The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance

Gio glanced at the two women standing together behind the counter. ‘I’m taking Billie out for lunch. She’ll be back in a couple of hours,’ he explained with complete cool.

‘Gio!’ Billie launched in disbelief, catching a glimpse of Dee’s laughing face before Gio shouldered open the door and hid her cousin from view.

The chauffeur swept open the passenger door as if they were royalty and Gio shoved her into the back seat with scant ceremony. ‘You should’ve known that I wouldn’t stand there arguing with an audience,’ he pointed out smoothly. ‘In any case, I’m out of patience and I’m hungry.’

In a series of angry motions, Billie smoothed down her dress, tugging it over her knees. ‘Why didn’t you go back to London yesterday?’

‘You should know by now that saying no to me only makes me try harder.’

Billie rolled her bright green eyes in mockery and said angrily, ‘Well, how would I know that when I never did say no to you?’

Disconcertingly Gio laughed, genuine amusement illuminating his darkly handsome face. ‘I’ve missed you, Billie.’

Her annoyance fell away and she turned her head in a sharp movement, both shaken and hurt by that claim and by how very empty it was. ‘You got married. How could you possibly have missed me?’

‘I don’t know but I did,’ Gio ground out truthfully. ‘You were so much a part of my life.’

‘No, I was like one tiny little drawer in a big busy cabinet of drawers,’ Billie countered. ‘I was never part of the rest of your life.’

Gio was sincerely astonished by that statement. He had phoned her twice a day every day no matter where he was in the world and no matter how busy he was. Her soothing happy-go-lucky chatter had provided him with necessary downtime from a hectic schedule. In truth he had never had so close a relationship with any woman either before or after her. He had trusted her and he had been honest with her, which was a very rare thing between a single man and a single woman in Gio’s world. But it was steadily sinking in on him that none of that mattered because he had married Calisto. Billie, who had never shown a jealous, distrustful streak in her life, had clearly been jealous and distressed by that development. He didn’t like that idea, he didn’t like it at all, and he kicked out that thought so fast it might never have existed.

Gio had constructed a protective shell while he was still a child to ensure that he could remain untouched by emotional reactions. Emotion didn’t need to get involved. Emotion complicated and only exacerbated an already difficult situation. Calm, common sense and control had always worked far more efficiently for Gio in every field of his life, only not with Billie, he acknowledged grudgingly. But the past was the past and he couldn’t change it, while life had taught him that with enough money, energy and purpose he could form the future into any shape he wanted.

Billie, however, was not practical; she was all about emotion and perhaps that essential difference between them had been one of the things that attracted him to her and which was now sending her in the wrong direction. His shrewd, dark eyes rested on her angry, flushed face and suddenly he wanted to flatten her to the seat of the limo and teach her that there were far more satisfying responses. Inky spiky lashes lowering, he scanned her from her bright eyes to her lush mouth right down over the glorious breasts he had loved to play with and the long shapely legs he had loved to slide between. Sex with Billie was amazing. Just thinking about her made heaviness stir at his groin. Being with her without being able to reach out and take what he wanted, what he had once taken for granted, not only felt weird, but also struck him as a form of refined torture.

‘I want you back,’ Gio declared with stubborn force. ‘I’ve been looking for you ever since you disappeared.’

‘Your wife must’ve liked that.’

‘Leave Calisto out of this...’

Even the sound of her name on Gio’s lips stung Billie like a whip across tender skin. She knew she was being too sensitive. He had married another woman two years ago and she needed to move on. Even if he hadn’t moved on? That was too complex for her, shouted too loudly of wishful thinking. And, my goodness, she had done enough of that while she was still with him and what had those optimistic hopes got her? A broken heart and, right now, the pieces of that foolish heart were rattling like funeral bells. This was the guy she had loved as she had never dreamt she could ever love anyone and he had damaged her beyond forgiveness. Even walking away as she had known she must had almost destroyed her, but not even for him would she have sunk low enough to sleep with another woman’s husband.

