by Lynne Graham
Around seven that same morning, Grace emerged from the shower, wrapped a fleecy towel round her nakedness and wondered ruefully where her cases were. Their frantic charge to the bedroom the night before had left no time for such niceties as unpacking. Her face burned and she glanced in one of the many mirrors, angry and ashamed of herself because she was still acting out of character and letting her life go off the rails. One mistake did not need to lead to another, so why had she slept with Leo again last night? Waking up in bed alone in the silent apartment with her brain awash with unfamiliar thoughts of self-loathing had unnerved her. Leo, she had decided miserably, Leo was bad for her.
She crept out to the hall where her luggage still awaited her and she was about to lift a case when she heard a sound from another room and stiffened uncertainly.
‘Grace...is that you?’
It was too late to retreat with any dignity but the discovery that Leo was still in the apartment and had not yet gone off to work as she had dimly assumed was unwelcome. She moved to the doorway of a large ultra-modern room flooded with light from a wall of windows and saw Leo. Her breath hitched in her throat. Barefoot, clad in only a pair of jeans unfastened at the waist and an unbuttoned shirt, Leo looked heartbreakingly gorgeous with his messy black hair, stubbled jawline and stunningly unreadable dark eyes gleaming in the sunlight.
‘I thought you were out,’ she confided. ‘I need to get dressed.’
‘No hurry... Housekeeping doesn’t get here until nine.’ Leo stared at her, his eyes eating her alive in the pounding silence. With her red hair rippling damply round her narrow shoulders, her triangular face warm with colour and her sea-glass eyes bright and evasive, she reminded him of a pixie. She was tiny and her curves were gloriously feminine. He wanted to tell her to drop the towel. The swelling at his groin was more than willing to bridge an awkward moment with sex.
‘I have things to do.’
‘Come here...I want to show you some properties,’ Leo urged.
Grace moved reluctantly forward, one hand clutching the towel to her breasts lest it slip. She was wasting her time with the modesty, Leo thought helplessly. It only made him want to rip it off her more. ‘Properties?’ she questioned, dry-mouthed.
Leo sank down on the sofa he had abandoned and swung out the laptop he had been using. ‘I’ve been looking for somewhere suitable for you to live.’
‘But I’m here...er...I thought...’
‘This is a company apartment, used by my father and my brother as well. It’s serviced, convenient for me,’ Leo explained. ‘Until now I haven’t spent enough time in London to warrant the purchase of separate accommodation.’
‘And that’s changing?’ Grace took a seat uneasily by his side and the faint but awesomely familiar scent of him assailed her nostrils, an intoxicating hint of sandalwood and citrus fruit with a foundation note of warm, musky masculinity. Below the towel her breasts beaded into straining points and warmth pooled in her pelvis.
‘Obviously it will. If my child’s going to be here, I will be too,’ Leo countered carelessly, as if that truth was so obvious he shouldn’t have to say it out loud. ‘But fortunately I do own quite a few investment properties here and I’ve made up a small selection of the ones that are currently available for you.’
Grace was frowning in bewilderment. ‘For...me?’
‘You’re homeless. My most basic responsibility should be ensuring that you have a comfortable and secure base.’
‘I wasn’t homeless until you persuaded me to move out of Matt’s spare room,’ Grace said shortly, disliking the label as much as his take-charge attitude that suggested she was a problem to be tackled and solved. ‘And I assumed I was staying here.’
‘You need your own space.’
No, Leo wanted his space back, Grace suspected. Just then she recalled that he hadn’t still been in bed with her the morning after their first night together on the yacht either. ‘You should’ve left me where I was.’
‘I’m not going to argue about this with you. It’s futile,’ Leo spelt out, flipping up the first of three luxury properties, chosen for proximity to her university campus.
Her lungs inflated while she listened to his spiel and watched the screen flip up properties that only someone wealthy could have afforded to rent. Her hands curled into fists and her soft mouth flattened over grinding teeth long before he reached the end of his running commentary and turned the laptop over to her for further perusal. It was the last straw. Grace sprang up and settled the laptop squarely back down on the coffee table. ‘Thanks but no, thanks,’ she said curtly.
Leo leapt up, his shirt flying back from his corrugated abdomen, his unsnapped waistband giving her a glimpse of the little black furrow of silky hair that arrowed down to his crotch. As she remembered how intimate she had been with him the night before the bottom seemed to fall out of her stomach and she felt positively ill with mortification.
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? That’s my baby you’re carrying and from now on until the finish line you’re both my responsibility!’ Leo shot back at her impatiently.
‘No, I’m my own responsibility and I don’t need a domineering, controlling man telling me what to do!’ Grace flared instantly back at him, light green eyes glittering with the blistering anger she had been holding back. ‘I understand that you want to stand by me to show me that you’re a good guy but you’re handing out very mixed messages and I prefer to know exactly where I stand.’
One look at her and Leo wanted her so badly at that moment that he physically hurt. Her passion called out to him on the deepest level of his psyche even though he had deliberately avoided that kind of passion all his life. She was having an emotional meltdown and that was all right, only to be expected, he told himself soothingly. ‘If you were to stay with me, we’d end up in bed again and that’s not a good idea when you don’t yet know what your plans are.’
