Читать книгу The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance - Мишель Смарт, Annie West - Страница 13

CHAPTER SIX

‘LET ME GET this straight...’ Billie framed between bloodless lips, barely able to credit what he was implying. ‘You’re suggesting that we get married?’

‘If we marry, Theo’s birth is automatically legitimised under British law.’

‘But that scarcely matters when anyone who knows his age will guess that he was born while you were married to another woman,’ Billie pointed out flatly.

‘That’s immaterial. The end result is what I want most—Theo legitimised, his place as my heir legally secured and recognised,’ Gio spelt out very quietly, his dark, velvet drawl lowered to the level of an insidious husky murmur. ‘That is his birthright and I want him to have it.’

‘Even if it means you have to marry me to achieve that?’ Billie prompted in disbelief.

‘You will marry me for his sake and I will marry you for the same reason. We’re responsible for his birth and we should put him first,’ Gio told her squarely. ‘We owe him that.’

Her skin clammy with disconcertion, Billie was trembling where she sat. Long, long ago, she had dreamt of being Gio’s wife, indeed she had dreamt the whole fairy tale before being forced to accept in the most painful way possible that it was just a fantasy. She could hardly bring herself to accept that he was actually talking about marrying her because it was like opening a locked door to let the silly fairy tale back in. She wrapped her arms protectively round herself. ‘And you’re quite sure that Theo’s rights as your heir couldn’t be secured any other way?’

‘I could have legal agreements drawn up to officially acknowledge him as my son but nothing of that nature would be as watertight as marriage to his mother. In such agreements there is almost always a loophole or an irregularity and a clever enough lawyer can always find those weaknesses and build on them to make a claim.’

‘And who on earth do you think is likely to make a claim?’ Billie pressed in wonderment, sufficiently challenged to even picture her infant son as a child of future means.

‘Have you any idea how wealthy I am?’ Gio asked with lethal quietness of tone. ‘Or of the lengths even wealthy people will go to in an effort to enrich themselves or their children even more?’

‘Probably not,’ she conceded ruefully, knowing when she was out of her depth.

‘When I was fourteen, my stepmother tried to have me disinherited from the family trust in favour of her son, who was eight years old. The claim was only thrown out of court when my grandfather was able to prove that her son was not his grandson,’ Gio completed.

Billie was sharply disconcerted, never having had any suspicion that Gio’s place in his family had been challenged before he even reached adulthood. She frowned, shaken on Gio’s behalf, wondering what on earth his childhood could have been like with such a spiteful and grasping stepmother and finally comprehending his fears on Theo’s behalf.

‘We can get married within a matter of days,’ Gio told her smoothly, as if he had already worked out that he had won the battle. ‘After the ceremony, we’ll fly out to Greece and I’ll introduce my wife and child to my family.’

Quite unable to credit such an event even taking place with her in a starring role, Billie sprang out of her seat and walked over to the window. ‘That would be crazy, me trying to pretend I was your wife... We can’t do this!’

‘You will be my wife, you won’t be pretending. What it comes down to is...how much do you love your son?’ Gio enquired with almost casual cruelty.

Billie went rigid. ‘That’s not fair!’

‘Isn’t it? You chose to make yourself solely responsible for Theo and his future happiness. I’m only asking you to make good on your mistakes and ensure that he receives everything that should be his by right of birth,’ he asserted glibly.

Billie inwardly squirmed at the accusation that she had made a serious mistake where Theo was concerned in not immediately informing Gio that he had a child, but the reference to Greece had sent her thoughts racing in another direction. ‘If the marriage is only a legal formality why would you need me to accompany you to Greece?’

‘Would you allow me to take Theo to Greece without you?’ Gio asked in apparent surprise.

‘No!’ Billie proclaimed instantly.

‘And while the marriage may appear to be little more than a legal formality to you,’ Gio continued in the same reasonable tone, ‘it is essential that it appears to be a normal marriage.’

Billie closed her arms round herself again, feeling threatened, cornered, bewildered, fighting that disorientation on every level as her chin tilted and her green eyes flared bold and bright as emeralds. ‘But why should it have to appear normal?’ she demanded.

‘Do you want our son to feel guilty when he’s older that you were forced to marry me for his benefit?’ Gio enquired.

