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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.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LEANDROS CONISTIS VERY NEARLY dropped his drink. ‘You’re getting married again?’ he repeated like a well-trained parrot to the male who had so recently told him he would never remarry.
Gio dealt his best friend a forbidding look that dared irreverent comment. ‘Ne...yes.’
‘Do I know the lady?’ Leandros enquired somewhat stiffly.
‘You met her briefly on one occasion,’ Gio divulged grudgingly. ‘Her name’s Billie...’
Leandros knocked what remained of his drink down in one suicidal gulp because he knew in that same moment that Canaletto’s name would never ever cross his lips again. ‘I didn’t realise...Billie was still a feature in your life. Have your family met her?’ he asked.
Gio compressed his wide sensual mouth. ‘No.’
‘And when is this wedding at which you wish me to act as your best man to take place?’
‘Tomorrow.’ Gio threw in the necessary details of place and time in a demonstration of spectacular cool.
Leandros studied the date on his watch face, astonished that it wasn’t the first of April and an April fool’s joke because Gio, who was as a rule extremely conservative and never imprudent, had literally stunned him speechless. ‘It seems...er...very sudden,’ he commented cautiously.
‘Ne...yes,’ Gio conceded.
‘Very...er hasty.’ Leandros was gradually becoming more daring.
‘Not hasty enough,’ Gio told him drily. ‘My son is fifteen months old.’
* * *
‘Oh, Billie, you look amazing.’ Dee sighed as she stepped back from tying the laces at the back of Billie’s wedding gown.
Billie stared at her reflection in the cheval mirror and blinked several times at the still-unfamiliar furnishings of the opulent bedroom. Gio had taken a plush city apartment for her and Theo to stay in. She still couldn’t quite believe that she was marrying Gio, indeed she kept on expecting some movie cameraman to show up and shout, ‘Cut!’ before things went any further. After all, in an hour’s time she was going to marry a man she wasn’t even speaking to. How’s that for stupidity? she asked herself ruefully.
Gio had left her and Theo in the hotel in Yorkshire for four days. Of course he had made regular phone calls and had talked during those calls as though there were nothing wrong with his desertion while smoothly excusing himself in advance.
‘I knew you had too much on your plate to accompany me down to London,’ Gio had told her, ignoring the fact that he had put one of his aides in charge of dealing with all the wedding and removal arrangements for her.
‘I knew you would want to spend time saying goodbye to your friends and sorting out your shop,’ Gio had said optimistically, ignorant of the reality that Dee was walking Billie down the aisle while her twins were acting as a bridesmaid and pageboy.
‘I knew that you would think it was a bad idea to subject Theo to another change of surroundings and more strangers when it wasn’t strictly necessary,’ Gio had opined complacently.
Billie was furious with him and her anger hadn’t faded; it had only grown while Gio had acted as if leaving his bride-to-be and newly discovered son behind him in Yorkshire had been the only possible thing to do. Striving to keep a lid on that tight little knot of rage locked deep inside her, Billie surveyed her dress with faraway eyes. It was a romantic dress fashioned of Chantilly lace and chiffon, light and floaty and styled to make the most of her natural curves and waist. The flirty short veil and crown of flowers had a natural elegant simplicity. Pearl-studded shoes peeped out below the hem of her gown.
Someone knocked on the bedroom door. Since the only other person in the apartment was Irene, the pleasant middle-aged nanny whom Gio had hired, Dee answered it.
‘Oh...’ Dee backed off uneasily, her surprise unhidden when she recognised Gio.
Billie froze. ‘You’re not supposed to see me in my wedding dress!’ she exclaimed in consternation.
Taken aback by Dee’s appearance, Gio muttered a stiff acknowledgment in English while hungrily taking in the vision Billie made in her white dress. He had died and gone to heaven, he decided without hesitation. As Dee ducked out behind him, tactfully closing the door in her wake, he strode forward, his attention locked to the tantalising pout of Billie’s ripe pink mouth and the creamy swell of her luscious breasts above the boned bodice of her gown. ‘You look fantastic,’ he breathed in a roughened undertone.
