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The locked door rattled. ‘Grace? Are you in there?’ It was her aunt’s voice, sharp and demanding.
Lifting the bag, Grace unlocked the door and prepared to step past the older woman.
Instead Della Donovan laid her hand on Grace’s arm to prevent her from walking away. ‘Are you pregnant?’ she demanded thinly.
Bemused by the question when she had not shared her concern with anyone, Grace stiffened, her brows lifting in a startled arc. ‘Why are you asking me that?’
‘Oh, that could be my fault.’ Jenna sighed with mock sympathy, pausing at the top of the stairs. ‘I was behind you in the checkout at the supermarket and I couldn’t help noticing the test...’
Grace lost colour. ‘Yes, I’m pregnant,’ she admitted stonily.
Her aunt, always a volatile woman, immediately lost her temper. By the time she had finished shouting, threatening and verbally abusing her niece for her morals, Grace knew where she stood and that she could no longer remain in her aunt and uncle’s home. Della had said things about Grace and her late mother that Grace knew that she would never forget. White as paper and numb with shock in the aftermath of that upsetting confrontation, she went into her room, phoned Matt and pulled out her suitcase; there was nothing else she could do. Her life, the life she had worked so hard to achieve, was falling apart even faster than she had feared, she acknowledged with a sinking heart.
* * *
At the outset of that same week, Leo had texted Grace but she hadn’t replied and he was tired of waiting and waking up in the middle of the night wondering...
In little more than two months’ time he was getting married and Marina had made him more than aware of that fact by calling him to ask his opinion on various questions of bridal trivia that he couldn’t have cared less about. Nothing more important had entered those conversations and it had convinced him that he was the only one of them with doubts.
Sadly, even the smallest doubt had not featured in Leo’s original blueprint for his future. He fixed on a goal, made decisions, brought plans to fruition and that was that. He didn’t do wondering about what if! He understood perfectly why he had ended up with Grace Donovan that night. He had been angry with Marina and full of misgivings about what their future together might hold. Regrettably, however, that still did not explain why Grace had hit him like a torpedo striking his yacht below the waterline. It did not explain why she had given him the most incredible sexual experience of his far from innocent life to date or why given the smallest excuse he would have repeated that night.
Consequently, he had checked out who Grace Donovan was while he waited to hear from her and what he had learned from that comprehensive investigation had only made him more confused. Her early childhood had been appalling and her adolescence not much kinder. It was a credit to her strength of character that she had achieved so much, regardless of those disadvantages. Yet there was still so much he didn’t understand. Why would a young woman as well-informed as a fifth-year medical student not take extra contraceptive precautions? And why had she avoided telling him what she was studying? He had also taken on board the reality that an unplanned pregnancy would probably wreak greater havoc on her life than it would on his.
When the curiosity, the unanswered questions and the need to know whether or not they had a problem rose to a critical level, Leo refused to wait to hear from Grace any longer. He gave his driver her address and compressed his lips, annoyed that Grace was forcing him to confront her. How could he walk away and hope for the best? How could he possibly risk marrying Marina without knowing for sure? The answer to both questions was that Leo could not ignore the situation, being all too well aware of the likely repercussions should Grace prove to be pregnant. On a deeper level, however, Leo could simply not believe that his legendary good fortune with women would crash and burn over something as basic as a sperm and an egg meeting in the wrong womb.
An hour later, Leo was considerably less naïve, having struck a blank at Grace’s former address. The frigid blonde in her forties who accepted his business card changed her attitude a little once she noticed his limousine and became more helpful but Leo still couldn’t get away fast enough. He really wanted nothing to do with a woman who had thrown out the mother of his future child—a phrase with a shocking depth he could not quite digest at that moment—like some pantomime little match girl and who had earlier in the dialogue referred witheringly to Grace in unjust terms that had implied she was some high-living veteran slut.
