What the Greek's Wife Needs Read online

  “Leon, you didn’t.” She closed her eyes, never once having considered that she stood to inherit her husband’s vast fortune.

  “What? Who else am I going to leave it to? You’re my wife. Do you want a big wedding this time?”

  “No.” She cupped his stubbled cheek. “I want you. Just you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  “Same.” He leaned across and they kissed. “You’re all I will ever need. Well...” He sent a significant look to their daughter.

  Tanja wrinkled her nose ruefully. “Same.”

  A week later, Leon bought a piece of property overlooking the ocean. When his mother and Cornelius arrived a few days after that, they all convened on the site of their future home. Leon and Tanja spoke their vows with their most cherished loved ones in attendance.

  This time they meant it.

  EPILOGUE

  Five years later...

  “BUT I’LL STILL live with you,” Illi said anxiously, her legs tight around Leon’s waist, her arm around his neck, her hand in his.

  “You absolutely will,” Leon told his daughter. “You will live with me forever.” He briefly squished her tighter against him. “Even if you get married and have children and grandchildren. I love you too much to ever let you live with anyone else or go anywhere without me.”

  She giggled. “I have to go to school by myself. And you don’t live with Yaya,” she said, referring to his mother.

  Smart as a whip, she was, and had a wonderful streak of independence he adored as much as every other part of her.

  “How about this? You can always live with me if you want to. Will that work?”

  “Yes.” She nodded.

  He kissed her forehead, not telling her he already resented having to share her with schoolteachers.

  “Did it land?” Tanja asked as she returned with their son’s hand clutched in her own.

  “It did.” He nodded at the flight board above where they stood.

  Christo put his arms up, wanting Leon to hold him, too. He scooped up their toddler and asked him, “Did you go?”

  Christo nodded.

  “No. Just me,” Tanja said ruefully. She was in the middle of carrying their next son or daughter, so a lot of Christo’s potty training attempts were falling on her since she was always headed that direction anyway.

  Leon loved seeing her pregnant, with her features round and sensual and rosy. Hell, he loved her when she was asleep or awake, sweaty from a workout or polished for an evening out. Grouchy from a bad night with a fussy baby or irreverently teasing him into laughter.

  He loved her right now, trying to pretend she wasn’t nervous as a mama duck and fierce as a mama bear beneath her glow of anticipation.

  It had taken years to find Brahim and sort out his immigration. He wasn’t a child any longer. He was nineteen and had wanted to come to Canada, even though things in Istuval had stabilized.

  Leon had an office tower in Vancouver and Tanja would be off work with the new baby, so they had decided the city would become their base while Brahim settled in his new home. Illi was enrolled in a local school in the fall. They had a comfortable home on the north shore that would give Brahim an option between a guest house by the pool or a room inside the mansion with them.

  First though, they would spend the summer at their home in Tofino, where the pace of life was slower and the rest of Tanja’s family was looking forward to opening their arms and homes to their newest member.

  “Thank you for this,” Tanja said with a squeeze of Leon’s arm when passengers began streaming from the secured area.

  “Your children are my children. You know that.”

  She gave him a shaky, touched smile and a kiss, then turned to watch for Brahim.

  Leon didn’t have misgivings precisely, but he was fiercely protective of his family. Brahim had spent years as a drafted child soldier in a mercenary force. That sort of experience had to leave scars, so he was experiencing some apprehension even as he knew they would get through any bumps or nicks that might come about.

  A few minutes later, a gasp was torn from Tanja’s throat. She rushed toward a lanky young man, tall and dark wearing tattered jeans and an army green T-shirt.

  He was looking up to read the unfamiliar signage and startled when Tanja was suddenly in front of him. He was disoriented and surprised, but his reaction was immediate. He dropped his duffel and hugged Tanja with such tangible relief it cracked Leon’s heart clean down the middle.

  “Is that him?” Illi slid down from Leon’s secure hold.

  He watched her walk forward, faltering slightly when Brahim released Tanja to look at her belly. His smile was exactly like his sister’s, full of happy wonder as he said something that made her laugh.

  He looked searchingly past her and froze as he saw Illi.

  Leon held his breath, protectiveness surging anew in him.

  “Illi.” Brahim covered his mouth and sank to one knee. His eyes grew bright, and he blinked them fast and hard. He held out a hand. “Look at you. Our mother would be so proud if she could see you,” he said in a choked voice.

  Without any urging, she rushed in for a hug.

  He clutched her tight, eyes closed, yet he showed such gentleness that Leon’s throat tightened.

  Tanja came back to him and buried her face in Leon’s shoulder, trembling and clearly overcome. Hell, he could hardly withstand the intensity of this reunion.

  “Mama?” Christo touched her hair.

  “I’m okay, little man. Mommy’s just really, really happy.” She showed him her beaming smile and round cheeks tracked with tears. “Your brother is here.”