It was a challenge for Billie not to echo that sentiment. It might be a small wedding on Gio’s terms, which was to say that it was a large wedding on her terms, but Gio had still chosen to embrace the formality of a full morning suit teamed with a striped black and silver cravat at his brown throat. The black jacket was exquisitely tailored to his tall, well-built form, delineating his broad shoulders and muscular chest, while the striped trousers enhanced his narrow hips and long powerful legs. Billie collided headily with smouldering dark golden eyes heavily fringed with curling black lashes. Gio looked absolutely gorgeous.
‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered and then tensed. ‘Have you changed your mind? If you have, it’s all right. I’m not going to make a fuss. It doesn’t feel real anyway—’
‘Theos...of course I haven’t changed my mind!’ Gio ground out, extending the jewel case he carried in one lean brown hand. ‘I wanted to give you this...’
For a split second he too wondered what he was doing there for in truth he had acted on the kind of impulse he usually suppressed. On the way to the church he had realised that he had to see her before the wedding and there was nothing wrong with that, he reasoned uneasily, when he was about to take the very major step of marrying her. Desire was always an acceptable motivation as long as it stayed within rational bounds. And sex with Billie was incredible. He felt nothing else, needed nothing beyond her physical presence.
In a daze, Billie blinked and accepted the case, flipping it open to display a breathtaking triple string of pearls and dangling pearl earrings. The set would match her shoes and be a great deal more impressive than the cheap diamanté set she had purchased. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she murmured weakly as he moved forward to detach the pearls from the case and fasten them round her neck.
His fingertips brushed the nape of her neck. ‘I wanted to give you something special.’
The glowing pearls were cool at her throat and she bent over the case to detach the earrings. Threading her veil and her curls out of the way, she put the earrings on. ‘Thank you,’ she said woodenly, thinking that he hadn’t changed one little bit in all the years she had known him. Here he was still trying to bribe and guilt her into ignoring his bad behaviour.
‘I can’t stand you talking to me in that chilly voice,’ Gio informed her grimly. ‘Obviously you’re annoyed I left you behind in Yorkshire.’
Billie’s teeth rattled together with rage. ‘You mean...you actually noticed I was being cool on the phone?’
‘Considering that you would once chat about nothing in particular for hours on end without the slightest encouragement, one-word responses were rather obvious,’ Gio countered with sardonic emphasis. ‘What’s wrong with you? You never used to play games like that with me.’
‘Shut up before I lose my temper!’ Billie urged between clenched teeth, her facial muscles locked tight. ‘You left me in that hotel with Theo and a bunch of bodyguards and a strange nanny!’ she accused. ‘You did it deliberately because I had annoyed you. You just took off for London. What happened to your all-consuming interest in getting to know your son? You can’t just saunter in here and throw a bunch of priceless pearls at me and expect that to take the place of an apology and an explanation!’ Billie launched at him in fiery denunciation.
‘I have nothing to apologise for. Now that I have got on top of work, I will have far more time to spend with Theo and you after the wedding,’ Gio told her stubbornly, watching her curls bounce round her animated features, the passion flaring in her green eyes, while noting how luminous the pearls were set against her creamy skin and the firm, sweet swell of her breasts. Hunger stormed through his tautening length in an uncontrollable wave, leaving him painfully aroused. ‘I refuse to go through a wedding with you behaving like this. This is why I needed to see you.’
Billie was silenced. Suddenly she was the one at fault for straining their relationship beyond tolerance. Wide-eyed she stared back at him, the atmosphere dense and sending a curious little quiver through her belly. ‘So...we...er call it off now and go our separate ways?’ she whispered shakily.
Gio stared at her in rampant disbelief, his dark eyes golden-bronze spearheads of intimidation at the mere thought of her pulling a disappearing act again. ‘You’re not going anywhere without me.’
Billie didn’t understand because that sudden shock of fear had destroyed her ability to think straight. Her heart was jumping up and down inside her ribcage like a rubber ball being bounced and making it very hard for her to breathe.
‘Ever again,’ Gio growled in menacing completion as he scooped her up in his arms and brought her down on the bed.
‘What are you doing?’ Billie gasped. ‘Gio...my dress!’
Gio came down on top of her, almost squashing her flat. ‘Stop struggling...you’re more likely to rip something.’
Billie looked up at him with huge disconcerted eyes. ‘Gio...we can’t...this isn’t the answer to anything.’
