Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWO
‘D ON ’ T TOUCH ME , ’ Helena commanded in a harsh whisper, painfully conscious of the guests not terribly far away, her head swimming and panic crawling across her skin.
‘I’m not,’ Leo growled, his hand hovering near the base of her spine having the same impact as a red-hot poker would have. He turned back to the priest and his parents, following just behind.
‘ Parakaló , Father, Mamá, Patéra...would you give us a few minutes? We would like to just take in this beautiful moment.’
This beautiful moment?
Leo’s words tripped around her head and she thought it half a miracle that they couldn’t hear the insincerity dripping off them like poison.
Cora glanced between them and Helena nodded to let her know that it was okay. Helena hadn’t seen as much of Leander’s parents as she would have liked since the showdown between Leo and her mother following the mistake Gwen had made with Liassidis Shipping, and Cora’s concern touched her deeply. But if Helena had even a single hope of figuring out what was going on, and how she was going to fix it, she would have to talk to Leo. Right now.
She watched the priest and Leo’s parents leave the small, ornately decorated room. Turning away from the powerful impact his mere presence had on her, she was confronted with the cloth-covered table—a large book open to display the marriage schedule detailed in beautiful calligraphy. And there, mocking her, were empty spaces waiting for their signatures. No, not theirs, his .
Leander’s.
Without that, she would never be able to access the shares that she needed to save the charity.
Oh, God, what was she going to do?
She spun back to face Leo, taking a step closer than she had intended, her worry, her concern so strong.
‘Where is he?’ she demanded, unable to keep the panic from her voice.
‘How should I know?’ demanded Leo, as if affronted she would even ask that of him.
He peered down at her, apparently uncaring of how close they were standing. And she hated the way her body responded, as if he were the man of her dreams instead of her nightmares. They were almost chest to chest, pressed against the superfine of the dark impeccable wool of his three-piece suit, the pristine white shirt that smelt of cotton and sandalwood, and she fought the temptation to inhale deeply. Because if she did breathe in, her chest would push against his and—
Leo stepped back so suddenly she nearly stumbled forward. Humiliation coursed through her as she regained her equilibrium, turning away from him to take that much needed breath.
‘There must be some mistake,’ she insisted.
‘The only mistake you made, agápi mou , is trusting Leander for even a single second.’
‘Don’t call me that,’ she lashed out, resenting the affectionate moniker that had no place between them.
She leaned back against the table and looked resentfully at the man who was seemingly unaware that he was standing in a sunbeam that picked lovingly over such incredibly handsome features. Helena knew that most people had a hard time telling the Liassidis twins apart, but she had never fallen foul of mistaking one for the other.
It was as if she could sense their personalities as much as what they looked like. Leander was playful, fun, irrepressible to the point of distraction. The week that she, Kate and Leander had just spent together in the lead-up to the wedding had been full of parties and fun, drinking and dancing. They’d been staying at the private island owned by the Liassidis family while his parents were away and she’d sensed absolutely nothing wrong with Leander. No, as always, he’d been his larger than life, gregarious self.
But if Leander was the life of the party, then Leo was the hangover in character form. The painful reminder of the morning-after, of earthly responsibilities and recriminations—that mistakes must be punished and paid for.
And while their features were near perfect symmetry—the thick, raven-dark hair almost wilfully unruly, the patrician nose, the savage cut of cheekbones regularly wept over by models, the closely cut beard that looked insolently stylish and the broad determined forehead—there was a difference.
Leo had always held himself back. He was just that little bit more isolated, that little bit less gregarious than Leander, a trait that had only increased with time and their separation, as if their differences had become more marked.
Because Leander had never impacted her the way Leo did—like her breath had been stolen, like flames heated her skin, like her pulse, her body even, was attached to the snap of his fingers, ready to leap at his whim.
Helena cleared her throat, suddenly painfully aware that she had been staring at him.
‘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.
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—’
‘The honeymoon?’
‘Yes. We’re supposed to attend various events to be seen, to prove that this is a real marriage. So that when I register the marriage certificate in the UK there are no questions then about me accessing my inheritance.’
‘You need me to pretend to be him.’
‘I need you,’ Helena grudgingly explained, ‘to pretend to be the affectionate, playboy, charming husband that Leander would have been.’
‘I can do that.’
‘You have as much charm as a venomous snake,’ she hissed. And while everything feminine in her roiled at pretending that Leonidas Liassidis was her ‘loving husband’, she couldn’t deny that he could give her what she needed quickly and without fanfare.
‘How much?’ she asked, cutting to the heart of the matter. She thought she saw a flash of surprise, but it was gone in the blink of an eye.
‘Fifty million. For all your shares.’
Helena nearly choked. ‘That’s nearly a third of their market value, Leo. That’s daylight robbery,’ she accused, horrified. She’d expected to make nearly two hundred million from the sale.
He shrugged as if to say take it or leave it .
‘Absolutely not!’ she cried out angrily as pinpricks of sweat dotted the back of her neck.
It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough to replace the money stolen from Incendia.
‘Okay,’ Leo said amicably. ‘It’s your call. I’ll just slip out the back and you can explain to all the guests that my brother has disappeared to leave you stranded and alone on your wedding day. I’m sure that the press will have more sympathy for you than him. But, to be honest, none of this will affect me in the slightest.’
