by Lynne Graham
‘Oh, yes, when I was younger I was absolutely mad about Leo! He was the full package—gorgeous, successful, strong—everything I wanted in a future husband,’ the other woman admitted with a rueful laugh. ‘Unfortunately, though, when it mattered I never made the girlfriend cut: Leo kept me firmly in the “friends” category. And when he suggested that we get married, I refused to listen to what he was saying and chose to assume that I meant more to him than he was willing to admit.’ Her expressive lips compressed. ‘Only I couldn’t have been more wrong. He didn’t mislead me, but any romantic feelings I once cherished for Leo were withered by his indifference.’
‘He hurt you and yet you’ve forgiven him,’ Grace commented in surprise.
Marina shrugged as she led the way into a designer bridal boutique. ‘Life’s too short for anything else. Just be sure you know what you’re getting into with Leo because I doubt very much that he’ll change.’
A small posse of assistants were waiting to greet them. Grace was extracted from her coat while Marina spoke to the designer, an effervescent blonde. Grace posed like a small statue while she was measured and wondered if she did have the slightest idea what she was getting into in choosing to marry Leo. Evidently he hadn’t ever been in love with Marina. Furthermore Marina had ultimately found someone else to love as well, which was what made it possible for the brunette to civilly accept the bride Leo was taking in her place.
‘Surely it doesn’t matter what I wear to a civil ceremony?’ Grace whispered to Marina.
‘It will be your first appearance as Leo’s wife and you’ll feel more confident if you’re properly turned out,’ Marina asserted sagely. ‘Being badly dressed won’t impress anyone.’
‘I don’t really care about impressing people,’ Grace admitted.
‘But in our world, whether you like it or not, appearances do matter,’ Marina traded without apology. The designer remarked that white and cream drained Grace of colour and tested less orthodox shades against her skin. Even Grace recognised the dress when it was held against her, an unconventional choice that provided an amazingly flattering background for her vibrant hair and pale complexion.
And as the seemingly endless day wore on with a lengthy trip to Harrods and the additional services of a very helpful fashion stylist, Grace discovered that she liked, possibly even loved, expensive, well-made clothes. Her fingers smoothed the softest cashmere, stroked silk and traced the delicate patterns of lace and exquisite embroidery. Astonishment and growing awe gripped her when those pricey designer garments shaped her figure and made her look so much better than she had ever dreamt she could look. When the overwhelming shopping experience was finally finished she slid her feet into comfy little pumps teamed with a short black skirt and a zingy sapphire-blue jacket and studied her sleek and elegant reflection in positive stupefaction. For the first time ever Grace thought she looked pretty and that maybe a spot of cosmetic enhancement would help even more.
‘Thanks for everything,’ she murmured with heartfelt gratitude to Marina, who had waved a magic wand over her like a fairy godmother bent on transforming Cinderella.
‘Tomorrow you hit the beauty salon for some treatments and you won’t be thanking me then. You haven’t ever even plucked your eyebrows, have you?’ the brunette prompted in a mixture of amusement and fascination.
Grace winced. ‘Is it that obvious?’
Marina laughed. ‘Comfort yourself with the knowledge that, in spite of your laissez-faire attitude in the grooming stakes, Leo admitted he couldn’t take his eyes off you the first time he saw you.’
‘He actually told you that?’ Grace prompted, colour flaring in her pale cheeks.
Marina nodded confirmation. ‘At least he was honest.’
Back at the hotel, Grace went straight up to the suite Leo was using. A stranger opened the door and two others were hovering round the desk at which Leo sat, his jacket off, his tie loosened, broad shoulder muscles flexing below a white silk shirt as he turned his head and stared fixedly at Grace where she hovered, uncertain of her welcome.
He sprang upright. ‘Marina did good,’ he quipped, brilliant dark golden eyes sliding over her slim figure in a look as physical as a touch. ‘In fact, she did brilliantly.’
‘She was a tremendous help.’ Grace’s colour was heightened by his scrutiny and the disturbing reaction of her body to that unashamedly sexual appraisal. Her nipples had prickled into taut sensitivity while a drenching pool of heat settled between her thighs. She was shaken by the intensity of her desire for him to reach out and touch her.
‘My staff...’ Leo introduced the three men before swiftly dismissing them. The trio swiftly gathered up laptops, briefcases and jackets and filed out. ‘I need to have a word with you about the guest list for the wedding,’ he told her levelly.
When asked earlier, Grace had put down Matt and her uncle’s family but could think of no one else to include and she studied him enquiringly.
‘I take it, then...that you’ve decided not to invite your father?’ Leo pressed, sharply disconcerting her.
‘How could I? I’ve never met him, n-never had any contact with him.’ In confusion and shock at the unexpected question, Grace stumbled over her words, wondering how he even knew that she had a father alive.
‘Never?’
‘Not since I was a baby anyway,’ she completed tersely. ‘Why are you asking? And how do you even know that I have a father living?’
‘I had your background investigated while I was waiting for you to get in touch with me,’ Leo confessed with a nonchalance that astounded her.
An angry flush illuminated her cheeks. ‘You did...what? You had me investigated? What gave you the right to go snooping into my background?’ Grace launched at him in a sudden fury.
‘I needed to know who you were and where you were from...in case you were pregnant,’ Leo responded levelly. ‘It’s standard business practice to check out people before you deal with them.’
‘But I wasn’t business and my life is private!’ Grace snapped back at him, outraged by his invasion of her privacy. ‘You had no right to pry!’
