‘GIANNI…’ Milly breathed, and she could hardly get his name past her dry lips.
‘You don’t look at all well,’ Gianni drawled with measured cool, incisive dark eyes resting on her without any perceptible expression. ‘You really should have stayed in bed.’
Yes, he could have handled her best as a total invalid, Milly decided. Then she would have been an object of pity, too weak and pathetic to require confrontation. Gianni went to quite incredible lengths to avoid emotional scenes. He could not bear to be vulnerable. He could not tolerate any loss of control. So he attached himself to objects, not to people. Perhaps Connor would teach him to love. She had failed—oh, boy, had she failed…
‘I’m fine,’ she lied, terrified that he was registering just how much he could still affect her.
Gianni looked back at her. She was so small, so slender, so pale, haunted eyes fixed to him as if he was about to unfurl a set of cloven hooves and a toasting fork. Fine? The fear she couldn’t hide filled him with seething bitterness.
Suddenly he wished her memory had stayed lost. Memories were bloody painful afflictions! That night in the hotel she had been so sweet. Trusting, open, just as he remembered her. The only person alive who had ever treated him as if he was just an ordinary guy. Nagging him when he was late, complaining when he was preoccupied, yawning through the business news and totally forgetting about him when she was out in her precious garden. In every way she had been different from every other woman he had had, either before or since.
Once she would have filled this awful silence, instinctively understanding that he couldn’t, that when he was wound up about something he turned cold and aggressive and silent in self-defence. Then he reminded himself that this bit would be over soon. Not for nothing had he spent the past twenty-four hours seeking a rational solution to the mess they were in. And around dawn, he had come up with the answer.
Not perfect, but simple. And the instant he made that proposal Milly would go back to normal—well, maybe not immediately, he conceded grudgingly, but obviously she’d be over the moon. He’d also have the tactical advantage of surprise. She’d appreciate that he was making a really huge and stupendously generous effort for Connor’s sake. And naturally she’d be grateful. Grateful enough to go back upstairs with him and consolidate their new understanding in the most logical way of all?
Milly knew she was gaping at Gianni like a pheasant looking up the barrel of a shotgun. But the lurch of her heart had appalled her. Feeling that sensitive to dark, deep flashing eyes as chilly as a winter’s day was not a good sign. Noticing that he looked shockingly spectacular in a casual designer suit the colour of caramel was an even worse sign. Say something, a voice in her head screeched, for heaven’s sake, say something. But her mind was a complete blank. She didn’t know where to start or how she would ever stop if she did start. Silence seemed a lot safer.
Milly stiffened as Gianni extended a hand to her. It was the very last gesture she had expected from him. Uncurling her fingers, she lifted her arm in slow motion. He got tired waiting. He brought up his other hand, closed both round her waist and lifted her down to the marble-tiled floor.
A slight gasp of disconcertion escaped her. However, the sudden shrinkage in stature she suffered helped. Suddenly her strained eyes were mercifully level with Gianni’s chest.
‘We’ve got some talking to do,’ Gianni informed her next.
Milly was poleaxed. Only a woman who had been intimately involved with Gianni could have understood that acknowledgement to be ground-breaking and incredible. Whenever she had wanted to talk, seriously talk about personal things, Gianni had had a hundred evasive techniques. ‘Later’ had been a particular favourite, followed by a sudden rampant desire for her body or a pressing appointment. It had taken her a very long time to appreciate that ‘later’ meant never.
‘A lot…’ Milly agreed breathlessly, suddenly experiencing a stark, shameful stab of pained resentment. What had changed Gianni? Who had changed him? Who had finally persuaded him that honest communication was the only option when the going got tough? It was what they had once so badly needed, but the offer was coming way too late for her to benefit.
He showed her into a library, where a log fire was burning in the grate. He strode over to the desk, lifted the phone and ordered coffee. Stilling by the hearth, Milly stretched her unsteady hands out to the heat and let her gaze travel around the magnificent room with its warm red décor.
‘What do you think of Heywood House?’ Gianni asked.
‘It’s beautiful.’ She resisted the urge to admit that it wasn’t at all what she had expected. She didn’t want to stray onto impersonal topics and deflect him from anything he might want to say to her.
‘The gardens are famous. I’ve ensured that they’ve been maintained to the highest standards,’ Gianni advanced smoothly.
Milly wandered over to the nearest window. She adored gardens, but right now she was so enervated she couldn’t even appreciate the wonderful view. ‘It looks tremendous.’
