wasn’t the right time or place to spring all that on you,’ Grace muttered guiltily. ‘I was in a bad frame of mind.’
‘Understandably,’ Leo cut in, stroking a long soothing forefinger along the taut line of her compressed lips. ‘You’re very tense. What’s wrong?’
Grace backed away a few steps to clear her head. That close to Leo, her very skin prickling with awareness and the familiar scent of his cologne teasing her nostrils, she found it impossible to concentrate. ‘If you’d got that text you’d have known that there’s nothing wrong,’ she told him with a wary half-smile. ‘You were right and I was mistaken. I was being too pessimistic. The second scan picked up our baby’s heartbeat the following morning.’
Leo froze, his ebony brows pleating in bewilderment. ‘You mean...you’re saying...?’
‘That I’m still pregnant and everything looks fine. Feeling a bit sicker, mind you,’ she burbled, suddenly shy beneath the burning intensity of his appraisal.
‘You haven’t lost the baby? Truly?’ Leo pressed, striding forward, dark eyes alight like flames.
‘Truly,’ she whispered shakily as his arms closed tightly round her and she leant up against him for support. ‘Sometimes I’m a terrible negative thinker, Leo. I only realised you didn’t know about the baby when my father came to see me today. I thought possibly you hadn’t mentioned the baby on the phone because you had changed your mind about certain things.’
‘Well, I have changed my position on some stuff,’ Leo stated in a driven undertone and then he startled her by swinging her up into his arms and spinning her round in a breathless rush. His charismatic grin lit up his lean dark features. ‘That’s the most wonderful news, meli mou! I didn’t quite grasp how much I wanted our baby until I believed he was lost.’
‘You’re making me dizzy...put me down,’ Grace urged, perspiration beading her short upper lip. With a groan of apology he settled her down at the foot of the bed where she lowered her head for a minute to overcome the nausea and dizziness the sudden spinning motion had induced.
‘Are you all right?’ Leo demanded, crouching at her feet and pushing up her face to see it. ‘You are pale. I was an idiot. I just didn’t think about what I was doing.’
Grace’s nebulous fears about how Leo would react to her news had vanished. Leo was being so normal. There was no distance in him at all and he had been genuinely overjoyed to learn that she was still pregnant. That was not the reaction of a male who was considering the possibility of reclaiming his freedom with a divorce. Relief quivered through her slim, taut frame.
‘I’m fine, Leo. I just get a little dizzy if I do anything too quickly. I’ve also been sick a couple of times,’ she explained prosaically. ‘It’s like my body’s finally woken up and realised it’s pregnant.’
‘It’ll settle down,’ Leo forecast cheerfully. ‘How did things go with your father today?’
‘What made you go and see him?’ Grace asked instead.
‘Well, I knew you wanted to meet him and I thought it would give you something else to think about,’ he paraphrased a shade awkwardly. ‘Grace—I’ve never felt so helpless in my life as when I believed you were losing our baby...’
‘Me too...it wasn’t something we could control.’ Grace’s fingertips stroked soothingly down his cheekbone to his strong jawline. ‘All my worst instincts went into overdrive.’
Leo sprang lithely upright. ‘No, I saw your point once I thought over what you’d said to me. I did make it all about the baby rather than about us. You could even say I used the baby as an excuse. Considering that I wanted you the very first moment I laid eyes on you and never stopped wanting you, I wasn’t being honest with either of us.’
Her eyes widened at that admission. ‘The very first moment?’
‘It was like sticking my finger in an electrical socket,’ Leo quipped. ‘The attraction was instant and very powerful. I had to know you and then I had to have you. When I found myself wanting to hang onto you the morning after our night together, it freaked me out.’
‘You did?’ Grace was frowning. ‘But we were only together one night.’
‘One night with a very special woman who made me want much more from her than any woman I’d ever met,’ Leo completed huskily. ‘Why do you think I was too impatient to wait to hear from you afterwards? I was obsessed. I couldn’t think of anything but seeing you again. It’s a wonder I wasn’t boiling bunnies...’
Grace was in shock but hanging onto his every word. ‘Can’t imagine that...but you said—’
‘I said I didn’t do love and then you threw me out of that hospital room when I badly needed to be with you and I had to get by without you for a week.’
‘During which you suffered some sort of brainstorm?’ Grace framed shakily.
‘No, it finally hit me that I was very deeply attached to you and that it had just happened, regardless of all my doubts about such feelings.’
Grace finally stood up and approached him. ‘Very deeply attached?’
‘Hopelessly,’ Leo told her with his irresistible smile. ‘Somewhere along the way I fell in love with you but I didn’t recognise it. I knew I liked you, wanted you close and needed to look after you. I knew I was jealous of your friendship with Matt and very relieved when you didn’t succumb to Bastien’s legendary appeal. But I honestly did think that I was feeling all those things because it was natural for me to feel protective towards you when you were pregnant.’
‘Easy mistake to make,’ Grace told him breathlessly, unknotting his tie, yanking it free of his collar before embarking on his shirt buttons. ‘You’ve just told me you love me and, since I love you too, we should be celebrating.’
‘You love me? Even after all the mistakes I’ve made?’ Leo pressed, stunning dark golden eyes locked to her flushed face and her huge beaming smile.
‘Yes. Unlike you,’ Grace murmured in unashamed one-upmanship, ‘I never expected the man I married to be perfect.’
‘But I do think you’re perfect,’ Leo argued heatedly. ‘Absolutely perfect for me. You’re beautiful and clever and warm and loving and you will make an absolutely brilliant mother.’
‘Tell me more. My ego loves this,’ Grace urged, laughing. ‘I really should’ve guessed you loved me when you tracked down my father for me and got him out here. Instead I was too busy worrying about you dining out with Marina.’
Leo tensed. ‘Why on earth would you worry about that?’
‘Because you thought she was perfect and you were with her for three years.’
‘If she’d been perfect for me I’d still have been with her and my sex drive would have centred on her,’ Leo pointed out levelly. ‘And Marina isn’t perfect. Not only did she once have a one-night stand with my brother...’
‘Bastien?’ Grace pressed in surprise.
‘Yes.
