The Mills & Boon Stars Collection

And then there were the shopping trips and the gifts. Grace tilted her chin, green eyes reflective as she glanced at the gold watch on her wrist and thought about the pearls in her ears and at her throat, not to mention the gorgeous handbag she had foolishly admired in a shop window. Leo was very generous and his giving wasn’t soulless or showing off. If he noticed she lacked something like jewellery he provided it without fanfare and so smoothly it was impossible to politely refuse. No, she couldn’t fault his intellect, his company, his generosity or the high-voltage excitement of his sexuality.

Furthermore after a month of living with Leo round the clock she could no longer credit the belief that he had blackmailed her into marrying him.

‘When you threatened my uncle and aunt’s careers, you were bluffing, weren’t you?’ Grace condemned very drily.

Leo rocked back in his chair, lashes low over gleaming dark eyes. ‘I was wondering how long it would take you to work that out.’

Temper hurtled through Grace like a rejuvenating blast of oxygen. ‘You mean you wouldn’t have done it?’

‘Of course I wouldn’t have done it. I’m not an unjust man. Your uncle gave you a home when you needed one and I respect him for that because I doubt very much that he received much support from your aunt.’ Leo studied her. ‘But from certain things you have let slip quite without meaning to, I think your aunt should be burnt at the stake as a witch...and possibly your cousin with her.’

That cool rundown of her upbringing snuffed out Grace’s annoyance as though it had never been and provoked an involuntary laugh from her lips. ‘Oh...dear.’

‘But in one sense you have done me a favour. Your position in your uncle’s family closely resembled Bastien’s when my half-brother and I were children and that has enabled me to see that Bastien was often excluded, set apart from my parents and I by his birth and parentage and made to feel like an outsider,’ he imparted grimly. ‘It was wrong when that was done to you and it must follow that it was equally wrong when it was done to him.’

Grace nodded, impressed by that deduction and his willingness to admit fault on that score. The level of animosity between Leo and his brother had disconcerted her. She suspected they never met without one trying to score points off the other.

‘Sadly, that reality won’t make me like Bastien but it is why I was ready to allow you to believe that I would blackmail you into marriage. I was prepared to use any weapon you put within my reach,’ Leo confessed wryly. ‘I could not bear our child to experience the isolation which you and Bastien suffered as children. I don’t ever want a child of mine to feel like an outsider. And if you and I hadn’t married that is what he or she would have ultimately been.’

‘So, I’m supposed to forgive the blackmail threats because your goal was the greater good?’ Grace fielded very drily although grudging amusement was tugging at her lips. ‘With that kind of reasoning you could excuse murder, Leo.’

A wolfish grin slashed Leo’s darkly handsome face. ‘But you like being married to me?’

Grace rested her chin down on the heel of her hand and gave him an enquiring look. ‘And why do you assume that?’

‘You sing in the shower, you smile at me a lot...you even jump me in bed occasionally,’ Leo husked soft and low, dark golden eyes pure burnished gold with wicked amusement and that innate bold assurance that she found so outrageously compelling.

Grace didn’t quite know how to react to that unexpectedly personal list of her mistakes. For smiling at him all the time was a dead giveaway of the kind of feelings he didn’t want her to have and she didn’t want to reveal. But it was a challenge to hide the simple truth that he made her happy, indeed happier than anyone had ever made her feel in her entire life. Because while he might not love her, he did care and he seemed to find her irresistible. Did she really need more than that from him? All that lovey-dovey stuff and wedding rings proudly worn on male fingers would really just be the icing on the cake, she reasoned: lovely to have but not strictly necessary.

‘You won’t be getting jumped tonight,’ she warned him, her lovely face flushed and self-conscious.

And Leo laughed uproariously as he so often did with Grace, who teased him and came back at him verbally in a way no other woman ever had and who was nothing short of dirty dynamite in his bed. Oh, no, Leo had no complaints on the marriage front. In fact, Leo was delighted with his bride.

He walked her back to the car and noticed a guy on a motorbike twisting his head rather dangerously to get a second look at the figure Grace cut in a pale pink cami top that showed rather more cleavage than Leo liked and a clinging white skirt that enhanced her curvy behind and show-stopping legs. His mouth flattened while he wondered when Grace would start looking more pregnant and less curvy and sexy. He could hardly wait for the day. It offended him when other men studied his wife with lascivious intent.