Billie frowned. ‘Of course not—’

‘Making it seem normal is a whitewash. There’s nothing I can do about that,’ Gio swore, manipulating the argument to the very best of his ability, flexing a level of cunning he had never utilised on Billie before. ‘The more people who accept that the marriage is normal, the fewer the awkward questions that will be asked and the less comment it will create.’

‘Nobody’s going to accept that you freely chose to marry your mistress!’ Billie slashed back at him angrily, hating to use that label on herself but willing to use it if it forced him to see sense.

‘But we are the only people who know that you were my mistress. We didn’t broadcast the fact and now we can be grateful that we kept a low profile. Ne...yes, you’ve had my child,’ Gio conceded, sliding fluidly upright and moving towards her. ‘All that proves is that we had a relationship.’

Billie clashed with spectacular dark eyes and her heart raced. ‘All that proves is that we had, at least, a one-night stand.’

‘Diavelos...you’re not a one-night-stand woman and no man looking at you could believe that one night would be enough, pouli mou,’ Gio purred soft and low, closing his hands firmly over hers to draw her close to his lean, powerful body. ‘You will be my wife, the mother of my son. You will have nothing to be embarrassed about...’

It was a seductive image because Billie had always been embarrassed about the reality of her relationship with Gio. He had not been her knight on a white horse and she had not been his one true love. Her power had never stretched beyond the bedroom door and that was a demeaning truth that Billie had always felt shamed by, for what sort of woman settled for that kind of half-relationship? Her hands trembled in the grasp of his. A whitewash, he called it. But to the woman whose heart he had broken, and in spite of the fact that love wasn’t involved, it still seemed more like a fairy tale to be offered what he had once tacitly refused to offer her.

‘I can’t leave Dee or the shop to go to Greece,’ Billie told him abruptly. ‘It’s impossible. The shop is my livelihood and I can’t just up and leave it...’

Gio closed his arms round her. Freed, one of her hands skimmed up over his muscular torso and came to rest uncertainly on a broad shoulder while the other lifted of its own volition to delve into his cropped black hair. ‘I’ll look after everything,’ he told her.

‘I have to have my independence,’ Billie muttered unsteadily, her mouth drying and her breathing quickening as he ran the tip of his tongue along the closed seam of her lips. Her mouth tingled, stinging tightness pinching her nipples to send a current of liquefied heat into her pelvis. ‘Listen to me, Gio,’ she urged even as her fingers massaged his well-shaped skull, fluffing up the short strands of hair that were never allowed to amount to curls.

Gio rocked his hips lightly against hers and she tensed, suddenly insanely aware of his arousal and her own. ‘Theo’s my son. It’s my duty to look after both of you.’

With a mighty effort of self-control, Billie yanked herself back from Gio and temptation. He could always make her want him but she could not afford to be stretched thin by that fierce wanting while she was trying to concentrate on the need to conserve her own life. With a slight shudder of loss, she straightened her slight shoulders and breathed in deep and slow to compose her scattered wits.

‘Sell the shop or let me hire a manager for it. You decide which option will suit you best,’ Gio urged, his lean dark features taut with impatience.

Billie looked at him with wide eyes of disbelief. ‘Gio...I worked very hard to build up my business. You can’t expect me to walk away from it.’

‘Not even for Theo?’ Gio prompted, glancing down at the little boy now clinging precariously to his jeans-clad leg and gazing up at both of them. ‘Our son needs both of us and will do for some time. I want a normal family rapport with him. At the very least you will have to relocate your life to London, so that I can have regular access to him.’

Unexpectedly that statement jolted Billie because Gio spent most of his time in Greece. No, he was definitely not offering her a fairy-tale for-ever marriage because he was clearly already envisaging a future in which they were separated and sharing custody of their son. Billie paled, feeling as though he had slapped her in the face with reality, but ironically it was her own silly thoughts she needed to put a guard on, she conceded painfully. Of course, Gio wasn’t suggesting a real marriage and a whitewash marriage would naturally have a sell-by date beyond which it was no longer required.

‘I need to think about all this,’ Billie admitted tightly. ‘You’re talking about turning my life upside down.’

‘And my own,’ Gio added softly. ‘None of this was on my bucket list either.’

