LITMIR.BIZ

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marriage the very first day he’d discovered she was pregnant, she recalled ruefully. It seemed that marrying the mother of his child was important to him, so important he had immediately recognised it as a necessity. Not that that excused him in any way for employing threats when persuasion had failed, she reasoned.

      Grace had so many unanswered questions that she was now wishing that she had listened to what Leo had had to say for himself earlier that day at his apartment. Clearly, Leo’s relationship with Marina was unusual. When Marina had introduced herself to Grace, she had been fairly polite and remarkably composed for a female whose fiancé had just dumped her for another woman. Even so, Marina had repeatedly said that Grace having Leo’s child would wreck all their lives. It was possible that Marina was simply a good actress but even that didn’t explain the peculiarity of Marina visiting Grace to try and buy her off and then freely admitting that embarrassing fact to Leo.

      Her head beginning to pound with the strain of her anxious reflections, Grace acknowledged that had Marina not existed she would’ve agreed to marry Leo. After all, it was best to be honest with herself: she did want Leo in spite of the shocks he had dealt her. It wasn’t sensible, it wasn’t justifiable but she had pretty much been infatuated with Leo from the moment she’d met him. On those grounds and bearing in mind the reality that she would very much like her baby to grow up with a father, shouldn’t she give marriage a chance?

      Only, how did she marry a male willing to blackmail her into agreement? That was wrong, that was so wrong. And the best of it was, she was convinced that Leo knew it was wrong but he had still put that pressure on her in an effort to get what he wanted. She did owe a debt of care to her uncle and aunt and if their lives were blighted because of something she had done she would be gutted, which didn’t give her much in the way of choice. On the other hand, Grace reflected as she swallowed another yawn, she could agree to marriage with certain provisos attached.

      * * *

      Leo studied Grace as she joined him for breakfast, her face blank, her eyes uninformative. He reckoned she would make a good poker player and the challenge of that talent in a potential wife amused him. ‘Well?’ he prompted grimly, still annoyed that she had forced him to wait for her answer.

      Grace sipped at her tea, wishing that Leo didn’t look quite so amazing first thing in the morning when she felt washed out and weary. There he was with his dark golden eyes alive with potent leaping energy, his blue-black hair still damp from the shower and his hard jawline close shaven. He wore yet another one of those remarkably well-tailored suits that beautifully defined his lean, muscular build. ‘I’ll say yes because you really haven’t given me a choice.’

      ‘Choice is a very much overrated gift,’ Leo declared, pouring himself a cup of fragrant coffee with a steady hand, determined not to react in any way to her capitulation. ‘People don’t always make the right choice. Sometimes they need a little push in the relevant direction.’

      ‘This was more than a little push,’ Grace censured. ‘I don’t know why you’re doing it either. You can’t want me as a wife that much.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘I’m just ordinary.’

      ‘I don’t see you that way, meli mou,’ Leo countered. ‘I see you as different, as special.’

      ‘Leo, you just blackmailed me into marrying you. Ditch the flattery!’ Grace said very drily. ‘And I may be saying yes but there would have to be certain conditions attached.’

      Leo tensed again and flung back his arrogant head, shapely mouth flattening back into a tough line. ‘Such as?’

      ‘As the term hasn’t started yet, I’m considering taking a year out while all this is going on but I would want to return to my studies in London next year. You would have to support that.’

      ‘Naturally I would support that arrangement,’ Leo asserted, the tension locking his lean bronzed features into tautness evaporating.

      Grace went pink and gathered her strength. ‘And it would have to be a platonic marriage.’

      Leo went rigid again and studied her with incredulous dark eyes as if she were insane. ‘You can’t be serious?’

      ‘Of course, I’m serious. We don’t have to be intimate to be married and raise a child together.’

      His dark golden gaze rested on her resolute face. ‘I’m afraid you do if you’re married to me. I refuse to look outside my marriage for sex. That would degrade both of us and I couldn’t live with it. I have strong views on fidelity,’ he completed with finality.

      Grace groaned out loud, not having expected him to be quite so set against what would in effect have been a marriage only on paper. ‘I really did think that that would be the sensible option.’

      ‘No, it would be a recipe for disaster.’ Leo stared at her with his black-lashed dark eyes glittering like stars in a lean, angular face that was so handsome it made the breath trip in her tight throat. ‘And I speak from experience. My father was persistently unfaithful to my mother and their unhappiness poisoned life for both them and their children.’

      ‘My goodness...’ Taken aback by that unexpectedly frank admission, Grace regrouped as she finished eating. ‘But it wouldn’t be quite so personal with us. For a start, we’re not in love with each other or anything like that.’

      ‘But I still want you, Grace, as a man wants a woman,’ Leo delivered with savage candour. ‘I won’t pretend otherwise. I want a normal marriage with all that that entails, not some unnatural agreement that increases the odds of divorce. I also want to be there for our child as he or she grows up.’

      ‘You’ve made your point,’ Grace conceded grudgingly, willing to admit that she had not thought through the consequences of a platonic marriage. It had been naïve to assume that Leo might be willing to live without sex while the alternative of her having to turn a blind eye while Leo sought sexual consolation elsewhere was even less appealing to her. But how could he say that he had strong views on fidelity after what he had done to Marina?

      As she pushed her plate away and stood up, her curiosity still fully engaged on the mystery of Leo’s thought processes, Leo stood up as well.

      ‘So, we’re getting married in forty-eight hours?’ Leo mused huskily, resting a hand on her arm.

      ‘I think that’s a yes.’ Still striving to keep her distance, Grace tried to gently detach her arm from his hold but she didn’t act fast enough because his other arm just closed round her spine to entrap her slim body against his lean, powerful frame. He was hard...everywhere. Hard-packed with muscle, tense and...fully erect. Her face burned in the split second before his mouth came crashing down on hers, nibbling, licking, tasting in a carnal assault on her senses that absolutely no other man could have contrived. Her head fell back and her mouth opened, treacherous excitement lighting her up like a shower of fireworks inside. It was so incredibly sexy. In a mindless moment she was convinced it was the sexiest kiss ever.

      A knock sounded on the door and he pulled back from her. A waiter brought in champagne. Flustered by the power of that compellingly provocative kiss and shaken by the thought that she was actually going to marry Leo, Grace backed away to the window to practise breathing again.

      Leo extended a champagne flute to her. ‘To our future.’

      ‘I shouldn’t drink.’

      ‘One sip for the sake of it,’ Leo suggested.

      Grace touched the flute to her mouth, moistening her lips.

      ‘I’ll set up a shopping trip for you today. You need clothes.’ Unusually, Leo hesitated. ‘Marina has offered to help out.’

      ‘Marina?’ Grace exclaimed, wide-eyed.

      ‘We’re still good friends. She’s probably feeling a bit guilty that she approached you yesterday to buy you off because that sort of behaviour really isn’t her style,’

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