Читать книгу The Mills & Boon Stars Collection - Мишель Смарт, Cathy Williams - Страница 29

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘I CAN’T HELP being curious to know what you know about my father,’ Grace admitted stiffly to her uncle on the drive to the register office.

Declan Donovan studied his niece in surprise. ‘Virtually nothing, I’m afraid. Your mother refused to talk about him. Initially she said she was getting married but when that failed to transpire Keira had a huge row with our parents and cut us all off. I think she felt she’d lost face with everybody and it hurt her pride.’

‘So, you never met him?’

‘No, they had a bad break-up and after that we lost track of your mother for years.’ The older man shook his head with unhidden regret. ‘Keira was a troubled woman, Grace. I never understood her. Luckily she still had my address in her personal effects when she died, so the social worker was able to get in touch with me to tell me about you.’

Grace flushed and looked away, wishing she had asked that same question years sooner. But she had been too proud to ask about the father who had deserted her and her mother. ‘It’s not important,’ she said with forced casualness.

‘It’s only natural that you would be thinking of your parents on your wedding day,’ her uncle completed gruffly and patted her hand.

Leo stared as Grace entered the room and he wasn’t the only one. Their few guests copied him, their expressions ranging from admiration to awe and disbelief. Anatole, however, dealt his son an appreciative nod as if the stunning appearance of his son’s bride had set the seal on his approval. But then Anatole, Leo acknowledged wryly, had never wanted his son to marry Marina and had instead talked a lot of nonsense about Leo needing to seek a soul mate rather than a practical life partner.

Her wedding dress was the colour of bronze with a metallic gleam, a long simple column that flattered Grace’s curves and small stature. In her vibrant hair, which was swept up to show off her slim white throat, she wore only a tawny-coloured exotic hothouse bloom. The pulse beating at Leo’s groin flared into disturbing activity, lust flaring when he least welcomed it. A primal surge of desire assailed him as her pale sea-glass eyes collided anxiously with his. She looked incredibly sexy and disturbingly vulnerable.

‘Money definitely talks, doesn’t it?’ Grace’s cousin, Jenna, remarked sourly. ‘That dress transforms you. It’s not very bridal though.’

Grace pasted a smile to her tense lips, determined not to react. It had not escaped her attention that her aunt and her cousin resented the reality that Grace was becoming the wife of a very wealthy man. In any case, Grace’s attention had already strayed to Leo, tall and dark and devastatingly handsome in a dark designer suit. Her heart hammered, her tummy flipped. She sucked in her breath, striving to stay calm as he strode across the room, his irresistible smile slashing his beautiful shapely mouth.

‘You look stunning,’ Leo told her with a dark deep husky edge to his resonant drawl that sent a responsive shiver travelling down her spinal cord. ‘Let me introduce you to my father, Anatole.’

‘And your brother, Bastien,’ the older man slotted in hurriedly as a tall dark male with coldly amused dark eyes strolled up and disconcerted Grace by leaning down to kiss her on both cheeks Continental fashion.

‘Enough, Bastien!’ Leo grated, startling Grace with that eruption even more.

‘Was I trespassing?’ Bastien quipped, devilment dancing in his mocking gaze. ‘Leo never did like to share his toys.’

Leo planted an impatient hand to Grace’s spine and spun her away from the other man. ‘Some day soon I’ll knock his teeth down his throat!’ he swore in a raw undertone.

Upset that Bastien had described her as one of Leo’s ‘toys’, Grace flushed and murmured with quiet good sense, ‘Shaking hands would have been a little formal when I’m about to join the family.’

‘I only count my father as family.’ Angry colour scored Leo’s high cheekbones.

In answer to his hostility towards his half-brother, Grace simply said nothing and instead turned back to politely address Leo’s father, who had been left hovering in discomfiture while his two sons squared up to each other.

Matt approached her almost shyly. ‘I hardly recognised you,’ he admitted, and they talked about her decision to take a year out until it was time to go into the room next door for the ceremony.

