The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance. Annie West

strangest thing was that she did trust Gio because he had told her the truth even when she didn’t want to hear it and he had never broken his word to her.

      Her son was sleepy and warm as toast. She nuzzled her cheek against his smooth skin and breathed in his glorious baby scent before threading his short little arms into the jacket. Even in the very dark mood he was in, Gio had stated that their son needed both of his parents, she reminded herself staunchly. He wasn’t trying to split them up; he was only making threats to make her listen and do what he wanted. Possibly all he really wanted was a couple of days with free access to Theo so that he could get to know him and he couldn’t have that opportunity without including Billie in the arrangements.

      A built-in safety seat for a child sat in the rear seat of the limousine. Billie settled Theo in and did up the buckle while her son craned his head to stare at Gio with big brown eyes. Silence fell while the two of them sized each other up. Gio had a cell phone in his hand and the light danced across the metallic finish. Theo stretched out a hand to grab the phone and Billie was incredulous when Gio handed it over.

      ‘You can’t give him that!’ Billie exclaimed as the phone went straight into Theo’s mouth to be chewed. ‘He tries to eat everything.’

      Billie filched the phone back. Theo looked at his empty hand and wailed while Billie passed the phone back to Gio out of her son’s view. She dug a toy out of the holdall to give her son. He studied it with a jutting lower lip and threw it down.

      ‘He wants the phone back,’ Gio breathed in wonderment.

      ‘Of course he does...it’s got lots of buttons. The brightest, shiniest new toy always gets his interest.’

      They drew up outside the hotel. Billie climbed out and leant back into the car to unbuckle Theo but Gio was one step ahead of her and was already hoisting Theo into his arms. She followed them into the hotel. Theo loved new places just as much as new toys and his curly dark head was turning this way and that with keen interest. Billie stepped into the lift. Theo beamed at her from the vantage point of his father’s arms, clearly very pleased with the exchange.

      Billie was surprised to enter a different suite from the one that Gio had previously used. ‘Have you changed to another floor?’

      ‘Of course, we needed more space,’ Gio pointed out while Theo frantically wriggled in his arms. With a sigh, Gio gave way and gently lowered Theo to the wooden floor. The little boy crawled off at high speed, grabbed at the leg of a fancy sofa and hauled himself upright, grinning with satisfaction.

      ‘Theo’s a clever boy,’ Billie praised warmly.

      Her son’s sturdy little legs began to wobble and he toppled down onto his bottom in a sudden loss of balance and burst into floods of tears. Gio scooped him up again and held him high above his head. In his usual mercurial fashion, Theo forgot his moment of misery and burst out laughing instead at finding himself airborne. Gio made aeroplane noises like a little boy and whirled his son energetically round the room while Billie watched with a dropped jaw, not entirely sure that she could credit what she was seeing. Gio, shedding his dignity and distance, Gio smiling with unabashed enjoyment.

      ‘It’s time he had lunch,’ Billie remarked.

      The game between father and son concluded. A high chair was delivered along with the case and Billie started to feed Theo, who wanted to feed himself and complained vociferously between mouthfuls until she finally gave him the spoon. Theo stuck the spoon in the carton of yogurt with a victorious smile. Billie was still in a daze, her mind still engaged in replaying Gio acting as she had never before seen him act. Only an hour earlier, he had been threatening her with an adverse report to social services.

      It had been an utterly ruthless threat that had chilled Billie to the marrow. A couple of years earlier, before Dee began getting her life straightened out, Dee’s children had been put into care. Although she had got the twins back again and no longer even received visits to check on her progress, any allegation of negligent childcare made against the household where Dee lived would certainly result in a full investigation being made by the authorities. Billie could not bear the threat of that happening to her cousin again. It would flatten Dee’s confidence, make her feel like an unfit mother again and if people realised that social services were checking up on her it would rouse local gossip. There was very little that Billie would not have done to protect Dee from such a development.

      Yet the same male who had voiced that chilling threat had shown an entirely different side of himself to their son. With Theo, Gio had been playful, uninhibited, almost joyful, three traits she would never ever have associated with Gio’s cool, calm and reserved nature. She recognised that Gio’s interest in his son was considerably more powerful than she had ever dreamt it would be and she wondered uneasily where that left her in the triangle. He had said he wanted his son. What exactly did that mean?

      Gio strode into one of the rooms leading off the spacious reception room and reappeared in jeans and a trendy striped cotton sweater. Billie couldn’t drag her eyes from his lean, dark, devastating face as he watched entranced while Theo piled up his bricks and smashed them down again, giggling at the noise he was making. The tight jeans delineated every muscle in Gio’s long, powerful thighs and narrow hips as he squatted down on the floor beside Theo. Billie’s gaze ran over his washboard-flat stomach to the bulge below his belt and she averted her eyes, as hot and cold as someone with a fever. And mortifyingly, she knew precisely what was wrong with her. The kind of craving she had for Gio didn’t go away, didn’t take a back seat when you wanted it to, didn’t fade when you knew it should; it just went on and on, the gift that kept on giving.

      Sometimes wanting Gio had felt like a life sentence to Billie. Her pregnancy had only accelerated her exit from his life because she had been afraid that he might guess her secret. She had believed that that would be the ultimate humiliation because she had assumed that Gio would foist all the blame on her for her inconvenient pregnancy and make her feel dreadful as well as guilty and unworthy. Yet now he was telling her differently, insisting that he would never have suggested she have a termination.

      Yet how much faith could she have in what Gio was currently saying? Gio, after all, was speaking with the benefit of hindsight, aware that his dynastic marriage was destined to fail. But two years ago that marriage had been very important to him and Billie’s pregnancy would have been a severe embarrassment at the very least. What on earth had he meant when he had sworn he would never have married had he known about Billie’s pregnancy?

      It would never have occurred to Billie then that she could set the clock forward by two years and would see Gio, down on his jeans-clad knees, creating a precarious tower of bricks for Theo’s benefit and actually laughing when Theo smacked it down with a chubby fist.

      ‘You said you wanted Theo,’ Billie murmured quietly, having finally worked up the courage to press for answers. ‘What does that mean exactly?’

      ‘That now that I’ve found him, I’m not walking away again,’ Gio intoned, level dark golden eyes resting on her above Theo’s head. Such beautiful eyes he had that even thinking was a challenge when she looked at them.

      ‘No...er obviously,’ she managed gruffly, ‘you want to get to know him and stay in contact.’

      Keeping very still, Gio lifted an ebony brow. ‘I want much more than that.’

      ‘How much more?’ she pressed, struggling to breathe while level with those stunning eyes of his.

      A sardonic smile curled Gio’s wide sensual mouth. ‘I don’t like half measures...I want it all.’

      ‘And what does “all” encompass?’ Billie asked shakily.

      Gio surveyed her with grim amusement. He had thought she would work it out for herself. He was ready to give her what she had always wanted from him and what he had never dreamt of offering before. Now he had very sound reasons for offering and anything else he gained as a by-product did not have to be measured or considered. The ever-ready pulse at his groin grew heavy while his attention roved to the deep valley between her full breasts, which was tantalisingly visible every time she angled