Chapter Four
CHAPTER FOUR
H ELENA WOKE UP feeling awful. She peered at the clock on the side table next to the large bed she barely remembered collapsing into last night. She closed her eyes against the glowing display announcing that it was seven in the morning and cursed.
The last thing she remembered was promising herself that she’d just close her eyes for a short nap, but she’d slept for twelve hours. For most people that would probably be a good sign, but for Helena Hadden? Sleep was her stress response. Her body’s default protection setting, a primal act of self-preservation that should have been warning enough.
She passed a hand over her face and hauled herself unsteadily to sit on the side of the bed, surprised by the cool touch of platinum from her wedding ring glancing over her skin.
Married. She was, for all intents and purposes, now married to Leander Liassidis.
Only it wasn’t Leander who was here with her, but his twin brother.
Not that it mattered. Because as long as the press continued to believe that it was Leander with her, then she still had a chance to make this marriage believable. And as long as it was believable she could still save Incendia.
That thought kept her going while she showered and dressed in a long cream muslin dress, reminding herself that Leo wouldn’t much care how she looked. She walked out onto the balcony of her room, the view of the Mediterranean Sea a dramatic display of sheer beauty, glittering like diamonds on silk rippled by the wind. Raising her face to the sun, she inhaled the sea salt and rosemary that always reminded her of Greece.
Her heart said home , but her head chided her for being fanciful.
What part did Greece play in her desire to be a successful CEO and businesswoman? To prove herself worthy of her father’s name? What part did Greece play in her life when everything she knew now was in England?
But that wasn’t true, was it? Not any more. Kate would soon be in Borneo, and Helena would be alone. But she told herself that it would only give her more time to focus on Incendia. On its future success after she had ensured they passed the financial review at the end of the year.
She sighed and prised open her eyes, the sound of something down below drawing her attention. There, powering through the gentle waters of an infinity pool that merged so well with the sea beyond she’d not even seen it, was Leo.
Dark head of hair, seal slick, and powerful muscles undulating across his back, his arms parted the water like a sea god. The glory of his easy movements, the breath he took with each alternate stroke, the backs of his thighs, the cut of his calf muscles, defined, solid, slid through the water with enough grace to barely mark the surface of the pool.
Her cheeks warming and her pulse flaring, she could no longer deny her body’s response to him. It wasn’t anger that made her heart pound painfully in her chest. It wasn’t resentment that caused heat to burn through what little common sense she had when it came to him. The effect Leo had on her was overwhelming. The throb between her legs, the dampness even. No one had ever made her feel this way.
But the person she wanted to be with, to give herself to, would do more than make her body sing. They would make her feel loved, cherished, wanted because she was enough, just as she was.
And that could, she assured herself, never be the man currently in the pool below. Because the cold and aloof Leo Liassidis only wanted one thing from her: her shares. And once he got them he would leave her life, just like he had before—without a backward glance or a second thought.
Leo had devastated her teenage years and she wouldn’t let that happen to her twenties. So she would stay out of his way until she couldn’t avoid him any more.
Leo hauled himself from the side of the pool for the second day in a row, after eventually realising that, no matter how many times a day he swam, no matter how many laps he did, it wouldn’t resolve the frustration that had plagued him for the last two days.
Helena’s absence suggested that she was hiding from him. Which, if he were being honest, suited him just fine. He’d taken several meetings online both the day before and earlier that afternoon but, despite insisting that very little needed to be changed, his assistant had, for the duration of Leo’s absence, taken it upon himself to ‘lighten his load’.
And he didn’t like it one bit. Over the years he’d developed a routine that he was happy with, that worked for both him and Liassidis Shipping. Full days and ferocious focus to the exclusion of all else was what had saved the company once, and what ensured that it was still at the top of its field today.
Leo rolled his shoulders, relishing the ache brought by his morning swim as he stood there staring out at a view that looked similar to the one from his parents’ island. He hadn’t been back there for quite some time now. Before, he would have blamed it on work. But was that true? Or had he just been trying to avoid his brother?
Whether it was Helena, seeing his parents at the wedding, or a strange mixture of both, his memory was tiptoeing around things he’d rather forget.
‘Have you made your decision?’
‘Yes, Patéra. I’m going to work at Liassidis Shipping.’
At eighteen, he’d been so excited to accept the mantle his father was willing to pass on. Wanting to make him proud. Wanting to work with his brother, to stand by his side as they became men.
