Leo frowned. ‘For what?’
‘To return to medical school,’ Letty replied happily. ‘I’ve applied for entrance for next year because I thought the kids and I should have the rest of this year to bond.’
Leo wondered when he would get the chance to bond with her and then questioned why he was having such a weird thought when they were already married. ‘I’m sure they’ll rearrange the interview for you,’ he commented.
Letty frowned. ‘There’s no need to rearrange it. Popi returns to school next week, so it all dovetails perfectly.’
‘Popi can return to London with one of the nannies and the rest of the kids while you stay on here. I have meetings in Athens next week,’ Leo pointed out equably, certain he had found the perfect solution.
Letty wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh, that won’t do. We can’t separate the children and Popi shouldn’t be in that huge house alone.’
‘Alone with a domestic staff of at least ten people,’ Leo slotted in drily, wishing yet again that Letty didn’t place literally everyone else’s needs ahead of his. ‘I want you to stay here with me next week.’
Letty opened and closed her mouth a couple of times and then encountered her father-in-law’s curious gaze and opted to remain silent. She would talk to Leo in private, fight with him without an audience because she had not the slightest doubt that it would be a fight when Leo spoke in that my way or the highway measured tone.
‘Leo…?’ she murmured from the office doorway once the children were in bed and his father had gone down to the village to catch up with old friends.
Leo frowned down at his laptop and then glanced up, immediately thinking how incredibly beautiful she was, even in worn jeans and a sweater. Maybe it was the appeal of aunaturel to a man who had never had that option with a woman before, he reasoned absently. There was faint colour in her cheeks and with her hair tumbling round her shoulders just a little messily she still contrived to look amazingly appealing to his eyes, and thinking about that wildly sensual little encounter in his manager’s office made him instantly hard.
‘Yes?’ His voice emerged huskily.
‘I have to return to London next week and I’m taking all the kids as well,’ Letty told him bluntly.
Leo frowned. ‘But I’d prefer you to remain here with me.’
Letty drew in a deep breath. ‘Leo…you married me to be a mother figure to the children, so please allow me to occasionally know what’s best for them. Popi would be upset to be parted from her sister and brothers and I want to attend that interview, not rearrange it. Don’t forget that my right to return to studying medicine is in our prenup.’
All of a sudden Leo could feel his usually very even and controlled temper threatening to go nuclear on him. He realised that it was her reference to that wretched prenuptial agreement that set him off, not to mention his father’s disturbing revelations about his marriage to Leo’s mother. Had the document been sitting in front of him at that moment he would have ripped it to shreds. ‘Does that mean you can’t compromise?’ he pressed in a curt undertone.
‘I won’t compromise when it comes to being straight about what the children need,’ Letty countered squarely. ‘I’m sorry, that’s not something that can be or should be negotiated.’
Leo released his breath on a long slow hiss and vaulted upright. Stunning dark golden eyes locked to her like grappling hooks. ‘We’re newly married. I am trying to be reasonable here!’ he bit out in a harsh undertone. ‘I want you to make what I want a priority—your main priority.’
Letty suppressed a sigh and cursed all the very many willing-to-please women who had worked tirelessly together to imbue Leo, the ultimate Greek tycoon, with such an outdated set of values. ‘This time I’m going to say no because the children are still too vulnerable to suffer separation or too much disruption…but another time, when they are better adjusted to their life with us, I will try to accommodate your wishes.’
Leo ground his teeth together. He totally understood her reasoning, even sympathised, but they had been married only a week and had spent very little time together. Now they would be apart another week and soon after that he had a trip to the US planned. Exactly when was he going to find time to be with his wife? Surely that should be of crucial importance to her too because without a functioning marriage, where would the children be then?
Feeling very dissatisfied with Leo’s reaction, Letty went off to dig out a book and read while striving to put that exchange behind her and not brood. She had to be reasonable, she instructed herself. She was dealing with a pretty spoilt and selfish man, who was still learning to deal with the changes children brought to life. Leo wasn’t likely to turn into a gilded saint overnight and her constantly reminding him that the kids had to come first seemed to be a particular goad. She wondered why that was when he had only married her to be their substitute mother.
She was tossing and turning, sleepless and still trying to fathom the mystery that was Leo’s tangled and contradictory thought processes, when Leo slid into bed beside her, startling her. ‘I thought you were still working,’ she commented.
‘No. I need to make the most of my wife while she’s still here and available,’ Leo told her, stripping her out of her silky nightgown with ruthless efficiency.
Rather exciting efficiency, Letty conceded, pulses picking up speed, heart pounding before his mouth even enclosed hers. She lifted up to him, wildly enthralled by the lean, hard muscular length of him pressing down on her. She was learning so much about herself that her head was spinning, registering that even when Leo set her teeth on edge she continued to crave him and was reassured now rather than annoyed to find herself still an object of desire. She loved him so much, she thought passionately, small fingers smoothing caressingly over his satin-smooth broad shoulders and up into his silky hair. There was no rhyme or reason to it but Leo was it for her, the summit of her dreams, her most insane fantasies and the key to her happiness and accepting that reality unnerved her a little.
‘Get with the programme,’ Leo breathed, gazing down at her with eyes that glittered jet black in the moonlight. ‘You’re a thousand miles away inside your head.’
‘How do you know that?’ Letty asked with a look of guilt.
‘Because you’re the only woman who has ever treated me like that and it is not a compliment,’ he murmured ruefully.
‘Well, maybe I’m disconnecting because you’re always in control,’ Letty suggested, planting her hands against his chest and sending him flat on the mattress beside her because she was embarrassed by the truth that she had floated away inside her anxious thoughts.
Letty revelled in Leo’s surprise and she chuckled. ‘So lie back and think of Greece like Victorian women used to do—’
Obligingly, Leo stretched, naked and bronzed and awesomely attractive, all lithe and sexy and willing to be seduced. Letty grinned down at him. ‘Now, I warn you I may be a little clumsy at first, but practice is crucial,’ she pointed out.
Leo lay back and surveyed the wonder that was Letty, who never ever did anything the way he expected and, as he was discovering, it was an extraordinarily fascinating quality in a woman. He had been seduced by women to whom sex was an art form, but every stroke of Letty’s uncertain fingers, every tiny enthusiastic kiss from her generous mouth had an infinitely stronger effect on him. And whether it was the medical training or the truth that he had married a superbly sensual woman, it was the sexiest hour he had ever enjoyed, and he told her so afterwards.