A Baby to Bind His Bride

But the only man who had touched her—or ever will, something dark in him growled—was him.

You agreed to let her go, he reminded himself. Who does or doesn’t touch her has nothing to do with you.

He jerked his attention away from Silvio and looked around at the rest of his assembled family instead. His few remaining aunts were clutching wineglasses like life vests and muttering to each other beneath pasted-on smiles. His single living uncle stood with a cluster of Italian celebrities, yet looked as dour as ever.

The rest of the cousins were up to their usual tricks. Gilded swans with murder in their eyes, they all smiled to Leonidas’s face, exclaimed over Susannah when they could get her attention, and hardly bothered to do him the courtesy of hiding their plotting behind a polite hand.

And Silvio wasn’t the only one who’d sniffed around Susannah, right in front of Leonidas. He might have thought it was nothing more than a test to see exactly what sort of marriage he and Susannah had—but he saw the way they looked at her. He knew that every last one of them would die to get his hands on her if they could.

The frostier she was, the more they wanted her.

The trouble was, so did he.

His entire family would be ridiculous if they weren’t so dangerous at times, Leonidas thought as the night wore on. Some more than others, lest he forget that at least one of the sleek relatives smiling his way tonight was more than just teeth. One of them had arranged for that plane to go down.

He’d seen the reports that had led Susannah to his compound. He knew as much as she did—that the plane had been tampered with. He didn’t have to cast around for a reason when he was the head of the family, the CEO and president of the company, and he was related to all these jealous snakes. He was sure it had made perfect sense to one of the jackals he called cousin to get rid of him before he could have his own children and complicate matters—and their own fortunes—even further.

It almost didn’t matter which one it had been.

“Are you enjoying all this family time?” he asked Susannah during a lull in the forced family interactions.

“Are they a family, then?” she asked, but there was a smile in her blue eyes and that eased the weight in his chest he’d hardly noticed was there. “I rather thought I was being feasted upon by a pool of piranhas.”

“Never fear,” Leonidas said darkly. “I haven’t forgotten that one of them wished me dead. Or I should amend that. I assume they all wish me dead. But I also assume that only one of them acted on that wish.”

She tipped her head to one side, still smiling. “Can you really make such an assumption? They do seem to like gathering in groups.”

“Indeed they do.” Leonidas inclined his head toward his aunts, who had gone from conspiratorial whispers to gritted teeth and eye daggers, visible from halfway across the ballroom. “But teamwork is not exactly a Betancur family strength.”

Susannah laughed, which Leonidas enjoyed entirely too much, but then stopped abruptly. As if it had been snuffed out of her. He followed her gaze across the room and found an older couple entering the room. The woman was tall and thin, with a haughtily sour look on her face, as if she’d smelled something foul—and continued to smell it as she swept in. The man was much rounder and wreathed in as many mustaches as chins, looking so much like a staid, plush banker that Leonidas would have guessed that finance was the man’s trade even if he hadn’t recognized the pair of them on sight.

Susannah’s parents. His in-laws.

And his wife looked about as happy to see them as he was.

The older couple picked Susannah out of the crowd and started toward her as the band began to play again after a short interval. And to Leonidas’s surprise, Susannah grabbed his arm.

“We must dance, of course,” she said, sounding almost offhand when he could see that frantic gleam in her gaze.

“Can I dance?” he asked mildly, looking down at her. And the way she was still watching her parents approach as if she expected them to strike her down where she stood. “Or is it only that I do not wish to?”

That penetrated. She blinked, then frowned at him.

“Of course you can dance,” she told him, with only a hint of frost. He admired her restraint. “You were taught as a boy, like every other member of your social class. And mine.”

“I can’t remember one way or the other, but I feel certain I detest dancing.”

“Luckily for you, I can remember that you love it.” She smiled at him, and no matter that it was a touch overlarge. “Adore it, in fact.”

Leonidas did not adore dancing by any stretch of the imagination. But he’d walked into that one, he was aware.