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?
* * *
Grace was stacking her luggage in the hall when the front door opened again. She had been frantically struggling to get herself out of the apartment as fast as possible while accepting the demeaning truth that she could not afford to call a taxi to ferry her and her possessions away in one go. No, she would have to leave stuff to be collected at a later date. But most threatening of all was the awareness that she had absolutely no place else to go because a return to Matt’s flat, Matt, who had been constantly texting her with revealing urgency since her departure, was definitely not an option.
As Grace straightened Leo stepped through the door and snapped it shut behind him without removing his glittering dark eyes from her once. ‘Going somewhere?’ he asked shortly.
Grace hadn’t seen Leo leave earlier. In a navy pinstripe suit that screamed designer elegance and a plain white shirt teamed with a jazzy red tie, Leo looked absolutely stunning. Her heartbeat quickened as she remembered running her fingers through his black hair the night before and the unforgettable taste of his mouth. Heat was beginning to stir inside her when she shut down hard on that response, fighting that potent physical pull with all her might, reminding herself of what he was and denying it until she was back in control again.
Grace lifted her chin. ‘Yes, somewhere as far as possible from you,’ she answered.
‘Marina told me she’d come to see you.’ His beautiful shapely lips compressed, a muscle pulling tight at the corner of his unsmiling mouth. ‘She shouldn’t have done that.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Grace fielded in a tremulous driven undertone that mortified her, frankly bemused by a relationship that crossed the expected boundaries. It was inconceivable to her that Marina would’ve told Leo she had been to see Grace. ‘Considering the way you’ve behaved I thought she was remarkably restrained in what she had to say.’
‘My relationship with Marina is not as straightforward as you probably assume it is. Nor does what it entailed matter now because I broke off our engagement earlier today.’ Leo studied her with screened intensity, expecting an immediate lessening of the tension in the atmosphere.
Grace refused to react in any way because that announcement did not lessen her sense of betrayal in the slightest. ‘You said you were single...you lied,’ she condemned with quiet simplicity.
‘Let’s move this out of the hall and talk like grown-ups,’ Leo suggested grittily.
‘I’ve got nothing to say to you, Leo, so I suggest we stay where we are and you let me leave.’
‘Diavelos...’ Leo ground out, his frustration finally bubbling over in response to her pale composed expression and cold light green eyes. He had expected to find Grace distraught. Somehow he had expected her to shout and sob because he knew, or he had thought he knew, that like some chocolates she had a soft inner centre and would be hurt about what she had learned about him. Instead he was looking at a disturbingly controlled young woman, who refused to either shout or sob, and he didn’t know how to deal with that at all. ‘In the circumstances you must have something to say to me.’
‘But I doubt very much if you want to hear it.’ So great was the strain of maintaining her tough, unfeeling façade, Grace could barely speak. Pain and disillusionment sat like a massive block inside her chest, radiating toxic, wounding rays of insecurity, hurt and rejection. He had devastated her, shattered her heart into a hundred pieces, but on another level she was grateful for Marina’s visit because at least she had found Leo out for the rat he was before she became any more deeply involved with him.
Leo thrust the door of the sitting room so wide that it bounced back noisily. ‘I do want to hear it!’ he challenged.
Reckoning that he was going to make it difficult for her to leave without a muck-raking confrontation and marvelling that he could even want that, Grace trudged into the big room where Marina had faced her with the truth that had destroyed her dreams. Silly, sentimental, romantic dreams, utterly inappropriate dreams for a woman of her age, intelligence and background to have cherished: the dream that a man could be decent and honest and trustworthy.
With her parents’ history before her, she should’ve known better, Grace thought painfully. Even her own father had lied and cheated rather than keep his promise to marry her mother. Soon after Grace’s birth, her father had begun working with the woman who would eventually become his first wife and he had kept his infidelity a secret while continuing to live with Grace and her mother. She had the vaguest possible memory of her father because he had walked out on her mother before Grace reached her second birthday.
Grace spun round to face Leo, her arms folded defensively across her slightly built body. ‘Right, exactly what do you want from me? Forgiveness? Understanding? Well, sorry, you’re not getting either!’ she told him roundly.
‘I want to explain.’
‘No, I don’t want to hear any explanations...a bit pointless at this stage!’ Grace pointed out curtly. ‘You lied to me and there’s no getting round that. Don’t waste any more of my time, Leo. Let me go.’
‘To go where?’
‘I don’t know yet.’ Grace was distracted by the buzzing of her mobile phone in the back pocket of her jeans and she dug it out and switched it off, noticing in forgivable surprise that it was her aunt calling her. Considering her aunt had told her never to bother her family again, what could she possibly want? Unless her uncle Declan, who had visited Grace at Matt’s flat, had persuaded his wife to soften her attitude.
‘You can’t leave when you don’t have anywhere to go!’ Leo argued fiercely. ‘You have to take care of yourself now that you’re pregnant!’
‘Oh, please, don’t pretend you actually care,’ Grace countered with withering sarcasm, her bitterness licking out from below the surface before she could prevent it from showing.
‘If you would just listen to me and stop being so unreasonable,’ Leo bit out.
‘I don’t need to listen. I already know what you are and that’s a dirty, lying, cheating scumbag without an ounce of integrity!’ Grace shot at him, green eyes suddenly flaring bright as angry stars because he had dared to call her unreasonable.
‘I broke off my engagement so that I could come back here and ask you to marry me!’ Leo launched at her in outrage, fury surging up inside him like lava inside a volcano about to erupt. He had never felt so angry in his life and it was an