‘There’s a rare plant centre attached to the estate. I rebuilt it,’ Gianni continued. ‘It doesn’t exactly do a roaring trade, but the manager tells me it’s a real haunt for the connoisseur.
Bewildered by this flood of extraneous information from a male who barely knew the difference between a rose and a daisy and was content to remain in a state of blissful ignorance, Milly suddenly frowned as her mind homed in on something else entirely, and she exclaimed, ‘For goodness’ sake, Gianni…I haven’t even spoken to Louise! What on earth must she be thinking? She’s my partner and my best friend and I didn’t even phone her!’
The silence spread and spread.
Gianni dealt her a fulminating look. ‘I phoned her. She was very concerned. I said you’d be in touch when you were well enough…OK?’
Milly released her breath, relieved by that assurance. But she wondered why he had delivered the news with such an air of impatience. It wasn’t as if she had interrupted him when he’d been talking about anything important. The door opened and a maid entered with a tray of coffee. It was a welcome diversion.
She sat down in a leather wing-back armchair and poured the coffee. Without hesitation she added three sugars to Gianni’s cup.
‘We’ll deal with practicalities first, get them out of the way,’ Gianni announced with decisive cool. ‘And naturally the first thing I want to know is, have you any idea who left you lying badly injured on that road in Cornwall? And how did it happen?’
Milly jerked and froze, her heartbeat thudding loudly in her ears. Such obvious questions. Why hadn’t she been prepared for them?
‘It must be distressing for you to have to remember that night. But it has to be dealt with.’ Gianni watched her with keen, dark expectant eyes.
Milly was shot right back to that night, forced to recall things she would have preferred to leave buried, things that had nothing whatsoever to do with the accident. She lost colour. Her hand began to shake. She set down her coffee again with a clatter. She hoped to heaven Gianni didn’t ask her what she had been doing in Cornwall in the first place, because if he did ask, she certainly didn’t feel like telling him the truth.
‘Milly…?’ Gianni pressed, more gently. ‘Do you remember what happened now?’
‘M-mostly…not very clearly.’ A taxi had dropped her off at the cottage where Stefano had been staying with his girlfriend. She had forgotten to ask the taxi driver to wait for her: a very foolish oversight. But it had taken a lot of courage to seek out and confront Stefano. And when she had walked back out of that cottage she had felt dead inside and she really hadn’t cared about anything. Not the darkness, not the wind, not the rain. She had just started walking away as fast as she could.
‘I got lost,’ Milly muttered tightly.
‘Where was this? Why were you were on foot?’
‘I’d gone visiting…and, coming back, I messed up my transport arrangements. So was walking,’ she began afresh, staring blindly at the silver sugar bowl, determined not to tell him any actual lies. ‘It was a horrible wet night.’
Gianni bent down, closed a hand over her knotted fingers and eased her slowly upright into the circle of his arms. ‘It was also a long time ago, cara. It can’t hurt you now.’
Helplessly, Milly leant into him for support, but she felt like a fraud. ‘There really isn’t much to remember, Gianni. I think I may have heard the car that hit me approaching but that’s it. There’s nothing else. I don’t recall seeing a car or being hit.’ She bowed her damp brow against his chest. ‘What has always given me the creeps is the knowledge that somebody robbed me while I was lying there hurt. I had an overnight bag with me.’
‘The hit-and-run driver and the thief may well have been the same person,’ Gianni ground out, and she could feel the massive restraint he was exerting over his anger on her behalf. The knowledge of that anger comforted her. ‘I’m afraid the police will be hoping for more details than you’ve been able to give me.’
‘The police?’ Milly echoed in surprise.
‘Some bastard left you lying by the side of that road like a piece of rubbish!’ Gianni reminded her with barely suppressed savagery. ‘You’d be dead if a passing motorist hadn’t seen you and contacted the emergency services. It’s a complete miracle that you didn’t have a miscarriage!’
Milly sighed. ‘I don’t really want to talk to the police about this again.’
Gianni veiled his gaze. ‘You’ll have to make a new statement, but I can understand that you don’t like the idea of it all being raked up again,’ he conceded soothingly as he settled her back into the wing-back chair. ‘I’ve still got a few questions I’d like answered, but we’ll leave them for now.’
‘Yes…’ Milly averted her pounding head, stomach still churning. She really didn’t want Gianni to know she’d gone to see Stefano. She knew what interpretation he would put on that revelation. And Stefano had clearly known better than to ever mention her visit. That was no surprise to her. Gianni’s kid brother had treated her like Typhoid Mary that night. With great difficulty, Milly put away that memory.
