Calling Angst Junkies! Yes, the hero Leo is Greek. Yes, he marries the heroine Natasha. Forced? Not exactly. More blackmail and manipulation. And it works! If you like emotions, passion and angst The Greek’s Forced Bride is a winner.
Plot Synopsis – Click to Skip Spoilers
Let’s do a quick sweep through the plot – which is skimpy to allow plenty of room for emotion and character development.
Blonde and curvy Natasha wears baggy, prim clothes and is engaged to useless Greek playboy Rico. Rico sleeps his way around Europe, pursues stick thin blonde model types, never ladies with curves and never ever ladies who wear baggy clothes and avoid the spotlight. Rico is shallow. We see just how shallow he is when his stepbrother, Leo, who runs the family business, barges into Rico’s office to confront him for embezzling millions. Oops. Rico is busy fornicating with a blonde on his desk. Natasha arrives to challenge Rico on cheating, enters right behind Leo, just in time to see Rico with her own sister, pop singer Cindy.
Cindy is 18, thin, blonde, petulant, spoilt, greedy, spiteful, vicious to her proper and morally upright sister Natasha whom she has hired to run her business affairs for a few months until Natasha marries Rico and Cindy’s new professional management company steps in. Natasha knows darn well Cindy doesn’t even like Rico, she simply can’t stand the idea of Natasha having something she does not. Cindy set up Natasha to visit Rico’s office and staged the scene for the fun of hurting her sister.
Natasha flees. Leo kicks Rico out – “and take the slut with you” and chases after Natasha. She’s throwing up. Leo stuffs her in his car and takes off for his apartment while they both ignore frantic phone calls from the cheats who are desperate to keep things smooth. Leo kisses Natasha which ignites; she decides she wants someone, even Leo, to want her and tries to seduce him but he realizes that she’s simply using him to get back at Rico and pushes her away.
Leo confronts Natasha as she leaves Leo’s home. He wants her to return $2 million Euros that Rico stole. Rico stashed it in an account in her name and Leo wants her to give it back then get out of his life. Leo is disillusioned, the woman he has lusted after, is nearly in love with, is a thief. Natasha had not realized Rico had stolen the funds and agrees to give it to Leo, except she cannot access the funds for 6 weeks. Leo threatens to get her arrested for fraud unless she comes with him to Greece for the 6 weeks, and oh, by the way, keeps him sweet with sex. Natasha is appalled but terrified by the threat of jail and overwhelmed with Leo’s sexual attraction. She agrees.
Leo accompanies her to Cindy’s apartment to get her passport and clothes; Cindy attacks her the second she arrives. Rico panicked, called their parents who are on the way and Natasha had better darn well take the blame for everything (?? I’m at a loss here how that would work) and do some major damage control or else Cindy would do it herself and throw Natasha under every bus, train and plane she can. Leo tells Cindy to shut up and threatens to ruin her singing career if she makes Natasha look bad. Cindy’s and Natasha’s parents arrive and are all over poor Cindy, completely ignore Natasha – who in one swoop lost her family, her fiancé, her home and future. Who cares? It’s CINDY who must be protected and cosseted.
Leo takes Natasha to his home in Athens, seduces her (she’s willing but not happy with herself or with him). He tries to shame her first, refuses to believe she’s never slept with anyone, then discovers that oops, yes, she was a virgin. In fact when Natasha gets up and showers Leo sees the blood and changes the sheets himself to protect her from seeing the evidence herself. He proposes marriage to save his honor and she tells him to stuff his honor, stick to the deal, she’s not interested in marrying him, he’s tacky.
Leo alternately acts as protector and as seducer. His ex-wife Gianna barges in when he’s kissing Natasha and shrieks at them both, insults Natasha. Leo introduces Natasha as his future wife which restarts the shrieks until Leo manhandles Gianna out. He tells Natasha “‘I do not have a relationship with my ex-wife,’ he spoke finally. ‘I do not sleep with her and I have no wish to sleep with her, though Gianna prefers to tell herself I will change my mind if she pushes long and hard enough…In case you did not notice,’ he continued as Natasha turned to look him, ‘Gianna is not quite—stable.’”. ” Natasha is more than fed up by now.
When they eat dinner Leo grabs Natasha’s breast which sends her out the door to find a quiet private spot to crumple and cry. Leo knows – has known all day – that he’s acting horribly. He comforts Natasha, puts her to bed.
