The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance. Annie West

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