‘And you, Leander?’
‘I...’ He’d not even been able to look Leo in the eye. ‘I want to take the money.’
Leo clenched his jaw, braced against the memory of that day. But, in truth, it wasn’t that moment that had been the fatal blow to his relationship with Leander. It had been the days, weeks, months of daydreams leading up to it. Of his brother pretending to support his plans for their future. The years of believing that he and his brother shared one thought, one desire, one goal.
And none of it had been real.
It had been him alone in that daydream. And him alone to bear the weight of the damage caused by Gwen three years later. By that point, he hadn’t even expected or wanted Leander to come home to help. But it had also been him alone to pull Liassidis Shipping back from the brink of absolute disaster.
And it had taught him an invaluable lesson. If he couldn’t rely on his twin, he couldn’t rely on anyone. And he’d honed that independence into a skill. That way, he didn’t have distractions, he didn’t leave himself or his company open to other people’s incompetence or betrayal. No. It was far better for him to go it alone.
Leo shook off the water from his hair and dried himself with a towel when his mobile beeped. He stopped to check the message.
We have the gallery event.
Frowning at the message from Helena that could just have easily been said in person, he typed back irritably.
Yes?
The car is coming in thirty minutes.
His hackles rippled at her clipped tone, but he restrained the urge to snipe back. Yes, Helena needed him. But he also needed her. If he alienated her, he might never get hold of those shares, and he’d never have what he’d always wanted: complete control of Liassidis Shipping.
He reached his room and peered at the wardrobe, filled with clothes that belonged to his brother. Clearly, when Leander had left, it had been with nothing but his phone and presumably a passport.
But the moment Leo caught himself wondering what had possibly made his brother do such a thing, he stopped himself. It made no difference to him. He no longer allowed himself to be tormented by the whys of his brother’s behaviour.
He showered quickly, dressed and was buttoning up the crisp white shirt when he realised he was standing in the one place in his room where he could see through his own door, down the hallway and into Helena’s room.
From this exact point, he could see the corner of her bed, and Helena looking at her reflection in a floor-length mirror.
Leo turned his attention to the cuffs of his sleeves. At home, Leo had rows and rows of cufflinks on display. They were the final touch on an appearance that mattered to him as the face of Liassidis Shipping. And while Leo knew Leander wouldn’t wear them, he purposefully retrieved the pair he’d worn the day he’d arrived at the wedding and fastened them in place.
He glanced back up to catch Helena putting in an earring. Her head was tilted to one side, her hair styled in a pretty, messy knot high on her head, showing off the slender arch of her neck. It was such a simple moment, but one that felt oddly private, as if it were something he shouldn’t be witnessing.
But his gaze still consumed the sight of her, dressed in the floor-length, high-necked green velvet dress, as if she were a feast. His hungry imagination, delighting in this moment of voyeurism, offered up suggestions for what his eyes couldn’t see and what his subconscious desperately wanted.
Inches of pale skin glowing beneath jade-coloured lingerie filled his mind. He saw his hand slide across that skin, felt it shiver beneath his touch, tasted the heady scent of her as he pressed open-mouthed kisses to her breasts, relished the damp, wet heat of her as he delved between her legs.
His pulse tripped and sweat broke out across his neck. Locked in that moment of erotic images, his famously quick brain made a million and one connections, all hurtling towards fierce arousal as if it were a race.
So attuned to her body, he felt the moment she realised that he was watching her, the way that tension pulled like a thread across her shoulders. He forced his gaze away and stepped from view, taking ruthless control over his wayward body.
Helena was a means to an end. Nothing more. She could never be anything more. And he didn’t want anything more, he told himself. This was nothing but an aberrant response to the female form. And it wouldn’t happen again, he warned himself.
By the time he’d regained his composure, Helena had retrieved her clutch and was making her way towards him down the corridor.
‘You shouldn’t be wearing cufflinks.’
Biting back a response, because right now anything that came out of his mouth would either sound petulant or lecherous, he simply stated, ‘We’ll be late.’
‘Leander is always late,’ she dismissed easily. ‘You shouldn’t be wearing cufflinks.’
‘I should be about two hundred and eighty kilometres away and not here, involved in this farce, but...’ And he shrugged as if to say, here we are .
Helena glared at him. ‘Fine. But please remember. If people don’t believe that you are Leander and that we are happily married, you can kiss your shares goodbye.’
