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
