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‘And how do you feel about your father now?’ Leo asked levelly.
‘That he probably did the best he could and obviously he didn’t deliberately abandon me. At least you were lucky enough to have both your parents growing up,’ Grace reminded him, closing the file and replacing it on the table with finality. Yet a little burst of warmth had touched the cold, hollow place in her heart where her belief in her father’s lack of interest had lodged in childhood. It was good to know that he had cared enough to fight for her even though he had ultimately lost out. For the first time ever, she wondered if she should try and contact her father.
Leo’s expressive mouth quirked in receipt of her innocent comment. ‘Having both parents never felt lucky to me. Anatole married my mother, who was a very spoiled Greek heiress, primarily for her money.’
Grace gazed back at him in shock. ‘That’s an awful thing to accuse your father of!’
‘But regretfully true. Although he married my mother he was actually in love with a waitress called Athene. He set Athene up as a mistress and she became pregnant with Bastien only a few months after my mother conceived me,’ he confided grimly. ‘Eventually my mother found out that she wasn’t the only woman in her husband’s life. I must’ve been about six by then. I still remember her screaming, sobbing and throwing things and the drama went on for days. Anatole duly promised to give up Athene and we lived in peace for a while. But of course Anatole was lying and the truth came out again. That same destructive pattern just kept on repeating and repeating—’
‘That must’ve been devastating for your mother. She must’ve really loved your father to keep on forgiving him.’
‘But he loved Athene and obviously Bastien was almost the same age as I was, so in a sense Anatole had two families. It was a hideous triangle.’ His lean dark features were bleak. ‘Anatole couldn’t walk away from Athene and my mother refused to let him go. Once when he tried to leave her she took sleeping pills and that scared the life out of him.’
‘Of course it did,’ Grace said with a shiver.
‘When I was thirteen, Athene died in a car crash and Bastien came to live with us. My mother was so relieved that her rival was dead that she agreed to the arrangement. Naturally, Bastien and I didn’t hit it off,’ Leo said drily, his lean, darkly handsome features grim. ‘However, the volatile nature of my parents’ marriage convinced me that I didn’t want an atom of that obsessive passion in my own marriage...’
Grace sipped at her soft drink and searched his lean, strong face, recognising the gravity etched there. ‘Meaning?’
‘I have never wanted any part of the possessiveness, the jealousy, the arguments or the overly high expectations that most married couples have of each other.’
‘That’s the down side of attachment. Love is the upside,’ Grace told him gently.
‘Not for me, it isn’t,’ Leo countered with cool conviction. ‘I’m not looking for love in our marriage, Grace.’
In spite of the sinking sensation in her stomach, Grace threw him a brilliant smile. ‘Neither am I, Leo, but I will expect you to love our child.’
‘That’s a different kind of love,’ he declared.
‘A less selfish love certainly,’ she conceded, wanting to ask him about his relationship with Marina and biting her lip to restrain herself while she was uncertain of her ground. ‘You forgave your father for his mistakes, didn’t you?’
‘He’s a good-hearted man but weak at the core. He dug himself into a hole and he couldn’t get out of it. He didn’t want to hurt anyone by making a choice and the result was that he hurt all of us.’
Her lashes dipped over her sea-glass eyes, which were clear as jade in the light filling the cabin. ‘If you feel so strongly about your father’s infidelity, how could you cheat on Marina?’
‘But I didn’t...cheat on her,’ Leo contradicted with a flare of distaste in the brilliant dark eyes narrowed below the lush canopy of his lashes. ‘Marina and I got engaged and then agreed to go our separate ways until we got married.’
