LITMIR.BIZ

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to someone else to raise.

      The locked door rattled. ‘Grace? Are you in there?’ It was her aunt’s voice, sharp and demanding.

      Lifting the bag, Grace unlocked the door and prepared to step past the older woman.

      Instead Della Donovan laid her hand on Grace’s arm to prevent her from walking away. ‘Are you pregnant?’ she demanded thinly.

      Bemused by the question when she had not shared her concern with anyone, Grace stiffened, her brows lifting in a startled arc. ‘Why are you asking me that?’

      ‘Oh, that could be my fault.’ Jenna sighed with mock sympathy, pausing at the top of the stairs. ‘I was behind you in the checkout at the supermarket and I couldn’t help noticing the test...’

      Grace lost colour. ‘Yes, I’m pregnant,’ she admitted stonily.

      Her aunt, always a volatile woman, immediately lost her temper. By the time she had finished shouting, threatening and verbally abusing her niece for her morals, Grace knew where she stood and that she could no longer remain in her aunt and uncle’s home. Della had said things about Grace and her late mother that Grace knew that she would never forget. White as paper and numb with shock in the aftermath of that upsetting confrontation, she went into her room, phoned Matt and pulled out her suitcase; there was nothing else she could do. Her life, the life she had worked so hard to achieve, was falling apart even faster than she had feared, she acknowledged with a sinking heart.

      * * *

      At the outset of that same week, Leo had texted Grace but she hadn’t replied and he was tired of waiting and waking up in the middle of the night wondering...

      In little more than two months’ time he was getting married and Marina had made him more than aware of that fact by calling him to ask his opinion on various questions of bridal trivia that he couldn’t have cared less about. Nothing more important had entered those conversations and it had convinced him that he was the only one of them with doubts.

      Sadly, even the smallest doubt had not featured in Leo’s original blueprint for his future. He fixed on a goal, made decisions, brought plans to fruition and that was that. He didn’t do wondering about what if! He understood perfectly why he had ended up with Grace Donovan that night. He had been angry with Marina and full of misgivings about what their future together might hold. Regrettably, however, that still did not explain why Grace had hit him like a torpedo striking his yacht below the waterline. It did not explain why she had given him the most incredible sexual experience of his far from innocent life to date or why given the smallest excuse he would have repeated that night.

      Consequently, he had checked out who Grace Donovan was while he waited to hear from her and what he had learned from that comprehensive investigation had only made him more confused. Her early childhood had been appalling and her adolescence not much kinder. It was a credit to her strength of character that she had achieved so much, regardless of those disadvantages. Yet there was still so much he didn’t understand. Why would a young woman as well-informed as a fifth-year medical student not take extra contraceptive precautions? And why had she avoided telling him what she was studying? He had also taken on board the reality that an unplanned pregnancy would probably wreak greater havoc on her life than it would on his.

      When the curiosity, the unanswered questions and the need to know whether or not they had a problem rose to a critical level, Leo refused to wait to hear from Grace any longer. He gave his driver her address and compressed his lips, annoyed that Grace was forcing him to confront her. How could he walk away and hope for the best? How could he possibly risk marrying Marina without knowing for sure? The answer to both questions was that Leo could not ignore the situation, being all too well aware of the likely repercussions should Grace prove to be pregnant. On a deeper level, however, Leo could simply not believe that his legendary good fortune with women would crash and burn over something as basic as a sperm and an egg meeting in the wrong womb.

      An hour later, Leo was considerably less naïve, having struck a blank at Grace’s former address. The frigid blonde in her forties who accepted his business card changed her attitude a little once she noticed his limousine and became more helpful but Leo still couldn’t get away fast enough. He really wanted nothing to do with a woman who had thrown out the mother of his future child—a phrase with a shocking depth he could not quite digest at that moment—like some pantomime little match girl and who had earlier in the dialogue referred witheringly to Grace in unjust terms that had implied she was some high-living veteran slut.

      Thee mou, he was going to be a father...whether he liked it or not. Leo breathed in slow and deep, traumatised by the concept, and rang Marina straight away.

      ‘Oh, dear,’ Marina sighed with what he rather suspected was bogus sympathy. ‘That rather tops my misbehaviour with my married man, doesn’t it? What do you want to do?’

      ‘We’ll meet up and talk.’

      ‘No, I suspect that right now you need to be doing that with the baby’s mother, not with me,’ Marina remarked heavily. ‘What a ghastly mess, Leo!’

      Leo ground his teeth together but there was nothing he could say in his own defence. He felt as though his smooth, perfectly organised life had been violently derailed without warning. Were all his carefully laid plans about his future domestic life to come to nothing now because his contraception had let him down? he questioned bitterly. He swore under his breath and gave the driver the second address he had acquired while wondering exactly who Matt Davison was and what his connection was to Grace. It was not that he was possessive, of course, it was solely the unpleasant awareness that Grace Donovan was very probably going to be the mother of his first child and the nature of her character mattered much more now than it had the night they had met.

      Was he already travelling down the destructive path his father had trodden before him? His bitterness hardened. No, he was not going to marry one woman for her wealth while another, poorer one carried his child and thankfully love didn’t enter the picture in any way. Anatole Zikos had married Leo’s mother while loving his mistress and had never conquered that craving. Leo prided himself on being infinitely more down-to-earth and less emotional than his father. While his situation with Grace might be starting out as a mess, he would swiftly organise the threatening chaos into something more acceptable that both he and Grace could live with.

      Grace was humming under her breath while she cooked supper, grateful that the smell of the chicken and vegetables didn’t stir up nausea the way the scent of anything fried seemed to do. At least her studies hadn’t started yet. She was at the start of a reading week, set aside for home study.

      The doorbell went and she wondered if Matt had forgotten his key. Her friend’s parents had died when he was eighteen, leaving him with the means to buy his own apartment. She was comfortable living in Matt’s guest room but, concerned that she was taking advantage of his good nature, she had taken over the cooking and the cleaning to demonstrate her appreciation of his hospitality.

      Barefoot, she padded out to the hall, a slim, casually clad figure in skinny jeans and a striped navy and white sweater, her vibrant long hair restrained in a braid that hung halfway down her back.

      ‘Leo...’ she pronounced numbly, shattered to find the leading character in her daydreams in the flesh on the doorstep.

      ‘Why didn’t you answer my text?’

      ‘I’m afraid I didn’t have an answer for you at the time.’

      Leo was so close to Grace that he could tell she was wearing no make-up and the sheer glow of her creamy cheeks and bright pale green eyes knocked him flat. She was even more beautiful than he remembered and a fleeting memory of her pale hands stroking down over his stomach gripped him, resulting in a stirringly strong surge of lust that he very much could have done without.

      ‘Your aunt threw you out.’

      ‘So, that’s how you found out where I was living! My uncle came to see me the day before yesterday. He asked me to come home with him but I don’t want to cause trouble between them,

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