Chapter Five
CHAPTER FIVE
W HO OPENED A club on a Wednesday night? Leo wondered as he looked at the wardrobe with neatly pinned paper cards informing the wearer of the date and the event. Leander’s assistant needed a pay rise. Leo would never have asked his to do such a thing.
He doesn’t have to, because you never go out , a distinctly Helena-sounding voice said in his head.
Leo rubbed a hand over the closely cut beard on his jaw. It had been two days since the gallery opening. Two days before that had been the wedding. If it followed this pattern, he could avoid Helena for another two days, starting tomorrow.
Because you’ll say some other appalling thing to her and cause her more upset.
That voice sounded like his brother.
The fact that Leo had been right about everything he’d said that night at the gallery hadn’t quietened his conscience. If anything, it had only got louder and louder as time wore on. He’d catch glimpses of Helena around the villa, the trail of a scarf, or a pair of sunglasses lying around. A book she’d left on a lounger that he’d been curious about and looked up. Little pieces of a girl he’d once known.
At least their argument had drawn a line under whatever had invaded his senses that day. Not that he’d forgotten the words he’d whispered to her, how close he’d come to crossing the invisible line between them. He assured himself that he was cured of that momentary madness as he considered the deep ochre-coloured T-shirt and dark maroon linen suit Leander’s assistant had chosen for tonight. A pair of sunglasses were tucked by an arm into the breast pocket and a leather belt hung over the suit shoulder. He frowned at the casual attire.
‘Be me.’
Kill me , thought Leo as he reached for the clothes that would turn him into Leander.
As he buttoned his shirt and tucked it into the waistband of his trousers, he racked his brain for why he had suddenly become so responsive to Helena. Yes, it had been a while since he’d last spent time with someone.
But after Mina he’d had absolutely no intention of making himself that vulnerable again. Since then, women had been an as and when for him and certainly no more permanent than a night or two of mutual pleasure. Despite his reaction to the pictures in the gallery, he wasn’t a prude. Far from it. He enjoyed pleasure, his partner’s and his own, greatly. He just didn’t have to splash it all over the papers like his brother.
With one last look in the mirror, he went to the living room, to find Helena looking at her watch.
‘So “Leander the Lothario” wanted to take you to a club opening on your honeymoon,’ he stated, trying to warm the chill in the air between them and ease his conscience at the same time.
‘Travi, the owner of the club, is a business associate,’ she informed him in a clipped tone that he should be thankful for.
‘Of yours?’ Leo asked, confused.
‘Of Leander’s ,’ Helena replied disdainfully, as if she were reproving him for how little he knew about his brother’s life.
As if it were he that had caused the separation between them.
‘I thought Leander is into web-based app development.’
‘He is. Travi is an investor.’
As they left the villa and made their way to the helipad where the helicopter would fly them back to Athens for the evening, the blush-pink sparkles covering Helena’s dress glistened in the setting sun. Before him was a kaleidoscope of golds, yellows and pinks that struck him in full Technicolor. Where the dress from the previous event had been long, this one stopped barely at where her fingers reached her toned thighs.
He clenched his jaw and slipped the sunglasses over his eyes.
‘So, you know Travi well?’ he asked as he followed, trying to watch where he was going and not the backs of Helena’s well-defined thighs.
‘Reasonably. But not as much as Leander. You’re going to have to concentrate this time.’
He nodded, though he already knew that hemline was going to be a major problem.
‘I’m surprised you know so much about my brother,’ he observed out loud.
‘I’m surprised you know so little,’ she snapped back in a rebuke he felt to his core.
The helicopter was waiting for them, the door slid back and the blades at a standstill for the moment. He waited while they took their seats and the headsets were in place. The co-pilot talked them through what channels to use and what to do in an emergency and Leo only heard every other word over the pounding in his head as the vee of Helena’s dress gaped just enough to reveal the gentle slope of her breast.
Skatá , he was turning into a pervert.
‘We kept in touch.’ Helena’s words came through the headset, bringing him back to their conversation.
He didn’t miss the unspoken accusation that he hadn’t bothered to keep in touch with her.
You cut her off from everything and everyone she knew.
Had Helena just been talking about her mother? Or had she also been talking about herself?
‘Do you see him regularly?’ Leo asked, choosing his words carefully, wondering how much of an answer he really wanted.
