The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance

Gio strolled up and without a word to even acknowledge his ex-wife walked Billie out of the gallery. ‘Only two people knew we were coming here and one of them is Damon, whom I trust with my life,’ he told her grimly. ‘I’ve already called him. He will deal with the leak and the person concerned will be sacked.’

‘I think that would be best,’ Billie said rather woodenly. ‘And perhaps the lawyer, whom you mentioned is her stepbrother? He seems to have talked out of turn about confidential matters as well.’

Gio frowned, making it obvious that he had not overheard Calisto’s final salvo. ‘What confidential matters?’

Billie shrugged as though she meant something trivial, reluctant to think the worst of Gio, averse to trusting anything that witch, Calisto, had claimed at his expense. She would dig out the pre-nup and check it out for herself or arrange to have it looked over by an independent lawyer. It couldn’t be true; it couldn’t possibly be true, she thought in an agony of fear. After all, if that claim of Calisto’s was true, it would mean that their marriage was an empty charade, never intended to do anything but gain Gio legal custody of Theo and she could not, would not believe that of him!

‘Your ex is a bit of a pyscho,’ Billie remarked tentatively as they settled into the waiting limousine.

‘And probably what I deserved,’ Gio breathed in a raw undertone of stress.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Billie prompted before they entered the fashionable restaurant.

‘Nothing’s the matter,’ Gio insisted.

If you can believe that, you can believe anything, Billie reflected, unimpressed, off-balanced by the odd way he was behaving. He was still holding her hand, still acting as if he were physically welded to her or, ridiculously, as though he were afraid that she might run away somewhere.

No way, Billie thought combatively. He had signed up for a life sentence as far as she was concerned and he was going to serve it, she thought crazily, studying his lean, bronzed, totally gorgeous profile while he talked to Leandros and Billie listened to Leandros’ girlfriend, Claire, who was a British model, talk about the joys of fake tan and the cosmetics range she was planning. It wasn’t riveting stuff but Billie tried her best to be friendly while reaching the conclusion that Leandros was as shallow as a puddle when it came to the female sex.

Gio skated a teasing forefinger along Billie’s thigh below the table and she tensed, thinking, not about what he probably hoped she was thinking about, but instead about what Calisto had said. I’m going to have to ask him, she accepted unhappily.

Was he capable of such a deception through the means of a legal document? Oh, yes, Billie had no doubts when it came to how ruthless Gio could be. After all, in spite of what she had deemed to be a very happy relationship and her warning that she would not be there when he returned, Gio had still gone off and married another woman because that was what he’d felt he had to do. Like a granite rock rolling down a hill on a set path, Gio was not given to second thoughts or doubts or insecurities like frailer personalities and he didn’t think much about the damage he could be inflicting.

How could she love someone like that? Billie asked herself wretchedly as the limousine carried them back to the airport.

‘What did you think of Claire?’ Gio enquired in the silence, desperate to know what Calisto had said to her. Calisto could be so vicious and, when she aimed it at Billie, even Gio was willing to admit that she had some excuse for her resentment.

‘Very chatty and glam. She seems pleasant enough,’ Billie commented.

‘For a fake-tan expert. She must be great in bed,’ Gio said sardonically.

‘Why?’ Billie heard herself say. ‘Is that how you first thought about me? Let’s face it, I didn’t have much in the way of intellectual conversation to offer either.’

‘We’re not talking about you.’ Gio gave her hand a little shake as though in rebuke. ‘You were never that vain or frivolous.’

‘Claire’s looks are the basis of her whole career so I don’t think it’s fair to call her vain or frivolous.’ And in the back of her mind, Billie was wondering why she was arguing with him about something that didn’t matter in the slightest to her. Dimly it dawned on her that fear was working on her nerves, cutting through the sense of trust and security that she had begun to develop and throwing up friction in her every response to him.

What on earth was she planning to do if the man she loved turned out to be her worst enemy rather than her husband? How was she going to cope with Gio trying to take Theo away from her? Murder him in his bed? Hire a hit man? Her mind threw up crazier and crazier ideas and her tension rose steadily as she boarded the helicopter to sit stiff and silent by his side until the flight back to Letsos was complete.