Grace was glad of the breeze that cooled her as they walked into the castle because she was feeling uncomfortably warm. ‘I need a shower,’ she sighed, starting up the stairs.

‘Me too,’ Leo husked with a roughened edge to his dark deep drawl.

Grace was moving towards the bathroom when Leo spoke again and in a sudden tone of urgency. ‘Grace...your skirt...you’re bleeding!’

CHAPTER NINE

COLD SHOCK AND dismay filled Grace as she looked down at herself. In the bathroom she frantically peeled off her clothes.

‘You can’t have a shower now...you should lie down!’ Leo tried to remonstrate with her.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Grace argued shakily. ‘If I’m having a miscarriage there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.’

Leo stepped out of the bathroom to call Dr Silvano and then went back in, battling an angry, aggressive urge to snatch Grace bodily out of the shower and force her to lie down but very much afraid that coming over all caveman would only upset her more. He tried to wrap a huge towel round her when she came out, hovering even when she shouted at him to leave her alone. Grace rebelled by stepping back out of view to take care of necessities but he was still waiting with the towel when she emerged again.

‘You’re so cold,’ he groaned.

‘Shock,’ she said, teeth chattering while she struggled to make herself face what felt like an impossible challenge and slid her arms into a towelling robe. ‘You know one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage during the first trimester and I’m only eight weeks and a bit along...’

‘Hush,’ Leo incised, bundling her up into his arms and carrying her over to the bed before rattling through drawers in search of the nightdress she requested. ‘Are you in a lot of pain?’

She winced. ‘None...whatsoever.’

‘You’ll still have to go into hospital. Diavelos...I should’ve taken you straight there!’ Leo breathed, pacing the floor at the end of the bed, rigid with tension and regret.

‘No hospital, Leo. I think I’d freak out on a gynae ward surrounded by pregnant women and newborns.’

‘You’d be in a private room and don’t be so pessimistic,’ Leo censured. ‘It may not be what you fear.’

Grace said nothing. She lay as still as an upturned statue staring up at the ceiling. Crazy thoughts tormented her. Was this to be her punishment for thinking that she could give her baby up for adoption? Was this her punishment for not properly valuing the gift she had been given? It seemed that Dr Silvano had been right when he’d expressed the opinion that a mother-to-be suffering from nausea and sore breasts could indicate a more stable pregnancy. Her eyes prickled. It was inconceivable to her that only an hour earlier she and Leo had been laughing and carefree, utterly unaware of what lay ahead.

She was moved from the limo into the small hospital in a wheelchair and taken to a small side ward. Somewhere in the background she could hear Leo talking in low-pitched urgent Italian and thought numbly of how useful his gift with languages could be. A few minutes later she was moved yet again and this time she was transferred to a room where there were no other patients. Leo helped her into bed and the fraught silence between them worked on Grace’s nerves until a radiographer entered with a portable scanner. Grace lay still while the gelled probe moved back and forth over her tummy, her attention locked to the small screen, her hopes and dreams slowly dying as what she prayed for failed to appear. The operator excused herself and reappeared some minutes later with a doctor, who spoke English. He broke the news that the machine had failed to detect the baby’s heartbeat but that the procedure would be repeated the following day to ensure that there was no mistake.

‘I don’t see why we should wait twenty-four hours to get a confirmation.’ Leo breathed harshly, his bone structure rigid below his bronzed skin.

‘It’s standard procedure to wait twenty-four hours and check again,’ Grace chipped in.

‘I’ll organise an airlift to a city hospital, somewhere with the latest equipment,’ he began.

The doctor said that it would not be a good idea to move Grace again and that air travel at such an early stage of her pregnancy only heightened the likelihood of miscarriage.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Grace declared, turning her face into the wall because she could not bear to continue looking at Leo.

It was over. Why was he making everything more difficult by fighting the obvious conclusion? Most probably she had miscarried and everyone in the room with the exception of Leo could accept that. A second check tomorrow was very probably only a routine precaution.