The next day Leo sends her shopping at a friend’s store. Although he he had instructed his friend to outfit Natasha in elegant, refined clothes, he first accuses Natasha of being an easy victim for all the self-confident harpies like her sister or Gianna. Natasha takes the challenge and buys elegant but very sexy clothes which infuriate Leo. He tells off one of his friends who’s ogling Natasha, “Get your eyes off my future wife’s breasts”. Natasha has it out with him that night, or tries to. Leo won’t fight with her as he has a fail-safe strategy in his back pocket to get his way.
The next morning Leo drags Natasha out of bed. The tabloid headline looks awful. “Love Cheat Chooses Riches over Rags.” Cindy got her damage control and it’s a doozy. Poor victim Cindy knew nothing about Natasha dating Leo behind poor Rico’s back and oh, by the way, look at her new single that her new management company is releasing. Leo is impressed with the job Cindy’s management company did to whitewash her and promote themselves at the same time. The lies are sordid and will hurt Natasha. But not to worry! He has a plan.
He, Leo could dump Natasha, thus enhancing his own reputation for ruthlessness, or Natasha could leave him and look even worse or yes, they could marry. And incidentally, here’s the notice of their impending marriage in the reputable papers. Natasha reluctantly agrees and they marry the next week. Leo takes her on a tour of his businesses in several countries where she and he draw closer and she gets familiar with his world of big business and fancy socializing.
Their lovemaking is working its magic on Natasha. She knows she’s falling in love with Leo, she isn’t very happy about it. “And if this was real love, then it made her hurt like crazy, because, no matter how profoundly she knew she affected him, she also knew deep down inside her that the mind-blowing sex was as deep as it went for him.”
Leo and Natasha return to Athens about two weeks before she can access the stolen funds and she realizes she needs a job because she isn’t willing to take money from Leo for anything except the fancy designer clothes he wants her to wear. Her intransigence infuriates him and they hit bottom when she reminds him of the theft. “‘Don’t you think I know I owe you enough money already without letting you shell out even more?’”
Gianna confronts Natasha the next day, digs her long nails into her arm. Leo comes home early and tries to pick a fight with her. He misses the old Natasha, Miss Prim and Cool, misses hunting her down. Leo asks her to stay home the next day, skip job hunting. It’s the day she had planned to marry Rico and he doesn’t want to remind her of his stepbrother. They spend the afternoon making love before Leo leaves for Paris.
Cindy calls Natasha out of the blue the next morning, ostensibly about a problem with their parents. She’s in Athens, can they meet? It’s Rico who meets her, wants Natasha to sign the documents giving him access to the overseas account holding Leo’s stolen money. He shows Natasha a video of Leo going into a hotel with Gianna the night before. Natasha signs, goes home without even trying to talk to Cindy.
Leo comes in blazing angry, even more furious when he sees Natasha packing.
“What the hell were you doing with Rico?’ he bit out.
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Natasha didn’t answer; she just turned back to her bag.
‘I asked you a question.’ He arrived at her side and caught hold of her arm to swing her around. It was only as he did so that his eyes dropped to the bag she was packing. Cold fury suddenly lit him up. ‘If you think you are leaving me for him you can think it through again,’ he raked out.
Natasha just smiled.
The smile hit him as good as a hard slap. ‘You bitch,’ he choked, tossing her arm aside and reeling away from her. ‘I can’t believe you could do this to me.’
‘Why not?’ Natasha let herself speak at last—
Leo accuses her of signing the money over to Rico. “‘Yes, I did, didn’t I?’ she said smoothly. ‘Are you going to inform the police?’” She tells Leo that the only reason she’s his wife is he was punishing Gianna. ‘I was there, if you recall. Until she turned up, I was just the little thief you took to your bed to enjoy for six weeks until you got your precious money back.” (Actually Leo proposed just before Gianna burst in.) Leo then dumps her suitcase, drags her to bed and forcibly seduces her.
Natasha gets up, packs only the clothes she brought with her and walks out, takes a taxi to the airport, nearly too hurt to cry or feel anything. Leo watches her walk down the drive. He’s hurting, angry with Natasha, angry with himself. Then he sees the envelope Natasha left with the banker’s draft for the money Rico stole. He’s even more appalled at himself. Natasha did not give the money to Rico. Whatever she signed it was not the open sesame to the foreign bank account.
Leo and his security team dragoon Natasha from the airport and into his helicopter. Natasha is terrified how he treats her, thinks he might have his men dump her overboard and sits alone until they arrive at his island home (which she had not known of).
‘You came into our bedroom today expecting to see a cheating wife so you treated m-me like a cheating wife.’
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‘I thought you had signed the money over to Rico. It—hurt me.’
