by Lynne Graham
‘If we’re leaving soon I should get changed,’ Grace whispered after she had drifted once round the small dance floor in the circle of Leo’s arms, every inch of her treacherous body humming at the hard stirring contact with his.
‘There’s no need for you to change. We should head to the airport now,’ Leo told her calmly. ‘I’m determined to be the one to take that dress off you, meli mou.’
Ready colour warmed Grace’s cheeks and within minutes they were walking out to a waiting limousine, having thanked their guests for sharing their day. Travelling with Leo was, she discovered, very different from going on a package holiday trip. There were no queues to slow them down. They were rushed through the airport and waited for the flight call in a private lounge where they were served with refreshments.
‘You still haven’t told me where we’re going,’ Grace reminded him.
‘Italy...I have a house there. It’s very private,’ Leo murmured huskily, running a finger across the tender skin of her inner wrist where a blue vein pulsed below her fine white skin, sending a current of awareness snaking through her veins. ‘Perfect for a honeymoon.’
They boarded Leo’s private jet. The cabin crew greeted her. Grace studied the opulent leather seating and stylish fixtures with wide eyes before she took a seat. She glanced down at the ring gleaming on her wedding finger and breathed in deep and slow. She was Leo’s wife now but only because she was pregnant, she reminded herself staunchly as the jet took off. It didn’t do to forget that salient fact.
A moment later, she was very much taken by surprise when Leo settled the file about her background down on the table in front of her. ‘I’m sorry my investigation into your background distressed you but you should know what’s in it and I’d like to get it out of the way now.’
Grace paled, tense as a bowstring. She had planned to work up the courage to ask him for the file and she was relieved he had not pushed her to that point. Flipping it open, she began to read. It very quickly became clear that when she was a child she had only been told one side of her parents’ story—her mother’s. And her father’s side of the story was strikingly different.
‘Were you aware that your mother was an addict?’ Leo asked curiously.
‘Yes, of course, but I was told to never mention it again once I moved in with my uncle and aunt. They were ashamed of it,’ Grace confided ruefully. ‘Mum got into drugs when I was a baby but I didn’t know that she’d gone into rehab before I was a year old.’
‘Your father got her onto a drug rehabilitation programme but it didn’t work.’
No, indeed it hadn’t, Grace recalled, her disturbing memories of her late mother including many of her lying comatose or doing inappropriate things because she was out of her head on drugs.
‘It must’ve been challenging for him as a doctor to live with an addict, who was the mother of his child.’
‘Yes, and of course he inevitably met someone more suitable, another doctor he worked with, and deserted us.’
‘But he did take your mother to court first in an effort to gain custody of you...’
That fact was news to Grace. The story she had grown up with had ended with her father Tony’s departure from their lives and his marriage to another woman. Now she bent her head over the file and learned that her father had failed to win custody of her from her mother because Keira Donovan had impressed her social worker with her apparent desire to turn her life around. Although her father had been granted access visits to his daughter, there had been continual cancellations and arguments, which had prevented his visits from taking place. By that stage her father had got married and Grace reckoned that her mother’s bitterness over that reality would have known no bounds. In an obvious effort to stop the visits, Keira had accused Grace’s father of assault and that accusation had plunged Tony into a damaging slew of investigations by the police, the social services and even the General Medical Council. During that period Keira had disappeared and changed her name to ensure that she couldn’t be tracked down.
Having failed to trace Keira and their daughter, her father had eventually given up the search. By then he had become a father for the second time and had had a new family to focus on.
‘Your mother took you to live in a commune in Wales,’ Leo remarked. ‘What was that like for you?’
‘Ironically it was better than living alone with my mother,’ Grace admitted a shade guiltily. ‘There were other people around to look out for me and make sure I went to school and had regular meals.’
‘You had it tough.’
‘I wish my father had found me. I wish he hadn’t stopped looking but he was probably afraid that Mum would make more allegations against him and that that might wreck his career.’ Grace sighed as she finished reading up to the point where her uncle and aunt had given her a home after her mother’s death from an overdose. ‘I can’t really blame him. Mum was incredibly difficult. She hated him with a passion and she was very bitter.’
‘And how do you feel about your father now?’ Leo asked levelly.
‘That he probably did the best he could and obviously he didn’t deliberately abandon me. At least you were lucky enough to have both your parents growing up,’ Grace reminded him, closing the file and replacing it on the table with finality. Yet a little burst of warmth had touched the cold, hollow place in her heart where her belief in her father’s lack of interest had lodged in childhood. It was good to know that he had cared enough to fight for her even though he had ultimately lost out. For the first time ever, she wondered if she should try and contact her father.
Leo’s expressive mouth quirked in receipt of her innocent comment. ‘Having both parents never felt lucky to me. Anatole married my mother, who was a very spoiled Greek heiress, primarily for her money.’
Grace gazed back at him in shock. ‘That’s an awful thing to accuse your father of!’