Helena smiled and her face lit up. ‘We find time to celebrate the milestones. I don’t get to come to Greece that often any more, so he’ll usually fly to London. He was...’ she looked up at him and then away ‘...there when I needed him.’
The sting of jealousy surprised Leo and it covered everything. Not just the fact that Leander was there for Helena in a way that Leander had never been there for him. But because there had once been a time when Helena had come to him and not Leander. And the way she talked about what they had made him curious about the man he’d cut from his life.
‘Is he happy?’ Leo asked, unsure of the answer he wanted to hear.
Helena looked at him from across the helicopter. ‘Yes,’ she said with a small smile. ‘But sometimes I get a sense that there’s something missing from his life.’
‘What?’ Leo couldn’t help but ask.
‘You.’
He couldn’t say anything to that.
Helena felt unusually self-conscious entering the trendy nightclub owned by Travi Samaras. People turned to stare, but she was under no illusion as to who it was that drew their attention. She was standing next to a man who looked like a Greek god worshipped by mortals, rather than one himself.
She would have laughed had she been with Leander, but standing beside Leo, seeing the impact he had on other women, feeling the impact he had on her without even trying , was making her feel distinctly on edge.
‘What’s wrong? Are you nervous?’ he asked, dipping his head to her ear, once again playing the doting new husband.
‘No. Just curious as to how on earth you’re going to succeed in pretending to be your party animal brother,’ she replied, wondering how he’d noticed her discomfort.
‘You don’t think I know how to party?’ came the amusingly indignant reply.
‘I don’t think you’d know a good time if it came up and slapped you across the face,’ she said as she stalked towards the bar. He kept pace with her as she made her way through a sea of people that parted for Leo as if he were Moses.
‘I do,’ he insisted as he reached her side at the bar.
‘You did ,’ she countered, his persistence softening some of her defiance.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
She deliberately caught the eye of the barman rather than look up at Leo, whose famous focus was now intently on her.
She shrugged. ‘Once upon a time you knew how to have fun. Now? Not so much.’ Turning a smile on the barman, she ordered a bottle of champagne.
‘You can put it on Leander Liassidis’ tab,’ she told the barman sweetly.
Leo’s eyes widened in realisation, his lips curving into a wicked smile just before asking the barman to make it two bottles.
‘Just the two?’ Helena asked as she found a standing table at the edge of a dance floor while the bar staff set up tall buckets with ice and two glasses.
‘I’m ordering a bottle of vodka next,’ he growled.
Helena found herself smiling despite herself. The merest hint of the boy she remembered from her childhood was enough to warm her. Back then, he’d been funny, irreverent. More grounded than Leander, yes, but so much less serious and sombre than the adult Leo.
She was about to reply when she saw Travi making his way towards them.
‘The man in the white suit and dark shirt? That’s Travi. You’ve known him for three years, ever since he approached you looking for an investor,’ she whispered hurriedly. ‘You decided against the first project, but liked an app designed by one of his young techs and invested in that instead. You tried to pinch the tech, but Travi made him an offer he couldn’t refuse to stay. You said at the end, At least the kid is finally being paid his worth. You joke about it regularly.’
Leo stared at her, his gaze halfway between surprised and impressed.
‘What?’ she asked, wondering what she’d done, but before she could ask, Travi had arrived at their table.
‘So, you incorrigible flirt, you finally bit the bullet and settled down with this unimpeachable goddess who is worth ten of your weight in gold,’ Travi announced, grabbing Leo by the shoulders and nearly wrestling him into a headlock.
Helena pressed a hand against her mouth to try to stop her laugh escaping from the shock on Leo’s face, until he managed to regain his composure, or at least recall that he was supposed to be Leander.
‘Hey, maláka , I know exactly how much she’s worth,’ he said, turning in the man’s hold to accept the hug in a way that seemed utterly alien to Leo, but absolutely one hundred percent Leander. ‘ Everything. She’s worth everything.’
Although Leo was looking at Travi, the words struck Helena hard, catching her breath in her chest. Because wasn’t that what she’d always wanted? To be someone’s everything.
‘But if you call her goddess again, we’re going to have words,’ Leo added with a warning bite that sounded foreign to her ears as she hastily pushed down the sudden bloom in her heart.
‘Helena, angelí mou , light of my life, why did you pick him? You know I would have married you in a heartbeat,’ the other Greek male complained.
