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‘I’ve never seen anyone blush that deeply,’ Leo confided in wonderment, watching the flush trail down her long white throat and dapple that fine skin with a warmer colour.
‘You’re supposed to pretend you didn’t notice, not embarrass me about it further,’ Grace told him roundly. ‘I used to go through agonies blushing when I was a kid. It’s the fault of my fair skin—it’s very conspicuous.’
Leo didn’t know where the conversation had gone, but then he hadn’t come with a prepared script, and as she strolled back into the kitchen to tend a steaming wok a key sounded in the front door and someone else arrived. Leo wheeled round to inspect a fresh-faced young man in his twenties with brown hair and bright blue eyes behind earnest spectacles.
‘Matt...meet Leo,’ Grace said quietly.
‘Oh, right...er...’ The hapless Matt managed to smile at Grace and then deal Leo a very different look of angry disapproval. ‘Of course, you’ll want to talk. Take him to the living room. I’ll take charge of whatever you’re cooking.’
‘Thanks, Matt,’ Grace said comfortably, pressing open a door off the hall and waving a guiding hand in Leo’s direction.
Leo’s talent had always been reading other people and he clearly saw Matt’s suppressed hostility and Grace’s complete unawareness of it and probably of its most likely source.
‘What’s Matt to you?’ Leo asked the instant Grace closed the door.
‘A good friend...and thank goodness for him. At such short notice the university couldn’t find me decent accommodation anywhere but a hostel, so I was grateful for Matt’s invite,’ Grace proffered truthfully. ‘Matt and I are on the same course.’
‘Why did your family throw you out?’ Leo enquired baldly, stationing himself by the window of the small room, which was cluttered with books, many of them lying half-open.
Grace gave him a wry glance. ‘I think you already know why.’
‘But that news should have come from you directly to me,’ Leo told her grimly. ‘I had a right to know first!’
‘And perhaps you would’ve done were we in a relationship,’ Grace countered quietly. ‘But since we’re not, the situation is rather different.’
Even greater tension filled Leo, stiffening the muscles in his broad shoulders, his clean-cut strong jawline hardening at her stubborn reminder of facts he considered to be more destructive than helpful. ‘If you’re pregnant, we definitely have a relationship,’ he contradicted.
Grace wrinkled her nose. ‘Well, I am having your baby,’ she conceded reluctantly. ‘But we don’t have to have any kind of a relationship!’
‘And how do you work that out?’ Leo gritted, becoming steadily more annoyed by her dismissive attitude.
‘I can manage fine on my own. I’m very independent,’ Grace informed him. ‘I’ll continue with my studies, hopefully have the baby during the Easter term break and give it up for adoption.’
‘Adoption?’ Leo was thoroughly disconcerted and stunned by her solution, that being a possibility he hadn’t even considered. ‘You’re planning to have our child adopted?’
Grace pleated her slender fingers together to conceal the fact that her hands were trembling while she battled to tamp down her distress. ‘I know it won’t be an easy decision to make when the time comes, Leo. I don’t want to give my child up but I was brought up by a single parent until I was nine years old and my mother really did struggle to meet the demands of that role.’
‘But—’ Leo clamped his lips shut on an instinctive protest while he fought to master emotions he had never felt before. Of course her reference to adoption had taken him very much by surprise. Even so, the very thought of never knowing his own child and not even having the right to see him or her genuinely appalled Leo. Even his own instinctive rejection of her proposition was a revelation that shocked him. ‘I don’t think I could approve that option.’
‘As far as I know you don’t legally have any say in the matter,’ Grace retorted in an apologetic rather than challenging tone. ‘Only married fathers have those kinds of rights.’