Leo asks her what she wants. “‘A speedy way off this island and an even speedier divorce!’ she flicked out, then turned to walk back to the house.” Deal, he agreed, in exchange for one more night in my bed.” He pushes and pushes until finally Natasha sinks down on the steps and starts to cry. Finally they talk. Leo tells her that he loves her, is insanely jealous of Rico, that Gianna uses sex for love, that he was done with Gianna after she had conspired with Rico against them. Lovemaking ensues and Happy Ever After beckons.
Why The Greek’s Forced Bride Works
1. Excellent Characters. The main characters are Leo and Natasha who take up almost all the page count. Minor characters Cindy, Rico and Gianna each say a few lines, (or screech a few), yet all three are important to building romance between Natasha and Leo. Natasha’s parents, housekeeper Beatrice and security chief Rasmus have almost no page time but are present enough that we could pick them out of a crowd. By focusing our attention on Leo and Natasha Michelle Reid moves the story along and builds romantic and emotional tension between them and with us readers.
Cindy Natasha calls Cindy a “self-seeking, spoiled brat” and Cindy confirms that judgement by her actions and words:
1. She shows she is selfish, shallow, vindictive, immoral, without conscience when she has sex with Natasha’s fiancé after making sure that Natasha would visit Rico’s office that morning so Natasha will see them in action.
2. She confirms that when she verbally attacks Natasha, screeching at her to get out of her safe, derail their parents, claims she only did Natasha a favor, struts and throws threats around, then lies to her parents and later to her fans.
3. Cindy is cunning, uses her management company to put all blame on Natasha – in fact Natasha herself is a nobody that the media would never have noticed until Natasha stumbled into Leo’s orbit and Cindy used her to deflect attention from Rico.
3. Just in case we didn’t realize it, Cindy is a great manipulator, using residual love to con Natasha into seeing Rico.
Cindy is a great foil for Natasha in the story beginning: Cindy is successful, self-confident, pretty with a fashionably thin figure, demanding, while we see Natasha getting sick in the parking garage after seeing Cindy with RIco. As Natasha’s story develops we see Cindy as an ongoing contrast. Leo challenges Natasha to stop letting bullies block her, when they later see Cindy celebrating her top single in the news Natasha is confident enough to be glad for her, no longer wracked by insecurities about her looks or standing.
Rico has even less page time than Cindy but Leo is horribly jealous of him, every time Natasha mentions him Leo nearly attacks Natasha and uses sex to burn his image in her mind and kick out Rico from her thoughts. Leo considers Rico his “vain and shallow, gut-selfish stepbrother” which is accurate. Rico is just as manipulative and greedy as Cindy, as jealous of Leo as Leo is of him (but with far more reason).
1. Rico lies to Natasha to get her to open the overseas account.
2. Rico conspires with Gianna to set up Leo and Natasha.
The author leaves it vague why Rico and Cindy both attempt to smooth things with Natasha until Rico admits that even his own mother doesn’t like him now, and as Leo says, Rico depends on his mom for money. (Yes, he is a parasite.) Cindy simply wants to avoid blame.
Gianna is unstable, sad, with little integrity. We see this when she barges into Leo’s bedroom and screams at him for missing a date he never made, attacks Natasha verbally then and later with her nails. Gianna is the least developed character, about all we need to know about her is that she’s obsessed with Leo and hates herself.
Natasha’s Parents It’s no surprise to read that her parents adopted her then essentially froze her out when they had their miracle baby, Cindy. Her parents rush right past her to comfort Cindy for meanie Rico, completely ignore Natasha and ignore that both Rico and and Cindy betrayed Natasha. Natasha does not expect anything more than she gets from her folks, which is good since they act as though she might as well not exist. Later Natasha gets a standard commercial congratulations card from them wishing her happiness in her marriage – with no message to Leo, no hint of love or affection. Leo suggests they may feel guilty but Natasha knows they simply do not care; they have blocked her off.
Rasmus, Leo’s Security Chief Rasmus appears just a few times. Leo assigns him to shadow Natasha and it’s Rasmus who helps her out of the helicopter. We expect Rasmus to be taciturn, discrete, loyal but know nothing else about him.
Beatrice, Leo’s Housekeeper in Greece Beatrice is deeply loyal to Leo and adds Natasha to his orbit. She’s blunt when Leo is blunt, “Go make the nice babies now” but otherwise talks little.
Natasha Reid shows us Natasha, a reserved, cool, composed lady who falls apart when Leo touches her. The story begins when Natasha goes to Rico’s office to end their engagement because she’s almost certain he has been sleeping around despite their engagement. Natasha was flattered and captivated by Rico’s charm offensive because she has never been wanted or even loved before, not even by her adoptive parents. She wants someone to want her and was easy game for Rico. Rico chose Natasha to ingratiate himself with his mother who knows too well that he’s a feckless womanizer.
