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While wishing for a little more enthusiasm on her part, Gio lifted his proud dark head high and moved past her into the confined hallway. He had obeyed a random prompting to visit her unannounced and was unusually uncertain of his motives. ‘I was concerned. I need to know you’re all right and that you have everything you need. This is not a good area for you to be living in—’
‘I don’t go out much at night, so that’s not a concern. You’d better come downstairs,’ she sighed, leading the way down the twisting steep stairs into the basement area, which smelt of damp and disuse.
She opened the door reluctantly into her scrupulously tidy bedroom. Gio skimmed his gaze over the drab little room, taking in the signs of damp in one corner and grimacing. ‘You shouldn’t be living like this while you’re pregnant. It’s not healthy.’
‘I’m fine. I shan’t be staying much longer anyway. In fact, I’m about to hand in my notice.’
Gio frowned. ‘Why? You’ve only been here a week or so, haven’t you?’
‘My circumstances are changing,’ Leah stated grudgingly. ‘It was unexpected.’
‘How?’ Gio asked bluntly.
‘I don’t think you’re entitled to ask me personal questions,’ Leah told him thinly.
‘If you are carrying my baby, I am naturally going to feel responsible for your welfare,’ Gio imparted curtly.
‘But it positively shines out of you that you don’twantthis to be your baby or to feel responsible!’ Leah snapped back at him, her voice rising slightly in volume.
‘Does any single man really want to become a father after one fleeting encounter with a woman who wants nothing more to do with him?’ Gio enquired very drily.
Colour stung her cheeks. ‘It wasn’t that I wanted nothing more to do with you—’
‘It was,’ Gio incised. ‘Don’t try to wrap it up. Best to be honest in our current circumstances.’
‘Look, it wasn’t like that,’ Leah protested, feeling unexpectedly guilty when he described their brief connection in such terms. ‘It was the fact that you concealed your identity and lied. I had had a recent bad experience with someone who had lied to me throughout our relationship and what you did reminded me of that and that unnerved me.’
‘I am very sorry that I pretended to be an ordinary working guy. I lied on impulse without thinking it through. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again at that point,’ Gio imparted with decided sincerity.
Leah nodded as though she understood and accepted his explanation when in truth she was neither so understanding nor so forgiving after Oliver’s deception. Oliver had destroyed her faith in her own judgement. Even before Oliver, her trust in the male sex had been seriously damaged by her father’s irresponsibility as a parent and her brother’s many broken promises and lies. She had once been so infatuated with Oliver and his status as a high-flying lawyer that she had swallowed his every word as though it were gospel. And the very memory of that weakness, that lack of judgement, still shamed Leah in her own eyes.
‘I wasn’t ready for another relationship anyway,’ Leah summarised, keen to drop the subject since she did not want to argue with him and create bad feeling for no good reason.
‘I’ve been there,’ Gio breathed, with sudden darkness shadowing his handsome features. ‘What happened to you?’
‘I once fell for someone who was lying to me from the day that we met,’ she muttered uncomfortably, not wishing to explain how blind she had been to Oliver’s unscrupulous character and behaviour.
It was not as though she were stupid and yet how else could she interpret her failure to spot Oliver as the cheat, liar and master manipulator that he had been? Oliver’s moral compass had been non-existent.
The suspicion that he was virtually paying for some other man’s mistreatment of her could only infuriate Gio and he gritted his teeth on the temptation to tell her so. A phone rang out a noisy rocky tune and she dug it out of her pocket to answer it.
‘Oh...’ she said slowly in a tone of great surprise and then suddenly she smiled, her whole face lighting up. ‘Like...rightnow?’
Mystified but genuinely excited to hear the voice of her newly discovered half-brother greeting her, Leah moved back towards her bedroom door, amused as Ari apologised profusely for his eagerness to meet her for the first time. He even told her how his wife had tried to restrain him by telling him not to crowd her on the same day that she had already had bad news delivered. A tiny giggle bubbled from Leah’s lips.
‘I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon andthisis good news,’ she murmured softly, thinking that he was family and family was something she had craved for a long time. ‘Problem is I don’t really have anywhere to entertain you here...oh, yes, I can do that... If you feed me as well, I’m yours for ever! Ten minutes? I’ll be waiting!’
Switching off her phone, she dug it back into her pocket and turned to look at Gio with colour brightening her formerly pale cheeks. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got an unexpected invitation out that I would like to accept—’
‘I was only dropping in,’ Gio conceded with a rather jerky shrug of dismissal when all he wanted to know was who had put the blush into her cheeks and lit up her big dark eyes like stars. By her enthusiasm, he assumed the caller was male and he didn’t like the direction his thoughts were travelling in one little bit.
He followed her back up the stairs, a knot of trapped rage starting to burn in his gut. He had been right to demand the DNA test and wise to call on her without warning. If he hadn’t done so, he wouldn’t have realised that she had another man in her life.
‘I’ll keep in touch,’ he breathed tautly at the front door.
‘If you like but it’s not necessary right now,’ Leah told him abstractedly.
Gio strode back to his car in a very bad mood, turbulent emotions washing through him in waves. As the front door shut he stayed static before stretching back in his seat to wait. Barely ten minutes later, a limousine double-parked, and a tall dark male leapt out and strode to the door. A light came on illuminating his features and incredulous recognition gripped Gio. Ari Stefanos! What the hell was Leah doing with a very married Greek billionaire? Could he be the man Leah had fallen for who had lied to her from the day they had met?