‘I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong,’ Gio breathed as she pulled away from his supporting arm and picked an uneven passage along the path from the helipad to the villa.

‘We’ll talk about it inside where nobody can hear us,’ Billie framed in a flat tone he had never heard from her before.

Tension screaming from every line of his tall, powerful figure, Gio mounted the stairs a step in her harried wake. It was no comfort for him to flip through his list of sins and omissions with Billie because there were so many of them he didn’t know where to start. He watched her stop dead in the living area of their suite and kick off her high heels, ensuring that she shrank greatly in stature.

Billie settled blazingly angry green eyes on Gio. ‘Calisto told me that the pre-nup I signed contained something about you keeping Theo here in Greece if we broke up.’

Furious that something so highly confidential could have been leaked from what should have been the most trustworthy source, Gio turned pale, and for an instant he couldn’t think of anything to say in his own defence.

Billie read his taut defensive expression and her shoulders slumped. ‘So, it’s true...this marriage has all been some cruel kind of game of deception.’

‘The pre-nup no longer exists. I shredded your copy and mine and had my legal rep destroy all evidence of it,’ Gio grated. ‘It’s gone, it’s in the past. I should never have thought of such a thing.’

‘How did you shred my copy?’ Billie demanded in sudden wonderment.

‘I went into your storage boxes,’ Gio admitted, a tinge of heat accentuating his cheekbones at the look of disbelief growing in her gaze. ‘I realised it was wrong and I wanted to destroy it. I didn’t want you to realise what I’d tried to do at some later stage of our lives.’

‘Well, you don’t have that to worry about that now. It’s come back to haunt you much sooner than you expected,’ Billie pointed out, wondering how much she should be mollified by the apparent destruction of the document and his evident change of heart. At least he knew when he’d done something wrong, she thought limply, struggling to find a bright side to her predicament.

Gio studied her, his full attention locked to her flickering changes of expression. ‘I didn’t want to lose you.’

‘You didn’t want to lose Theo,’ Billie corrected. ‘I wish you’d just been honest from the beginning. I’m not unreasonable, Gio, and from the moment you reappeared I was willing to share Theo with you, honestly and fairly.’

‘It was a very dirty trick to plant that clause in the pre-nup,’ Gio acknowledged with a humility that astounded her.

‘But very typical of you,’ Billie responded. ‘Clever, devious, cold-blooded.’

‘I’m never cold-blooded when it comes to you. I had the pre-nup drawn up that way because...’ Gio hesitated, lean, strong face rigid ‘...not because I was trying to take Theo off you, but because...’

‘Because what?’ Billie snapped in sudden frustration.

‘Because I knew you’d never leave him and if I had the right to keep him, you wouldn’t leave me either!’ Gio yelled back at her full force, making her jump in fright.

Billie gaped at him. ‘But I had no intention of leaving you.’

‘You left me before!’ Gio bit out rawly.

Billie stared at him, fighting to hide her fascination and astonishment. ‘But don’t you think there was some excuse for me leaving you then, when you were marrying another woman?’ she reasoned very gently.

His lean, darkly handsome features froze as if she had slapped him. He released his breath in a long pent-up hiss. ‘Marrying Calisto was the worst mistake I ever made...but I thought, I truly believed at the time that I was doing the right thing.’

Billie thought about what Theon had told her about the way he had raised Gio and the values he had emphasised and suppressed a sigh. ‘But it wasn’t the right thing for you.’

‘I am so sorry for hurting you,’ Gio framed in a roughened undertone, lustrous dark eyes unshielded and filled with overwhelming regret. ‘If I could go back and change it, I would...but I can’t. If it’s any consolation, I hurt myself as well. For two years my life was miserable because you weren’t part of it any longer, so I definitely paid for making the wrong choice. My happiest day since the day I lost you was the day when I finally found out where you were living.’

In her entire experience of Gio, Billie had never thought to hear such admissions from him. Initially the shock of what he was telling her almost struck her dumb and then the natural warmth of her nature sent her hurtling across the room to wrap both arms round him in comfort. ‘Oh, Gio, you are an idiot sometimes,’ she whispered helplessly.

