower. He had shaved though, the dark stubble that had started to noticeably shadow his strong jawline gone. His lean, darkly arresting features held her gaze and only when she registered that she was staring did she hurriedly look away and address herself to the food now being brought to the table.