That obvious fact struck Billie like a second slap when she least required it. She did not need the reminder that Gio would never have chosen to marry her were it not for Theo. That reality was engraved on her soul because he had once rejected her in favour of Calisto. She bent down and scooped up Theo, loving the warm cuddliness of his solid little body and using it as a comfort to the chill spreading through her stomach. ‘I need to change him,’ she explained, walking away to scoop up the holdall and locate the nearest bathroom.

Why were women so complicated? Gio thought in seething frustration. He had offered her what he had assumed she had always wanted and she was behaving as if he had offered her a dirty deal. What did she have to think about? How many women had to run off to the bathroom and change a nappy before they could decide whether or not they wanted to marry a billionaire? Was it possible that she suspected that he had a motivation that he wasn’t sharing?

His lean, strong face set like granite. Admittedly, he had not told her the whole truth, could not possibly tell her the whole truth because that would make her fear him. He was fighting for what he believed in, fighting for what Theo needed most. In every battle there were winners and losers and Gio had no plans to be a loser or to stand by powerless while Theo received less than his due. In the rarefied world of the super-rich Billie could only be a trusting babe in arms. She was so ignorant of the utter ruthlessness that could make Theo a target for the greedy that she had no concept of how best to protect their son. But Gio knew and there was nothing he would not do to achieve that objective.

Billie hovered by the vanity while Theo crawled across the tiled floor and pulled himself up on the side of the bath. Her brain was in turmoil, inescapable fear rammed down behind every thought. Gio wanted her to marry him for Theo’s sake and she wanted to give her son the best possible start in life. But there would be a steep price to pay for such a rise in her social status, she acknowledged unhappily. She would inevitably be an embarrassment to Gio, and his precious family were certain to disapprove of her. But then doubtless Gio planned to pension her off once all the legalities and his son’s place in life had been affirmed. So, it wouldn’t be a real for-ever marriage and would probably be set aside once Theo was old enough to go and visit his father without his mother in tow. Everything, she assumed, would happen exactly the way Gio wanted it to happen because he left nothing to chance. She foresaw that reality and froze at the terrifying prospect of being left so powerless, shorn of her home and her business. Did she have a choice? Could she trust Gio with their son’s future well-being?

Theo anchored on her hip, Billie walked back into the gracious reception room. Gio had removed his jacket, loosened his tie and pushed up the sleeves of his white silk shirt. The super-fine expensive material accentuated the muscles that rippled with his every movement and his impossibly taut, flat stomach. Her gaze lingered there, feverish memories of torrid moments awakening, fingers and lips gliding along his hard ribcage, smoothing over his abdomen before stroking down the furrow of silky hair disappearing below his waistband. Her tummy flipped and she gave herself a stern, frowning little shake as she emerged from her reverie. Black lashes flicking up on shrewd eyes, Gio completed the phone call he was making and set the phone down.

‘OK. I’ll marry you,’ Billie spelled out tautly, her colour high. ‘But that means I’m trusting you not to do anything that might harm Theo or me. If I find out that I can’t trust you I’ll leave you.’

Gio flashed her a deeply appreciative smile. She would never leave him again. Not unless she was prepared to leave her son behind with him, he reflected with immense satisfaction. She might not know it yet but her days of running were at an end.

‘And you have to be totally, one hundred per cent faithful,’ Billie decreed.

‘I always was with you,’ Gio responded airily.

‘But there’s that saying about how when a man marries his mistress he creates a vacancy,’ Billie remarked flatly, her lush mouth compressing on a sense of humiliation.

‘I think my life is complicated enough,’ Gio fielded.

And of course he wouldn’t be expecting to be married to her until he was old and grey and, since he would always have an end to their arrangement in sight, straying through boredom was less likely to be a problem, Billie affixed grimly, striving not to be hurt by that truth.

‘Now that you’ve got what you wanted, can I go home?’ Billie pressed.

‘I want you here. Presumably you want to be involved in making your own wedding arrangements.’ A straight ebony brow inclined. ‘We’ll have a small wedding in the Greek Orthodox church I attend in London. I’ve already applied for the required licences.’

Billie’s eyes flared in surprise. ‘You took a lot for granted.’

Gio’s steady gaze held hers. ‘I can afford to. Why would you refuse to marry me when that was presumably what you wanted two years ago?’