During the ceremony, Grace focused on the handsome flower arrangement on the table while listening carefully to the words. She would have preferred a church service but would not have dreamt of telling Leo that. He slid a ring onto her finger but he had not given her one to return the favour with and there was a small embarrassing pause as the registrar allowed them time to complete what was usually an exchange of rings. Clearly, Leo wouldn’t be wearing a ring, announcing to the world that he was ‘taken’, Grace reflected ruefully, wondering why that small detail should make her feel so insecure. Many men didn’t like wearing rings, she reminded herself.

A light meal was served to the wedding party at an exclusive hotel. Grace glimpsed her reflection in one of the many gilded wall mirrors in the private function room and barely recognised the refined image of the woman clad in the sleek bronze sheath. At the beauty salon the previous day every part of her had been primped and polished and waxed and trimmed, all her rough edges smoothed away. She had seen Della and Jenna’s frowning surprise at her new image and she knew she no longer looked incongruous by Leo’s side. The cringeworthy fear that her lack of grooming could embarrass Leo had made Grace tolerate the various treatments and she accepted the need to at least try to fit into Leo’s world as best she could. Grace had always believed that if something was worth doing, it was worth doing well and that was the outlook she intended to embrace in her role as Leo’s wife.

‘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 conviction. ‘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.

A few minutes later, Leo stepped into the spacious wet room to join her. ‘What was that all about?’ he asked.

‘What was what all about?’

‘You pushed me away,’ he reminded her, angry dark eyes spelling out how he had reacted to her conduct.

‘That’s what you’ve always done with me afterwards,’ Grace pointed out innocently. ‘Shouldn’t I have done that?’

Leo knew when he was being played, but then he had also never been on the receiving end of such a careless dismissal before. It had stung, it had felt ridiculously like rejection, he reasoned in confusion at his own thoughts. Before he could think any more, he reacted on instinct and closed Grace’s dripping body into his arms below the falling spray.

‘Things change. We’re married now. I think we can afford to be a little more affectionate,’ he declared in a rasping undertone, tugging her even closer.

Grace hid a smile against a broad muscular shoulder. He wasn’t an irredeemable rat, she decided ruefully. Damaged by his parents’ toxic marriage, he had avoided the softer emotions all his life to date. But he could learn by example, yes, and he was one very fast learner, Grace conceded as the embrace became an unashamed hug.

A couple of hours later, they lay naked in a tangle of fur throws in front of the gas-fired logs in the massive fireplace in the main drawing room. As night fell they had become hungry and had raided the fridge to savour the delicacies prepared by Josefina, the housekeeper, who had gone home hours earlier.

‘I thought pregnant women suffered a lot from nausea,’ Leo said abruptly. ‘But you still have a good appetite.’

‘I haven’t felt sick once,’ Grace admitted. ‘A little dizzy a couple of times but that’s all.’

‘I’ve signed you up to see one of the local doctors while we’re here.’

‘That’s unnecessary this early in my pregnancy.’

Leo dealt her a warning glance. ‘Humour me. I have a very strong need to know that I’m looking after you properly.’

But Grace was worried that if she gave an inch, Leo would take a mile. She wondered if he had taken the same managing, controlling attitude to Marina and asked.

Leo rested back thoughtfully on his hands, the hard muscular lines of his chest and stomach flexing taut and drawing her involuntary gaze. ‘I never felt the need to interfere...offer advice occasionally, yes, veto or demand, no. You’re different.’

‘How am I different?’ Grace asked baldly.

‘You’re pregnant,’ Leo pointed out, disappointing her with that comeback.

‘So, if I’m allowed to ask one awkward question...exactly why did you want to marry Marina?’

‘Because I thought she was perfect...’

Grace froze, the colour leaching from beneath her fair skin.

‘Of course, nobody is perfect,’ Leo continued wryly. ‘But I did believe Marina was as near to the ideal as I could get because we had so much in common and were close friends.’