Leo has been obnoxious and sarcastic to Natasha and she doesn’t much like him. She quickly realizes that disliking Leo’s sarcasm does not immunizer her to his good looks or determined seduction and his pursuit invigorates her. Natasha doesn’t know why she falls in love with Leo, it is more than physical attraction and lovemaking and more than the fact he wants her. Leo annoys her, drives her up the wall, but she loves him.
Leo Reid does an outstanding job developing Leo. She uses his point of view and gives us peeks into his thinking and feeling and combines that with Natasha’s view and Leo’s actions. We end up knowing him at least as well as we do Natasha.
Leo is by nature faithful, loving, warm, demanding, loyal, truthful, trustworthy, has integrity and demands it in his friends and wife and family, is willing to go a very long way to help his friends and family. He does not, likely never did, love Gianna who has behaved horribly to him and later to Natasha, yet he takes care of her. He continually reinforces that they are done as a couple, that he does not want to sleep with her or bring her back into his life as anything other than someone he has an obligation to.
Leo claims at the end that he never believed Natasha a thief; contrast this with his thinking once PA Juno informs him that Rico deposited the stolen money into an account in Natasha’s name. He mentally called her a thief, castigated her for her prim exterior and himself for being taken in with her act. So did he truly never really think she was Rico’s confederate, that his nasty thoughts mainly were aimed at himself for being immensely attracted to her, while he thought she was in love with the wastrel Rico? “‘I have never, for one second, believed you were a thief,’ he denied. ‘I have a split personality. I can go wild with jealousy over Rico and can still recognize that you’re the most honest person I know.’”
The thieving charge was very difficult for Natasha; it got in the way of open dialogue and stopped her from telling Leo she loved him. At the same time it was a handy crutch for Leo early on, something he could always drag out of the closets in his mind to diminish her. It caused heartache for both. Leo doesn’t want Natasha to bring up the money yet he never tells her that.
I suspect that Leo did have two opposing views of Natasha-as-thief. One view is sheer shock that this innocent appearing, prim woman would have been party to theft and the other is nah, no way she knowingly stole anything. Of course Leo was very happy to use the thief charge to bring Natasha to Greece and into bed. As he says at the end, “I was fighting for my woman.” Leo does indeed have a split personality regarding Natasha with Rico.
Leo is driving himself nuts with Natasha. He wants her, loves her, torments himself wondering what she feels for Rico, at first isn’t sure whether she loves him, but later realizes that her every actions say she loves him. Throw in the thief thoughts and his guilty knowledge that he’s treated her with far less respect than she deserves and he’s a basket case.
Although The Greek’s Forced Bride is ostensibly about Natasha, it is in fact more about Leo. He pushes and pushes and pushes her the first week they are together, lets up a bit then reverts to pushing her to get a response when he kidnaps her to his island. Leo is happiest when he can plot and plan his hunt for Natasha and that revitalizes him. He tells her he is blindly, jealously in love with her, has been almost from the moment he saw her and we readers realize it’s the truth.
Overall
The Greeks Forced Bride has several bedroom encounters that are neither explicit nor fade to black, vivid enough for us to realize that Leo takes immense care with Natasha and they both enjoy their physical intimacy, their emotional intimacy. Leo is surprised Natasha was a virgin, delighted yes, but horrified that he was so pushy, was nearly brutal in how he talked to her, acted towards her and knows that he acted nearly unforgivably.
It was wonderful to see a man realize he had been acting like a jerk, propositioning a woman who was wounded by seeing her fiancé betray her with her own sister, then being ignored by her parents in favor of the same sister. I think seeing Leo face up to his behavior and his unremitting skunky treatment is the one of the best parts of the story.
I don’t usually care for books with a ton of bedroom scenes as too often the authors use smut instead of interaction and character development. The Greek’s Forced Bride is not smutty and uses the bed times to develop the characters along with their actions and speech.
About my only quibble with this is the last paragraph in the book. Leo and Natasha have both admitted they love each other, although Natasha says she has no idea why, and are kissing on the steps. Leo says THIS is why she loves him, and she agrees. We readers know it is far more than physical passion that binds these two and it’s unnerving to see the author denigrate their deep emotional, mental, spiritual and physical connection to only the physical.
5 Stars
I got my E book copy from Harlequin.com and read it on the Glose app. You can get E versions from Amazon or Barnes and Noble and many sites have paperback formats.
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Michelle Reid uses dialogue to drive the plot and show us the Leo and Natasha.