‘I wanted to see you to discuss something...probably something you’ll consider quite silly,’ Grace warned him uncomfortably, striving to not quite focus on his lean, darkly handsome features with a mouth running dry and a tummy turning somersaults. But there he was, gorgeous, no denying that, she conceded helplessly while she fought to concentrate on what she had to say.
Leo had the celebratory champagne standing by on ice. He knew she was pregnant but was convinced that one little sip would do no harm simply to mark the occasion, because of course she wanted to see him to tell him that she was ready to marry him. The true celebration would be taking her back to bed again, knowing she was his...finally. When it dawned on him that Grace was burbling on for some strange reason about her uncle’s job and her aunt’s legal firm, he was perplexed, until the proverbial penny dropped and he made the necessary leap of understanding. Of course, what else would a lying, cheating scumbag do but throw his weight around through threats and intimidation?
‘And you’re afraid that I took offence?’ Leo prompted, taking very much more offence from what she was saying than from anything her shrewish aunt had thrown at him.
‘Yes, of course, I know you’re not really like that...’ Grace assured him.
No, you don’t know. They wouldn’t be having this conversation if she knew him and without warning a scorching tide of rage was washing over Leo like a dangerous floodtide.
Grace stared at Leo, noticing that his big powerful body had gone very, very still. His dark eyes shone as bright as gold ingots below his lush black lashes.
‘They’re my family...I do care about what happens to them,’ Grace framed in uncertain continuation. ‘They really don’t deserve to be dragged into this mess between us.’
‘I won’t adversely affect their lives in any way if you agree to marry me,’ Leo delivered in a tone that brought gooseflesh to her bare arms.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I think you heard me, Grace. If you do what I want and marry me, I will promise not to interfere with your uncle and aunt’s continuing employment.’
Before his shrewd, hard gaze, Grace turned white. ‘You can’t mean that, not that you would seriously threaten their livelihoods just because I’m not doing what you want?’
‘I mean it,’ Leo asserted with fierce emphasis. ‘I’ve run out of patience. I want to marry you and I want that child you’re carrying. So, think very carefully about what you decide to do next.’
‘But that’s complete blackmail!’ Grace shot back at him, trembling like a leaf in shock and barely able to credit what he was telling her.
‘I never pretended to be a knight on a white horse, Grace. You and that baby are mine and the sooner you acknowledge that, the happier we will all be.’
‘I don’t belong to anyone. I belong to myself,’ Grace argued through gritted teeth, battling a terrifying sense of panic as hard as she could because Leo had just trashed the faith she hadn’t known she still cherished in him.
Leo stalked closer, well over six feet of powerfully built and determined masculinity. ‘That was before you met me, meli mou. Everything’s changed now. We’ll get married on Friday.’
‘Fri-Friday is only three days away,’ Grace stammered, utterly thrown by Leo’s controlling behaviour.
‘I know and I can’t wait to sign on that official dotted line,’ Leo grated impatiently. ‘Then I’ll know where you are and how you are.’
‘You’re out of your mind,’ Grace breathed in a daze. ‘We can’t just get married. You were engaged to Marina!’
‘Marina’s the past, you’re the present,’ Leo cut in with ruthless bite. ‘And at this moment I’m only interested in the future and it starts here, now with your answer...’
Grace pinned tremulous lips together in the terrible stretching silence. Her heart seemed to be hammering in her eardrums. He was threatening her aunt and uncle’s comfortable life and she couldn’t just stand by and do nothing after all they had done for her, she thought wretchedly. They had brought her up, supported her at school, kept her safe. All right, it had been far from perfect but they were still the only family she had and she didn’t want them to suffer in any way by association with her. Leo held all the cards: her uncle’s employment, Della’s legal firm’s dependency on the business Leo sent their way. Della had worked long and hard for a partnership and if she had been rude to Leo—well, she was pretty rude to a lot of people, never having been the type to tolerate fools. Grace’s mind and her thoughts were in turmoil.
‘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,