The Mills & Boon Stars Collection

‘You could explain now about Marina,’ she proffered tersely.

‘No, that ship’s already sailed,’ Leo slammed back at her coolly. ‘Are you marrying me on Friday or not?’

Grace wanted to say not, to puncture his carapace of arrogant strength and challenge him, but her character was grounded very firmly in compassion and the risk of her relatives having to pay a high price for her mistake in getting pregnant by the wrong man was not one she could ignore. She snatched in a wavering breath and damned him with her pale green defiant gaze. ‘I’ll give you an answer in the morning.’

‘Why drag this out?’

‘Because it’s a very big decision,’ Grace countered quietly. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ve decided tomorrow.’

Impatience assailed Leo and he gritted his strong white teeth. Her eyes were luminous pools of pale green but he noticed the dark circles etched below them and her general pallor. ‘You look very tired.’

Grace coloured in receipt of that unflattering comment. ‘I’m going back downstairs to go straight to bed.’

‘Have you eaten?’ he shot at her as she reached the door.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I’ll meet you here for breakfast at eight in the morning,’ Leo decreed.

How could she marry a man who had been planning to marry another woman for three long years? How could she surrender to blackmail? Would Leo really damage her aunt’s and uncle’s livelihoods and careers? Or was he bluffing? And if bluffing was a possibility was she prepared to light the fuse and wait and see what actually happened if she said no?

Grace lay in bed mulling over those weighty questions. Although she had completely dismissed the idea, Leo had mentioned marriage the very first day he’d discovered she was pregnant, she recalled ruefully. It seemed that marrying the mother of his child was important to him, so important he had immediately recognised it as a necessity. Not that that excused him in any way for employing threats when persuasion had failed, she reasoned.

Grace had so many unanswered questions that she was now wishing that she had listened to what Leo had had to say for himself earlier that day at his apartment. Clearly, Leo’s relationship with Marina was unusual. When Marina had introduced herself to Grace, she had been fairly polite and remarkably composed for a female whose fiancé had just dumped her for another woman. Even so, Marina had repeatedly said that Grace having Leo’s child would wreck all their lives. It was possible that Marina was simply a good actress but even that didn’t explain the peculiarity of Marina visiting Grace to try and buy her off and then freely admitting that embarrassing fact to Leo.

Her head beginning to pound with the strain of her anxious reflections, Grace acknowledged that had Marina not existed she would’ve agreed to marry Leo. After all, it was best to be honest with herself: she did want Leo in spite of the shocks he had dealt her. It wasn’t sensible, it wasn’t justifiable but she had pretty much been infatuated with Leo from the moment she’d met him. On those grounds and bearing in mind the reality that she would very much like her baby to grow up with a father, shouldn’t she give marriage a chance?

Only, how did she marry a male willing to blackmail her into agreement? That was wrong, that was so wrong. And the best of it was, she was convinced that Leo knew it was wrong but he had still put that pressure on her in an effort to get what he wanted. She did owe a debt of care to her uncle and aunt and if their lives were blighted because of something she had done she would be gutted, which didn’t give her much in the way of choice. On the other hand, Grace reflected as she swallowed another yawn, she could agree to marriage with certain provisos attached.

* * *

Leo studied Grace as she joined him for breakfast, her face blank, her eyes uninformative. He reckoned she would make a good poker player and the challenge of that talent in a potential wife amused him. ‘Well?’ he prompted grimly, still annoyed that she had forced him to wait for her answer.

Grace sipped at her tea, wishing that Leo didn’t look quite so amazing first thing in the morning when she felt washed out and weary. There he was with his dark golden eyes alive with potent leaping energy, his blue-black hair still damp from the shower and his hard jawline close shaven. He wore yet another one of those remarkably well-tailored suits that beautifully defined his lean, muscular build. ‘I’ll say yes because you really haven’t given me a choice.’

‘Choice is a very much overrated gift,’ Leo declared, pouring himself a cup of fragrant coffee with a steady hand, determined not to react in any way to her capitulation. ‘People don’t always make the right choice. Sometimes they need a little push in the relevant direction.’

‘This was more than a little push,’ Grace censured. ‘I don’t know why you’re doing it either. You can’t want me as a wife that much.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m just ordinary.’

‘I don’t see you that way, meli mou,’ Leo countered. ‘I see you as different, as special.’

‘Leo, you just blackmailed me into marrying you. Ditch the flattery!’ Grace said very drily. ‘And I may be saying yes but there would have to be certain conditions attached.’

Leo tensed again and flung back his arrogant head, shapely mouth flattening back into a tough line. ‘Such as?’

‘As the term hasn’t started yet, I’m considering taking a year out while all this is going on but I would want to return to my studies in London next year. You would have to support that.’

‘Naturally I would support that arrangement,’ Leo asserted, the tension locking his lean bronzed features into tautness evaporating.

Grace went pink and gathered her strength. ‘And it would have to be a platonic marriage.’

Leo went rigid again and studied her with incredulous dark eyes as if she were insane. ‘You can’t be serious?’

‘Of course, I’m serious. We don’t have to be intimate to be married and raise a child together.’

His dark golden gaze rested on her resolute face. ‘I’m afraid you do if you’re married to me. I refuse to look outside my marriage for sex. That would degrade both of us and I couldn’t live with it. I have strong views on fidelity,’ he completed with finality.

Grace groaned out loud, not having expected him to be quite so set against what would in effect have been a marriage only on paper. ‘I really did think that that would be the sensible option.’