‘Right,’ Gianni breathed in a next-on-the-agenda tone, as if he was chairing a board meeting. ‘I imagine you’d like to know where we’re heading now.’
Considering that in two entire years with her Gianni had not once even hinted that they might be heading anywhere beyond his next flying visit, Milly was taken aback by that concise assurance. She looked up, sapphire-blue eyes very wide and wary.
Gianni leant back against his desk, looking incredibly sophisticated and elegant in his unstructured caramel suit and black T-shirt. Milly averted her head again and rubbed at a worn seam on her jeans with restive fingers.
‘To start with I should tell you why I bought this place two years ago.’
Milly frowned, not understanding why that should be of interest to her.
‘Heywood House is convenient both to the airport and the City of London. I hoped that once I found you both, you would move in here—’
‘Move in here?’ Milly glanced up in frank bewilderment. ‘Why?’
Gianni sighed, as if she was being incredibly slow on the uptake. ‘Naturally I want you to live at a location where I can easily maintain regular contact with Connor. Heywood House fits the bill very well.’
‘Two years ago, you purchased this property for me?’ Milly was thinking out loud, and she flushed with embarrassment when reality sank in a split second later.
Gianni had bought a stately home and turned it into a treasure house. Naturally not for her benefit but for his child’s! Even that far back Gianni had been making plans. Selecting the kind of home he wanted his child to grow up in, filling it with priceless artwork and furniture to create a gilded cocoon of wealth and privilege. Could she ever have dreamt three years ago that he would warm to the concept of being a father to such an extent? With an effort, she forced her attention back to him.
‘To all intents and purposes Heywood House will be yours, until Connor reaches his twenty-fifth birthday.’ Gianni made that distinction with complete cool. ‘I intend to sign all the documentation to that effect and this is now your home. I want you to feel secure here.’
Everything to be tied up all nice and tight and legal. Very much Gianni’s stamp. Gianni had already worked out how best to control her and, through her, his child. Where they lived, how they lived. And, to that end, Heywood House would be put in trust for their son. Milly stared down into her untouched coffee, feeling incredibly hurt and humiliated. He didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her now—but then had he ever?
For the first time since she had recovered her memory, Milly recalled the DNA testing Gianni had mentioned. A shudder of very real repulsion ran through her in response. One glimpse of her with Stefano and that had been that. Instantly Gianni had been willing to believe her capable of any evil. Two years of her loving faith had been eradicated in a nano-second. Now, it seemed, he didn’t even trust her not to try and make a claim for a share of this house at some time in the future.
‘I thought you’d be pleased about the gardens and the plant centre.’ Gianni regarded her like a generous benefactor, still awaiting the gratitude he saw as his due and keen to give her a helpful nudge in the right direction. ‘Obviously those factors influenced my choice of this particular property.’
Unable to credit that, hating her as he did, he could have been influenced by any desire to please her, Milly swallowed hard. ‘Didn’t it occur to you that I might want to live somewhere of my own choosing?’
‘Within certain parameters,’ Gianni qualified without hesitation. ‘This is my son we’re talking about, but let’s put that issue aside for now. I have something far more important I want to discuss with you…’
A slightly jagged laugh escaped Milly’s tight, dry throat. Her nerves were already stretched tight as piano wires.
‘What’s so funny?’ Gianni asked.
‘Once, whenever I said anything like that to you, it really used to spook you,’ Milly reminded him helplessly.
His lean, dark features clenched hard, the dark, deep flashing eyes chilling to polar ice. “‘Once” is not a barrier we want to cross. I don’t want to rake over the past.’
The sudden freeze in the atmosphere raised goosebumps on Milly’s over-sensitive skin. She tore her strained and shadowed gaze away. She got the message. Three years ago he had denied her the chance to give her version of what happened the night he had found her with Stefano. And now he was telling her that she would never get that chance. Never, ever. Only Gianni, so practised at keeping unpleasant or awkward things in tight little separate compartments, could fondly imagine it possible for her to respect such an embargo.
‘For Connor’s sake, we need to move on,’ Gianni added with cool emphasis.
