Falling From Grace: Student-Teacher Forbidden Romance

Chapter 72

"Absolutely sure. I'll take a long break afterwards, I promise. We'll go back to England and visit your family. Or fly them over here."

Leonie's own family had finally come around to her choice of career. Shortly after her first film was released, setting one of that year's box office records, they started getting reporters knocking and their own door. They wanted to do stories on Leonie's childhood, her family, her background. It had made Leonie's parents finally realise that their daughter had made her own future.

They had actually apologised, though relations had been awkward for a while. Similarly, while Leonie didn't get an apology from her grandmother for the hurtful things she had said, her grandmother had turned out to be grudgingly proud of her. She had nearly fainted from shock when she discovered her granddaughter was engaged to a former priest. But Gabriel's charm won her around, and she had attended their wedding in the South of France.

A destination wedding had simply made sense. Back home in Boston they would have been hounded by media. By the time Leonie and Gabriel had got married, on her twenty-second birthday, she had easily earned enough money to fly everyone over. Another movie actor had loaned them a beautiful and secluded villa near Cannes, and it had been an absolutely amazing week.

Figgy was engaged and getting married the following year, with Leonie as a bridesmaid. Mai was single but having a ball of a time in New York. Harry, now in the British Olympic squad, was dating a fellow Olympian.

"We're so lucky, aren't we?" Leonie said, looking at the brilliant bougainvillea tumbling down the villa wall. "Sometimes life feels like a fairytale."

"You work incredibly hard for it. It's not just luck," Gabriel told her. He remembered how Leonie had fainted with exhaustion when she'd got sick during a particularly demanding shoot, He kept a vigilant eye on her now. She was his wife, and he had committed to protect her. This sometimes meant protecting her from her own crazy work ethic.

"I know. But so many people would kill for the chance to do this work. I do feel fortunate," Leonie said. "I should have asked you about your meeting. How did it go?"

"Great. Far better than I expected. He wants to do something global, not just in the US," Gabriel said.

Leonie knew how much this had meant to him. "That's brilliant! We should celebrate."

Gabriel ran his eyes over the slender curves that he never got tired of. "I know how I'd like to celebrate."

Leonie looked up at him from under her eyelashes. "Does it involved me removing this?" She hooked her thumbs under her white bikini, teasing him.

"Yes. But not here." Despite the high walls, he was always conscious of paparazzi or even prying neighbours. Intimate photos of Leonie would be splashed everywhere if someone managed to take them.

Gabriel led her to the bedroom, where he made slow and tender love to her. He could never get enough of her. It still amazed him that such an incredible girl had chosen to be his wife.

"So this latest script," Leonie said, as they lay next to one another afterwards. "Did you read it?"

"I glanced through it. Should I read it?"

"I think you should."

She handed him a copy of it. The one by the pool was a spare, in case it fell in the water and got wet. After a previous disaster Leonie always had at least three duplicates made.

Gabriel started reading it while Leonie fixed them both a drink. People often found it absurd that Gabriel didn't work in movies as well. He more than had the looks, and was frequently approached by agents. But it just wasn't his passion.