‘No, it would be a recipe for disaster.’ Leo stared at her with his black-lashed dark eyes glittering like stars in a lean, angular face that was so handsome it made the breath trip in her tight throat. ‘And I speak from experience. My father was persistently unfaithful to my mother and their unhappiness poisoned life for both them and their children.’

‘My goodness...’ Taken aback by that unexpectedly frank admission, Grace regrouped as she finished eating. ‘But it wouldn’t be quite so personal with us. For a start, we’re not in love with each other or anything like that.’

‘But I still want you, Grace, as a man wants a woman,’ Leo delivered with savage candour. ‘I won’t pretend otherwise. I want a normal marriage with all that that entails, not some unnatural agreement that increases the odds of divorce. I also want to be there for our child as he or she grows up.’

‘You’ve made your point,’ Grace conceded grudgingly, willing to admit that she had not thought through the consequences of a platonic marriage. It had been naïve to assume that Leo might be willing to live without sex while the alternative of her having to turn a blind eye while Leo sought sexual consolation elsewhere was even less appealing to her. But how could he say that he had strong views on fidelity after what he had done to Marina?

As she pushed her plate away and stood up, her curiosity still fully engaged on the mystery of Leo’s thought processes, Leo stood up as well.

‘So, we’re getting married in forty-eight hours?’ Leo mused huskily, resting a hand on her arm.

‘I think that’s a yes.’ Still striving to keep her distance, Grace tried to gently detach her arm from his hold but she didn’t act fast enough because his other arm just closed round her spine to entrap her slim body against his lean, powerful frame. He was hard...everywhere. Hard-packed with muscle, tense and...fully erect. Her face burned in the split second before his mouth came crashing down on hers, nibbling, licking, tasting in a carnal assault on her senses that absolutely no other man could have contrived. Her head fell back and her mouth opened, treacherous excitement lighting her up like a shower of fireworks inside. It was so incredibly sexy. In a mindless moment she was convinced it was the sexiest kiss ever.

A knock sounded on the door and he pulled back from her. A waiter brought in champagne. Flustered by the power of that compellingly provocative kiss and shaken by the thought that she was actually going to marry Leo, Grace backed away to the window to practise breathing again.

Leo extended a champagne flute to her. ‘To our future.’

‘I shouldn’t drink.’

‘One sip for the sake of it,’ Leo suggested.

Grace touched the flute to her mouth, moistening her lips.

‘I’ll set up a shopping trip for you today. You need clothes.’ Unusually, Leo hesitated. ‘Marina has offered to help out.’

‘Marina?’ Grace exclaimed, wide-eyed.

‘We’re still good friends. She’s probably feeling a bit guilty that she approached you yesterday to buy you off because that sort of behaviour really isn’t her style,’ Leo remarked with a wry roll of his eyes. ‘What you see is what you get with Marina. But if you would feel uncomfortable with her, I’ll make a polite excuse...’

In the taut silence, Grace swallowed with difficulty, her mind functioning at top speed. Leo’s ex-fiancée was offering to assist her in preparing for their shotgun wedding out of a genuine desire to be helpful? Grace’s curiosity about the unconventional nature of Marina’s relationship with Leo literally shot into the stratosphere at that revelation. Evidently their ties of friendship had withstood the breaking off of the engagement and the bitterness that Marina had briefly revealed, and that more than anything else impressed Grace and made her want to know more.

‘No, don’t make an excuse. It’s an unusual situation but I think that Marina’s kind gesture should be met with equal generosity,’ Grace pronounced, hoping that she was making the right decision and not setting herself up as a target for the sort of spiteful comments of the type her cousin and her aunt had specialised in.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘FROM A PRACTICAL point of view, I’ve been up to my throat in wedding arrangements for the past few weeks, so I know exactly what I’m doing and who to contact,’ Marina proffered as she sat beside Grace in the back of Leo’s opulent limousine an hour later.

‘But there isn’t enough time to organise anything fancy.’

‘When a man is as rich as Leo is, there are always people willing to meet a challenge for a substantial bonus,’ the brunette told her drily.

‘But why should you help us?’ Grace asked baldly, no longer able to swallow back that burning and obvious question.

‘I have my pride. First and foremost, I would prefer our friends to believe that the break-up was amicable rather than inspire a pity party,’ Marina fielded wryly. ‘I’ve also since had a radical rethink about my own future. Yesterday when I went to meet you I was fighting to preserve the status quo but, having cooled down, I’m now more inclined to think that Leo and I were just treading water and never meant to be. My father is deeply disappointed that he’s not getting his dream whiz-kid son-in-law but I’m afraid I want to do what’s right for me.’

‘You’re being very understanding.’

Marina laughed. ‘Not as understanding as you probably think. To be frank, I have someone else in my life too and I believe that eventually Zack will make me happier than Leo ever would have done.’

Grace absorbed that unexpected admission without visible reaction. Yet it was undeniably a relief for her to learn that the svelte brunette was not the innocent and cruelly betrayed fiancée Grace had initially assumed she was. ‘Even so, you and Leo still seem to be very close.’

‘But there was always a flaw in our relationship.’ Marina turned to look at Grace with a self-mocking light in her lively dark eyes. ‘Although most men consider me attractive Leo never wanted me the way he wanted you.’

‘I can’t believe that,’ Grace said uncomfortably, her face burning with sudden heat.

Marina grimaced. ‘It’s true and his detachment was bad for my ego. However, because we were friends from a young age, Leo believed we were an ideal match.’

‘But you must’ve loved Leo as well,’ Grace incised, cutting through the brunette’s frustratingly guarded comments.

‘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 that 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.