Honest communication? Why on earth had she got her hopes up? They were to move on without ever having paused to consider. Gianni hadn’t changed one iota. And Gianni was far too proud to confront an episode that had undoubtedly savaged his ego. So their entire past had now become a conversational no-go area. For Connor’s sake. That phrase had an almost pious ring of superiority. Naturally it did. Gianni thought Connor’s mother was the immoral slut who had lured his kid brother into bed with her.
‘I’d like my son to have my name,’ Gianni admitted.
Milly raised dulled eyes, wishing he could look ugly to her just once, wishing his flaws would shriek at her loud enough to destroy the dangerous emotions swilling about inside her. But, no, Gianni lounged back against that desk looking drop-dead gorgeous, relaxed and in spectacular control of the situation.
Milly rose to her feet. She parted her lips, and with a defiance she could not withstand breathed raggedly, ‘Your brother assaulted me.’
Gianni froze. A kind of incredulous outrage laced with black fury flared in his brilliant eyes.
‘Just thought you should know,’ Milly completed shakily.
‘Keep quiet…’ All cool ditched, Gianni studied her with glittering rage and derision, every line of his big, powerful body poised like a predator about to spring. ‘I won’t listen to your lies. I will not discuss this with you, capisce? One more word and I walk out of this room—’
‘Go ahead.’ Milly stood her ground. Indeed, all of a sudden she felt as if she was wedged in concrete, ready to hold steady through any storm.
‘And I head straight for my lawyers and I throw everything I’ve got at you and fight for custody of Connor!’
Milly’s stomach lurched as suddenly as if Gianni had thrown her off a cliff. White as milk, she gazed back at him in horror.
‘Now you’ve got the message,’ Gianni murmured grittily, his anger back under lock and key as he recognised her response.
The shock of that unashamed threat savaged Milly. And suddenly she couldn’t bear to look at him any longer. She was too damned scared of him. Scared of Gianni for the first time in her life. Before, she had only feared his hold on her emotions. Now she feared a whole lot of other things as well. His innate ruthlessness, his enormous wealth, the dangerous power and influence he had at his fingertips.
She was shaking, and she hated that he should see that. But she didn’t need a crystal ball to guess the sort of weapons which might be used against her in any custody battle. A woman capable of spending three years living another woman’s life might well fail to impress a judge as a stable mother figure. In fact, her recent past would put her at a distinct disadvantage, Milly reflected bitterly.
‘But I wouldn’t do that, to you or Connor. I think you’re a great mother. I have no intention of trying to take him away from you. OK?’ Gianni breathed tautly.
Her arms protectively wrapped around herself and her back turned to him, Milly continued to stare blindly out of the window. His words meant nothing to her. She knew she would never forget the way Gianni had just turned on her. His façade of civilised cool and control had dropped to let her see the cold menace that still lay beneath. Why was she so shocked? Hadn’t she always known that Gianni was totally incapable of forgiving her for what he believed she had done?
‘I suppose I should’ve expected you to come out with that sort of stuff today,’ Gianni continued flatly. ‘But you have to accept that I’ve put all that behind me.’
Her supposed betrayal. Like a gun he concealed behind his back, always primed to shoot.
‘To the extent…’ Unusually, Gianni hesitated. ‘You’ve really messed this moment up, Milly.’
‘What moment?’ she muttered in confusion.
‘I was about to ask you to marry me. Accidenti, I am asking you to marry me!’ Gianni rephrased, with more than a suggestion of gritted teeth.
Milly went from shock into bigger, deeper shock. She had to consciously will her feet to turn around so that she could look at him again. She had to look at him to believe the evidence of her own ears.
A dark line of colour accentuating his stunning cheekbones, Gianni subjected her to a grim, glittering appraisal. ‘In spite of everything you’ve done, I’m willing to give you another chance and make you my wife.’
‘Wife…’ Milly could hardly get her tongue round that astounding word. ‘But you hate me…’
Gianni raised two lean brown hands and spread them at truly impressive speed to indicate his distaste for that subject. ‘I don’t want to get into emotions here. They’re quite irrelevant.’
‘Irrelevant…’ Milly stared at him with huge wondering eyes.
‘All that really matters is that you’re the mother of my son. Connor deserves a proper family life and he’s not going to get that if I’m just the guy who flies in to visit every week,’ Gianni pointed out levelly. ‘I want to be a real father. I don’t want him turning round and asking me as a teenager why I never thought enough of him to marry his mother and be a genuine part of his life.’
Milly nodded in slow motion.
‘Then there’s us,’ Gianni added in an obvious afterthought. ‘Let’s be frank, cara. You wouldn’t kick me out of bed.’
