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.
Coming next month
THE GREEK’S CONVENIENT CINDERELLA
Lynne Graham
‘Mr Alexandris,’ Tansy pronounced rather stiffly.
‘Come and sit down,’ he invited lazily. ‘Tea or coffee?’
‘Coffee please,’ Tansy said, following him round a sectional room divider into a rather more intimate space furnished with sumptuous sofas and sinking down into the comfortable depths of one, her tense spine rigorously protesting that amount of relaxation.
She was fighting to get a grip on her composure again but nothing about Jude Alexandris in the flesh matched the formal online images she had viewed. He wasn’t wearing a sharply cut business suit, he was wearing faded, ripped and worn jeans that outlined long powerful thighs, narrow hips and accentuated the prowling natural grace of his every movement. An equally casual dark grey cotton top complemented the jeans. One sleeve was partially pushed up to reveal a strong brown forearm and a small tattoo that appeared to be printed letters of some sort. His garb reminded her that although he might be older than her he was still only in his late twenties and that unlike her, he had felt no need to dress to impress.
Her pride stung at the knowledge that she was little more than a commodity on Alexandris’s terms. Either he would choose her, or he wouldn’t. She had put herself on the market to be bought though, she thought with sudden self-loathing. How could she blame Jude Alexandris for her stepfather’s use of virtual blackmail to get her agreement? Everything she was doing was for Posy, she reminded herself squarely and the end would justify the means…wouldn’t it?
‘So…’ Tansy remarked in a stilted tone because she was determined not to sit there acting like the powerless person she knew herself to be in his presence. ‘You require a fake wife…’
Jude shifted a broad shoulder in a very slight shrug. ‘Only we would know it was fake. It would have to seem real to everyone else from the start to the very end,’ he advanced calmly. ‘Everything between us would have to remain confidential.’
‘I’m not a gossip, Mr Alexandris.’ In fact Tansy almost laughed at the idea of even having anyone close enough to confide in because she had left her friends behind at university and certainly none of them had seemed to understand her decision to make herself responsible for her baby sister rather than returning to the freedom of student life.
‘I trust no one,’ Jude countered without apology. ‘You would be legally required to sign a non-disclosure agreement before I married you.’
‘Understood. My stepfather explained that to me,’ Tansy acknowledged, her attention reluctantly drawn to his careless sprawl on the sofa opposite, the long muscular line of a masculine thigh straining against well washed denim. Her head tipped back, her colour rising as she made herself look at his face instead, encountering glittering dark eyes that made the breath hitch in her throat.
‘I find you attractive too,’ Jude Alexandris murmured as though she had spoken.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Tansy protested, the faint pink in her cheeks heating exponentially as her tummy flipped while she wondered if she truly could be read that easily by a man.
‘For this to work, we would need that physical attraction. Nobody is likely to be fooled by two strangers pretending what they don’t feel, least of all my family, some of whom are shrewd judges of character.’
Tansy had paled. ‘Why would we need attraction? I assumed this was to be a marriage on paper, nothing more.’
‘Then you assumed wrong,’ Jude told her without skipping a beat.
Continue reading
THE GREEK’S CONVENIENT CINDERELLA
Lynne Graham
Available next month
Copyright ©2021 by Lynne Graham
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.