‘I may not have had an official right but I did have good reason to want to know exactly who Grace Donovan and her family were,’ Leo retorted unapologetically. ‘But to return to my original question—when I found out about your father, it wasn’t clear whether or not you had had any recent contact with him.’
Still furious with him, Grace clamped her lips into a tight line of control. ‘No, none and I don’t want any either!’
His stunning dark golden eyes narrowed in apparent surprise. ‘That seems a bit harsh in the circumstances.’
‘He let my mother down badly and I’m quite sure he could have traced me years ago if he’d had any real interest in finding me,’ Grace declared thinly.
‘Only that would have been a considerable challenge for him when your mother had already taken him to court for harassment, had threatened to accuse him of assault and then changed her name to shake him off.’
Sheer rage roared up through Grace’s rigid body like a forest fire running out of control. It convulsed her throat muscles, clenched her hands into fists and burned in her chest like the worst ever heartburn. She didn’t know what Leo was talking about; she truly didn’t have a clue! Wasn’t that the ultimate humiliation? How could it ever be right that Leo should know more about her past than she did? Harassment? Assault? Court cases?
Reading her shuttered and mutinous face and the pale sea-green eyes blazing at him, Leo returned to the desk and extracted a slim file from the drawer, which he settled on the desk top. ‘The investigation. Take it if you want it.’
Trembling with reaction, Grace studiously averted her eyes from the file, too proud to reach for it.
‘I didn’t intend to upset you, Grace. But naturally, I assumed that nothing in tha
t file would come as a surprise to you...you were eleven years old when you lost your mother.’
Having Leo study her in that cool, even-tempered manner when she herself was so shaken up simply made Grace want to thump him hard. ‘You really do have no finer feelings, do you? You suddenly drag up my father and reveal that you know more about him than I do? Didn’t it occur to you that that was inexcusably thoughtless and cruel?’ she condemned with angry spirit.
‘I didn’t realise that it would still be such a sensitive subject for you. But you’re right—I should’ve done. I’m not particularly keen to discuss my own background,’ Leo conceded with a wry twist of his sensual mouth.
‘I have to go. I have an appointment to see my tutor in an hour,’ Grace fielded, spinning on her heel and walking fast out of the room before she exposed herself any more.
Leo lifted the investigation file and then slapped it back down hard on the desk in frustration. He had upset her and he hadn’t intended to do that. Grace was sensitive. Grace had hang-ups about her past. But didn’t he as well? And since when had he worried about such delicate details? Or reacted personally to someone else’s distress? The answer to that last question came back and chilled Leo to the marrow: not since he was a child struggling to comfort his distraught mother. Any desire to follow Grace and reason with her faded fast on that note.
Still struggling to master her powerful emotions, Grace leant back against the wall in the lift. What was it about Leo Zikos that brought her inner aggression out? The very first night she had met Leo she had resolved to be herself rather than act like the quieter, more malleable Grace she had learned to be to fit in with her uncle’s family. That version of Grace had never freely expressed herself or lost her temper and had certainly never shouted at anyone. So, what was happening to her now? She was unnerved by her own behaviour and by the sheer strength of the emotions taking her by storm. It was almost as though that one night of truly being herself with Leo had destroyed any hope of her either controlling or hiding her emotions again for ever. Suddenly she was feeling all sorts of things she didn’t want to feel.
Hell roast Leo for his interference, she thought in a simmering tempest of resentment. He had made her curious, made her burn to know what he knew about the father she barely remembered and that infuriated her when she had always contrived to keep her curiosity about her father at a manageable, unthreatening level. Now all of a sudden she was desperate to know everything there was to know. But that was yet another betrayal of her self-control, in short a weakness, and she refused to give way to it. After all, she knew everything she needed to know about her father. Those bare facts could only be interpreted in one way. Her father hadn’t cared enough to stay around. That was all she needed to know, she told herself impatiently.
She met with her tutor and her decision to take a year out from her studies was accepted. While she negotiated the stairs back down to the busy ground floor of the university building, Grace was thinking resolutely positive thoughts about the seed of life in her womb. She was facing huge changes in her life, but the sacrifices she was making and the adjustments that would follow would all benefit her baby, she told herself soothingly.
Marrying Leo would give Grace the precious gift of time. She would have time to come to terms with the prospect of motherhood and time to enjoy the first precious months of her baby’s life without the stress of wondering how she was to survive as a new mother. She would also have Leo’s support. Any male that keen to marry her for their baby’s sake would be a hands-on father and she very much wanted that male influence in her child’s life. She had never forgotten how much she herself had longed for a father as a little girl. In every possible way her life would be more settled when she returned to her studies the following year, she reflected with relief.
But as she went to bed that night her mind was still in turmoil over her personal, private reactions to Leo. Leo, always Leo, who had dominated her thoughts from the first moment she laid eyes on him. How had that happened? Grace had always prided herself on her discipline over her emotions but Leo Zikos had blasted through her defensive barriers like a blazing comet, awakening her to feelings and cravings that she had barely understood before. Was it infatuation? Was it simply sexual attraction? Or did her need to understand him, note his gifts as well as his flaws, indicate a deeper, more dangerous form of attachment? Theirs would be a marriage of convenience, after all, and even Marina had warned Grace not to expect more from Leo than he was already offering her.
But in the dark of the night Grace was facing an unsettling truth: she was beginning to fall in love with Leo, hopelessly, deeply in love with a male who had never uttered a word of interest relating to any connection with her more meaningful than sex. A male, moreover, who had virtually blackmailed her into marrying him and who, while declaring respect for fidelity, had still been rampantly unfaithful to his fiancée.
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 br
other, 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.