Hot, humiliated colour drenching her former pallor, Milly discovered that she wanted to kick him to kingdom come.
‘I don’t see any reason why things shouldn’t go right back to the way they were,’ Gianni told her with complete conviction. ‘I still find it a real challenge to keep my hands off you.”
‘That’s a…a compliment?’ Milly prompted unevenly.
Gianni slanted an ebony brow. ‘I’m asking you to marry me. I can understand that you’re pretty surprised by this development, but you should be really pleased.’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ Gianni repeated with unconcealed incredulity. ‘It’s what you always secretly wanted. Do you think I didn’t realise that?’
Kicking him to kingdom come wouldn’t be enough. It would be too quick, too clean. Milly wanted him stretched on a rack and tortured. How could a male so very clever make a marriage proposal sound so deeply offensive? It had to be deliberate. He had decided he had to marry her for Connor’s sake, but he was making it brutally clear that his sole use for her would be sexual. Connor deserved a relationship; she didn’t.
Gianni surveyed Milly’s frozen little face with mounting tension. He could feel his temper rising again, no matter how hard he tried to ram it down. Wasn’t she capable of a logical reaction? First she had wrecked everything by actually daring to refer to that disgusting episode with Stefano. Next she had told stupid lies. And now she was reacting to his extraordinarily generous proposal as if he had insulted her beyond belief!
Here he was, striving in the only way he could to make amends for his own errors of judgement over the past few days! He was giving her what she must always have wanted when she least deserved it, but not one ounce of appreciation was he receiving for his impressive ability to rise above her unforgivable act of betrayal three years ago! And, finally, he had been honest with her, Gianni reflected with smouldering resentment. Right from the instant he had first met her, she had stressed how important it was that he should always be honest with her. So he had been honest. Only somehow honesty wasn’t working like any magic charm!
‘You said that to all intents and purposes this is my home,’ Milly reminded him tightly.
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Gianni demanded with stark impatience, brilliant eyes glittering like ice shards.
‘If this is my home, I can ask you to get out of it,’ Milly informed him, her breath catching audibly in her throat. ‘So I’m asking…’
Gianni frowned at her. ‘Run that by me again.’
Milly thrust up her chin. ‘In fact, I’m not asking. I’m telling you to get out!’
Wrathful incredulity emanated from Gianni in powerful waves. His eyes flashed shimmering gold. ‘How dare you talk to me like that?’
Milly’s temper rose hot enough to equal his own. She took a step forward. ‘You’re complaining about how I’m talking to you? You dragged me back into bed at the hotel just so that you could satisfy yourself that you could still pull me like a Christmas cracker!’
‘Dio…how can you be so vulgar?’ Gianni shot at her thunderously.
‘Vulgar? Me?’ Milly gasped in disbelief. ‘Would you listen to yourself? You’re the cockroach who had to boast about the fact that I didn’t have the wit to kick you out of bed! Well, now that I’ve got my memory back, I know I’d sooner be dead than let you touch me again!’
‘Is that a fact?’ Before she could even guess his intention, Gianni reached out and simply lifted her up into his powerful arms as if she were a doll.
‘Put me down this minute!’ Milly shrieked at him furiously.
His mouth slammed down on hers like a silencer. Rage hurtled up inside her, only to be transformed into a blaze of white-hot hunger so intense it literally hurt. It physically hurt to want, to need, to crave to such an extent, for nothing he could do could ever be enough. She always wanted more. The drugging heat of his mouth, the provocative stab of his tongue driving her wild only made her ache unbearably for the fulfilment that he alone could give. Heartbeat pounding, pulses racing, she dug her fingers into his luxuriant hair and kissed him back so frantically she couldn’t even stop to breathe.
Gianni dragged his mouth off hers. He was breathing heavily, but his dark golden eyes shimmered with unashamed satisfaction. ‘Somehow I don’t think death before dishonour is likely to figure in this reconciliation, cara mia.’
The raging fire within Milly shrank to a tiny mortified flicker and was doused entirely by an all-consuming ache of regret. Her cheeks a hectic pink, she removed her fingers shakily from his hair, tormented by her own weakness.
Gianni lowered her to the carpet again with exaggerated care.
Immediately she spun away in a jerky movement. ‘Go, Gianni,’ she urged in desperation.
‘Call me when you’ve thought things over,’ he murmured silkily, all cool now restored.
