LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER SIX

      ‘YES. AM I supposed to know who you are?’ Grace asked the tall brunette awkwardly.

      ‘Leo didn’t mention me?’ Marina Kouros prompted.

      ‘I’m afraid not.’

      ‘Coffee, Miss Kouros?’ Sheila proffered from the kitchen doorway.

      ‘No, thanks...we’ll be in the sitting room,’ the brunette said with easy authority, strolling confidently ahead of Grace, making it clear she knew her way around the apartment before she paused for an instant to firmly close the door.

      ‘Why should Leo have mentioned you?’ Grace asked stiffly as she hovered by the wall of windows, insanely conscious of her worn jeans and plain chain-store sweater when compared to her companion’s expensive separates.

      Marina’s discomfiture was, for an instant, too obvious to be misinterpreted. ‘Because Leo and I have been engaged for the past three years and we’re getting married in six weeks’ time...or, at least, we were until you came along.’

      Grace’s jaw felt frozen and unwieldy as she struggled to speak through underperforming facial muscles. ‘Engaged?’ That single word was literally all she could squeeze out of her deflated lungs because her whole body felt as if it had gone into serious shock.

      ‘I’ll keep this brief. I’m not here to see you off...well, I suppose that’s a lie. If you were to vanish into thin air right now, it would suit me very well, but I know you’re pregnant and that it’s not quite that simple.’

      ‘Leo told you that I’m pregnant?’ Grace whispered in even greater shock.

      ‘He’s very upfront like that but I must say you are a surprise. I was expecting a blonde bombshell with a pole dancer’s wardrobe,’ Marina admitted with a distressing candour that suggested Leo’s infidelity was more normal than worthy of note. ‘But look, I won’t prevaricate. I’m here for one reason only. I don’t want you to screw up Leo’s life and mine and I was planning to offer you money to go away.’

      Like an accident victim, Grace was frozen in place, her face as pale as milk, her eyes wide with consternation and haunted by too many powerful reactions to enumerate. Marina evoked so many different reactions in Grace; anger, mortification, guilt and pain were assailing her on all levels. Leo had lied to her. Leo had pretended to be single and unattached, and an engaged man on the brink of his wedding was anything but unattached. He had been engaged for three years? That was not a recent or a casual commitment.

      ‘If Leo had told me he was engaged this wouldn’t have happened because I would never have been with him in the first place,’ Grace framed with desperate dignity. ‘I’m genuinely sorry that anything I have done has upset you and that this situation is affecting you as well, but there is no way I would accept money from you.’

      ‘I’ve known Leo all his life. He had a horrendous childhood and, because of it, he will never turn his back on his own child,’ Marina informed her grimly. ‘But I don’t think he should have to sacrifice his whole life and all his plans because of that child. Somewhere, somehow there has to be a happy compromise for all of us.’

      ‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ Grace framed sickly, her mind glossing over that reference to Leo’s childhood because she could barely cope as it was with the overload of information and thoughts already bombarding her. ‘I don’t know what I can say...other than, how can you still care about a man who cheats on you?’

      ‘I think that’s my business.’

      ‘Just as the baby’s mine,’ Grace countered quietly. ‘I don’t know what you want from me, Marina. But I won’t be staying on in this apartment.’

      ‘I only want you to think about what you’re doing. If you have that baby...’ Marina breathed with unmistakeable bitterness, her well-mannered mask slipping without warning ‘...you’re wrecking all our lives!’

      ‘But that’s my decision to make,’ Grace pointed out with wooden precision as she battled her churning inner turmoil to walk back to the door Marina had closed. She opened the door again in unapologetic invitation. ‘If you’re finished, I don’t think we have anything else to say to each other right now.’

      * * *

      Across the city, Leo said a very bad word below his breath when he read the warning text from Marina. For the first time ever he was really furious with his ex, his quick and clever brain instantly envisaging the potential fallout from what Grace had just discovered about him. Grace already had quite enough on her plate without that and Marina had absolutely no right to interfere. Had Marina hit out at Grace in revenge? Having always trusted his oldest and most loyal friend, Leo was taken aback by the suspicion, but the timing of Marina’s visit spoke for itself and could hardly be deemed an accident. His handsome mouth twisted and he stood up at the board table to excuse himself from the meeting; he had to see Grace before she did something stupid.

      That was the most surprising thing about Grace, which he had quickly registered. She might have a very clever brain and a steel backbone of independence but both were combined with an alarming tendency to make very sudden decisions and execute moves that were not always wise. It was that deeply buried vein of spontaneous passion and adventure in Grace that worried Leo the most. How else did he explain that night on his yacht? After almost twenty-five years of being a virgin she had just picked him like a rabbit out of a hat? A man about whom she knew nothing? Leo was still appalled by the risk she had taken on him that night until it occurred to him that he had never expended a similar amount of anxiety on any other casual sex partner. Only then did he crack down hard on his undesirable feelings of concern and the vague suspicion that Grace was much more fragile and vulnerable than she liked to pretend.

      Well, once they were married, he wouldn’t need to worry about her any longer. He would know where she was, what she was doing...in short, once he had control of Grace, full control, the horrible sense of apprehension that had gripped him since he first learned of her pregnancy would die a natural death. His anxiety was undoubtedly focused on the baby, he told himself consolingly. The baby was only a speck barely visible to the naked eye at this stage of his or her development—Leo had looked it up on the Internet—but it was his future son or daughter and he knew that baby was virtually defenceless and utterly dependent on the health and well-being of its mother’s body for survival. What the hell had Marina been thinking of when she had deliberately approached a woman in Grace’s condition to break such bad news? Hadn’t she appreciated how dangerous that could be?

      * * *

      Grace was stacking her luggage in the hall when the front door opened again. She had been frantically struggling to get herself out of the apartment as fast as possible while accepting the demeaning truth that she could not afford to call a taxi to ferry

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