* * *
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.
‘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