Never ask a question if you aren’t tough enough to accept the answer and live with it, Grace told herself wretchedly. How on earth could she compete with his ideal of the perfect wife? Most especially when that ideal woman was still walking around? Was it possible that Leo felt more for Marina than he had ever appreciated? And that losing her might make him finally realise it? Not a productive thought train, Grace scolded herself, and she suppressed her crushing sense of insecurity with every fibre of willpower that she possessed.

* * *

‘So, why don’t you want these blood tests the doctor has recommended?’ Leo demanded impatiently.

Grace wrinkled her nose. ‘Because there’s nothing wrong with me.’

‘But the doctor—’

‘Dr Silvano is nice but he is a little old-fashioned, Leo. Why should he wonder if there’s something wrong with my hormone levels just because I’m not feeling sick all the time?’ Grace prompted impatiently. ‘A lot of women get morning sickness but there are a lucky few who don’t and I don’t plan to start fussing over myself and worrying without good reason. He’s one of those doctors who prefer to treat pregnancy as an illness and I don’t agree with that.’

Leo surveyed her with unhidden annoyance. Grace went pink and looked across the cobbled square to the playground where small children were running and shouting. In a few years she would have a child of around that age, she ruminated fondly, wishing Leo would not make her pregnancy so much his business. Yet how could she fault a man for caring about her well-being?

‘I’ll go back first thing tomorrow for the tests,’ Grace surrendered with a grimace. ‘Will that make you happy?’

The tightness of his superb bone structure eased and the hint of a smile softened the hard line of his sculpted mouth. They had been in Italy for four incredible weeks and even when Leo annoyed her, Grace still never got tired of simply looking at him, admiring the proud flare of his nose, the downward frown of his brows when anything annoyed him, the pure silk ebony luxuriance of his lashes when he looked down at her with eyes of pure gold in bed.

‘Yes, that will make me happy,’ Leo told her without apology and pulled out his phone to immediately book the appointment.

Grace sipped her bottled water, reflecting that Leo had taught her a master class in the art of compromise and negotiation. His forceful personality and strong views made occasional clashes between them inevitable. He was much deeper and more of a thinker than he liked to show. Clever, shrewd and over-protective as he was, he was also wonderfully entertaining and her every fantasy in bed. He was willing to make an effort as well. Since their wedding night there had been no further flights from intimacy post-climax. She wouldn’t let herself think negative thoughts around him, wouldn’t let herself dwell on the awareness that she loved him and he did not love her. Unlike him, she wasn’t expecting the perfect marital partner.

And in any case, Leo might say that he didn’t do romance but it was remarkable how often their outings were drenched in romantic views, surroundings and meals. He had taken her to see a candlelit religious procession in the streets of Lucca one evening and topped it off with dinner in a rooftop restaurant with the stars shimmering far above them. They had enjoyed a picnic below the ancient chestnut trees that overlooked the vineyards in the valley. With no road noise, no people around and virtually nothing in view to remind them of the twentieth century, it had been timeless and peaceful and she had dozed off, probably because she had eaten far too much from Josefina’s fantastic picnic dishes. There had been sightseeing trips and scenic drives and a couple of casual dinner engagements with friends Leo had, who lived locally.

And then there were the shopping trips and the gifts. Grace tilted her chin, green eyes reflective as she glanced at the gold watch on her wrist and thought about the pearls in her ears and at her throat, not to mention the gorgeous handbag she had foolishly admired in a shop window. Leo was very generous and his giving wasn’t soulless or showing off. If he noticed she lacked something like jewellery he provided it without fanfare and so smoothly it was impossible to politely refuse. No, she couldn’t fault his intellect, his company, his generosity or the high-voltage excitement of his sexuality.

Furthermore after a month of living with Leo round the clock she could no longer credit the belief that he had blackmailed her into marrying him.

‘When you threatened my uncle and aunt’s careers, you were bluffing, weren’t you?’ Grace condemned very drily.

