Seungri’s grandfather did not look at all like a seventy-one-year-old man who had undergone heart by-pass surgery only a few months ago. Even leaning on a cane for support, he stood commandingly tall in the middle of the spacious Mediterranean-style room.

His almost black eyes bore into Harumi with disconcerting force from below steel-gray brows that matched the hair on his head.“So this is my new granddaughter, heh?”

He put his hand out commandingly. “Come here and greet your family, child.”

Harumi stepped forward with an assumed air of confidence, knowing to show her fear of his disapproval would be to lose his respect. She put her hands on his shoulders and reached up to kiss his cheek in greeting.

He returned the salute with an approving smile before she stepped back.“She doesn’t look like her pictures,” he said to Seungri.

Then he turned back to Harumi. “I like you better this way. More natural. No fancy curls and dye jobs in your hair. My wife, she never used color on her hair.” His gaze roamed over her face like he was taking inventory. “Eyes a nice hazel, not some impossible green. It suits you.”

She bit back a smile at his blunt speaking. “Thank you. SeungHyun thought maybe I was too ugly to support myself modelling any longer.”

Both men spoke at once.“I did not say—”

“What’s the matter with my grandson?”

The smile broke through.

“To be fair, I did look a fright from lack of sleep and morning sickness at the time.”

Seungri’s grandfather beetled his brows at Seungri. “Never tell a pregnant woman she looks a fright, even when her appearance would be enough to scare the goats from the hills. You will find yourself sleeping in the guest room and dealing with enough tears to sink a fishing boat, heh?”

“A little piece of wisdom grandmother taught you?” Seungri asked.

“My eyes. She taught me.” He thumped his cane on the floor. “She asked me did I think she was fat? Of course she was fat. She was as round as a barrel and could barely walk. Your papa, he weighed ten pounds. She almost died. I said no more babies after that, I can tell you.” Remembered fear clouded the old man’s eyes for a moment.

“I told her, yes I thought she’d gotten fat. She threw her dinner at me and then started in on the other dishes on the table. I said I was sorry and ended up with moussaka in my hair for my trouble. I ran for my life.”

Seungri’s smile made Harumi feel all gooey inside while she laughed at Seungri’s grandfather’s story.

“And she made you sleep in the guest room?”

He grinned and winked. “She locked our door.”

“So you meekly found another bed for the night, hmm?” Seungri asked mockingly.

Seungri’s grandfather laughed.“You are like me. Tell me what you would do if this lovely creature carrying my first great-grandson locked you out of her room.”

He waved his cane in Harumi’s direction. Remembering a locked door and a very shower, she smiled. No wonder Seungri’s grandfather had his security man teach Seungri to pick a lock.

For some reason that thought struck her as terribly funny and she started laughing so hard she was almost bent over double.

“So it’s already happened, heh?”

Seungri didn’t answer, but took her firmly by the wrist and pulled her to a bright red armchair and almost pushed her into it.

“The baby can’t be getting enough oxygen with you laughing like a loon,” he reproved her, but his eyes smiled and the corner of his mouth was engagingly tilted.

She took a deep breath and then another, finally managing to stop her mirth. Seungri’s grandfather sat across from her, his face creased in a smile. “I did not have a smart grandfather to see to my education. I did not know how to pick a lock, so I threatened to kick in the door. She started crying so loud I could hear her through the thick wood.”

He rolled his eyes. “I climbed in through the window and took her by surprise,heh? It was a very satisfactory reunion.”

Harumi felt herself blush thinking of Seungri’s similar approach to the same problem. He sat on the arm of her chair with his hand on her nape.

“Are Byung-Chull and Phoebe back in Paris?” he asked his grandfather.

“Yes. They came here first, though. Wanted to tell me what a wonderful new granddaughter I had.”

Harumi felt her cheeks heating again. She smiled at the older man.

“I’m pleased they think so. I was worried they would resent me, but they were very kind as you have been.”

“It all worked out for the best, heh? I have both my grandsons married, a grandchild on the way and everyone is happy as a clam. My wife could not have done a better job if she were alive to arrange it all,” he said with obvious satisfaction.

“I think I must send prayers of thanks to the God above for so many gifts all at once to my family.”

His clear sincerity moved her deeply. She impulsively pushed herself out of the chair and crossed to give him another kiss on the cheek. “Thank you. You are a very nice man.”

He waved her away, but his eyes revealed his pleasure in her words. “Take her upstairs, SeungHyun. Pregnant ladies need their rest, heh?”

Which made her giggle again, being so close to what Seungri said at least once a day since his return into her life. They were usually followed by his version of a nap, the resemblance to which was loosely based on the fact they went to bed.

Seungri shook his head and swung her up against his chest. “Come. I believe you need an afternoon nap.”

She went off into gales of laughter at that, but she choked back her amusement to protest. “You can’t carry me up the stairs. I’m too heavy.”

Seungri’s eyes glittered down at her. “I won’t be accused of implying you’re fat. I learned my lesson from Grandfather’s story.”

“Letting me walk on my own isn’t making any sort of implication,” she asserted.

He was already a third of the way up the stairs. “It is after you said you were too heavy. Either you’re implying you are fat or I am a wimp. I refuse to give credence to either.”

She subsided, secretly thrilled at his macho display of consideration. He carried her into a bedroom so big that even the extra-long, king-size four-poster bed looked small in the middle of it.

Two sets of side-by-side sliding glass doors looked out onto the wrap around terrace and the crystalline-blue sea beyond it and her gaze alighted there first.“It’s breathtaking”

He let her slide down his body in a very suggestive manner and she turned from the incredible view to smile into his brown eyes. “A nap I think you said?”

Her gaze wandered around the room and was arrested by a familiar Lladro figurine on top of an antique chest of drawers. It was of a young girl in a garden. Seungri had said the figure reminded him of her.

The last time she’d seen it, it had been in a pile of paper wrapping on the floor of the living room in the Paris apartment. She only had time to ponder the significance of it being here in the room for a few moments before Seungri’s expert ministrations shut down her thinking processes entirely.