‘I can’t believe you’re wasting your time with this,’ Billie admitted abruptly, her soft full mouth compressed to a flat, tense line. ‘I mean, what are you doing here? Why do you even want to see me again? It makes no sense for either of us!’

Gio searched her animated face and wondered what made her seem so beautiful to him. In some corner of his brain, he knew that from a purist’s point of view she never had met and never would meet the standard tenets of beauty because her nose turned up at the end and her eyes and her mouth were too big for her face and in a sudden shower of rain her hair turned into an unbelievably frizzy mess. But dry it fell in a silky tangle of curls the colour of toffee halfway to her waist and that hair had cloaked his body many, many times on occasions so intimate it hurt to remember them and still be deprived of the right to repeat them.

‘Stop looking at me like that,’ Billie told him thinly, the colour of awareness mantling her cheeks, a warm glow unfurling low in her body to remind her of how much time had passed since she had last been touched. She had got pregnant, become a new mother, set up a new home and business and kept so busy-busy-busy for months on end that she fell into bed exhausted every night. It took Gio’s reappearance to remind her that life could offer more self-indulgent pastimes.

‘Like what?’

‘Like we’re still...you know,’ she completed, eyelashes lowering.

‘Like I still want to be inside you?’ Gio queried thickly. ‘But I do and right at this very minute I’m aching for you...’

A tiny clenching sensation in a place she refused to think about forced Billie to shift uneasily on the seat. ‘I really didn’t need to know that, Gio. That was a very inappropriate comment to make—’

Gio skated a long forefinger down over the back of the hand she had tautly braced to the leather seat. ‘At least it was honest and you’re not being honest—’

‘I’m not coming back to you!’ Billie interrupted loudly. ‘I’ve got another life now—’

‘Another man?’ Gio slotted in, deep accented voice raw with unspoken vibrations.

And Billie seized on that convenient excuse like a drowning swimmer thrown a lifebelt. ‘Yes. There’s someone else.’

Every lean, long line of Gio’s big body tensed. ‘Tell me about him.’

Billie was thinking about her son. ‘He’s extremely important to me and I would never do anything to hurt or upset him.’

‘There’s nothing I won’t do to get you back,’ Gio warned as the limousine drew up outside his country-house hotel and the chauffeur leapt out to open the door. He also grasped at that same moment that he was not as law-abiding as he had always assumed because he knew that he was willing to break rules in order to get Billie back.

Billie stole a reluctant glance at his lean, hard face, clashing with the golden glitter of his stunning eyes. She froze in consternation at that expression of menace she had never seen there before. ‘Is there some reason you can’t let me be happy without you?’ she asked suddenly. ‘I think I’ve paid my dues, Gio.’

Gio’s nostrils flared at that declaration, exasperation roughening the edges of an anger he knew he had no right to express. If she had another man, she would naturally get rid of him because he refused to credit that any other man could set her on fire the way he did. But nothing could assuage his bone-deep ferocious reaction to being forced to imagine Billie in bed with someone else. Billie had always been his alone, indisputably his.

As they crossed the foyer of the opulent hotel a familiar voice hailed Billie and she stopped dead and flipped round with a smile as a tall blond man in expensive country casuals moved towards her eagerly to greet her.

‘Simon, how are you?’ she said warmly.

‘I’ve got an address for you.’ Simon dug into his wallet to produce a piece of paper. ‘Got a pen?’

Billie realised her bag had been left behind at the shop and looked expectantly at Gio. ‘Pen?’ she pressed.

Totally unaccustomed to being ignored while others went about their business around him, Gio withdrew a gold pen from his pocket with pronounced reluctance, his beautiful obstinate mouth sardonic.

Simon borrowed the pen and wrote the address on the back of a business card. ‘There’s a heap of stuff there you’ll like and it won’t cost you much either. The seller just wants the house cleared.’

Impervious to the reality that Gio was standing by her side like a towering and forbidding pillar of black ice, Billie beamed at the taller man. ‘Thanks, Simon. I really appreciate this.’

Simon studied her with the same appreciation Gio had often seen on male faces around Billie and his perfect white teeth gritted. ‘Maybe you’ll let me treat you to lunch here some day soon?’

