The Mills & Boon Stars Collection. Cathy WilliamsЧитать онлайн книгу.
Leo Zikos, far beyond the boundaries of those she had first envisaged. Considering how insanely attractive Leo was, she supposed her reaction to him was fairly normal and naturally there was something even more attractive about his insatiable desire for her ordinary self, never mind the fact that he was the father of her baby. Obviously she didn’t want to get hurt by falling for someone who didn’t feel the same way. But then, nobody wanted to get their heart broken and this was not only a time for her to consider her future as a mother, but also a time in which they could get to know each other better and explore their feelings.
By the time Leo came back to bed, Grace was sound asleep. Around dawn she shifted up against Leo and the sheer novelty value of being in bed with another person was probably what awakened him. In the darkness, he lay still, listening to Grace’s even breathing. He frowned and very gently removed the arm he had inexplicably draped round Grace before quietly easing out of the bed to pull on jeans and a shirt. He padded through to the vast expanse of the main reception room and checked his phone for messages.
There was a text from his father: Anatole would be in London on Saturday and wanted to know if Leo would still be around. Leo almost groaned out loud. He would be on the other side of the world by then but he now needed to move Grace to another location because the London apartment was used by both his father and his brother. Leaving Grace in residence would entail explanations that Leo was not yet ready to make.
He raked impatient fingers through his tousled black hair. What was he playing at? What the hell had he been playing at when he took Grace back to bed again? That was no answer to the mess they were both in and had probably only complicated everything more. He was maddened by his sudden unprecedented loss of restraint and discipline the night before and exasperated by what he saw as his own irrational behaviour.
Sex had always been a purely physical exercise for Leo. Anything even one step beyond simple sex was dangerous in his view because it could open him up to the risk of destructive attachments and desires. He had not had to worry about that before because he had never connected in any more lasting way with a woman he had been intimate with.
He swore under his breath, grasping that it was a little late in the day to acknowledge that he was getting in too deep with Grace Donovan. Hadn’t they enough of a connection in the child she had conceived? Getting involved in an affair with Grace would be foolish because when it finished relations would inevitably sour between them and potentially damage his future relationship with his child. Why hadn’t he thought about that reality? Why hadn’t he thought about what he would be encouraging if he had sex with her again? Most probably raising expectations he was highly unlikely to fulfil?
As Leo poured himself a whiskey from a crystal decanter it seemed to him that his libido had been doing all his thinking for him. That shook him inside out. In fact he broke out in a cold sweat at that knowledge while he paced the pale limestone floor. He drained his glass and set it down with a definitive snap. Was he more like his father than he had ever suspected? Too weak and selfish to behave honourably? More likely than most men to succumb to a sexual obsession? After all, Anatole Zikos had promised repeatedly to end his relationship with Bastien’s mother but somehow he had always ended up drifting back to Athene while coming up with one excuse after another. In truth Anatole had been too obsessed with Athene to ever give her up and her death had devastated him.
Leo was all too well aware that he was the son of almost neurotically volatile parents, who had remained locked in an emotional triangle of high drama throughout their marriage. His home life had been a nightmare and when he had visited his friends’ homes he had marvelled at the quiet normality that they took for granted. When it came to what he viewed as his dodgy genes, Leo had always been relieved that he appeared to have skipped that over-emotional inheritance and was far too cold-blooded and logical to become obsessed with any woman. Indeed since his troubled childhood had taught him to mask his feelings and rigorously suppress or avoid any more intense reactions he had struggled to deal with any strong emotion.
But that approach wasn’t likely to work for a male who had conceived a child with another woman in the run-up to his own wedding, Leo conceded bleakly. Everyone concerned had a right to strong emotions in a scenario like that. He had made the same mistake his father had—he had got the wrong woman pregnant. Wilfully or accidentally—did it matter which? Unlike his father, however, he would not compound his error by marrying a different woman and dragging her into the same shameful chaos. He had some tough decisions to make, he acknowledged grimly. It was no longer a matter of something as self-indulgent as what he wanted, but more a matter of honour. Such an old-fashioned word, that, Leo conceded ruefully, but if it meant that he accepted the need to put logic and fairness at the top of his list, it perfectly encapsulated his duty. And unlike his father, Leo planned to put his child first and foremost.
Around seven that same morning, Grace emerged from the shower, wrapped a fleecy towel round her nakedness and wondered ruefully where her cases were. Their frantic charge to the bedroom the night before had left no time for such niceties as unpacking. Her face burned and she glanced in one of the many mirrors, angry and ashamed of herself because she was still acting out of character and letting her life go off the rails. One mistake did not need to lead to another, so why had she slept with Leo again last night? Waking up in bed alone in the silent apartment with her brain awash with unfamiliar thoughts of self-loathing had unnerved her. Leo, she had decided miserably, Leo was bad for her.
She crept out to the hall where her luggage still awaited her and she was about to lift a case when she heard a sound from another room and stiffened uncertainly.
‘Grace...is that you?’
It was too late to retreat with any dignity but the discovery that Leo was still in the apartment and had not yet gone off to work as she had dimly assumed was unwelcome. She moved to the doorway of a large ultra-modern room flooded with light from a wall of windows and saw Leo. Her breath hitched in her throat. Barefoot, clad in only a pair of jeans unfastened at the waist and an unbuttoned shirt, Leo looked heartbreakingly gorgeous with his messy black hair, stubbled jawline and stunningly unreadable dark eyes gleaming in the sunlight.
‘I thought you were out,’ she confided. ‘I need to get dressed.’
‘No hurry... Housekeeping doesn’t get here until nine.’ Leo stared at her, his eyes eating her alive in the pounding silence. With her red hair rippling damply round her narrow shoulders, her triangular face warm with colour and her sea-glass eyes bright and evasive, she reminded him of a pixie. She was tiny and her curves were gloriously feminine. He wanted to tell her to drop the towel. The swelling at his groin was more than willing to bridge an awkward moment with sex.
‘I have things to do.’
‘Come here...I want to show you some properties,’ Leo urged.
Grace moved reluctantly forward, one hand clutching the towel to her breasts lest it slip. She was wasting her time with the modesty, Leo thought helplessly. It only made him want to rip it off her more. ‘Properties?’ she questioned, dry-mouthed.
Leo sank down on the sofa he had abandoned and swung out the laptop he had been using. ‘I’ve been looking for somewhere suitable for you to live.’
‘But I’m here...er...I thought...’
‘This is a company apartment, used by my father and my brother as well. It’s serviced, convenient for me,’ Leo explained. ‘Until now I haven’t spent enough time in London to warrant the purchase of separate accommodation.’
‘And that’s changing?’ Grace took a seat uneasily by his side and the faint but awesomely familiar scent of him assailed her nostrils, an intoxicating hint of sandalwood and citrus fruit with a foundation note of warm, musky masculinity. Below the towel her breasts beaded into straining points and warmth pooled in her pelvis.
‘Obviously it will. If my child’s going to be here, I will be too,’ Leo countered carelessly, as if that truth was so obvious he shouldn’t have to say it out loud. ‘But fortunately I do own quite a few investment properties here and I’ve made up a small selection of the ones that are currently available for you.’
Grace was frowning in