‘I am not going to end up in bed with you again. I am never going to go to bed with you again!’ Grace swore vehemently.
Far from comforted by that news, Leo groaned. ‘Grace, you’re a nice girl and I don’t get involved with nice girls. I don’t do love and romance. I can’t be what you want if you want more.’
‘I’m not going to be some kept woman in some house you own either, living off you like a leech because we had a stupid contraceptive accident!’ Grace raked back at him furiously, infuriated to be called a ‘nice girl’ because that tag only suggested dreary, conservative and needy to her. In addition, although she refused to allow herself to dwell on her sense of rejection, she was horribly crushed by his cool, cynical disclaimer of any deeper feelings where she was concerned. ‘I may be poor but I have my pride. You’re interfering in my life far too much, Leo.’
Leo shocked himself by wanting to shout back at her. He wanted her to do what he told her to do, which was, after all, what ninety-nine per cent of the people in his life invariably did. Consequently, he very rarely, if ever, raised his voice. He was proud of his self-control but then he had always avoided emotional scenes, swiftly ditching women who specialised in them. Of course he had been raised by the ultimate of scene-throwers: his mother, whom he recalled staging dramatic walkouts, outrageous suicide threats and sobbing herself into hysterics.
‘You have to have peace and quiet to continue your studies and decide what to do next. I’m trying not to interfere with that. If you weren’t pregnant, you wouldn’t be in this situation now. I only want what’s best for you and the baby.’
‘And the easiest thing for you to give is money,’ Grace completed with reluctant comprehension, her troubled green eyes scanning the opulence of the furnishings and a view of the City of London that had to be next door to priceless. ‘Isn’t it?’
His lean, darkly handsome face tensed. ‘Yes, so will you view the property you like the best? I’ll have you mov
ed in by the weekend. I think we should have dinner tonight and talk future options.’
‘No, I have a student thing to attend,’ Grace lied, freshly determined to dull her intense attraction to Leo by seeing less of him.
‘Tomorrow night, then.’
‘No, sorry.’
‘Grace, I’m trying hard here,’ Leo growled in warning.
‘I have a check-up with the doctor booked.’
‘I’ll come with you and we’ll eat afterwards,’ Leo pronounced with satisfaction.
That wasn’t what Grace wanted at all. She felt like a ball being rolled down a steep hill in a direction she didn’t want to go. Leo was getting much too involved in her life but by sleeping with him again hadn’t she encouraged that? Torn in two by inner conflict, Grace lifted her chin. ‘When do you want me to see this property?’ she prompted.
‘I have a board meeting this morning but late afternoon around four would suit me. I’ll pick you up then.’
Grace wanted to tell him that she didn’t need his escort either but it was his property and she could hardly object. All too frequently in life, Grace had discovered that necessity and practicality overruled any personal preference. Barring a return to Matt’s guest room, she was technically homeless and in no position to dismiss an offer made by the father of her unborn child. She didn’t like that truth but she had to live with it, she told herself unhappily.
When she emerged from the unused bedroom she had taken her case into, fully dressed and composed, Leo had left and Sheila, the friendly older woman washing the kitchen floor, asked her what she would like for breakfast. ‘Housekeeping’ Leo had labelled Sheila with the casual indifference that spoke volumes about his privileged status in life. Grace ate cereal and toast at the kitchen table and learned all there was to know about Sheila’s four adult children, grateful for the pleasant chatter that took her mind off her problems.
There was a tight, hard knot inside Grace’s chest and it ached like mad. Over and over again she was still hearing Leo say, I don’t do love and romance...you’re a nice girl. Last night Leo had sung a very different tune, making her sound irresistible, giving her the heady impression that she meant more to him than she did while he smoothly talked her into an act of monumental stupidity. Of course, he had said all those things, demonstrated all that thrilling impatience before he got her into bed, and that told her all she really needed to know, didn’t it? she scolded herself with newly learned cynicism. He had fooled her, manipulated her, got what he evidently wanted and then withdrawn behind boundaries again. There was a lesson to be learned there and she had learned it well.
A light knock sounded on the bedroom door while she was repacking her case. ‘Grace...you have a visitor,’ Sheila told her.
Bemused by the announcement when even Matt didn’t have her address, Grace followed Sheila down to the hall to see a tall, very attractive brunette with a wealth of mahogany hair and dressed in a very fashionable outfit, who frowned at Grace in apparent astonishment. ‘My goodness, you’re not at all what I expected!’ she exclaimed, extending a slim beringed hand. ‘I’m Marina Kouros...and you can only be...Grace?’
CHAPTER SIX
‘YES. AM I supposed to know who you are?’ Grace asked the tall brunette awkwardly.
‘Leo didn’t mention me?’ Marina Kouros prompted.
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Coffee, Miss Kouros?’ Sheila proffered from the kitchen doorway.
‘No, thanks...we’ll be in the sitting room,’ the brunette said with easy authority, strolling confidently ahead of Grace, making it clear she knew her way around the apartment before she paused for an instant to firmly close the door.