But then she was not cut from the same cloth as her husband, she acknowledged heavily. Leo was rich and powerful and accustomed to his wealth changing negatives into positives but sadly there was no way to do that in the current situation. Her baby had died without ever learning what it would be like to live. A great swell of anguish mushroomed up through Grace and a choked sob escaped her as she gasped for breath and control.

Leo sat down on the side of the bed and gripped her clenched fingers. ‘We’ll get through this,’ he rasped, his eyes burning and pinned to her pale, pinched profile as he flailed around mentally striving to come up with words of comfort.

‘It just wasn’t meant to be,’ Grace said with flat conviction.

‘Some day there’ll be...another chance,’ Leo completed tightly.

‘Not for us.’

Leo ignored that assurance. He wasn’t about to get into an argument. Grace was devastated, probably barely aware of what she was saying and Leo, struggling to master the tightness in his chest and the yawning hollow opening up inside him, was realising that he was devastated too, much more devastated than he had ever expected to be in such circumstances. ‘Let’s not be pessimistic. Tomorrow...’

‘It will only hurt me more to hold onto false hope!’ Grace snapped back at him, her head flipping, vibrant red hair spilling across the pillows, pale sea-glass eyes distraught and accusing.

Leo’s eyes stung, frustration flaring through his lean, powerful frame because he wanted so badly to fix things and knew that he couldn’t. ‘It was my baby too,’ he murmured in a roughened undertone.

‘I know...that’s all you ever cared about. Believe me, I don’t need reminding,’ Grace framed jerkily, turning away again to present him with her slender back.

Leo paled and sprang off the bed to head for the chair in the corner. ‘Try to get some sleep. I’ll stay with you.’

Grace sat up with a sudden start, grief and regret weighing her down to the extent that she felt as if she were drowning in inner turmoil and unhappiness. She pushed the pillows back behind her and studied him in his pale grey exquisitely tailored suit that glimmered like dull silver below the stark hospital lights. His blue-black hair was tousled, his strong jawline rough with dark stubble, his stunning eyes unusually bright with emotion. Of course he was upset; she knew he was upset. After all, much as he might wish to be, he wasn’t a block of unfeeling wood. Unfortunately, Grace had already looked beyond their loss to become painfully aware of exactly what her miscarriage meant to them as a newly married couple.

‘There’s no point in you staying.’

Predictably, Leo argued. He needed to be with her. That was non-negotiable in his mind. He had to see that she was fed, properly cared for and that if things were to get any worse he was on the spot to provide immediate support. His sense of responsibility was too strong to be denied.

‘Why would you stay?’ Grace whispered, fighting her desire for his presence, fighting her longing for him to come close again, fighting all those softer feelings with the sure knowledge at that moment that she was doing what had to be done. She was facing up to reality, struggling to move forward and step away from the lure of a future that could no longer be hers. How could she feel any other way when that future had been so inextricably linked to their baby?

‘You’re my wife, hara mou. I belong by your side,’ Leo countered with fierce conviction. ‘You’re upset, we’re both upset but together we’re stronger.’

‘Maybe that would’ve been true had we been in love...but obviously we’re not.’ Grace closed her restive fingers into a tight ball of self-restraint, her deep sense of hurt tamped down. ‘Us...as a couple, that’s over. Of course it is. How could it be anything else after what’s just happened?’ she asked shakily, anger at the tumultuous emotions she was crushing arrowing through her trembling frame because with every word she spoke she was going against her own heart.

But how could she do anything else? she asked herself in despair. They had come together for the baby’s sake and without the baby there was nothing to keep them together. She had to face that, deal with it, live with it whether she liked it or not. She loved him but he did not love her. She was too proud and too fair-minded to cling to him and make him feel that he somehow owed it to her to stay with her.

Leo welded long tanned fingers to the rail at the foot of her bed, every muscle in his lean, powerful body pulling dangerously tight. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said in a harsh undertone.

‘I’m just saying what needs to be said. You’re free, Leo.’

Leo lost colour, the exotic slant of his cheekbones pronounced. There was a lurch in the region of his gut as though he had been punched. He didn’t want to be free. Naturally he had got used to being married and he was content to stay married and eventually try for another baby. Grace suited him. He didn’t know how she did it or why she was so important to him but she matched him in all the ways that mattered. Indeed he had become so accustomed to Grace being around that he could not imagine his life without her. Obviously he was more of a creature of habit and routine than he had ever appreciated because within a short time Grace had become astonishingly necessary to his comfort.

