AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She met with her tutor and her decision to take a year out from her studies was accepted. While she negotiated the stairs back down to the busy ground floor of the university building, Grace was thinking resolutely positive thoughts about the seed of life in her womb. She was facing huge changes in her life, but the sacrifices she was making and the adjustments that would follow would all benefit her baby, she told herself soothingly.
Marrying Leo would give Grace the precious gift of time. She would have time to come to terms with the prospect of motherhood and time to enjoy the first precious months of her baby’s life without the stress of wondering how she was to survive as a new mother. She would also have Leo’s support. Any male that keen to marry her for their baby’s sake would be a hands-on father and she very much wanted that male influence in her child’s life. She had never forgotten how much she herself had longed for a father as a little girl. In every possible way her life would be more settled when she returned to her studies the following year, she reflected with relief.
But as she went to bed that night her mind was still in turmoil over her personal, private reactions to Leo. Leo, always Leo, who had dominated her thoughts from the first moment she laid eyes on him. How had that happened? Grace had always prided herself on her discipline over her emotions but Leo Zikos had blasted through her defensive barriers like a blazing comet, awakening her to feelings and cravings that she had barely understood before. Was it infatuation? Was it simply sexual attraction? Or did her need to understand him, note his gifts as well as his flaws, indicate a deeper, more dangerous form of attachment? Theirs would be a marriage of convenience, after all, and even Marina had warned Grace not to expect more from Leo than he was already offering her.
But in the dark of the night Grace was facing an unsettling truth: she was beginning to fall in love with Leo, hopelessly, deeply in love with a male who had never uttered a word of interest relating to any connection with her more meaningful than sex. A male, moreover, who had virtually blackmailed her into marrying him and who, while declaring respect for fidelity, had still been rampantly unfaithful to his fiancée.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I CAN’T HELP being curious to know what you know about my father,’ Grace admitted stiffly to her uncle on the drive to the register office.
Declan Donovan studied his niece in surprise. ‘Virtually nothing, I’m afraid. Your mother refused to talk about him. Initially she said she was getting married but when that failed to transpire Keira had a huge row with our parents and cut us all off. I think she felt she’d lost face with everybody and it hurt her pride.’
‘So, you never met him?’
‘No, they had a bad break-up and after that we lost track of your mother for years.’ The older man shook his head with unhidden regret. ‘Keira was a troubled woman, Grace. I never understood her. Luckily she still had my address in her personal effects when she died, so the social worker was able to get in touch with me to tell me about you.’
Grace flushed and looked away, wishing she had asked that same question years sooner. But she had been too proud to ask about the father who had deserted her and her mother. ‘It’s not important,’ she said with forced casualness.
‘It’s only natural that you would be thinking of your parents on your wedding day,’ her uncle completed gruffly and patted her hand.
Leo stared as Grace entered the room and he wasn’t the only one. Their few guests copied him, their expressions ranging from admiration to awe and disbelief. Anatole, however, dealt his son an appreciative nod as if the stunning appearance of his son’s bride had set the seal on his approval. But then Anatole, Leo acknowledged wryly, had never wanted his son to marry Marina and had instead talked a lot of nonsense about Leo needing to seek a soul mate rather than a practical life partner.
Her wedding dress was the colour of bronze with a metallic gleam, a long simple column that flattered Grace’s curves and small stature. In her vibrant hair, which was swept up to show off her slim white throat, she wore only a tawny-coloured exotic hothouse bloom. The pulse beating at Leo’s groin flared into disturbing activity, lust flaring when he least welcomed it. A primal surge of desire assailed him as her pale sea-glass eyes collided anxiously with his. She looked incredibly sexy and disturbingly vulnerable.
