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‘I’m fine, Leo. I just get a little dizzy if I do anything too quickly. I’ve also been sick a couple of times,’ she explained prosaically. ‘It’s like my body’s finally woken up and realised it’s pregnant.’
‘It’ll settle down,’ Leo forecast cheerfully. ‘How did things go with your father today?’
‘What made you go and see him?’ Grace asked instead.
‘Well, I knew you wanted to meet him and I thought it would give you something else to think about,’ he paraphrased a shade awkwardly. ‘Grace—I’ve never felt so helpless in my life as when I believed you were losing our baby...’
‘Me too...it wasn’t something we could control.’ Grace’s fingertips stroked soothingly down his cheekbone to his strong jawline. ‘All my worst instincts went into overdrive.’
Leo sprang lithely upright. ‘No, I saw your point once I thought over what you’d said to me. I did make it all about the baby rather than about us. You could even say I used the baby as an excuse. Considering that I wanted you the very first moment I laid eyes on you and never stopped wanting you, I wasn’t being honest with either of us.’
Her eyes widened at that admission. ‘The very first moment?’
‘It was like sticking my finger in an electrical socket,’ Leo quipped. ‘The attraction was instant and very powerful. I had to know you and then I had to have you. When I found myself wanting to hang onto you the morning after our night together, it freaked me out.’
‘You did?’ Grace was frowning. ‘But we were only together one night.’
‘One night with a very special woman who made me want much more from her than any woman I’d ever met,’ Leo completed huskily. ‘Why do you think I was too impatient to wait to hear from you afterwards? I was obsessed. I couldn’t think of anything but seeing you again. It’s a wonder I wasn’t boiling bunnies...’
Grace was in shock but hanging onto his every word. ‘Can’t imagine that...but you said—’
‘I said I didn’t do love and then you threw me out of that hospital room when I badly needed to be with you and I had to get by without you for a week.’
‘During which you suffered some sort of brainstorm?’ Grace framed shakily.
‘No, it finally hit me that I was very deeply attached to you and that it had just happened, regardless of all my doubts about such feelings.’
Grace finally stood up and approached him. ‘Very deeply attached?’
‘Hopelessly,’ Leo told her with his irresistible smile. ‘Somewhere along the way I fell in love with you but I didn’t recognise it. I knew I liked you, wanted you close and needed to look after you. I knew I was jealous of your friendship with Matt and very relieved when you didn’t succumb to Bastien’s legendary appeal. But I honestly did think that I was feeling all those things because it was natural for me to feel protective towards you when you were pregnant.’
‘Easy mistake to make,’ Grace told him breathlessly, unknotting his tie, yanking it free of his collar before embarking on his shirt buttons. ‘You’ve just told me you love me and, since I love you too, we should be celebrating.’
‘You love me? Even after all the mistakes I’ve made?’ Leo pressed, stunning dark golden eyes locked to her flushed face and her huge beaming smile.
‘Yes. Unlike you,’ Grace murmured in unashamed one-upmanship, ‘I never expected the man I married to be perfect.’
‘But I do think you’re perfect,’ Leo argued heatedly. ‘Absolutely perfect for me. You’re beautiful and clever and warm and loving and you will make an absolutely brilliant mother.’
‘Tell me more. My ego loves this,’ Grace urged, laughing. ‘I really should’ve guessed you loved me when you tracked down my father for me and got him out here. Instead I was too busy worrying about you dining out with Marina.’
Leo tensed. ‘Why on earth would you worry about that?’
‘Because you thought she was perfect and you were with her for three years.’
‘If she’d been perfect for me I’d still have been with her and my sex drive would have centred on her,’ Leo pointed out levelly. ‘And Marina isn’t perfect. Not only did she once have a one-night stand with my brother...’