‘But regretfully true. Although he married my mother he was actually in love with a waitress called Athene. He set Athene up as a mistress and she became pregnant with Bastien only a few months after my mother conceived me,’ he confided grimly. ‘Eventually my mother found out that she wasn’t the only woman in her husband’s life. I must’ve been about six by then. I still remember her screaming, sobbing and throwing things and the drama went on for days. Anatole duly promised to give up Athene and we lived in peace for a while. But of course Anatole was lying and the truth came out again. That same destructive pattern just kept on repeating and repeating—’
‘That must’ve been devastating for your mother. She must’ve really loved your father to keep on forgiving him.’
‘But he loved Athene and obviously Bastien was almost the same age as I was, so in a sense Anatole had two families. It was a hideous triangle.’ His lean dark features were bleak. ‘Anatole couldn’t walk away from Athene and my mother refused to let him go. Once when he tried to leave her she took sleeping pills and that scared the life out of him.’
‘Of course it did,’ Grace said with a shiver.
‘When I was thirteen, Athene died in a car crash and Bastien came to live with us. My mother was so relieved that her rival was dead that she agreed to the arrangement. Naturally, Bastien and I didn’t hit it off,’ Leo said drily, his lean, darkly handsome features grim. ‘However, the volatile nature of my parents’ marriage convinced me that I didn’t want an atom of that obsessive passion in my own marriage...’
Grace sipped at her soft drink and searched his lean, strong face, recognising the gravity etched there. ‘Meaning?’
‘I have never wanted any part of the possessiveness, the jealousy, the arguments or the overly high expectations that most married couples have of each other.’
‘That’s the down side of attachment. Love is the upside,’ Grace told him gently.
‘Not for me, it isn’t,’ Leo countered with cool convic
tion. ‘I’m not looking for love in our marriage, Grace.’
In spite of the sinking sensation in her stomach, Grace threw him a brilliant smile. ‘Neither am I, Leo, but I will expect you to love our child.’
‘That’s a different kind of love,’ he declared.
‘A less selfish love certainly,’ she conceded, wanting to ask him about his relationship with Marina and biting her lip to restrain herself while she was uncertain of her ground. ‘You forgave your father for his mistakes, didn’t you?’
‘He’s a good-hearted man but weak at the core. He dug himself into a hole and he couldn’t get out of it. He didn’t want to hurt anyone by making a choice and the result was that he hurt all of us.’
Her lashes dipped over her sea-glass eyes, which were clear as jade in the light filling the cabin. ‘If you feel so strongly about your father’s infidelity, how could you cheat on Marina?’
‘But I didn’t...cheat on her,’ Leo contradicted with a flare of distaste in the brilliant dark eyes narrowed below the lush canopy of his lashes. ‘Marina and I got engaged and then agreed to go our separate ways until we got married.’
Her lashes fluttered up in disbelief. ‘That’s weird.’
‘Why? Neither of us was in a hurry to marry and we weren’t lovers either, so it wasn’t the unsavoury agreement you are obviously imagining,’ Leo derided.
We weren’t lovers. That phrase repeated inside Grace’s brain and stunned her. ‘You mean, you and Marina...er...never—?’
‘Never, but that is confidential.’
Grace was shocked into silence, recalling Marina’s comment about Leo’s indifference and finally understanding its source. That Leo had been content to stand back and allow Marina to do as she liked during their engagement spoke volumes about the chilling level of his detachment and it was hardly surprising that the brunette had ultimately decided that she would be happier with another man. And Marina’s statement that Leo was bad for her ego? Oh, yes, Grace finally understood that and the significant part it might well play in her own future. Would Leo be so detached with her that he froze her out too?
The jet landed in Tuscany and they transferred into a helicopter for the last leg of their journey. By that stage Grace was fed up bundling her long dress round her legs to cope with steps and looking forward to being free of its confines, not to mention her perilously high heels. She stole a tentative glance at Leo’s hard bronzed profile, recalling his declared intention to remove her dress. Steamy warmth engulfed her treacherous body, anticipation as potent as an electrical storm at its core. But then desire shimmied like intoxicating alcohol through her veins when Leo was close. A heady combination of memory and the physical craving he evoked put her on edge, mortified by her weakness and ill at ease with her own physical reactions.
Leo lifted her out of the helicopter when they landed and she straightened to look in wonder at the building a hundred yards from them. ‘It’s a castle!’
‘Yes, but a small one. Built by a wealthy eccentric in the nineteen twenties and bought by my mother. She owned a lot of property round the world. I turned the most promising into businesses and sold the rest,’ he volunteered, walking her towards the curiously elegant castle fashioned of cream-coloured stone and set in the midst of beautiful gardens. ‘At one time I planned to turn the castle into a small exclusive hotel but once I had renovated it I decided to keep it as a bolt-hole.’
‘It’s hot for this time of year,’ Grace remarked in pleasant surprise, moving into the cool shadow of the tree-lined stone path that led to the castle entrance. Back in London late summer was fading into evenings with steadily dropping temperatures while here in Tuscany the roses were still blooming and the bite of autumn’s approach had yet to register.