Billie reddened as though she had been slapped. So, he had finally worked that obvious fact out, had he? Mortification drenched her like a tidal wave. ‘I don’t buy into fairy tales any more.’

‘But I want you to have the fairy tale, pouli mou,’ Gio breathed curtly, thoroughly disconcerting her with that statement. ‘I want you to wear a fancy dress and all the trimmings.’

‘Why? Because it will look good in the photos?’ Billie forced her strained eyes away from him, her heart-shaped face stiff because she knew that he could never give her the fairy tale. After all, the one essential facet of her fairy-tale denouement had been his love. She was also wounded that he was so sure that she would have married him like a shot two years earlier, particularly when he had coolly turned away from her to marry another, more suitable woman. Her love had meant nothing to him in those days but then she had offered her love too freely. Was it fair to judge him harshly for not being able to love her back?

‘A normal marriage,’ he reminded her quietly. ‘That is what I want and that is what we will have.’

His uncompromising arrogance set Billie’s teeth on edge. Even though he was divorced he still had no fear of matrimonial failure. But then he wanted Theo and he wanted her, Billie conceded ruefully, and she knew that high-voltage libido of Gio’s probably drove him harder than love ever could. He was, to say the least, an electrifyingly sexual personality. Had he ever loved Calisto? Or merely wanted the beautiful blonde? What had ultimately killed that wanting? And what did it matter to Billie? After all, she was only finally getting that wedding ring by default.

Gio’s business team arrived to work with him that afternoon while Billie viewed images of wedding dresses online, sent at Gio’s behest by a well-known designer. She squirmed over taking her measurements and sending them off and then buried the memory by picking her dream dress, her dream veil and her dream shoes while planning a timely trip to her favourite lingerie shop. But when she headed for the door with Theo in her arms, Gio asked coolly, ‘Where are you going?’

‘I have some shopping to do,’ Billie told him, soft mouth settling into a firm line. ‘And I want to do it with Dee.’

His stunning gaze iced over. ‘No,’ he said simply as he scrawled his signature on a document placed in front of him by an aide.

‘Yes,’ Billie said equally simply and walked on out of the door.

‘Billie!’ Gio roared down the corridor after her as she headed to the lift.

With reluctance she turned.

‘I said no,’ Gio reminded her icily.

Green eyes sparkling, Billie wandered back closer. ‘And I wasn’t going to argue with you in front of your staff but I have to see Dee.’

‘You know I’ve arranged for a sitter for her for the next two weeks.’

‘She’s my cousin and my friend and she has always been there for me when I needed her,’ Billie countered gently. ‘I don’t care what you say or how you feel about it but I will not turn my back on her.’

‘Then leave Theo with me,’ Gio urged, reaching out to take his son.

Billie retained a hold on Theo. ‘You couldn’t look after him on your own—’

‘I won’t be on my own. I hired a nanny. She’s in the hotel right now awaiting my call.’

His interference, his conviction that he knew what was best for her child, made Billie bridle. ‘Then you’ve wasted your time and your money because I will not leave Theo with a stranger.’

‘I’ll tell her to come up and you can meet her.’

Billie pursed her lips. ‘Theo comes with me. Sorry, if you don’t like that, but that’s the way it’s going to be.’

‘Don’t try to fight me,’ Gio warned her softly. ‘If you fight, I will fight back and inevitably you’ll get hurt.’

‘Nothing you do could hurt me now,’ Billie declared staunchly, refusing to be intimidated. ‘And why don’t you quit while you’re ahead, Gio? I’ve agreed to turn my whole life upside down, to marry you and meet your family. How much more do you want or expect? When do you learn to compromise?’

‘I don’t,’ Gio said succinctly, his strong jaw line squared. ‘Not when it comes to my son and your involvement with an individual I don’t want you mixing with.’

‘That individual you don’t want me mixing with was with me when I was in labour for two endless days!’ Billie snapped back at him in a low intense voice that shook with emotion. ‘She was there for me and Theo when you weren’t and I was darned glad to have her!’

An almost imperceptible pallor spread beneath Gio’s bronzed skin and his thick lashes screened his gaze to grim darkness. ‘I would have been there for you if you’d told me you were pregnant—’

‘I don’t think so, Gio. You were a newly married man back then,’ Billie reminded him without any expression at all.