‘I honestly didn’t believe you would leave me. When I found the apartment empty...well, it was a very bad moment for me and I did everything I could to fight feeling the way I did, but everything in my life felt wrong after that,’ he confessed raggedly. ‘Calisto got a bad deal from me as well. I didn’t want her, I wanted you, and when you disappeared you were all I could think about.’

Belatedly Billie understood his ex-wife’s hatred for her. ‘Did she love you? She must’ve been jealous and hurt...’

‘No, love wasn’t part of our arrangement, nor was jealousy. If it had been she would never have agreed to me still keeping you in my life.’

‘You told her about me? She actually agreed to you continuing to see me?’ Billie prompted, shaken even though she recalled him saying something in that line before.

‘I preferred to be honest with her from the start. Cal wanted social position. Her family are wealthy but have little status. She wanted to be Gio Letsos’ wife for what it meant to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, I couldn’t live with her,’ Gio admitted with a grimace of recollection. ‘She was nasty to my family and she lies at the drop of a hat about the most trivial things. After promising to have a family with me, she then confessed that she didn’t ever want to have a child. In short, we were both dissatisfied with our marriage and she agreed to the divorce.’

‘But then why is she carrying on this way trying to upset me and wreck our marriage?’

‘I can only think I hurt her ego by not wanting her more than I wanted you. Obviously marrying you straight after the divorce offended her as well but we won’t be having any more trouble from that quarter,’ Gio asserted with conviction. ‘That lawyer will be removed from my team and Leandros doesn’t get on with Cal any better than I do, so there won’t be any leaked info from him with regard to our lives.’

Ready to toss the issue of Calisto and his brief marriage on a back burner, Billie was instead thinking about what Gio had said about the pre-nup agreement he had had her sign. ‘Why were you afraid of me leaving you again?’ she murmured.

‘My father left me, my mother left me and somehow you became even more important to me than they were,’ Gio framed with dogged determination but obvious difficulty in explaining that to her. ‘After I found my mother dead, I taught myself to close out emotions because it was the only way I could cope with the way my sisters’ lives and mine had imploded. I preferred to stay in control. I felt threatened whenever emotion tried to take over. I found the way I seemed to need you totally unnerving...’

Billie was so stunned by that speech that the best she could manage was, ‘Oh, dear...’

‘I couldn’t believe that you could try and send me away once I found you again.’

‘Only because of Theo and I thought you’d be furious about him. And because you hurt me before and I didn’t want to put myself out there for that again,’ Billie told him truthfully.

‘I did everything wrong, but then I would have done anything to get you back,’ Gio confided. ‘I shouldn’t have used Dee’s past as a weapon against you.’

‘No, you shouldn’t have.’ Billie didn’t pull her punches on that score. ‘You blackmailed me into moving to your hotel!’

‘I wanted you with me.’

‘And then abandoned me at the hotel,’ Billie reminded him stubbornly.

‘My feelings around you were getting on top of me,’ Gio breathed curtly. ‘I couldn’t handle them and I was getting angry and frustrated and I was afraid I might scare you off.’

‘I didn’t know you felt like that because until now you haven’t shared anything with me,’ she murmured ruefully.

Gio reached into his pocket and withdrew a ring box, from which he removed a gleaming diamond solitaire. ‘It’s five minutes after midnight and your twenty-third birthday, pethi mou. Happy birthday.’ He lifted her hand and threaded the beautiful ring onto her wedding finger. ‘It belonged to my grandmother and now it belongs to you. They enjoyed a very long and happy marriage; consequently it comes with a worthy history for us to follow.’

Billie gazed down at her beautiful ring with tears of joy glittering in her eyes because that family gift meant so much more to her than a ring that he might have bought.

‘I should have placed that ring on your finger two years ago but I didn’t know my own heart then,’ Gio confessed heavily. ‘I had never stopped to evaluate what you actually meant to me and by the time that I did, it was too late and you were gone. Even after I found you again and married you, I genuinely still didn’t appreciate that what I feel for you has to be love.’

‘Love?’ Billie exclaimed, jolted by surprise from her blissful perusal of her engagement ring.

‘I do love you,’ Gio declared with an endearing amount of self-consciousness about making such a statement. ‘I probably always loved you but it was a very selfish love, so I didn’t recognise it for what it was and neither could you have done.’