A cheerful housekeeper chattering in Italian met them on the doorstep. Leo introduced her as Josefina and responded smoothly in the same language before escorting Grace across the highly polished floor tiles in the hall and up the stone staircase. A selection of doors led off the wide landing but Leo headed straight for the set of double doors in the centre and into a massive bedroom with a turret at either corner. ‘Wow,’ she whispered, pulling away from him to explore the turrets, finding a bathroom in one and a fully furnished dressing room in the other.
An ebony brow lifted, Leo watched in amusement, enjoying the expressions crossing her mobile face while their cases were being stashed behind them. ‘You like?’
‘I love,’ Grace confided, kicking off the high heels, which pinched. She brushed the petal of an exquisite white lily in a dramatic floral arrangement, trailed an admiring finger along the gleaming wooden surface of an antique chest of drawers and studied the big bed with its snowy white linen and ice-blue silky throw. ‘It’s so romantic.’
‘I don’t do romance,’ he reminded her, unbuttoning his shirt, having long since discarded his jacket and tie.
‘Bite the bullet, Leo,’ Grace advised in amusement. ‘This is a very romantic setting.’
Leo stiffened, but looking away from Grace at that moment wasn’t an option; she looked so impossibly appealing. She had taken her hair down during the flight and the brilliantly colourful strands tumbled luxuriantly round her slim shoulders, glinting like her metallic dress in the sunlight coming through the windows. He moved forward, stepped behind her and ran down her zip, peeling the fabric back slowly from her shoulders while planting a kiss on the pale flesh he exposed.
Grace held her breath, watching their reflections merge in a tall mirror with the faint blurry quality of antique glass. As he bent over her, the brush of his lips made her shiver. His hair was so black against hers, his hand so dark against her white shoulder. The dress slid down her arms and then dropped in a pool at her feet.
‘My turn to say wow,’ Leo growled, flipping her round to take in the full effect of her curves sheathed in a dainty white balcony bra and knickers teamed with lace hold-up stockings. ‘I like...I love.’
‘Th-thought you would,’ Grace stammered, her face burning with colour because standing in front of him clad in provocative lingerie filled her with stupid self-consciousness.
‘I’m very easy to please,’ Leo husked, tipping her breasts gently free of the silk to massage her pointed pink nipples between finger and thumb, lowering a hand to slide a fingertip beneath the edge of her panties and probe the wet heat she would have hidden from him.
An arrow of stark hunger shot through Grace and she gasped, wanting, needing, pierced by so many sensations at once she couldn’t vocalise or think. He crushed her parted lips below his, nibbling and teasing with erotic expertise, and then lifted his head again.
‘I want you so much I’m burning with it,’ Leo breathed, dropping to his knees to tug down her knickers and spread her thighs. ‘And I want you to burn along with me, hara mou.’
Grace shivered in sensual shock as he closed his mouth to the most sensitive spot on her entire body. She couldn’t believe she was standing there, letting him... All too quickly her knees shook with weakness as she drowned in the intoxicating flood of pleasure he was wrenching from her. Little breathy cries parted her lips, sounds punctuated by a low keening moan. Suddenly it was more than she could bear and it took his hands curving to her hips to keep her upright as the excitement pent up inside her surged high and took her with it in an orgasm that almost tipped her off her feet.
But no, that was Leo’s doing as he caught her weak body up into his arms and pinned her down on the bed, leaning over her as he yanked off his clothes with an impatience she could feel in every fibre of her still-humming body.
‘Seems to me you’re always promising to do this slowly,’ Grace whispered.
‘I’m not going to deliver slow tonight either,’ Leo warned, coming down to her again naked and urgently aroused. ‘I’m too damned excited.’
It thrilled Grace that she had the power to unleash such
impatience in him. She felt the push of him against her tender flesh and lifted her legs to lock her thighs round his lean hips in welcome, the wanting building again like some monster she couldn’t sate because, even when she was fresh from a mind-blowing climax, Leo could somehow make her want him again. Her heart was hammering, her body slick with perspiration and every skin cell was on fire for him so that when he thrust deep into her, she cried out with the hot pleasure of that powerful invasion. He withdrew and sank into her again, choosing a potent rhythm that sent heat pulsing through her pelvis as her greedy body began to strain and burn and reach for the heights again.
‘Oh, please, don’t stop!’ she heard herself gasp in anguished excitement.
She was soaring by then, her body jerking and convulsing with the sheer raw intensity of the pleasure washing over her. Bliss enclosed her like a warm soft cocoon when it was over but a little buzzer also went off in her head, reminding her of how Leo pulled away from intimacy in the aftermath of sex. In a sudden movement, Grace dislodged him and snaked out of the bed to head straight for the bathroom. The very knowledge that she wanted to hug him and stay close had sent her into swift retreat for fear of what she might reveal. There was no room for such sentimental behaviour within the narrow limits Leo had set for their marriage.