‘Why should Leo have mentioned you?’ Grace asked stiffly as she hovered by the wall of windows, insanely conscious of her worn jeans and plain chain-store sweater when compared to her companion’s expensive separates.
Marina’s discomfiture was, for an instant, too obvious to be misinterpreted. ‘Because Leo and I have been engaged for the past three years and we’re getting married in six weeks’ time...or, at least, we were until you came along.’
Grace’s jaw felt frozen and unwieldy as she struggled to speak through underperforming facial muscles. ‘Engaged?’ That single word was literally all she could squeeze out of her deflated lungs because her whole body felt as if it had gone into serious shock.
‘I’ll keep this brief. I’m not here to see you off...well, I suppose that’s a lie. If you were to vanish into thin air right now, it would suit me very well, but I know you’re pregnant and that it’s not quite that simple.’
‘Leo told you that I’m pregnant?’ Grace whispered in even greater shock.
‘He’s very upfront like that but I must say you are a surprise. I was expecting a blonde bombshell with a pole dancer’s wardrobe,’ Marina admitted with a distressing candour that suggested Leo’s infidelity was more normal than worthy of note. ‘But look, I won’t prevaricate. I’m here for one reason only. I don’t want you to screw up Leo’s life and mine and I was planning to offer you money to go away.’
Like an accident victim, Grace was frozen in place, her face as pale as milk, her eyes wide with consternation and haunted by too many powerful reactions to enumerate. Marina evoked so many different reactions in Grace; anger, mortification, guilt and pain were assailing her on all levels. Leo had lied to her. Leo had pretended to be single and unattached, and an engaged man on the brink of his wedding was anything but unattached. He had been engaged for three years? That was not a recent or a casual commitment.
‘If Leo had told me he was engaged this wouldn’t have happened because I would never have been with him in the first place,’ Grace framed with desperate dignity. ‘I’m genuinely sorry that anything I have done has upset you and that this situation is affecting you as well, but there is no way I would accept money from you.’
‘I’ve known Leo all his life. He had a horrendous childhood and, because of it, he will never turn his back on his own child,’ Marina informed her grimly. ‘But I don’t think he should have to sacrifice his whole life and all his plans because of that child. Somewhere, somehow there has to be a happy compromise for all of us.’
‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ Grace framed sickly, her mind glossing over that reference to Leo’s childhood because she could barely cope as it was with the overload of information and thoughts already bombarding her. ‘I don’t know what I can say...other than, how can you still care about a man who cheats on you?’
‘I think that’s my business.’
‘Just as the baby’s mine,’ Grace countered quietly. ‘I don’t know what you want from me, Marina. But I won’t be staying on in this apartment.’
‘I only want you to think about what you’re doing. If you have that baby...’ Marina breathed with unmistakeable bitterness, her well-mannered mask slipping without warning ‘...you’re wrecking all our lives!’
‘But that’s my decision to make,’ Grace pointed out with wooden precision as she battled her churning inner turmoil to walk back to the door Marina had closed. She opened the door again in unapologetic invitation. ‘If you’re finished, I don’t think we have anything else to say to each other right now.’
* * *
Across the city, Leo said a very bad word below his breath when he read the warning text from Marina. For the first time ever he was really furious with his ex, his quick and clever brain instantly envisaging the potential fallout from what Grace had just discovered about him. Grace already had quite enough on her plate without that and Marina had absolutely no right to interfere. Had Marina hit out at Grace in revenge? Having always trusted his oldest and most loyal friend, Leo was taken aback by the suspicion, but the timing of Marina’s visit spoke for itself and could hardly be deemed an accident. His handsome mouth twisted and he stood up at the boar
d table to excuse himself from the meeting; he had to see Grace before she did something stupid.
That was the most surprising thing about Grace, which he had quickly registered. She might have a very clever brain and a steel backbone of independence but both were combined with an alarming tendency to make very sudden decisions and execute moves that were not always wise. It was that deeply buried vein of spontaneous passion and adventure in Grace that worried Leo the most. How else did he explain that night on his yacht? After almost twenty-five years of being a virgin she had just picked him like a rabbit out of a hat? A man about whom she knew nothing? Leo was still appalled by the risk she had taken on him that night until it occurred to him that he had never expended a similar amount of anxiety on any other casual sex partner. Only then did he crack down hard on his undesirable feelings of concern and the vague suspicion that Grace was much more fragile and vulnerable than she liked to pretend.
Well, once they were married, he wouldn’t need to worry about her any longer. He would know where she was, what she was doing...in short, once he had control of Grace, full control, the horrible sense of apprehension that had gripped him since he first learned of her pregnancy would die a natural death. His anxiety was undoubtedly focused on the baby, he told himself consolingly. The baby was only a speck barely visible to the naked eye at this stage of his or her development—Leo had looked it up on the Internet—but it was his future son or daughter and he knew that baby was virtually defenceless and utterly dependent on the health and well-being of its mother’s body for survival. What the hell had Marina been thinking of when she had deliberately approached a woman in Grace’s condition to break such bad news? Hadn’t she appreciated how dangerous that could be?