‘And what if I don’t want to be free?’ he grated, soft and low.

‘If that’s what you think you feel right now you’re lying to yourself,’ Grace told him with astonishing conviction. ‘And why are you lying to yourself? Because you feel sorry for me and you think it’s your job to look after me. You have a very strong sense of responsibility and that’s a noble trait but don’t let it blind you to what you really want out of life. And what you really want, Leo, is not me.’

Leo wondered why she was telling him how he felt. Did she really think he was so inadequate that he couldn’t work out his own feelings for himself? Annoyance slashed through him and he wanted to express it but he was horrendously aware of the experience she had undergone and that it was his duty not to make the situation worse.

‘Our marriage was all about the baby and everything you have ever shared with me related to the baby and the baby’s future needs. Without our baby...’ Grace framed unsteadily, tears glinting in her over-bright eyes ‘...we don’t have a marriage. We don’t even have a relationship. We can get a divorce now.’

‘Are you insane?’ Leo heard himself snap back at her, all self-discipline vanquished by her use of that bombshell word. Divorce? How was he supposed to listen to that in polite and understanding silence?

‘I’m looking at a guy who doesn’t even wear a wedding ring!’ Grace shot at him equally out of the blue and Leo looked down at his bare hand in bewilderment, wondering what wedding rings had to do with anything and whether simply leaving the room would be wiser than remaining.

‘You never bothered to ask but I would’ve liked to get married in a church. But then you never really wanted to be properly married to me, so obviously you didn’t bother to ask my preferences. You didn’t choose me,’ Grace condemned heatedly. ‘You married me because I was pregnant, so why would we stay together now?’ she demanded emotively.

Leo lifted stunned dark golden eyes from the offending hand that lacked a wedding ring and thought how sneaky women could be. She had never mentioned his omission or the church thing. She had never by so much as a hint let him know how she felt about him not wearing a wedding ring and now he was being hung out to dry for a sin he hadn’t known he had committed. How fair was that?

‘I can buy a wedding ring,’ Leo pointed out gruffly.

‘That’s not the point!’ Grace exclaimed in seething frustration because he was not giving her the reaction she had expected: he was not looking guiltily relieved.

‘Then why did you mention it? And could we have this conversation at some other time when you’re not emotionally overwrought and we’re both feeling calmer?’ Leo pressed grittily. ‘Because right now is not working for me.’

Grace lifted her chin. ‘I thought it was better to say it and get it out in the open. I don’t want you faking what you don’t feel. You felt things for the baby, not for me.’

‘That is untrue,’ Leo grated, losing patience. ‘You’re my wife and I made a serious commitment to you.’

‘But I don’t want your cold sense of commitment...I want love!’ Grace flung back at him helplessly.

‘I warned you that I couldn’t put that on the table,’ Leo breathed harshly.

‘Oh, you could if you wanted to,’ Grace fielded with unmistakeable bitterness. ‘But you don’t want to. And do you know why? It’s not because you had an unhappy childhood, it’s because you’re an emotional coward.’

His nostrils flared, his eyes kindling like flames. ‘Let’s not descend to that level.’

‘But it’s true. You don’t get involved because you’re scared of getting hurt. Nobody wants to get hurt, Leo, but most of us still try to make a relationship that goes further than practicality and convenient sex. You’re too busy protecting yourself to even give it a go.’ Exhausted by telling him what was wrong with their marriage, Grace fell back against the pillows, drained by emotion. ‘Go back to the castle.’

‘To start planning our divorce?’ Leo challenged darkly.

‘It’s inevitable now,’ she whispered numbly, her heart heavy as lead inside her tight chest. ‘There’s nothing left to keep us together.’

‘If you really want me to leave, I’ll leave and come back first thing in the morning,’ he bit out grimly, his darkly handsome features bleak with constraint.