Milly listened to the quiet thud of the door closing on his exit and slumped, bitterly ashamed of her own behaviour. He had levelled the score. He had had the last word. Although, as usual, language hadn’t played much part in her defeat. But it hadn’t always been like that between them, she reminded herself fiercely. Once she had been strong enough to hang onto her pride and independence and protect herself from a male determined not to commit himself…
Five years ago, on the very first day they met and admitted to diametrically opposed expectations, Gianni had accurately forecast that one of them was set to crash into a solid brick wall.
Gianni had wanted a no-strings-attached affair, but Milly had wanted and needed something much deeper. Within the first week, she had recognised the disturbing intensity of her own emotional response to him. And the discovery that one kiss could set a bushfire burning inside her had been no more welcome.
Milly had tried to back off and protect herself by making loads of rules to ensure that she never emulated poor Lisa with Stevie. No man was going to turn her into a puppet on a string! So, if Gianni hadn’t called far enough in advance, she’d always been busy. If Gianni had just turned up without calling, she’d always been on the way out of the door to a pressing engagement. If Gianni had been late, she’d gone out and stayed out. And she had never, ever called him.
But then Gianni had gone over to New York for three weeks, and her whole world had turned gloomy grey. She’d begun marking off days on the calendar, hanging over the phone anxiously, and driving herself crazy with the suspicion that he might have other women in his life.
‘Have you?’ Milly had asked baldly, the first time she’d seen him again.
‘Of course I have,’ Gianni admitted without hesitation. ‘I travel a great deal. Anything else would be impractical.’
Feeling as if she had been slugged by a sack of coal, Milly cleared her throat. ‘But if we have an affair, that would change…wouldn’t it?’ she almost whispered.
Gianni lifted one broad shoulder in an infinitesimal shrug, too slick an operator to be entrapped by a verbal response.
But Milly had got her answer in that silence. And, having naively assumed that even Gianni would concede that intimacy should be accompanied by total fidelity, she was shocked and furious. ‘All I can say is, thank heaven I found this out before I slept with you!’ she slung as she rose from her seat and stalked out of the restaurant.
‘I don’t like public scenes. Nor do I admire jealous, possessive women,’ Gianni imparted chillingly, outside on the pavement.
‘Then what are you doing with me?’ Milly demanded. ‘I’m jealous and I’m very possessive, so get out of my life now and don’t come back!’
Gianni stayed away another full month.
Milly lost a stone in weight, but she didn’t wait by the phone; she didn’t ever expect to see him again. But Gianni was waiting for her to come home one evening when she finished her supermarket shift.
One look and she was sick with simultaneous nerves and sheer, undiluted joy. Gianni took her back to his Park Lane apartment. He dropped the news that she no longer had competition. She asked him how she could be sure of that. Gianni could freely admit that he didn’t trust anybody, but, faced with her lack of faith in him, he was outraged. They almost had another fight.
She was in tears, and then he kissed her—a standard Gianni response when things got too emotional. And the wild passion just blazed up so powerfully inside her she finally surrendered. He was astonished when he realised he was her first lover.
Making love with Gianni was glorious; staying for breakfast feeling totally superfluous while he made calls and read stockmarket reports was something less than glorious.
So Milly drew up a new set of rules. No staying overnight. No asking when she would see him again. Always saying goodbye with a breezy smile. By then, she knew she was in love with him, but she was well aware that he didn’t love her. He found her good company. She made him laugh. He couldn’t get enough of her in bed. But never once did he do or say anything that gave her any hope that their affair might last.
As part of her college course that year Milly had to spend two months gaining practical experience of working in a large garden or park. She was allotted a place on a big private estate far from London. When she informed Gianni that she would be going away, they had a blistering row.
‘How the hell am I supposed to see you up there?’ he demanded incredulously.
‘You’re out of the country at least two weeks out of every four,’ she reminded him.
‘Porca miseria…you can’t make a comparison like that!’
‘Don’t say what you’re dying to say,’ she warned him tautly. ‘It’ll make me very angry.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
So she said it for him. ‘You think your life and your business empire are one hundred times more important than anything in mine.’
‘Obviously they are,’ Gianni stated without flinching. ‘And, while we’re on the subject, I can think of a thousand more suitable career choices than a peculiar desire to go grubbing about in the dirt of somebody else’s garden!’
‘It’s what I want to do. It’s what I’ll be doing a long, long time after you’re gone. So really, in every way, it has to take precedence,’ Milly retorted shakily.