The car pulled up at the red-carpeted entrance to the gallery in Kalamata for the opening night of an exhibition by an up-and-coming artist garnering deserved amounts of attention for her unique subversion of the male gaze. Helena had been more than happy to support the event when Leander had chosen it, but with Leo beside her she wanted to be anywhere else but here.
She just couldn’t imagine how he would respond to the detailed and graphic images that had prompted extreme responses in both the media and the public. But, Helena supposed, she would soon find out.
Leo slipped wordlessly from the car and came round to her door, holding it open and offering his hand. The smile on his face shocked her for a moment after the cold silence between them since leaving the villa, but then the first of many flashbulbs erupted and she remembered that he was supposed to be Leander.
She stood and he placed her hand in the crook of his arm and gestured towards the length of red carpet, where the three-deep crowd of paparazzi waited impatiently. As always, she felt assaulted by the bright flashes of light directed their way. In England, her family wealth and name had always drawn attention, but her marriage to a Liassidis had launched the attention into a whole new stratosphere.
‘Leander, over here!’
‘Helena, Helena!’ another called.
From somewhere in the mass of dark shapes looming behind the bright flashes, questions were hurled their way.
‘How’s the honeymoon going, Helena?’ one voice jeered, but she kept her smile.
‘Is it true what they say about him, Helena?’
She swallowed at the crass comments, distaste and disgust crawling over her skin. She felt the flex of Leo’s forearm beneath her palm. Unlike his brother, Leo had never courted the press. Especially not after the months and months of speculation and derision at his leadership fail in the early stages of taking over Liassidis Shipping. A hounding scrutiny that he had protected her mother from, even as he’d engineered her removal from the company.
‘Helena, are you here for pleasure, or are you hoping to gain a brand ambassador for Incendia, perhaps?’
Seizing on the sanest question of the evening, and the opportunity to increase awareness for her charity, she paused and found the reporter amongst the masses, allowing a genuine smile to spread across her features.
‘I would be incredibly lucky to do so, but for tonight we’re just here to enjoy the exhibition. Efi Balaskou is a fascinating artist and I can’t wait to see her exhibition.’
‘ Efcharistó , Helena. Leander? If you have a moment?’
Leo’s focus had been on the crowd until the mention of Incendia. She couldn’t have explained why, but she felt it. His attention had zeroed in on it, as if it were a vulnerability he could take advantage of.
And the horrible truth was that it was.
‘Congratulations on your wedding. It was a beautiful event.’
Leo smiled broadly, setting off another round of flashes from photographers who knew bankable good looks when they saw them.
‘Oh, that little thing?’ he said, full of tease that felt just wrong coming from Leo’s lips. ‘It was perfect, wasn’t it, agápi mou ?’ he went on, turning to Helena.
She smiled, despite a strong suspicion that he’d used that term precisely because she’d told him not to.
‘But your brother wasn’t there. We’ve all heard the rumours of the rift between you, but how did it feel for him to have missed your wedding day?’
Helena’s mind went blank. She just hadn’t expected the question. This time, the pause, though infinitesimal, seemed to stretch out before them like eternity.
Leo narrowed his gaze at the reporter and, in a panic, Helena tightened her grip on his arm.
‘You know what Leo Liassidis is like,’ Leo dismissed, after an eternal moment of near deafening silence.
The reporter laughed, clearly thinking he was in on an inside joke of some sort.
‘ Naí. The words stick up and backside come to mind,’ the reporter said in Greek.
Helena flushed. It was one thing to think it, but another entirely to say it. And accidentally to the man’s face? Breath rippled in her chest, making her light-headed enough to want to come to Leo’s defence.
‘I—’
‘It would take an act of God to remove that stick,’ Leo interrupted, leaning towards the reporter conspiratorially. ‘He had very important business ,’ Leo mimicked and for a moment Helena was so lost in Leo being Leander, being Leo, that she simply stared at him. ‘I hear that he’s so wedded to his office chair, he takes it home with him.’
The reporter laughed again as she forced an awkward smile to her lips.
‘Helena, were you offended by your brother-in-law’s absence?’
Leo looked at her, the challenge in his eyes wicked. As if he were saying, Now’s your chance. A wickedness that cut through the years, the bitter recriminations between them, to before her mother’s mistake, before the loss of her father, before that horrible Christmas, to when she’d felt safe in their relationship, when she’d felt she’d known him. And that he’d known her.