‘There’s no point you coming back for the second scan.’ Grace knew she would cry then because, no matter how hard she was striving to be realistic, a little spark of hope still flourished inside her. She would be shattered when she received the confirmation that, yes, she had miscarried and lost their baby and she didn’t want Leo to witness that emotional breakdown and start feeling sorry for her again. ‘I could handle that better alone. I’ll be able to leave the hospital straight after it.’

‘To do what? Fly back to London?’ Leo demanded bitterly. ‘You’re in no fit state for that. At the very least you need to spend a couple of weeks recuperating. If it makes you happier, I’ll leave and you can have the castle all to yourself. At this moment I feel that getting fully back to work would be a welcome distraction.’

‘I didn’t want it to be like this, Leo,’ Grace muttered wretchedly. ‘I know you’re upset as well.’

‘I’m not upset.’ Leo swung round and left the room, walked down the corridor and settled in the waiting room. He wasn’t just upset, he was furious. She was his wife and she was shutting him out, dismissing him as a husband as if he were of no account.

Did he really deserve a wife who had such a low opinion of him? Did she think he had been faking it with her for the whole of the past month? Faking the passion, the laughter, the enjoyment? Without warning he badly wanted a drink and he wanted to punch something hard. He leapt upright again and paced. Grace was stubborn and rigid in her views. That wedding-ring jibe? How could she be so petty?

Unfortunately, her prejudice against her father for the way she had believed he had treated her late mother had ensured that Grace had not had a very high opinion of men even to begin with. And how much had Leo’s own behaviour since their first meeting contributed to her continuing distrust? The casual one-night stand? The engagement he had neglected to mention? The blackmail he had used to persuade her to marry him? His conduct had been less than stellar.

But Leo had always had a can-do approach to problems. Grace wanted him to love her? He could lie and tell her he loved her. Was he willing to do anything to keep her? Leo winced, shocked by the concept. What had she done to his brain? His brain clearly wasn’t working properly. Shock and sorrow had temporarily deranged his wits because for the first time since childhood he felt helpless and almost panicky.

It felt wrong not being with Grace although maybe she genuinely needed time alone to deal with what had happened. He couldn’t help wishing she had turned to him, leant on him. He spoke to the nurse in charge, asking her to contact him if Grace’s condition changed, and then he breathed in deep and fought his reluctance to leave the hospital. Perhaps if Grace slept a while, she would be more normal in the morning, a little less worked up and fatalistic, although it was hard to see how a confirmation of the miscarriage would do anything to improve her outlook.

Leo helped himself to a whiskey in his limousine. He would get stinking drunk and stop agonising over a situation he couldn’t fix, he decided despondently. He checked his phone to see if Grace had texted him; she had not. He embarked on a second whiskey while wondering if a wedding ring could really mean that much to a woman and he thought about texting Grace to ask to have that mystery explained. But there was a yawning hole stretching ever wider somewhere inside his chest. He thought about the baby, the baby that wasn’t going to be, and his eyes burned and prickled, deep regret engulfing him.

He lifted his phone again, needing to talk to Grace, wanting to share his thoughts with a woman for the first time ever. He’d probably wake her up or upset her by saying the wrong thing, he conceded heavily. And the last thing she needed was a series of drunken maudlin texts asking silly questions. But the phone, the only link he had with the woman he so badly wanted to be with, was a terrible temptation. After a moment’s reflection, Leo extracted his SIM card, buzzed down the window and flung his phone out of the car. There, now he couldn’t be tempted to do or say anything stupid.

* * *

Grace tossed and turned restively in the bed, tears trickling from below her lowered eyelids. She wanted Leo, she wanted him back so badly, but he had never really belonged to her in the way a real husband would have done and now she needed to learn not to look for him and not to rely on him. She had to accept that this phase of her life was over. There would not be a baby with Leo. He had been so angry when he’d left her and she knew she had provoked him. He had tried to be there for her and she had rejected him, needing him to see that honesty was now the best policy. Their shotgun marriage no longer had a reason to exist and she had recognised that reality long before he did. Wasn’t that better than Leo waking up some day about a year from now and questioning why he was still married to a woman so far removed from his ideal of a wife?