  Christo looked at her belly, making her laugh and stammer out, “The other one.”

  Brahim was asking Illi questions. Illi was nodding and wiping at her little cheeks, smiling as she shyly answered. When Brahim rose and shouldered his duffel, Illi took his hand, drawing forth a very naked look of love as he gazed down on her.

  Illi seemed to have an instant case of the hero worships. She brought him to Leon. “This is my daddy and my brother, Christo. This is my brother, Brahim.”

  “Leon. Welcome.” Leon released Tanja to offer his hand.

  Brahim shook it, but his expression shuttered slightly, telling Leon the young man’s trust wouldn’t be won as easily by him as it had been by Tanja and Illi.

  Christo dipped out of Leon’s hold straight into Brahim’s arms, though. Brahim caught the boy with surprise.

  “You give hugs, too?” Brahim asked in accented English. “Thank you.” He patted Christo’s back with bemusement, making them all laugh.

  “Christo always wants to do everything I do,” Illi informed in the very important tone of a big sister.

  “Well, he is obviously learning to be as loving as you are.” He gave Christo back to Leon, but his defensiveness had receded a little.

  Hours later, when they had made the final leg of travel home and everyone was abed under one roof, Leon said, “I told Brahim he could talk to me about his experiences if he’s worried it might burden you. Or that we could find him a professional. He’s liable to have PTSD or other lingering effects.”

  “Thank you for reaching out to him like that. I don’t know that he’s had any good male role models for a long time.” She pinched his side, warning, “Don’t say anything self-deprecating. You are a good role model.”

  “I’ll defer to your better judgment,” he said drily. “But I think we’ll all be good for him.” He cuddled his warm, supportive, incredibly generous wife into his side. “He’s cautious, which is understandable, but the children will win him over. And you love so hard, you’re impossible to resist.”

  “So do you. Is that news to you?”

  He rolled and adjusted their positions so they were face-to-face. He smoothed a tendril of hair off her face.

>   “I didn’t know I was capable of loving this much. I don’t know that anyone else could have brought it out in me. And even though I don’t know how all of this will work out, I know it will. That you and I will get through it, one way or another, together. Stronger.”

  “Leon.” She cupped his jaw, and he drew her closer for a kiss.

  She’d come to bed in a nightgown, already yawning, but desire sent his hands in search of skin. She made one of those receptive noises that turned him on, and they gravitated into each other.

  “It’s been a long day.” He ran his mouth down her neck, inhaling her familiar scent. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to.”

  “I always want to,” she assured him, peeling her nightgown up. “I want you. I love you.”

  He set about demonstrating that his love and desire was as steadfast as hers.

  * * *

  Hooked by What the Greek’s Wife Needs? Dive into these other stories by Dani Collins!

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  The Secrets She Must Tell

  by Lucy King

  PROLOGUE

  SHE COULDN’T TAKE her eyes off him.

  Sitting on the crimson velvet banquette that curved around a table upon which sat a bottle of bubbles chilling in a bucket, Georgie Wallace took a sip of champagne and felt it fizz down her throat to join the unfamiliar buzzing in her stomach.

  Her pulse thudded in time to the beat of the sultry music drifting over from the dance floor. The blood pounding through her veins was thick and hot. This pull, this dizzying breathlessness, this inability to concentrate on the conversation going on around her had never happened to her before.

  But then, she’d never seen anyone quite like him before either.

  She’d noticed him the moment he’d entered the room what felt like an eternity ago but could only have been a matter of seconds. One minute she’d been laughing at something one of her friends had said, the next the air had started vibrating with a strange sort of electric tension that had sizzled straight through her, igniting her nerve-endings and robbing her of all coherent thought. Her gaze had located the source of it with the precision of a heat-seeking missile, and the impact of seeing him had dealt a blow to her senses from which she’d yet to recover.

  Now he was striding across the floor away from her, dominating the space as if he owned it, all towering height, confident authority and purposeful intent. Anyone in his way instinctively stepped out of it. No one appeared inclined to inform him of the club’s no-jeans policy.

  ‘Magnificent,’ Georgie murmured to herself, watching transfixed as he slid onto a stool at the far end of the busy bar and summoned the bartender with nothing more than a barely perceptible lift of his head.

  That was what he was.

  In command.

  Compelling.

  And clearly in need of a drink, if the way he knocked back the one that appeared in front of him was anything to go by.

  ‘Huh?’ said Carla, her oldest and best friend, who was sitting beside her and who she could see out of the corner of her eye was bopping to the music while plucking the bottle from the bucket to refill her glass.

  ‘The guy at the bar,’ Georgie said, unable to wrench her gaze away.

  ‘Which one?’

  Wasn’t it obvious? ‘Far left. Dark hair in need of a cut, checked shirt.’

