LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER FOUR

      ‘NO, PLEASE DON’T tell me it’s been great!’ Grace urged Leo with a rueful laugh as, ever gracious, he saw her into the speedboat that would whisk her back to the real world, rather than the fantasy in which she had ordered her own personal perfect breakfast directly from Leo’s personal chef.

      ‘Why not?’ Leo demanded, strangely unsettled by her apparent good humour at leaving him.

      ‘Because you know it’s been a disaster for you from start to finish but you’re too polite to say it. I was absolutely not what you expected,’ Grace pointed out bluntly, taking a seat in the launch.

      Leo, rarely put out of countenance, felt heat sear his cheekbones and thought that she really was extraordinarily unusual for her sex, when she said exactly what she thought and felt without chagrin, revealing not an iota of the vanity he had believed that every woman possessed. ‘I will be in touch—’

      ‘Not necessary,’ Grace cut in briskly as if he were a five-year-old importuning a busy teacher.

      His strong jaw line clenched. ‘I will decide what’s necessary,’ Leo delivered, losing patience.

      From the upper deck, Leo watched the launch convey Grace back to the marina. He was assailed by a vague sense of something unfinished...of regret? His jaw set hard as granite. He had almost asked her to stay with him until it was time for her to fly home. Why? She had spoken the truth, after all: it had been a disaster. Instead of an experienced woman and a sexual marathon he had landed a virgin and then there had been the mishap with the condom. His teeth gritted together. When he had registered that for some inexplicable reason he was in no hurry to see Grace leave, his blood had run cold on the suspicion that he was feeling more than he was willing to feel for any woman, and from that point on he had been keen to see her depart. Yet the sound of her sobbing his name in orgasm still echoed in his ears and his body hardened as he remembered all too well the tight, hot feel of hers. From his point of view, although there had been too little of it, the sex had been stellar. In fact there had been something oddly, dangerously addictive about Grace Donovan and getting rid of her fast had been absolutely the right action to take!

      * * *

      Three weeks after that day, Grace did a pregnancy test in the bathroom of her aunt and uncle’s home.

      Her nerves were shot to hell and her mood had been on a steady downward slope for days when her menstrual cycle had failed to kick in on the expected date. Unfortunately pregnancy tests were very expensive and Grace had forced herself to wait until there was little risk of the test providing her with a potentially false result that would require yet another test to be done. And now she was bracing herself for the moment of truth even while her training had already provided her with good reason to be afraid. The very last thing she had required earlier that week was a blatantly impatient text from Leo Zikos asking for news that she did not yet have, so she had simply ignored it.

      Her breath hissed in her dry throat when she studied the result: positive. Hell roast the wretched man, she thought ridiculously, why couldn’t he have been sterile? Instead they were both young and healthy and the odds had not been in their favour. Pregnant! Fear and no small amount of horror made Grace break out in a cold sweat because nobody knew better than her how very hard, if not impossible, it would be for her to complete her medical studies with a child in tow and no supportive partner. Suddenly she was furious with herself for not having protected her own body better simply because she had failed to foresee the need. She had assumed that she would always be in total control and Leo Zikos with his stunning dark eyes had shown her different. But at what cost?

      Leo...stray thoughts and recollections of Leo had littered the past weeks while Grace had struggled to put the entire episode behind her and continue as normal. She had discovered that she had a softer, dreamier side to her character that she had never suspected. Well, so much for that, she thought cynically, stuffing the pregnancy-test paraphernalia back into the plastic bag to be discreetly dumped. Would she tell Leo? Undoubtedly she would tell him...eventually but not until she had decided what to do. Right at that minute she had more to worry about than taking time out to contact a male who had nothing other than money to offer her in terms of support. She suspected that Leo would expect her to have a termination and when she refused to give him a ‘tidy’ conclusion to the development he would be furious and resentful of her decision.

      Would he be the exact opposite of the father she had never met? Grace wrinkled her nose, not wanting to think along those lines. She was too intelligent not to be aware that her mother had fed her daughter a steady diet of her own martyred bitterness. Sadly, Grace had been too young to be told such things, too innocent to be anything other than deeply hurt by an absent father who had never felt the need to look for his eldest child. Her father had other children now; she knew after finding him on Facebook that she had half-siblings with the same red hair, the children of the woman he had married after deserting her mother. Yet her father had pleaded for Grace to be given the chance of life before she was even born and how could she do any less for her own baby?

      Grace adored babies, but she had believed that the opportunity to have children lay far, far away in her future. And now that everything had changed she was struggling not to think in either personal or sentimental terms about the baby. After all, after her own chequered experience as a child she knew that the best possible option for her baby would be an adoption by two parents with a stable home and everything Grace herself was currently unable to provide.

      Didn’t she owe her child the very best possible start in life? What on earth could she give in comparison? Her own mother had frankly struggled to cope with the weighty responsibilities of being a single parent. Keira Donovan had often resented her daughter, blaming her for the loss of her youthful freedom. There had always been a shortage of money for necessities and Grace had often been left in the care of unsuitable babysitters. Most telling of all, Grace was painfully aware of how much she herself had longed to have a stable father figure when she was a child. She was terrified of failing her own child the way her mother had failed her. But while her brain reminded her of all those distressingly practical facts, a more visceral response to motherhood deep down inside her was agonised by the concept of handing her baby over 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

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