Yet the prospect of life without Leo, life after Leo was unbearable to Grace. She couldn’t sleep and it was mid-morning before she was taken to be scanned. This time the scanner was a bigger, more complex machine and the doctor was present. Grace lay still, all hope of good news crushed by a wretched sleepless night and an irredeemable tendency to expect only bad things to happen to her. So, when the doctor urged her in heavily accented English to look at the screen, she was reluctant and glanced up, startled to see that the small medical team surrounding her were all smiling.

And they showed her baby’s heartbeat and switched on the sound so that she could listen to that racing beat that quickened her own. An intense sense of joyous relief filled her with a wash of powerful emotion and tears flooded her eyes. ‘I was so sure I’d lost my baby...’

The obstetrician sat down by her side to enumerate the various reasons why bleeding could occur in early pregnancy, pointing out that her blood loss had already stopped and that her baby’s heartbeat was strong and regular.

The minute she got back to her room, Grace snatched up her phone to text Leo, but what on earth was she to say to him? What an idiot she had been! Panicking and distraught at the conviction she had lost their baby, she had flung their marriage on the bonfire of her hopes as well. It would be her own fault if Leo received the news that he was still going to be a father with a new sense of regret because she had blown their relationship apart with all her foolish talk about wanting love. She laboured long over the text she sent him, apologising profusely for the way she had behaved and the things she had said before sharing the fact that she was still pregnant. She was a little surprised that there was no immediate response and rather more disconcerted when a nurse came to tell her that a car had arrived to collect her and she was wheeled out expecting to see Leo and instead saw only his driver and two of his bodyguards. Had she expected Leo to rush hotfoot to the hospital to greet her?

Perhaps that had been a little unrealistic after what she had slung at him the evening before, she conceded wretchedly. She sent him another text, hoping to elicit a response, but it was not until the evening that Leo phoned her and the conversation they shared was brief and stilted. He asked how she was, made no reference to the baby or their marriage and told her that he was in London on business and that he would be away for about a week.

‘When you get back, I suppose we’ll talk,’ Grace said uncomfortably, disappointed that he hadn’t once mentioned the baby.

‘Great...won’t that be something to look forward to?’ Leo derided, silencing her altogether.

Had Leo ignored her text because he had decided that there was a lot of truth in what she had said at the hospital? Had he reached the conclusion that the fact they were going to be parents wasn’t a good enough reason to stay married to a woman who wasn’t his ideal? Was that why he had made no comment? And was the divorce she had suggested what he would be discussing when he reappeared?

Five days later, Grace sat out on the terrace below the twining vines that were slowly colouring to autumnal shades and dropping their leaves. She had thrown up before she made it down to breakfast and her breasts were painfully sensitive. It was as if every possible side effect of pregnancy was suddenly kicking in all at once. She had gone for her blood tests with Dr Silvano and he had reassured her that the results were normal.

Her nerves though were all over the place because Leo was due back that very evening and she was stressed out at the thought of seeing him again because he had been so polite and distant when he phoned. In addition, he had mentioned dining with Marina, who was also in London, and Grace had had to battle an innate streak of jealousy and tell herself that she was relaxed about his friendship with his former fiancée. But even so, Grace feared comparisons being made and knew it would always hurt that Leo should believe that Marina would have made him the ideal wife.

Josefina popped her head out of the French windows that led out to the terrace. ‘Signora Zikos? Visitor. Meester Robert,’ she pronounced, utilising her tiny English vocabulary.

Her brow pleating in surprise, for she didn’t recognise the name, Grace stood up and stared at the man walking towards her, a chord of recognition striking her so hard that she froze and her eyes widened. The man was in his forties and of medium height with red hair as bright as her own. She had studied his photos on Facebook on several occasions and she knew who he was even though she couldn’t quite credit that he could be in Italy to visit her.

‘You’re...’ Grace began breathlessly.

‘Tony Roberts, your father. I wanted to phone and warn you that I was coming but Leo was convinced it would be better if I simply surprised you,’ he explained tautly. ‘I hope he was right on that score...’

‘Leo? You’ve met Leo?’ Grace exclaimed, inviting the older man to sit down at the table she had vacated.

‘He came to see me at the surgery last week and told me that you’d only recently found out what happened between your mother and I. By the way, I’m very sorry for your loss,’ he told her with quiet sympathy. ‘I wasn’t sure this was the best time for me to meet you but your husband thought it might cheer you up.’