The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance. Annie West

passed, it was just her and me...and she never liked me, said I reminded her of my mother.’ Billie grimaced. ‘You can’t really blame her. My mother dumped me on her and never came back. She was a bitter woman, who just never saw the good in anyone. I got to go back to school for a couple of years and then Grandma’s health failed too and that was the end of that.’

      Gio was stunned by what he was belatedly learning. ‘How is it that I’m only finding out all this about you now?’ he could not help asking, as if he thought the oversight might somehow be her fault.

      Tactfully concealing her wonder at that question, Billie shot him a wry glance. ‘Gio, back then, in your eyes, when I wasn’t physically in front of you, I didn’t exist.’

      Gio tensed. ‘That’s untrue.’

      ‘Do you recall that cabinet with drawers I once mentioned where I was tucked in my own tiny drawer, only to be taken out and appreciated by you on special occasions? Seriously, I wasn’t joking—that was what it was like.’

      His lean dark features were grim. ‘What you’re really saying is that I’m a colossally selfish individual.’

      ‘You were self-absorbed and very driven. Let’s face it, when we were together your main focus was always business. I also think you were too posh to be comfortable with the difference in our backgrounds. Ignoring it was easier. I think as long as I was willing to be quiet about it, you preferred not to be reminded that I was once a humble cleaner,’ Billie told him gently.

      ‘I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation!’ Gio ground out angrily, his temper, kept on a short leash all day, whipping up in a sudden surge hotter than lava. ‘Or that you could ever have had such a low opinion of me!’

      In mute frustration, Billie closed her eyes and counted to ten. ‘It’s done and dusted, Gio—it’s the past. I’m not attacking you. I’m only being honest. I wasn’t perfect either. I should have stood up to you, demanded more, but I was too young and in my very first relationship.’

      ‘You lied about your age.’ Gio was quick to pounce on that reminder.

      Billie nodded peaceably, refusing to rise to the bait because there was no way she was about to engage in a massive row with Gio about their past. After all, everything had changed now and they were making a new start at a very different level of intimacy.

      ‘I’ve got some work to do,’ Gio said in a tone of finality.

      Billie smiled, knowing his first refuge when emotion threatened was work. ‘I’ll walk back indoors with you.’

      Gio settled with his laptop in the library, which was set up like a high-tech office for his use. Theos, he still found himself thinking furiously, he was not and he never had been a selfish person. On one issue, Billie was correct: he had no need whatsoever to revisit the past. That conviction in place, Gio struggled to concentrate on the lines of figures on his laptop screen and he was fine until the moment that the matter of the pre-nuptial settlement contract squeezed into his mind and practically obliterated everything else in the process. He rang the housekeeper to discover where Billie’s possessions had been stored since being shipped out the previous week.

      It occurred to him then without warning that even the devil could not have devised a more colossally selfish or fiendish document. He refused to act like a male engaged in a covert operation, but on some level of his brain he was astounded by what he was about to do when he finally stood in the room confronted with a heap of boxes. After all, when was Billie ever likely to lift that contract out and reread it? Why the hell was he so damned rattled by a very minor risk? Perspiration dampened his lean, bronzed features. He was engaging in a cover-up and the knowledge didn’t sit well with him. But prior to that contract he had never once been dishonest with Billie. He hovered, studying the boxes. That document could hurt her, he reflected broodingly, and he latched onto that excuse for what he was about to do with alacrity.

      Gio had never unpacked a box in his life but he wasn’t surprised by the discovery that every box was labelled and incredibly neatly filled because Billie was very, very organised and always had been. In the third box, he hit the pay dirt of finding files full of papers and in the second file he espied the contract and ripped it out, but not before he frowned down at a certificate for wine tasting and found beneath it one for art appreciation. He went through the whole file, checking the dates, learning what he knew he should have learned years sooner.

      There was a burning behind his eyes that made them feel scratchy and he felt oddly hollow, as though someone had gutted him without warning. Feeling rather as though he had been beaten up, Gio replaced everything where he had found it with the exception of the contract and strode off to pour himself a very stiff drink. The contract went through the shredder but the relief he had expected to feel was utterly absent. He had gone digging where he had no business digging, he conceded sardonically, and he rather thought that in the process he had got what he deserved.

      ‘Theon wants you to join him for afternoon tea,’ Sofia told Billie cheerfully around three that afternoon. ‘It’s a big honour.’

      Billie grinned. ‘I liked him.’

      ‘I think the feeling’s reciprocated,’ Gio’s sister responded with a laugh as she guided Billie across the villa to the wing of the house Theon occupied.

      A manservant showed her out onto a big shaded balcony where Theon awaited her. ‘I believe this is an honour,’ Billie remarked with a grin.

      ‘How on earth have you escaped Gio?’ his grandfather enquired mockingly.

      ‘Something I said annoyed him... He’s taken refuge in work,’ Billie confided, marvelling at how very comfortable she felt in the older man’s company.

      ‘I overheard that conversation,’ Theon admitted, disconcerting her. ‘This balcony is directly overhead.’

      Billie reddened but sat down. ‘Oh, well, it’s all within the family,’ she said without great concern because it wasn’t as if she and Gio had been hurling insults at each other or discussing anything she considered particularly private, although she knew that put in the same position Gio would have been furious.

      ‘I thought I should bring you up to date on some family history, as I doubt very much that Gio has done the job for me,’ Theon commented.

      ‘I know about his parents’ divorce,’ Billie contributed. ‘And I know his father really didn’t have much to do with him after it.’

      ‘Dmitri was a weak man. There, I have said it,’ the older man said wryly. ‘For years I wouldn’t admit that to myself because he was my son...’

      ‘It’s challenging to accept faults in those we care about most,’ Billie murmured soothingly.

      ‘You love Gio a great deal—it shines from you,’ his grandfather told her. ‘He’s a very lucky man.’

      Billie flushed and decided not to embarrass herself with a denial while she poured the tea. ‘I hope he always thinks so. He’s much more complicated than I am...’

      ‘And that’s why I invited you for tea,’ Theon told her. ‘I’m very much afraid that his complexity can be laid at my door. I raised Gio from the age of eleven after his mother died.’

      ‘I had no idea she died while he was still so young,’ Billie said in surprise as she buttered a scone and deliberated with some gastronomic anticipation on whether to have raspberry or strawberry jam with her cream.

      ‘Ianthe couldn’t cope alone after Dmitri divorced her for Marianne. I had no idea how bad things had become for Gio’s mother,’ Theon told her heavily. ‘Perhaps if my wife had still been alive she would have had the wisdom to foresee the problems and she would have encouraged me to offer help in time to prevent a tragedy.’

      Billie set down her scone after one delicious bite. ‘A tragedy?’ she pressed.

      ‘Ianthe hanged herself...and Gio found her,’ the older man recounted with a shudder.