He turned and before she could stop herself she’d reached out to grab his arm. He paused, looking down at where her hand had grasped onto his sleeve as if he couldn’t believe she’d dared.
She removed her hand and he turned slowly to give her his full attention. How could she have ever thought there was anything remotely decent about this man? It had been years since they had properly spoken, more years before that since they had laughed together. Just the thought of it seemed nearly impossible. And now? She couldn’t ever imagine laughing with this man again.
He was blackmailing her with an offer that was so offensive it made her feel nauseous. But what choice did she have? If she didn’t agree to his offer, then there was no way that she could hope to plug the shortfall caused by the CFO’s theft. And if she didn’t, then the charity would be declared bankrupt by the financial review in December. Millions of people, families experiencing loss and devastated by cardiac events, would suffer. All because she hadn’t been able to fix it.
‘I don’t need to know what you need the money for... All that’s important is that you need to sell the shares, and I am in the position to buy them the quickest.’
Leo was right in one way. But he had also made a big mistake in revealing how much he wanted to have the shares for himself. It was a weapon. Small, and not enough to beat him, but enough to get what she needed.
‘One,’ she threw out between them.
‘One what?’
‘One hundred million.’
His head snapped back as if he’d hardly expected her to even think, let alone dare, to actually counter his offer.
‘No.’ The word was a full stop cutting through the air.
‘Okay,’ Helena said, putting her hands on her hips. ‘You’re right. I’ll call this off. I’ll figure out a different way to solve my issues. And I’ll still have thirty percent shares in Liassidis Shipping,’ she taunted.
Tension snapped across those broad shoulders, making him appear to loom more imposingly over her. He went very still, as if fearful that if he moved the wrong way he might lose the one thing he most wanted. Those shares.
‘And then, when I’m twenty-eight, just think of what I could—’
‘Seventy-five.’
‘No.’
Leo slammed his teeth together before he could say another word. Helena Hadden had learned how to negotiate. There had been a time when her face had been so expressive that he could have sworn he’d all but seen her words before she said them, but now? Staring back at him was a fury who had chosen the hill she would die on. He couldn’t afford to underestimate her like he had with her mother, or this time the damage could be fatal.
And really, if he was honest, offering fifty million for thirty percent shares in Liassidis Shipping was almost disgusting. One hundred was still nauseating. But it was a drop in the ocean of what Gwen had cost the company, so Leo told himself that the deeply unfair price was nothing but compensation years after the event.
He could have let her sweat a little more, but they didn’t have time. He could feel the restlessness of the guests waiting in the nave, the concern building between the priest and his parents.
‘One hundred.’
She held out her hand as if to seal the deal.
‘I’ll have my people email you the contract,’ he said, ignoring her hand and turning back to call for the priest, missing the way that Helena masked the jagged edge of pain that crossed her features.
His parents, thankfully, remained studiously quiet while the priest went through the legal requirements.
Helena was first to sign the register, her gaze flicking to his one final time before the pen flew over the dots beside her printed name.
Unaccountably, his pulse picked up. Looking down at the piece of paper, the jarring sight of Helena’s name beside that of his brother tightened a grip around his chest. Recognising it as a reasonable response to the chaos his brother and Helena were dragging him into, he placed his pen on the paper.
Signing this was the height of stupidity. If they were ever discovered, it would absolutely destroy his reputation and in all likelihood be the very end of the company—and after he’d worked so hard to bring it back after near bankruptcy.
But if they weren’t discovered then he would finally have the whole of the company to himself. Without another thought, Leonidas Liassidis signed the register as his brother.
Five minutes later, he took his place beside Helena in front of the priest and the wedding guests and counted down the minutes until he could get away from the church and Helena and get a drink in his hand. The reception would at least afford him some space from her, he prayed, as the priest’s words washed over him. Until...
‘In the sight of God and these witnesses, I now pronounce you husband and wife! You may now kiss!’
His mind went utterly blank for a moment, the pulse of blood rushing in his ears became thunderous, even as he leashed himself back under control. He turned to face Helena, studying her carefully, her eyes wide with shock and something close to fear, but not quite. He half-expected her to run, but she didn’t. She simply watched him, her gaze a physical touch against his senses.
He raised his hand to the side of her face as if to cup her jaw, but stopped short of touching, and he chose to ignore the ripple of response across Helena’s features, chose to ignore his body’s instinctive response to her as a woman. Because his brain had absolutely no trouble remembering just how far he needed to keep from Helena Hadden.
She watched, wide-eyed, as he dipped his head. He felt the entire congregation in the church hold their breath in anticipation, surprised to realise that Helena had done the same—the blue depths of her eyes beginning to disappear beneath the black of her pupils.
Leashing an instinctive response, he dipped his head deeper, cutting off the line of sight to their lips from the guests in the church, and lowered his thumb to Helena’s mouth. He slid the pad of his finger across the slick surface, blurring the gloss coating of the flushed plump lips, trying to ignore the subtle flinch that pulled at Helena’s body as he did so.
Oohs and ahhs filled the nave of the church and the only person who would ever know that they hadn’t kissed was his fake bride.