‘Travi,’ she said, taking his face in her hands, the smile on her face only a little forced. ‘You know how much I love you, but he has a bigger bank account,’ she teased.
‘How very dare you?’ Travi cried in a high falsetto and a cut glass English accent. ‘I expect you both to be the last couple standing,’ he commanded with a finger pointed right at them, before he left to meet and greet his other guests.
One after the other, many familiar faces from amongst Leander’s crowd came and went, Leo seemingly relaxed and easy, mimicking his brother so well that even Helena nearly forgot. But it wasn’t just the smiles and jokes. Talk quite often turned to business—and she suddenly realised how many of Leander’s acquaintances he’d actually met through business. Someone needing investment advice, or wanting the ‘in’ on his latest app development.
Leo handled each and every one with an ease and confidence that surprised her, the marked difference from the man who could barely bring himself to touch her at the wedding, who was more relaxed and freer somehow.
When someone tapped her on the shoulder she turned and found herself immediately wrapped in the warm embrace of Serene, a friend of Leander and Travi that she’d spent some time with in London when she’d visited for work.
‘Man, you tamed the devil,’ Serene teased in English, nodding to Leo and mistaking him, just like everyone else, for Leander. ‘I didn’t think anything would make him settle down.’
‘Neither did I,’ Helena replied, feeling a little guilty for the deception now that she was with friends.
‘So, what is it like?’ Serene demanded as Helena passed her a champagne flute. ‘Married life! Gah, I can’t think of anything worse.’
Others around the table joined in the conversation, affectionately shouting her down, but Serene remained beautifully and happily adamant.
‘Go on,’ she taunted Helena. ‘Hit me with it. What’s the best thing about being newlyweds?’
‘Oh, I don’t know...’ Helena hedged. ‘Morning breath?’ she offered, determined to hold onto the humour in the conversation.
‘Picking up someone else’s dirty laundry,’ another of Leander’s friends contributed.
‘Argh.’ Serene grimaced, the look of horror on her face comical.
‘Having to put the toilet seat back down,’ another woman added.
‘Okay, no. If you’re not going to be serious about this, then I’ll ask him. Hey!’ she shouted, pulling at Leo’s arm. ‘What’s so great about being married, Leander?’
Leo looked at the expectant faces around the table. He knew they’d all been laughing about it, but as he looked at Helena he didn’t want to laugh it off. He had once believed in the sanctity of marriage. He’d wanted it, hoped for it. Thought he’d nearly had it. Helena’s smile faltered just a little and he forced a smile to his lips.
‘The best part about being newly married is that I get to dance with my wife whenever I want!’ he said, reaching for her and pulling her away from the crowd to the celebratory yells and encouragement of Leander’s friends.
As he led her to the dance floor Leo felt drained from having to pretend to be his brother for the last two hours. He hadn’t realised how at the wedding no one had actually said anything more than congratulations. And at the gallery they hadn’t spoken to anyone after the red carpet.
But this had been different. These were Leander’s friends. And Leo liked them. He could see how easy they were around each other, how supportive, how interconnected. Business was business all over the globe, so he could field any specific work-related questions with ease. The loyalty these people had to Leander—who, in Leo’s considered opinion, had the staying power of cheap Sellotape—surprised him. He was struck, seeing his brother through other people’s eyes. But he was also struck by how he was seen.
As a man who didn’t show up to his brother’s wedding.
A man with a stick up his backside.
A man who couldn’t relax.
In truth, he was a man who couldn’t remember the last time he’d come to a club or been out with his own friends, and it was that realisation that had made him want a moment away from Leander’s friends, so he’d clutched at the opportunity to draw Helena on to the dance floor.
But then the music that had been full of wild beats and chaotic chords had changed and morphed into something deeper, with a bass line that rolled over the skin and senses like a promise. The track poured sibilance into the air like a thousand whispers and the hyperawareness of earlier became almost painful.
Helena looked up at him uncertainly. She looked at him like he was Leo Liassidis, not his brother. And it was a smile he didn’t want anyone else to see. He led her deeper into the dance floor to find just a little anonymity, a little breathing space, he told himself. He wanted to explain himself to Helena, why he’d brought them to the dance floor, but when he turned he realised his mistake.
