‘But I wasn’t business and my life is private!’ Grace snapped back at him, outraged by his invasion of her privacy. ‘You had no right to pry!’
‘I may not have had an official right but I did have good reason to want to know exactly who Grace Donovan and her family were,’ Leo retorted unapologetically. ‘But to return to my original question—when I found out about your father, it wasn’t clear whether or not you had had any recent contact with him.’
Still furious with him, Grace clamped her lips into a tight line of control. ‘No, none and I don’t want any either!’
His stunning dark golden eyes narrowed in apparent surprise. ‘That seems a bit harsh in the circumstances.’
‘He let my mother down badly and I’m quite sure he could have traced me years ago if he’d had any real interest in finding me,’ Grace declared thinly.
‘Only that would have been a considerable challenge for him when your mother had already taken him to court for harassment, had threatened to accuse him of assault and then changed her name to shake him off.’
Sheer rage roared up through Grace’s rigid body like a forest fire running out of control. It convulsed her throat muscles, clenched her hands into fists and burned in her chest like the worst ever heartburn. She didn’t know what Leo was talking about; she truly didn’t have a clue! Wasn’t that the ultimate humiliation? How could it ever be right that Leo should know more about her past than she did? Harassment? Assault? Court cases?
Reading her shuttered and mutinous face and the pale sea-green eyes blazing at him, Leo returned to the desk and extracted a slim file from the drawer, which he settled on the desk top. ‘The investigation. Take it if you want it.’
Trembling with reaction, Grace studiously averted her eyes from the file, too proud to reach for it.
‘I didn’t intend to upset you, Grace. But naturally, I assumed that nothing in that file would come as a surprise to you...you were eleven years old when you lost your mother.’
Having Leo study her in that cool, even-tempered manner when she herself was so shaken up simply made Grace want to thump him hard. ‘You really do have no finer feelings, do you? You suddenly drag up my father and reveal that you know more about him than I do? Didn’t it occur to you that that was inexcusably thoughtless and cruel?’ she condemned with angry spirit.
‘I didn’t realise that it would still be such a sensitive subject for you. But you’re right—I should’ve done. I’m not particularly keen to discuss my own background,’ Leo conceded with a wry twist of his sensual mouth.
‘I have to go. I have an appointment to see my tutor in an hour,’ Grace fielded, spinning on her heel and walking fast out of the room before she exposed herself any more.
Leo lifted the investigation file and then slapped it back down hard on the desk in frustration. He had upset her and he hadn’t intended to do that. Grace was sensitive. Grace had hang-ups about her past. But didn’t he as well? And since when had he worried about such delicate details? Or reacted personally to someone else’s distress? The answer to that last question came back and chilled Leo to the marrow: not since he was a child struggling to comfort his distraught mother. Any desire to follow Grace and reason with her faded fast on that note.
Still struggling to master her powerful emotions, Grace leant back against the wall in the lift. What was it about Leo Zikos that brought her inner aggression out? The very first night she had met Leo she had resolved to be herself rather than act like the quieter, more malleable Grace she had learned to be to fit in with her uncle’s family. That version of Grace had never freely expressed herself or lost her temper and had certainly never shouted at anyone. So, what was happening to her now? She was unnerved by her own behaviour and by the sheer strength of the emotions taking her by storm. It was almost as though that one night of truly being herself with Leo had destroyed any hope of her either controlling or hiding her emotions again for ever. Suddenly she was feeling all sorts of things she didn’t want to feel.
Hell roast Leo for his interference, she thought in a simmering tempest of resentment. He had made her curious, made her burn to know what he knew about the father she barely remembered and that infuriated her when she had always contrived to keep her curiosity about her father at a manageable, unthreatening level. Now all of a sudden she was desperate to know everything there was to know. But that was yet another betrayal of her self-control, in short a weakness, and she refused to give way to it. After all, she knew everything she needed to know about her father. Those bare facts could only be interpreted in one way. Her father hadn’t cared enough to stay around. That was all she needed to know, she told herself impatiently.