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‘Sadly, that reality won’t make me like Bastien but it is why I was ready to allow you to believe that I would blackmail you into marriage. I was prepared to use any weapon you put within my reach,’ Leo confessed wryly. ‘I could not bear our child to experience the isolation which you and Bastien suffered as children. I don’t ever want a child of mine to feel like an outsider. And if you and I hadn’t married that is what he or she would have ultimately been.’
‘So, I’m supposed to forgive the blackmail threats because your goal was the greater good?’ Grace fielded very drily although grudging amusement was tugging at her lips. ‘With that kind of reasoning you could excuse murder, Leo.’
A wolfish grin slashed Leo’s darkly handsome face. ‘But you like being married to me?’
Grace rested her chin down on the heel of her hand and gave him an enquiring look. ‘And why do you assume that?’
‘You sing in the shower, you smile at me a lot...you even jump me in bed occasionally,’ Leo husked soft and low, dark golden eyes pure burnished gold with wicked amusement and that innate bold assurance that she found so outrageously compelling.
Grace didn’t quite know how to react to that unexpectedly personal list of her mistakes. For smiling at him all the time was a dead giveaway of the kind of feelings he didn’t want her to have and she didn’t want to reveal. But it was a challenge to hide the simple truth that he made her happy, indeed happier than anyone had ever made her feel in her entire life. Because while he might not love her, he did care and he seemed to find her irresistible. Did she really need more than that from him? All that lovey-dovey stuff and wedding rings proudly worn on male fingers would really just be the icing on the cake, she reasoned: lovely to have but not strictly necessary.
‘You won’t be getting jumped tonight,’ she warned him, her lovely face flushed and self-conscious.
And Leo laughed uproariously as he so often did with Grace, who teased him and came back at him verbally in a way no other woman ever had and who was nothing short of dirty dynamite in his bed. Oh, no, Leo had no complaints on the marriage front. In fact, Leo was delighted with his bride.
He walked her back to the car and noticed a guy on a motorbike twisting his head rather dangerously to get a second look at the figure Grace cut in a pale pink cami top that showed rather more cleavage than Leo liked and a clinging white skirt that enhanced her curvy behind and show-stopping legs. His mouth flattened while he wondered when Grace would start looking more pregnant and less curvy and sexy. He could hardly wait for the day. It offended him when other men studied his wife with lascivious intent.
Grace was glad of the breeze that cooled her as they walked into the castle because she was feeling uncomfortably warm. ‘I need a shower,’ she sighed, starting up the stairs.
‘Me too,’ Leo husked with a roughened edge to his dark deep drawl.
Grace was moving towards the bathroom when Leo spoke again and in a sudden tone of urgency. ‘Grace...your skirt...you’re bleeding!’
CHAPTER NINE
COLD SHOCK AND dismay filled Grace as she looked down at herself. In the bathroom she frantically peeled off her clothes.
‘You can’t have a shower now...you should lie down!’ Leo tried to remonstrate with her.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Grace argued shakily. ‘If I’m having a miscarriage there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.’
Leo stepped out of the bathroom to call Dr Silvano and then went back in, battling an angry, aggressive urge to snatch Grace bodily out of the shower and force her to lie down but very much afraid that coming over all caveman would only upset her more. He tried to wrap a huge towel round her when she came out, hovering even when she shouted at him to leave her alone. Grace rebelled by stepping back out of view to take care of necessities but he was still waiting with the towel when she emerged again.
‘You’re so cold,’ he groaned.
‘Shock,’ she said, teeth chattering while she struggled to make herself face what felt like an impossible challenge and slid her arms into a towelling robe. ‘You know one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage during the first trimester and I’m only eight weeks and a bit along...’