Gio shot an arm like a statement round Billie’s slender spine. ‘Regrettably she’s already taken.’

Ignoring that intercession, Billie reddened but kept on valiantly smiling. ‘I’d like that, Simon. Call me,’ she suggested while knowing that she was only encouraging the other man to make a point for Gio’s benefit and feeling guilty about that because Gio was making her behave badly as well.

‘What was that all about?’ Gio demanded grittily as he urged her into the lift.

‘Simon’s an antique dealer. He tips me off about house clearances. I know a lot of dealers. That’s how I built up my business,’ Billie advanced with pride.

‘You can open a shop in London. I’ll pay for it,’ Gio told her grimly.

Unimpressed, Billie glanced wryly at him. ‘Well, in a roundabout way you paid for this one and my house, so I don’t think it would be right for you to pay anything more.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I sold a piece of jewellery for cash. It was something you gave me.’

Gio frowned. ‘You left everything I ever gave you behind.’

‘No, I took one piece. Your very first gift,’ Billie extended. ‘I had no idea how much it was worth. That was a surprise, I can tell you.’

‘Was it?’ Gio couldn’t even remember his first gift to her and he would have been prepared to swear, having checked the jewellery she left behind, that she had taken nothing with her when she walked out.

‘Yes, you’re so extravagant it’s a wonder you’re not broke. You hardly knew me and yet you spent an absolute fortune on that diamond pendant,’ Billie told him critically. ‘It paid for my house and setting up the shop. I couldn’t believe how valuable it was!’

Gio thrust open the door of his suite. And just like that, the memory of the gift returned to him. He had bought the pendant after their first night together and he was furious that she had just sold it as if it meant nothing to her. ‘I don’t believe that there’s another man in your life.’

‘I’m not coming back to you,’ Billie told him in the most ludicrously apologetic tone. ‘Why would I want a shop in London? Why would I want to move? I’m happy here. And believe it or not there are men out there who would take me out with them into a public restaurant instead of hiding me inside their suite!’

Billie had served a direct hit. Gio paled beneath his Mediterranean tan. ‘We’re in my suite only because we need a private setting in which to talk.’

Billie gave him a wry smile. ‘Maybe that’s true this one time, Gio, but when it went on for almost two years, even I got the message. You might as well have been married from the moment I met you. I was like a guilty, dirty secret in your life.’

‘That is not true.’

‘No point arguing about the past now,’ Billie parried with determination. ‘It’s not worth it.’

‘Of course it is...I want you back.’ A spasm of open exasperation crossed Gio’s lean dark face when a knock sounded on the door, announcing the arrival of two waiters pushing a rattling trolley: lunch had arrived.

Billie folded her arms, thinking of her grandpa’s favourite winning racehorse, Canaletto, and the reality that just four years ago she had never heard of the artist called Canaletto before. Recalling that blunder still made Billie cringe and die inside herself, for the moment she had entered the conversation she had known her mistake but it had been far too late to cover it up. Unhappily for her, the one and only time Gio had taken her out to mix with his friends she had made an outsize fool of herself...and him.

Although he had reacted with neither anger nor criticism, he had dismissed her attempts to talk about the incident and explain that she had grown up more at home in betting shops than museums. But she had known that she had seriously embarrassed him in public in a way that would not be forgotten and, even worse, in a manner that had literally signposted the reality that she and Gio came from worlds and educational backgrounds that were light years apart.

That was why she had never complained about being excluded from his social life and why she had happily settled for dinners out alone in discreet locations where he was unlikely to meet anyone he knew. She had guessed that he was worried she would let him down again and without his awareness she had swiftly set about a self-improvement course in the hope that eventually he would notice and give her another chance. Sadness filled Billie when she recalled that naivety born in the early months of their relationship before she had reached the daunting moment of discovery and slow, painful acceptance that she was not Gio’s girlfriend but instead his mistress, there to dispense sexual entertainment and not much else and never ever to be taken seriously.

‘You’re so quiet. I’m not accustomed to you being quiet with me,’ Gio confessed in growing frustration, closing his hands over her slender, taut shoulders, massaging the tense muscles there as the door flipped shut behind the waiters. ‘Talk to me, Billie. Tell me what you want.’