Leo rocked back in his chair, lashes low over gleaming dark eyes. ‘I was wondering how long it would take you to work that out.’

Temper hurtled through Grace like a rejuvenating blast of oxygen. ‘You mean you wouldn’t have done it?’

‘Of course I wouldn’t have done it. I’m not an unjust man. Your uncle gave you a home when you needed one and I respect him for that because I doubt very much that he received much support from your aunt.’ Leo studied her. ‘But from certain things you have let slip quite without meaning to, I think your aunt should be burnt at the stake as a witch...and possibly your cousin with her.’

That cool rundown of her upbringing snuffed out Grace’s annoyance as though it had never been and provoked an involuntary laugh from her lips. ‘Oh...dear.’

‘But in one sense you have done me a favour. Your position in your uncle’s family closely resembled Bastien’s when my half-brother and I were children and that has enabled me to see that Bastien was often excluded, set apart from my parents and I by his birth and parentage and made to feel like an outsider,’ he imparted grimly. ‘It was wrong when that was done to you and it must follow that it was equally wrong when it was done to him.’

Grace nodded, impressed by that deduction and his willingness to admit fault on that score. The level of animosity between Leo and his brother had disconcerted her. She suspected they never met without one trying to score points off the other.

‘Sadly, that reality won’t make me like Bastien but it is why I was ready to allow you to believe that I would blackmail you into marriage. I was prepared to use any weapon you put within my reach,’ Leo confessed wryly. ‘I could not bear our child to experience the isolation which you and Bastien suffered as children. I don’t ever want a child of mine to feel like an outsider. And if you and I hadn’t married that is what he or she would have ultimately been.’

‘So, I’m supposed to forgive the blackmail threats because your goal was the greater good?’ Grace fielded very drily although grudging amusement was tugging at her lips. ‘With that kind of reasoning you could excuse murder, Leo.’

A wolfish grin slashed Leo’s darkly handsome face. ‘But you like being married to me?’

Grace rested her chin down on the heel of her hand and gave him an enquiring look. ‘And why do you assume that?’

‘You sing in the shower, you smile at me a lot...you even jump me in bed occasionally,’ Leo husked soft and low, dark golden eyes pure burnished gold with wicked amusement and that innate bold assurance that she found so outrageously compelling.

Grace didn’t quite know how to react to that unexpectedly personal list of her mistakes. For smiling at him all the time was a dead giveaway of the kind of feelings he didn’t want her to have and she didn’t want to reveal. But it was a challenge to hide the simple truth that he made her happy, indeed happier than anyone had ever made her feel in her entire life. Because while he might not love her, he did care and he seemed to find her irresistible. Did she really need more than that from him? All that lovey-dovey stuff and wedding rings proudly worn on male fingers would really just be the icing on the cake, she reasoned: lovely to have but not strictly necessary.

‘You won’t be getting jumped tonight,’ she warned him, her lovely face flushed and self-conscious.

And Leo laughed uproariously as he so often did with Grace, who teased him and came back at him verbally in a way no other woman ever had and who was nothing short of dirty dynamite in his bed. Oh, no, Leo had no complaints on the marriage front. In fact, Leo was delighted with his bride.

He walked her back to the car and noticed a guy on a motorbike twisting his head rather dangerously to get a second look at the figure Grace cut in a pale pink cami top that showed rather more cleavage than Leo liked and a clinging white skirt that enhanced her curvy behind and show-stopping legs. His mouth flattened while he wondered when Grace would start looking more pregnant and less curvy and sexy. He could hardly wait for the day. It offended him when other men studied his wife with lascivious intent.

Grace was glad of the breeze that cooled her as they walked into the castle because she was feeling uncomfortably warm. ‘I need a shower,’ she sighed, starting up the stairs.

‘Me too,’ Leo husked with a roughened edge to his dark deep drawl.

Grace was moving towards the bathroom when Leo spoke again and in a sudden tone of urgency. ‘Grace...your skirt...you’re bleeding!’