‘I’m usually more offended by his presence, so for me his absence made a pleasant change,’ she announced loftily, holding Leo’s gaze.
Leo threw his head back and laughed. A genuine, full-throated laugh that caught almost everyone’s attention.
She couldn’t help but let a smile curve her lips. It wasn’t every day she managed to score a point against Leo Liassidis, but to make him laugh like that? Like he used to? A round of flashes went off and it was as if the stars had fallen from the sky to land at their feet. Leo recovered himself and gestured for her to continue down the carpet and she followed, dazzled not by the lights but by him .
Leo hadn’t expected to laugh. He’d expected to be angry. He’d expected to use her as a foil to vent his frustrations. But she’d surprised him. And he hadn’t been surprised for a very long time. He strangely welcomed the moment to move beyond all the anger from the past, even if just for a while.
They navigated the small bottleneck blocking the entrance to the gallery and each accepted a glass of champagne from the wait staff. Making sure that there were no reporters hidden behind corners waiting to catch him out, he finally took a sip of his drink as he turned back to the larger-than-life photograph they stood before and promptly choked.
Bubbles ran simultaneously down his throat and up his nose, blocking off his airways.
There was a distinctly unsympathetic smirk across Helena’s features as, without taking her eyes from the gallery piece, she passed him a napkin. Leo’s eyes watered as he vainly tried to contain all the liquid trying to leave his body at the same time, while he avoided the image that had caused this disastrous incident in the first place.
‘Helena, what the hell have you brought me to?’ he whispered the moment he regained the ability to speak.
‘It is called art, Lee—Leander,’ she managed, spinning his name into his brother’s in case anyone was listening.
‘That,’ he spat, ‘is pornography.’ It didn’t seem to matter that he’d glanced at the photograph for less than a second—the image was indelibly inked on his brain. But, what was worse, it was now irrevocably linked to Helena.
Gamóto.
The last thing he wanted, or needed, was to be thinking of Helena in any correlation to the image of a pair of lips utterly encasing a rather turgid part of the male anatomy, in such close proximity that the photographer made the viewer feel less observer and more participant.
One quick glance around the other images adorning clean white gallery walls confirmed his fears. They were everywhere. Every possible sexual act imaginable seemed to be blown up in extreme detail and pasted all over every wall. He could turn a corner and fall headfirst into a ménage à trois if he wasn’t careful.
‘I didn’t take you for such a prude.’
‘I’m not,’ he assured her. ‘In the privacy of my own bedroom.’
And suddenly the air thickened between them, heavy with the implication of what did happen in his bedroom. Helena’s teasing lips wobbled a little. Lips that he had swiped with the pad of his thumb. Lips that he now associated with the large photograph directly behind her. And it was as if that thought lit the touchpaper that had been the last barrier of his restraint.
Helena broke the connection between them, taking slow steps from one large canvas to another. Amongst the black and white images on display and the monochromatic style of the other guests, she stood out like a shard of jade. He followed behind her, stalking her, past pictures of increasingly detailed sexual acts that merged with his earlier fantasies about the woman mere inches away from him. It was a very fine line and he was hovering dangerously close.
‘You look like you’re angry with me,’ she said, her gaze in a reflection of glass covering a sculpture of twisting limbs in marble.
‘How do you want me to look at you?’ he asked before he could stop himself, the question unspooling a dangerous arousal between them.
She stilled, the pulse flickering at her throat daring him to push further, the tremble of her fingers on the stem of the champagne flute urging him beyond his usual self-control.
‘Like I’m your newly married husband?’ he pressed, leaning over her shoulder to whisper into the shell of her ear, unable to help himself. ‘Like I want to do these things to you?’
The sharp inhalation of her shock was both a warning and a temptation, but when she stepped away from the heat of his body he let her go. He took a mouthful of the champagne but it did nothing to cool the ardent heat coursing across his skin.
What was wrong with him?
There was too much at stake to play silly games like that. He blamed it on his body’s primal reaction to her as a woman, the shocking difference between the girl he’d once known and the incredibly beautiful adult before him. He then spent the next twenty minutes wandering the gallery as far from her as possible while he struggled for the control that he was so famous for.
By the time he’d reined himself in he found Helena standing by the window that looked over a stunning Greek nightscape.
‘When can we leave?’ he asked, clearing his throat.
‘Soon,’ she said without looking at him. And he was thankful that at least one of them had sense enough to maintain the barriers between them.