  ‘Big and broad with his sleeves pushed up?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  Carla replaced the bottle in the bucket and sat back. ‘A bit dishevelled for my liking,’ she said after a moment’s consideration. ‘Nice back, though. Good shoulders.’

  ‘Very.’ With muscles clearly visible beneath the cotton that stretched across them, they were possibly the finest set of shoulders Georgie had ever seen.

  ‘Did you get a look at his face?’

  ‘Not properly.’ Just a tantalising glimpse of a strong masculine jaw and straight nose as he’d stridden past her.

  ‘It would be helpful if he shifted round a bit more.’

  ‘True,’ Georgie said with an assessing tilt of her head. ‘But even if he did, he’d still be too far away to make out the details.’

  ‘Shame.’

  It was indeed, because just imagine if his face matched up to the promise of his body. He’d be breathtakingly gorgeous and that was something she wouldn’t mind taking a good, long look at.

  But, intriguingly, what was equally as arresting as his physique on the move was his stillness and his containment as he sat alone at the bar. Now furnished with another drink, which he was taking more slowly than the last, he seemed to be utterly lost in thought, an island of immobility in a sea of activity, his bleak sobriety a sharp contrast to the hedonistic atmosphere of the club, and oddly desolate.

  Who was he?

  What was he doing here?

  And would he like some company?

  At that distantly familiar thought, Georgie inwardly stilled, her heart skipping a beat before racing.

  Oooh, how interesting.

  Once upon a time, as an out-of-control teenager desperate for parental attention and discipline, she hadn’t thought twice about approaching good-looking men in bars for a spot of light flirting or dirty dancing, and she’d been extremely good at it.

  But ever since she’d come to the distressing realisation at the age of sixteen that if she wanted boundaries she’d have to set them for herself, she’d given up that sort of reckless, impulsive behaviour and had knuckled down to the serious business of adulting. With a love of rules that had been missing from her upbringing, she’d pursued a career in law—much to the horror of her hippie parents—and had slowly built the structure she craved into her life.

  She’d had dates, of course, relationships even, but they were casual affairs with guys at college or, later, with men she generally met at friends’ dinner parties, men she already faintly knew instead of random strangers picked up in bars.

  And, while she’d liked and respected and fancied all of them, none had made her heart race particularly fast. Her last relationship—six months with a perfectly nice but ultimately unexciting banker—had fizzled out over a year ago and she’d neither lamented its demise nor been on the lookout for another.

  For the last twelve months, in fact, she’d become so engrossed in the job she loved, so determined to get the promotion she’d been after, that she hadn’t given the opposite sex a moment’s consideration. She hadn’t wanted the distraction. She hadn’t needed the hassle.

  Tonight, however, with her promotion in the bag and her foot easing off the accelerator a fraction, it appeared she wouldn’t mind some of both.

  ‘Good song,’ Carla said in response to a shift in the music as she bopped about on the seat a bit more energetically. ‘Want to dance?’

  Not particularly.

  In fact, Georgie wanted something quite different. Because, while hitting the dance floor with her friends and forgetting all about the brooding hunk at the bar would be by far the safest, most sensible option, she didn’t want to forget about him. And for once she didn’t want to be sensible. She wanted to meet him. Talk to him. Flirt with him. She wanted to give in to the scorching heat and the dizzying lust rushing through her and see where they took her.

  She couldn�
��t remember the last time she’d experienced such an intense and immediate attraction, or felt so alive. She hadn’t realised how much she’d missed the heady thrill of sexual excitement, how long she’d been treading water. Besides, it was her birthday. If she couldn’t let her hair down tonight of all nights, when could she?

  ‘Maybe later,’ she said, her stomach tightening and her pulse racing at the thought of what could happen if she went for it.

  Beside her, Carla stilled, her eyes wide. ‘Oh? But you usually love dancing.’

  ‘I think I might go over and see if I can’t cheer him up instead.’

  There was a moment of stunned silence, and then an incredulous, ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he does not look like the sort of suave, sophisticated professional you usually go for these days. He looks...untamed.’

  ‘I know.’ And that was the attraction.

  ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘Yup.’ Ish. Her chatting up skills were a bit rusty, and not only might he not be in the mood for company, he might also be spoken for. But what was the worst that could happen? If she crashed and burned, she could always give a nonchalant shrug and leave. If, on the other hand, she didn’t, and the attraction she was experiencing turned out to be mutual...well...the outcome could be explosive.

  ‘I thought you’d given up doing that sort of thing.’

  ‘It’s only conversation,’ she said while thinking, Well, maybe. To start with, at least.

  ‘Sure it is,’ said Carla with a wry grin that Georgie couldn’t help returning as she put down her glass and got to her feet, her stomach churning with nervous excitement.

  ‘Wish me luck.’

  ‘Good luck. Not that you ever needed it. One thing, though...’