‘Go, then, if it means so much to you,’ he urged with chilling bite.

‘It does mean that much to me. I’m always loyal to my friends,’ Billie declared with quiet dignity.

Gio glowered at her, lustrous dark eyes shimmering gold. ‘Once, first and foremost, you were loyal to me.’

Billie dealt him a wry look. ‘And where did that loyalty get me at the end of the day?’ she quipped, stepping into the lift.

Gio wanted to snatch her back out of the lift and Theo with her but her reference to that word, ‘compromise’ had sunk in. He had ninety per cent of what he wanted and he would have the whole once they were married. In the short term, he could afford to be generous, he told himself sternly. But Billie had changed and he could no longer ignore the fact. She was ready to go toe-to-toe with him and fight. In some ineffable way she had grown up and the girl who had looked at him with starry eyes as if he were a knight in shining armour was no more. He didn’t like that one little bit.

Even less did Gio appreciate the way he was feeling, shaken up and stirred, insanely abandoned by her departure, all reactions totally at war with the cool, adult, detached reserve with which he preferred to view the world. Above all, he didn’t like people to get too close; he didn’t want or miss the messy emotional responses that encouraged weakness, self-delusion and loss of control. He could only be content when calm and discipline ruled.

So, what was it about Billie that could make him feel so at odds with himself? She disturbed him, made him overreact, he decided grimly, hoping that that was a temporary affliction he would soon overcome. It seemed particularly ironic that she was also the only woman who had ever given him a sense of peace and contentment. But that was not the effect she was having on him at present. He had a great deal of work to accomplish before he could hope to take time off after the wedding. Mulling over the problem and the challenges, Gio was quick to decide that it would be more sensible to take a short break from Billie and the unwelcome and disturbing hothouse emotions she unleashed.

* * *

‘You can’t give me the house,’ Dee told Billie squarely. ‘I’m not going to live off you. I can afford to pay rent.’

Billie was reluctant to hurt her cousin’s feelings by pointing out that once she was married to Gio she would have little use for the rental payment. Dee was fiercely independent and had learned young that she had to be that way. The few times she had depended on others, Dee had been let down.

‘Are you hoping to sell the shop as a going concern?’ Dee asked.

‘It’s as much my baby as Theo is,’ Billie admitted. ‘I really don’t want to part with it at all.’

Dee looked at her anxiously and then, biting her lower lip, leant forward. ‘Would you let me try to run it for a three-month trial period?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘I picked up quite a bit from you when I was helping you set it up and as long as I used a bookkeeper I think I could manage.’

Billie studied the blonde woman in surprise, never having suspected that her cousin had a yen to work in the shop. ‘I had no idea you would be interested.’

‘Well, I am interested, always have been to be honest...but I knew you couldn’t afford a full-time employee, so there wasn’t much point mentioning it.’

The two women talked at length and an agreement was reached. Billie was smiling by the end of their discussion, happy to think of Dee taking over her business, much preferring that to the option of selling.

‘If you’re willing to go to Greece, you must really trust Gio,’ Dee remarked.

‘He’s always been straight with me, even when I didn’t want to hear what he had to say,’ Billie pointed out wryly. ‘If he’s prepared to marry me for Theo’s benefit, I’m prepared to trust him.’

‘You’ve got far too big a heart, Billie. Don’t let him hurt you again,’ Dee warned her worriedly.

It was a piece of advice that Billie wished she could take to heart after she returned to the hotel and discovered that Gio had checked out to fly back to London ‘to work’. Not that she was fooled by the piece of fiction in the brief note he left for her. She had annoyed Gio and he had turned his back on her and walked away. She was familiar with the withdrawal of approval and presence that always followed such demonstrations of independent action. Once long ago she had insisted on attending a tutorial interview while he was staying at the apartment. He had been irritated that she should want to go out and leave him, even if it was only for a couple of hours. By the time she had got back, he had returned to Greece. Lesson learned, she had thought then, sick with disappointment and resolving never to mention the need to go anywhere else again. This time around, however, Billie was exasperated and furious that he had removed her from the comfort of home and familiarity and marooned her in a luxury hotel with a nanny and a four-strong set of bodyguards to watch over her and Theo.