Swaying to the beat of the music, she unfurled beneath the dim blue lights throbbing from above. She reached up to sweep her hair from her neck, eyes closed, her rapture was all her own and it was the most erotic thing he’d seen. Even after the gallery exhibition.
As she shifted from foot to foot, the hemline of her dress, that had been barely decent before, became nothing but temptation, sliding across thighs that he wanted to grip and pull against him. Hot pinpricks of desire broke out across his shoulders and the base of his spine. His breath was staccato in his chest.
This wasn’t some artful moment of manipulation. There was no intent or thought for anyone else, he could tell. Not because she just wasn’t that type of person but because her focus, one he could feel almost instinctively, was on herself. Her pure enjoyment of the moment.
Just at that moment she opened her eyes, unerringly finding him without having to search, and all the blood rushed from his head. The crowd on the dance floor grew bigger and someone jostled him, but he still couldn’t look away. Just as the music built to a crescendo, the girl behind Helena careened into her from behind and Helena was thrust forward, Leo only having enough time to reach for her as she crashed against him.
Suddenly, his hands were full of soft, hot skin and sequins. Her breasts pressed against his chest, her hands, one palm to his heart, the other clinging to the lapel of his linen jacket. His breath left his lungs, and instinct took over. He pulled her more firmly against him, his fingers flexing against her body. Neither of them moved, a breath held, shared between them. Helena leaned back and this time when she looked at him there was something beneath the trepidation: want .
He was jostled again and the moment was cut short when she pulled out of his arms and laughed a little, perhaps at herself, perhaps at him. But whatever it was that had passed between them was over. And he couldn’t work out whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Helena left the dance floor without looking to see if Leo was following her. She needed some time and space to sort through what had just happened. Or at least what she had just wanted to happen. She pressed the back of her hand against her flushed cheek and turned towards the table when a hand caught her wrist.
Leo looked at her with no trace of a reaction to what had just taken place on the dance floor.
‘Travi wanted us in the VIP section?’
She nodded reluctantly. She wanted to go home. Not just to the villa, but home home. To England. But even that was no longer the refuge it had once been, everything tainted by Gregory’s theft and Kate’s soon-to-be absence.
She wanted to hide from everything that she was feeling, but instead she followed Leo past the suited bouncer who unhooked a red velvet twisted rope, up the stairs and over towards a red velvet sofa.
They had barely sat down when a waiter appeared with a silver bucket, a bottle of champagne and two flutes.
‘With the host’s congratulations on your recent nuptials.’
The flourish was so extravagant she bit back a laugh and allowed the distraction to smooth over the tension from the dance floor. Leo graciously accepted as Leander and the waiter disappeared, but he looked strangely disappointed.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
He scratched his chin and winced. ‘I was hoping to buy the entire club a round of drinks. On Leander’s tab, of course.’
Helena smiled. ‘It would be the least he deserves. I mean the least you could do,’ she hastily corrected.
Leo poured them each a glass and offered her one.
‘A toast.’
‘To?’ she enquired.
He paused, looking at her a little too intently. ‘To new beginnings.’
She grasped it like a lifeline but, clinking her glass to his, she couldn’t hold his gaze for long. She looked down over the crowded club and wondered what that might look like.
New beginnings.
Unable to stifle her curiosity, she turned back to him, the question in her eyes finding its way to her mouth.
‘What would that look like? To you?’
The hand holding his glass paused halfway to his lips, his gaze locked on hers, until it refocused on something—someone—over her shoulder.
Leo cursed.
‘So, “Leander the Lothario” finally settles down?’ the woman said when she arrived at their table.
Helena swallowed, genuinely incapable of speech in that moment. Panic swelled and her heartbeat thundered in her ears. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Of all the people they could have run into.
‘Mina,’ Leo greeted through clenched teeth. ‘What are you doing here?’
They were going to be found out. There was no way that Mina would let them leave without creating the biggest scene she possibly could.
‘Don’t be silly, Leander, you’re not the only one who moves in these circles.’
It took a moment for Helena’s brain to catch up because she genuinely couldn’t believe the woman that Leo had been engaged to couldn’t tell the difference between him and Leander.
‘Just because your brother doesn’t deign to come down off his lofty mountain to have some fun, doesn’t mean that I don’t. But Helena?’ she said, still directing her conversation to Leo, as if even now she was beneath Mina’s consideration. ‘Of all people, you chose to marry her ?’