Feeling the warm tingling of his touch snaking down her rigid spine and the pinching tautness of her nipples while resisting a powerfully seductive urge to lean back into the strong, sheltering heat of Gio, Billie pulled away and quickly sank down into one of the chairs by the beautifully set table. Talk to me. That was an insanely perplexing invitation to receive from a male like Gio, who didn’t like serious conversations and who smoothly sidestepped or downright ignored emotional moments and phrases.

‘We’ve got nothing to discuss,’ she pointed out, tucking into the first course with sudden appetite because while she ate she did not have to speak and had less excuse to be looking at Gio. Gio, surely one of the most beautiful men ever born? She glanced at him from below her lashes, roaming with helpless appreciation across his sculpted features to relish the spectacular slash of his high cheekbones and the tough masculine angle of his jaw. He was out of her reach. He was rich and successful, handsome and sophisticated, educated and pedigreed, everything she was not. He had always been out of her reach. If only she had had the wit to accept that obvious fact, she would never have got involved and never have got hurt.

‘Is there really another man?’ Gio asked very quietly, the rich velvety depth of his accented drawl filling her with pleasure, no matter how hard she tried not to react that way. But that was the same voice she had once lived to hear on the phone when he was away from her, and she could not break her instinctive appreciation.

Billie worked out the question and flushed as she collided with stunning tigerish golden eyes surrounded by ebony lashes. She breathed in, intending to lie, breathed out, knew that for some reason she didn’t want to lie. Perhaps it was because if she lied he would come down on her like a granite block to get further information about the supposed man in her life and would eventually cleverly trip her up and learn that she was lying, which would only make her look stupid. ‘No, there isn’t,’ she admitted grudgingly. ‘But that doesn’t change anything between us.’

‘Then we’re both free,’ Gio murmured lazily, topping up her glass with the bottle of wine.

‘I have no intention of getting involved with you again,’ Billie declared, taking a hasty gulp of the mellow red, wondering if he would laugh if she told him what the flavour reminded her of. After all, she had once attended a wine course as well as an art-appreciation course and had never had the opportunity to show off what she had learned there.

‘But we work well together.’

Billie shook her head in vehement rejection of that statement and concentrated on her food again.

Sipping his wine, Gio watched her. He suspected she was wearing vintage clothes and the pale green linen dress she wore teamed with a light blouse-like jacket embroidered with flowers didn’t bear any resemblance to what he deemed to be current fashion, but the colours and plain styling had an understated elegance. The minute she sat down, however, the fabric of the dress pulled taut across the swell of her ample bosom. Gio tensed, hunger stabbing through him while he wondered how he was supposed to tempt a woman so utterly lacking in greed. She didn’t want his money, had never wanted his money, had once told him in no uncertain terms that he didn’t need a yacht because he would never take the time off to use it. His yacht, sitting idle and costing a fortune to maintain, was currently moored at Southampton.

The waiters came back to serve the main course. She saw their sidewise glances and recognised their curiosity about her. By now the hotel staff would have established who Gio was—Giorgios Letsos, the oil billionaire was a legend the world over. The press loved him because he lived a rich man’s life and looked great in print. Calisto had looked brilliant in print too with her sleek straight blonde hair, her perfect features and her terrifyingly tiny size-zero body. Beside her, Billie would have appeared plump, short and ungainly and, from seeing that first photo, Billie had accepted that no comparison could ever be made between them. After all, she and Calisto weren’t even on the same page in the looks department.

Gio wound down the tension by talking about his recent travels round the world. She asked small, safe, impersonal questions about some of his staff, a couple of whom she had met and some she had only got to know by speaking to them often on the phone.

While eating her dessert, a glorious concoction of fresh berries and meringue, she enquired whether or not he still had the apartment.

‘No...like you, it’s long gone,’ he stated.