He took another careful sip of his champagne, searching for something safe for them to discuss, rather than the dangerously sensual play they should most definitely not be engaging in.
‘What is Incendia?’ he asked, expecting her to respond with some bland explanation of her day job.
He knew Helena well enough that the evasive shoulder shrug and moue she made with her lips was as red a flag as any.
He nodded to himself and pulled out his phone.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, turning her attention finally away from the view from the gallery window.
‘Looking up Incendia.’
She pushed down his phone with a sharp slap of her hand, catching him completely by surprise, red slashes on her cheekbones, and not through pleasure but anger.
‘What do you want to know?’ she demanded in a low voice.
‘What you’re trying to hide,’ he returned, just as low, sliding his phone back into his suit pocket.
Helena had never been one for deceit and, on reflection, even the idea that she would actually marry Leander to access money was so uncharacteristic he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it before.
‘I’m not trying to hide anything,’ she said with a shrug. ‘I’m CEO of Incendia, a—’
‘Oh, Christ, Helena, don’t tell me you’re trying to prop it up with your own money,’ he interrupted, his hand bracketing his temples.
The shock in her gaze, the fear as she looked around to make sure that no one had heard him, made him even more furious.
She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into a corridor away from the main exhibition.
Anger crawled up and bit into whatever peace had been found between them as he yanked his arm back. What she was doing was immature and reckless. Dangerous even, and not just for her company but for herself.
‘Didn’t you learn anything from your mother?’ he demanded.
‘My mother made a mistake,’ Helena hissed. ‘She thought she had learned enough about business from listening to my father for years. And you punished her terribly for it.’
The accusation was both unjust and true at the same time, but Leo couldn’t leave it at that.
‘She didn’t just make a mistake, Helena. She expressly went against the wishes of not just me but the entire board of Liassidis Shipping. She engaged one client—a fierce competitor of an existing one—to make herself feel like a businesswoman, and nearly bankrupted us in the process.’
Helena’s defiance faltered. It was just a second, but it was enough.
‘You didn’t know that?’ he asked, before he could take it back.
‘I knew enough!’ Helena cried. ‘I was there when you yelled at her and called her stupid, and foolish, and a liability. She was a grieving woman, Leo,’ she accused, ‘and you cut her off from everything and everyone she knew.’
‘And you’re still making excuses for her,’ he hit back, wondering if she would ever stop searching for something that Gwen would never give her.
‘She’s my mother,’ Helena replied, unable to stop herself from feeling all the hurt, anger and confusion from that time building up all over again. When everything she had known had been slipping through her fingers—she’d lost her father, her mother had made a terrible mistake and then Leo was pushing them out of his and his family’s lives as if they were nothing more than an inconvenience.
‘Then how could you possibly even contemplate making the same mistake again? If the company is failing, it’s failing,’ he announced with a fatal finality.
‘It’s not failing,’ she slammed back. ‘It’s employee theft. All we need to do is survive the financial review at the end of the year,’ she insisted.
Leo shook his head, that same look of disappointment in his eyes now that she remembered from when her mother had messed up.
‘You cannot put your own money at risk like this,’ he warned.
‘Why not? You did,’ she accused.
‘Because it was my company, Helena. This? It’s just a job. A CEO’s position.’
‘Even if it was just that, why is it okay for you to do it but not okay for me?’
And that was when she saw it. The answer that she feared the most.
‘Because you think I’ll fail,’ she correctly interpreted. A sob rose in her chest. To see him staring back at her, disappointed and disapproving, it was her worst imaginings come to life. ‘Thank you for your vote of confidence, Leo.’
She pushed past him and out of the gallery, the cool of the night biting into her heated emotions. As she messaged the car service, she told herself that Leo was wrong. She wouldn’t mess this up. She would save Incendia and prove him wrong. She knew what she was doing. All she had to do was stick to the plan and it would work. She knew it would.
Her phone buzzed in her clutch and she read the message from Kate with a strange mix of relief and resentment. And felt immediately bad. Her best friend had travelled halfway round the world to help her. Leander had to be in some sort of trouble to have done what he’d done. And all she could think of was that it wasn’t enough.
Oh, why was this such a mess?
Leo came to stand beside her just as the car pulled up.
‘Kate’s found Leander.’
‘Hopefully, she can bring him back before it’s too late,’ Leo said.
But Helena feared it already was.