‘Over me?’ Gianni breathed chillingly. ‘Haven’t I offered to find you a decent job?’
‘I’m happy with the career choice I’m training for.’
‘Fine. Just don’t expect me to follow you north to the rural wastes!’
‘I never did expect you to. You’re far too used to people doing the running for you. You never, ever put yourself out for anybody,’ Milly pointed out with quiet dignity. ‘So that’s that, then. We’re at the end of the road.’
‘Spare me the clichés at least,’ Gianni ground out as she walked straight-backed to the door. ‘Tell me, am I being dumped again?’
Milly thought about it, and nodded.
‘This is a wind-up,’ Gianni drawled in icy condemnation. ‘This is a power-play.’
‘Goodbye,’ she said gruffly.
He did come up north. His limo got bogged down in a country lane. He was fit to be tied when he ended up lodged in a very small and far from luxurious hotel. And he was furious when she wouldn’t let him come to the estate to pick her up for the weekend. He didn’t appreciate being told that she didn’t want to shock the head gardener and his wife, who were letting her stay in their guest-room. By the time she had finished explaining that a humble student trainee couldn’t have a very rich, flash older boyfriend without her reputation taking a nosedive, and the all too human effect that might have on her receiving a fair assessment of her work, Gianni was not in a very good mood.
‘So I’ll buy you a big garden of your own,’ he announced, in the dark of the night.
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Then I’ll buy the garden for myself. I’ll pay you to look after it for me!’
‘You’re embarrassing me,’ she groaned. ‘Stop living in fantasy land.’
‘When I’ve got free time, I’d like you to be available occasionally.’
‘I know how that feels. You’re away much more than I am,’ she complained sleepily, looking forward to spending two entire nights with him, snuggling up to him with a euphoric smile in the darkness.
‘Do you think the head gardener and his wife would be shocked if I delivered you back strangled?’ Gianni mused reflectively. ‘What am I doing here in this lousy dump with you?’
Sex, she reflected. Sex and only sex—and it was an ongoing source of amazement to her that her body could possibly have such a hold on him. It was a perfectly ordinary body. Slender, well-honed, but far from being centrefold material. Yet he kept on coming back to her. She was developing expectations on that basis. That worried her terribly. After all, some day soon he would lose interest and vanish for good.
He came up north three more weekends. She was so happy she couldn’t hide it from him. It was getting harder and harder to obey her own rules. It was as if he knew her rules and worked overtime to try and get her to compromise them. That next summer he was away a lot, and she pined, went off her food, couldn’t sleep. He gave her a mobile phone and she accepted it, and used it much more than she felt she should.
Then they had their six-month anniversary, and she was stupid enough to mention it. He frowned. ‘That long?’ he questioned with brooding coolness, and went silent on her for the rest of the evening.
He didn’t call her for a week after that. So she called him in a temper and told him he was history and that she was going to find a man who would treat her with the respect she deserved.
‘Tell him in advance how demanding you are,’ Gianni advised helpfully. ‘That you have a very hot temper, a habit of saying things you don’t mean and a stubborn streak a mile wide.’
‘I’m finished with you—’
‘I’ll pick you up for dinner at eight, and if you’re not there, I’m not waiting. It’s time to join the grown-ups and stop playing hard to get.’
Just before she started back at college, she suffered what appeared to be a really bad bout of tonsillitis, and instead of getting better she lost her energy and her appetite. Gianni was in South America. She told him that she thought she had the flu and soldiered on, exhausted, to her classes and her part-time job. By the time Gianni flew back to London she was so weak that walking from the bed to the door was enough to reduce her to a perspiring wreck.
Gianni was furious with her. He got another doctor. Acute glandular fever was diagnosed. She was told she would have to rest for weeks. She wouldn’t be fit for her classes or for any other form of work—and by the way, the doctor added, physical intimacy was out for the foreseeable future too. That quickly, her whole world fell apart. At the time she just could not comprehend why Gianni, threatened by weeks of celibacy, should still seem so incredibly supportive.
Forty-eight hours later, she was flown to Paris in Gianni’s private jet and installed in a fabulous townhouse with a garden. When she was least able to oppose him Gianni made his move, at supersonic speed.
His every argument had been unanswerable. Who would look after her in London? How could he take care of her from a distance? And she loved Paris, didn’t she? If she couldn’t study and she couldn’t work, she might as well regard her lengthy convalescence as a vacation. And the sad truth was that she was so desperately grateful that Gianni wasn’t abandoning her she didn’t protest that much.
