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Leo settled a notepad and pen down on the table beside Grace. She printed her address and phone number and returned the pad to the table. As she did so, she yawned. ‘I’m sorry, I’m very sleepy...’
‘It’s late...go to bed,’ he murmured quietly.
Grace thought of the hassle of arriving back at the marina before dawn, finding her way back to the apartment block and then sitting in Reception until Stuart took his leave. ‘I’ll stay...at least you have a bed.’
‘A bed?’ Leo queried, recognising her exhaustion in her pale face and heavy eyes.
Grace climbed into the bed still clad in the robe.
‘I wasn’t going to touch you again,’ Leo remarked drily.
‘Obviously I’ve offended your ego and I’m sorry,’ Grace mumbled.
As she closed her eyes Leo peeled off his own clothing, although he retained his boxers and slid into the other side of the bed, dousing the lights. ‘What did you mean about having a bed?’
‘Our apartment is only one bedroom and my cousin met a man the first day,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve been sitting up in Reception most nights so that she can be with him—’
‘That’s outrageous!’ Leo cut in.
‘No, it’s not. Jenna’s family paid for her to go on holiday with her best friend.’ Briefly she explained. ‘Now that she’s met Stuart, I’m surplus to requirements.’
‘Surely her parents would be furious if they knew how she was treating you?’
‘What Jenna wants, Jenna gets,’ Grace muttered drowsily, her voice trailing down in volume. ‘It’s always been that way. She’s the daughter, the little princess...I’m the niece they took in out of the kindness of their heart.’
‘But to make such distinctions between two children in the same family!’ Leo began angrily until it dawned on him that Grace had fallen asleep.
A moment later, the echo of his own words still ringing in his ears, he realised that there were remarkable similarities between Grace’s situation with her cousin and his own non-relationship with the half-brother he hated. Yes, in his home too, the same distinction had been made in favour of the legitimate firstborn son, Leo. For the first time Leo was recognising an angle that he had never even considered before: Bastien’s side of the story. Was it really so surprising that Bastien had always seemed to seethe with resentment as a child and had matured into a fiercely competitive and aggressive male? He was sobered by the unfamiliar thoughts afflicting him, and it was a long time before Leo fell asleep.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘NO, PLEASE DON’T tell me it’s been great!’ Grace urged Leo with a rueful laugh as, ever gracious, he saw her into the speedboat that would whisk her back to the real world, rather than the fantasy in which she had ordered her own personal perfect breakfast directly from Leo’s personal chef.
‘Why not?’ Leo demanded, strangely unsettled by her apparent good humour at leaving him.
‘Because you know it’s been a disaster for you from start to finish but you’re too polite to say it. I was absolutely not what you expected,’ Grace pointed out bluntly, taking a seat in the launch.
Leo, rarely put out of countenance, felt heat sear his cheekbones and thought that she really was extraordinarily unusual for her sex, when she said exactly what she thought and felt without chagrin, revealing not an iota of the vanity he had believed that every woman possessed. ‘I will be in touch—’
‘Not necessary,’ Grace cut in briskly as if he were a five-year-old importuning a busy teacher.
His strong jaw line clenched. ‘I will decide what’s necessary,’ Leo delivered, losing patience.
From the upper deck, Leo watched the launch convey Grace back to the marina. He was assailed by a vague sense of something unfinished...of regret? His jaw set hard as granite. He had almost asked her to stay with him until it was time for her to fly home. Why? She had spoken the truth, after all: it had been a disaster. Instead of an experienced woman and a sexual marathon he had landed a virgin and then there had been the mishap with the condom. His teeth gritted together. When he had registered that for some inexplicable reason he was in no hurry to see Grace leave, his blood had run cold on the suspicion that he was feeling more than he was willing to feel for any woman, and from that point on he had been keen to see her depart. Yet the sound of her sobbing his name in orgasm still echoed in his ears and his body hardened as he remembered all too well the tight, hot feel of hers. From his point of view, although there had been too little of it, the sex had been stellar. In fact there had been something oddly, dangerously addictive about Grace Donovan and getting rid of her fast had been absolutely the right action to take!