Billie took that to mean that he had not installed a more malleable woman in her place and when a sense of relief filtered through her she gulped more of her wine and tried hard to direct her thoughts to safer topics. It was no longer her business to wonder who he slept with. Once he had married Calisto the question had become academic. Billie had been replaced in every way. Calisto had been chosen to sit at the other end of the dining table in his probably very beautiful Greek home, which Billie had naturally never visited. Gio would have socialised with Calisto because they were a real couple and obviously he had planned to make Calisto the mother of his children...

CHAPTER THREE

AS THE PAIN of that never-to-be-forgotten reality pierced Billie, she suddenly reached the limits of her tolerance. Her attempt to be civilised for the sake of appearances was shattered and, forced cruelly out of her comfort zone, she thrust her hands down on the edge of the table and suddenly stood up. ‘I can’t do this!’ she told Gio with ragged abruptness. ‘I want to go home right now!’

Taken aback, Gio sprang upright, a frown line drawing his ebony brows together, his lustrous dark eyes locked to her flushed and unhappy face with wary, searching curiosity. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Only you would ask that in this set-up!’ Billie exclaimed helplessly. ‘I didn’t want to see you ever again. I don’t want to be reminded of the past!’

‘Billie...’ Gio murmured, closing strong hands over her shaking shoulders while his keen gaze collided with her translucent green eyes. ‘Calm down...’

‘I can’t...I’m not like you...I never was. I’m no good at avoiding the obvious and pretending!’ She gasped strickenly, tears clogging up her throat and terrifying her because in the past she had always contrived to hide her emotional breakdowns from Gio and she was proud of the restraint she had demonstrated in spite of the provocation and the pain he had put her through. ‘You really shouldn’t be here...you should’ve left me alone in my new life.’

Gio trailed a blunt forefinger along the lower line of her lush bottom lip. ‘I would if I could. I had to see you again.’

‘Why?’ Billie demanded baldly.

‘Because we weren’t done when you walked away.’

A great scream of agonising hurt and frustration was rising up inside Billie. ‘Of course we were done—you were getting married!’ she reminded him doggedly.

‘I had to see you again to find out if I still wanted you.’ Long brown fingers rose to cup her cheekbones. ‘And the answer to that is that I do still want you.’

In a sudden rage at his nerve in admitting that, Billie jerked her head back out of reach to detach his fingers. ‘That means nothing.’

‘It means a hell of a lot more to me than you seem to appreciate!’ Gio growled, patience splintering, because he was well aware that he was fighting blind in the sort of emotional confrontation he had absolutely no experience of dealing with.

‘Not enough to make a difference!’ Billie snapped back, a kind of madness in the strong emotions powering her while she fought a humiliatingly defensive urge to just race out of the door and run away like a scared kid.

Gio imprisoned her in the strong circle of his arms in an unforewarned movement that jolted her. Brilliant dark eyes blazed pure gold fire down at her. ‘There’s more than enough for both of us,’ he spelt out, marvelling that she was still fighting him when it was more normal for him to be fighting off the women who ceaselessly pursued him with flirtation and flattery.

‘Let me go!’ she told him shakily.

‘No.’ Gio studied her with smouldering determination. ‘You’ll only run away again. I can feel it in you and I won’t let you do something that stupid again.’

‘You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to—’

‘But what about what you want to do?’ Gio savoured the comeback, bending his handsome dark head to run his tongue along the seam of her closed lips.

Taken by surprise, Billie jerked, her blood running heavily and slowly through her veins as if time itself had slowed down to give her the chance to catch up. His breath fanned her cheek and his lips connected with hers in a heart-stopping collision that tripped her ability to breathe. His lips were smooth and unusually gentle and soft and somehow she couldn’t prevent herself from turning up her chin to ask for more of the same.

Gio smiled against her lush mouth, hunger beating through him like a jackhammer. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything or anybody in his life and he was all fired up to fight hard for what he wanted because he knew she would restore the oasis of peace he needed in his private life. Long fingers smoothed over her back, his other hand curving to her waist. He nipped at her soft lower lip and then glided his sensual mouth over hers in a move that swallowed her tiny cry of surprise. His hand moved up to tangle in her mane of curls and the pressure of his mouth increased until her head tilted back, allowing him greater access.