Gio rubbed his mouth sexily across hers with a sensual groan. ‘It’s the only answer for me.’
‘You’re wrecking my make-up,’ she framed unevenly, fingertips dancing shyly through his cropped black hair, slowly dropping to frame his amazing cheekbones.
‘You don’t need make-up,’ Gio told her thickly.
‘Every bride needs make-up,’ Billie argued, trying to slide unobtrusively out from beneath his weight without shredding her dress.
He lowered his head and devoured her mouth with a hungry driving urgency that made her every sense shift into superdrive with piercingly sweet longing. The taste and scent of him infiltrated her like a dangerous drug, blowing her control out of the water. ‘I won’t wreck the dress,’ he promised, lifting his hips to tip the bundled skirt of her gown up to her waist.
‘Gio...’ Billie whispered pleadingly even as her back arched and her pelvis rocked up to his without her volition.
‘Diavelos, Billie...I hurt,’ he ground out, his breath fanning her cheek while he shifted revealingly against her, grinding the thrust of his erection into the cradle of her thighs.
And low down in her pelvis, deep in her feminine core a surge of moisture dampened her most tender flesh and she started to melt. ‘We can’t...we haven’t got the time.’
‘We’ll make time,’ he husked, yanking out his phone as it buzzed, clamping it to his ear and talking in fast Greek to a male voice that sounded both loud and agitated. ‘Our day, nobody else’s,’ he spelled out fiercely.
Long fingers glided up her inner thigh, leaving tingles of humming energy in their wake. Her eyes closing, her head fell back on the pillows, her neck extending as her spine arched. Her heart was racing thump-thump-thump at the foot of her throat. He stroked the taut triangle of satin between her thighs and the only thing in the world for her at that moment was the stupendous high of excitement and anticipation holding her fast. With a yank, Gio dislodged her bodice sufficiently to expose a creamy breast topped by a pale pink nipple. He closed his mouth urgently to that swollen peak and a stifled gasp escaped her, eyes squeezing tight shut.
‘I need to know you’re mine,’ Gio growled against her throat.
He eased a finger below her lace-edged knickers and stroked along the petal-soft folds. Her thighs opened wider in helpless invitation and when he rubbed the little bud where she was most sensitive she moaned and shifted her hips, urging him on, helpless in the grip of the savage need he could induce. He thrust a long finger into her tight, wet sheath and she jerked, on the edge of crying out until he clamped his mouth to hers to silence the sounds she was making. The rhythmic play of his fingers over her tender flesh sent ripples of throbbing excitement through her. As the tension in her pelvis rose to an all-consuming ache that was unbearable, her every muscle clenched tight and she soared to a breathless shattering peak of ecstasy while biting the shoulder of his jacket to mute the sob of release building up inside her.
‘Oh...’ she mumbled afterwards, her body as languorous as a floating beach ball.
Gio’s phone was screeching in his pocket. Scanning her dreamy face, he switched it off with an unsteady hand. Strangely, although he was still taut with sexual arousal, the inner tension driving him had dissolved. He felt like himself again for the first time in four days and snapped straight into rescue mode, propelling Billie off the bed, repositioning her bodice, brushing down the skirt of her gown before urging her into the bathroom where he stared in all male helplessness at the crushed veil hanging askew, the curls positively rioting round it and the smudges of the lipstick he had dislodged.
‘Good grief,’ Billie groaned, catching her mangled reflection. ‘Gio, you’re a menace.’
Gio washed with enviable cool and ran a comb through his tousled hair. A sharp knock sounded on the bedroom door and it opened the merest crack. ‘The cars have arrived, Mr Letsos. We cannot be late...’ It was Damon Kitzakis’ voice.
‘I’ll get your friend to help you,’ Gio breathed in sudden decision.
Billie was in full bridal panic mode, scanning her swollen mouth and tumbled hair and veil with withering scorn. You should have said no, she told herself furiously. Why didn’t you say no? Why had she, once again, failed to call a halt? Sex had always been a slippery slope with Gio. She couldn’t keep her hands off him, she couldn’t resist his passion but she was convinced that he would respect her more if she was less spontaneous and more restrained. Yet he had received no satisfaction whatsoever from what they had done, she acknowledged in surprise as she waged a frantic war on her rebellious curls and hurriedly repaired her make-up.