He was really wonderful when she was ill. She learnt that he liked to be needed, and that in constantly asserting her independence she had been missing out on probably the very best side of him. From that time on, Gianni became the love of her life, the centre of her existence. She stopped trying to contain her own feelings. The last barriers came down. She told him she loved him. He froze, but he didn’t back off. The more she told him, the less he froze, and eventually he even began to smile.
And she decided then that maybe if she absolutely showered him in love and trust and affection, if she gave and gave and gave, with complete honesty and generosity, she might break his barriers down too. Her only goal was that he should return her love. So she never did go back to complete her college course.
Gianni became her full-time occupation. He finally got everything the way he wanted. He got to buy her clothes and jewellery, to switch her between the house in Paris and the apartment in New York, according to what best suited his travelling itinerary. She became his mistress full-time without ever acknowledging what she had become. And he was right; she was deliriously happy—right up until the day she discovered she was pregnant.
In the heat of passion, Gianni had on several occasions neglected to take precautions. She knew that. He knew that. But, like so much else, they had never discussed the fact that he had taken that risk.
Yet the evening she broke the news Gianni went into shock, like a teenager who had honestly believed it couldn’t possibly be that easy to get a girl pregnant.
‘You can’t be…’ he said, turning visibly pale beneath his bronzed skin.
‘I am…no doubt about it. No mistake,’ she stressed, getting more and more apprehensive. ‘It was that night we—’
‘Let’s not get bogged down in details,’ Gianni interrupted, striding across the room to help himself to a very large brandy.
‘You don’t want to talk about this, do you?’ she muttered tightly.
‘Not right now, no.’ Quick glance at gold watch, apologetic look laced with a hint of near desperation.
‘You’ve got some calls to make?’
‘No—’
‘You have a business meeting at eleven o’clock at night? Well, some celebration this is turning out to be.’
‘Celebration?’ Gianni awarded her a truly stunned appraisal. ‘You’re pregnant and we’re not married and you want to celebrate?’
‘Since you’re the one who’s been playing Russian roulette with my body, maybe you’d like to tell me what end result you expected?’
‘I just didn’t think!’ he ground out, like a caged lion, longing to claw at the bars surrounding him, resisting the urge with visible difficulty.
Yet he thought about everything else…incessantly. He thought rings round her. He planned business manoeuvres in his sleep. He was seriously telling her that he hadn’t once acknowledged the likely consequences of making love without contraception?
‘I’m not having a termination. You might as well know that now,’ she whispered sickly.
‘Madre di Dio…why do you always think you know what’s on my mind when you don’t?’ he slashed back at her rawly. ‘I don’t believe in abortion!’
Only a little of her tension evaporated. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed.’
‘I’m going out.’
‘I know.’ She closed the door softly, heard the brandy goblet smash and shivered. He was right. So much of the time she did not have one earthly clue what was going on inside him. But that night she believed she did. He might not believe in abortion, but he still didn’t want her to have his baby.
The next development shocked her rigid. Gianni walked out of the Paris apartment that night and vanished into thin air for thirty-six hours. He even switched off his mobile phone—an unheard-of development. His security staff went crazy the next morning, questioning her, checking the hospitals, considering kidnapping. They weren’t able to accept that Gianni should choose to deliberately take himself off without cancelling his appointments.
Milly convinced herself that he had gone to some other woman.
But Gianni reappeared, looking pale and grim as death, hiding behind an enormous bunch of flowers. And she didn’t say a word, behaved as if he had only stepped out an hour earlier. Patently relieved by that low-key reception, Gianni swept her up into his arms and just held her for the first time in his life, so tightly she could barely breathe.
‘You just took me by surprise. My own father…if he was my father,’ he qualified in a roughened undertone. ‘He was abusive. I don’t know how to be a father, but I don’t want to lose you!’
She had never loved Gianni more than she loved him at that moment. It felt like an emotional breakthrough: Gianni trusting her enough to refer to the childhood he never mentioned and actually admitting to self-doubt. Her heart and her hopes soared as high as the sky. Yet, just two short months later, Gianni had almost destroyed her with his lack of his faith…
Coming back to the present to gaze like a wakening sleeper round the library of Heywood House, Milly found that her cheeks were wet with tears. You’ve got to stop this, she warned herself angrily. There is life after Gianni. Three years ago she hadn’t felt able to cope with that challenge. But now she was older, wiser…only still as hopelessly in love with him as she had ever been.