‘I’m sitting right here, Mina,’ she said as calmly as she could, but her pulse was wildly erratic and her hands fisted.
‘Yes, you are. But I don’t understand why,’ she dismissed with a shrug. ‘Everyone knew you had a silly schoolgirl crush on Leo.’
Humiliation crawled up Helena’s skin in angry inches, hating that Leo was sitting right there hearing everything she said. ‘That was a long time ago. Things change.’
Leo cursed. There had been a time when Mina was the woman he’d wanted to spend his life with, to have a family with. Back then, he’d found her avarice amusing; it had been tempered by youth and her insecurity was much better hidden. But age had only made her worse. And that she couldn’t even tell that it was him was shocking.
Mina’s jealousy of Helena was as blatant as it was unpleasant. Looking back, he remembered the shame and embarrassment he’d felt at the conversation they’d had that last Christmas the two families had spent together before Helena’s father had died. At the time he’d thought the feeling was because of his awareness of Helena’s feelings for him. He now realised in a shocking moment of self-revelation that he’d been embarrassed by Mina. And himself, for letting her say the things that she’d said. His stomach turned and he looked at Mina, truly looked at her, trying to find some semblance of the young woman he’d spent nearly three years of his life with, but he found that there was nothing of her left.
‘Things don’t change that much, Lena,’ Mina spat.
‘Don’t call her that.’ His tone was as definitive and unquestionable as his swift and sudden dislike of her use of the nickname for Helena that only he had ever used. And from the look on Mina’s face, she didn’t like it one bit. He should have known that she’d turn on Helena in response.
‘So, when you couldn’t get your hands on Leo you settled for the “other” Liassidis instead?’ she threw at Helena.
Leo barked a laugh and leaned back into the sofa. ‘ Other? There’s nothing other about me, darling,’ he said, perfectly impersonating his brother.
‘I. Don’t. Believe. It,’ Mina said, leaning forward, wafting alcohol over them with every word. She was drunk, Leo realised. Very drunk. ‘Whatever this is,’ she slurred, ‘I hope you get found out.’
Warning her to keep her voice down wouldn’t work in the slightest. But he couldn’t let her run around thinking or, worse, saying this to others. He just had to make her believe it.
‘There’s nothing to find out, Mina. This is the woman I have pledged to love for the rest of my life. And I intend to do just that,’ he said, reaching for Helena and hauling her into his lap, facing him.
The look of surprise on Helena’s face lasted a breath’s length before understanding dawned in her gaze. He raised an eyebrow in query. If she wasn’t with him in this, he’d leave her alone, he’d stop the charade and leave the club that very moment.
Subtly, Helena nodded and with his eyes on Mina’s over Helena’s shoulder, he brought her closer and deeper into his lap with his hands on her backside.
Helena pressed her lips together as if trying to control her response to him, but there was no controlling his response to her.
Slowly, so very slowly, he leaned towards her, wanting to give Helena time to stop him if she needed to. But she didn’t. He became aware of the scent of her perfume, something heady and full of citrus, teasing his senses just as much as the heat of her body against his.
His lips were mere inches from hers and Mina no longer existed. The busy, crowded bar receded, the blood rushed in his ears and his heart pounded in his chest so violently he feared the world would hear it.
Want.
He could lie to himself, justify a kiss with the need to keep up the pretence, but he wanted this. He wanted her .
His lips met Helena’s in what was supposed to be just a kiss. But there was nothing ‘just’ about it. It exploded through his body, his lips not content with a simple press, as he gently teased and prised her mouth open to his. Her gasp—surprise or pleasure, he wasn’t sure—poured into his mouth and he was done.
He pulled back, shocked, trying to understand what was happening, but the sight of Helena staring up at him, wide-eyed, flushed and kiss drunk, meant he couldn’t have held back for the world. He claimed her mouth again just as Helena’s hands came to his jacket, clinging to the lapels as if needing an anchor.
Bringing his hand to cup her jaw, he angled her to him and took full advantage of the position. Open-mouthed, his tongue claimed her, thrusting deep into a soft, wet heat that was instantly addictive. He plundered like a Neanderthal, while holding himself back with a ruthlessness that bordered on masochism. She became fire in his arms. Heat and passion rippled between them like a wildfire and it was only the desire to do so much more that brought him to his senses.