Billie was bemused. ‘Gio...you just called yourself selfish...’

Gio frowned. ‘I couldn’t avoid that deduction after I found your exam certificates and all the courses which you had done while we were together two years back... I didn’t know about even one of them,’ he decried. ‘I wish you’d told me.’

Billie was flushed. ‘I was too embarrassed. You have a degree and there I was studying for the most basic qualifications,’ she pointed out. ‘My goodness, is that why you took me to that stupid art gallery tonight?’

‘I thought you’d enjoy it,’ Gio admitted.

‘I only took the course because of that Canaletto thing,’ she muttered ruefully. ‘But to be frank, it’s all a bit highbrow for me.’

‘I’m not into art either. I wouldn’t change a single thing about you. I’m proud of you and happy to show you off anywhere. I’m really proud that you’re my wife,’ Gio imparted with a brilliant beautiful smile as he scooped her up in his arms and carried her through to their bed.

‘Honestly?’ Billie pressed.

‘Honestly,’ Gio stressed. ‘I only wish I’d understood the strength of what I felt for you a lot sooner because it would have saved us both a great deal of unhappiness. I would never willingly have let you go.’

‘I still love you,’ Billie told him with a forgiving grin that illuminated her whole face.

‘I have to wonder why,’ he said seriously.

‘Maybe because I see a side of you that other people don’t. I don’t know. I just always loved you,’ Billie mused, relaxed about her own feelings for the first time in years because he loved her back. A singing, dizzy sense of happiness was spreading through her, all her fears finally laid to rest.

‘Bet I love you even more than you love me,’ Gio husked, dark eyes smouldering gold as he kissed her with sweet, ravishing hunger. ‘I’m hopelessly competitive.’

‘You can win that competition any time you like,’ Billie joked, feeling gloriously free to express her own feelings as she gripped his shirt collar and dragged him down to her again.

* * *

Billie watched Theo race into the waves with Jade and Davis while Gio kept a watch on the children.

‘You know,’ Dee remarked from her lounger by Billie’s side on the deck of the beach house, ‘Gio’s totally different from the sort of man I thought he was. He’s great with kids, for a start.’

‘Oh, he’s surprised me too in that line,’ Billie confided lazily, her attention on the six-month-old daughter sleeping in her portable crib in the shadows. ‘He adores Ianthe.’

‘When does your family tree get a look-in with the names?’ Dee asked.

‘Are you joking?’ Billie laughed. ‘With Grandpa being a Wilfred and Grandma Ethel, I think Gio’s family names have more promise. What were we talking about? Right, yes, Gio and children. He’s surprised too by how much he enjoys having a family.’

‘Billie, if you wanted a giraffe in the family, he’d try to give it to you,’ her cousin said with a roll of her eyes. ‘The man is besotted. I can see it every time he looks at you.’

‘Maybe it’ll be your turn soon,’ Billie remarked quietly, because Dee had started seeing someone back home. It was early days yet, of course, but she was hoping Dee would be brave enough to try another relationship because her cousin spent too much time alone.

It had been two years since Billie had married Gio and Dee was currently in the process of buying Billie’s vintage clothes shop, which she was still successfully managing. A lot had changed for Billie in that same period but Gio had changed too, opening up to his emotions and pulling free of an outlook that had once been set in stone. He would never be Dee’s best friend but he could relax now with the other woman and accept her place in Billie’s life without comment or tension. Billie suspected that their children had helped Gio become more relaxed and flexible.

Theo was tall for a three-year-old, like all the men in the Letsos family, and he had Gio’s black hair messily combined with his mother’s corkscrew curls, something he would no doubt complain bitterly about when he reached his teenaged years, Billie reflected fondly. Ianthe was a combination of their genes as well, for her eyes had turned as green as her mother’s and she was fairer in colouring than her brother with dead straight hair with not even a hint of a curl.

Billie went into the beach house for a cold drink and glanced around with a rather wicked smile because she knew that she and Gio would be spending the night there. Dee and the children were heading home in the afternoon and Irene, their trusty nanny, would collect Theo and Ianthe to take them back to the villa.

In the two years since she had married Gio, Billie had learned to make the most of their private time together. Gio travelled less than he once had and their lives were based on the island. Billie got on great with Gio’s family and was particularly close to his sisters and never short of company. Sometimes she wanted to pinch herself because she had never dreamt that she could be so happy.

A pair of arms closed round her from behind and she jumped. ‘Gio?’

‘Who else?’ he breathed teasingly above her head.

‘You gave me a fright,’ she whispered, swivelling round in his arms to look up at him. ‘Who’s with the children?’

‘Dee’s taking a turn.’

Billie collided with smouldering dark golden eyes set in a stunning lean dark face and wrapped her arms round his neck, her heart hammering. ‘You still rock my world, Mr Letsos,’ she confided breathlessly.

Gio dealt her a thrillingly erotic smile of anticipation. ‘Not until tonight, agapi mou.’

He called her ‘my love’ now, Billie reflected blissfully, for she now spoke a fair amount of Greek. Her curvaceous body sealed slowly to his with intense appreciation of the strength and protectiveness in his tall, well-built length. ‘I love you, Gio...’

‘And I am totally devoted to you,’ Gio intoned huskily, bending his head to steal a kiss that went on until they had to break apart to breathe.

* * * * *

Innocent in His Diamonds

‘Save the act, Miss Duval. Pretending outrage while your eyes devour me wears thin after a while,’ he sliced at her.

‘God, you are full of yourself, aren’t you? The outrage is real. I’ve never met anyone more infuriating than you. And there’s nothing remotely sexual about that!’

There—that should set him straight, she congratulated herself, so pleased with her comeback that she didn’t acknowledge the charged silence until his hand landed on her shoulder.

‘Then this shouldn’t affect you too much.’

‘Wha—?’

His lips slanted over hers before she could get the word out.

Ana’s world imploded. Every coherent thought, every ounce of outrage fled as she experienced Bastien, up close and devastatingly personal.

His kiss started out as a ruthless lesson. Very quickly it became something else. Something that made her stomach muscles quiver.

His lips, hot and urgent, seared her, branded her, evoking such electrifying reactions that she could do nothing but cling on, crave more, open herself to the pleasure drenching her.

When his tongue stroked hers molten heat seared through her, singeing every nerve-ending, every drop of her blood, until she burned, engulfed in sensual flames.

Bastien had called her reaction to him an act. Except it wasn’t an act. The world might think Ana Duval represented sex on legs, but the truth would shock them even more. The fact was that she was as far removed from being sexually promiscuous as was humanly possible.

MAYA BLAKE’s hopes of becoming a writer were born when she picked up her first Mills & Boon® aged thirteen. Little did she know her dream would come true! Does she still pinch herself every now and then to make sure it’s not a dream? Yes, she does!

Feel free to pinch her too, via Twitter, Facebook or Goodreads!

CHAPTER ONE

BASTIEN HEIDECKER THREW OPEN the doors of his boardroom and strode in. For several seconds none of his board members noticed his presence, absorbed as they were by the catastrophe playing out in high definition on the big screen.

Henry Lang, his CFO, spotted him first.

‘Mr Heidecker! We were just catching up on the latest development...’ The short dark-haired man grabbed the remote, pressed a button and dashed to his seat.

Bastien watched the rest of his staff scramble into their places, his already simmering anger mounting as his gaze shifted to the screen.

Her frozen image stared back at him. Despite the storm brewing beneath the surface of his calm, Bastien couldn’t fault his team for being enthralled by the woman at the centre of the chaos engulfing his company.

Ana Duval was stunning perfection. The half-Colombian, half-English supermodel’s beauty combined innocence and defiance with a hint of cultivated vulnerability that had been skilfully honed into the perfect commodity. That combination had ensnared every red-blooded male in the western hemisphere and ensured her a permanent place in the limelight by the time she’d turned twenty-one.

Hell, it had nearly ensnared him...

Even at fifteen Bastien had known the skinny, doe-eyed, eight-year-old he’d had the misfortune of spending that unforgettable winter with was nothing but trouble. What he hadn’t foreseen was that sixteen years later Ana Duval would bring bedlam right to his doorstep.