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‘No, I’m not thinking about taking that test,’ Leah parried brightly with a determined smile. ‘You’re going to have to wait—’
‘I’ll take you home,’ Gio announced on the street.
‘Thanks, but I have someone to meet in half an hour,’ Leah told him truthfully and, turning on her heel, she walked away, looking forward to meeting Cleo for coffee and sharing her news with someone who actuallycared.
For a split second, sheer frustrated rage over that unhesitating rejection rolled through Gio. The reaction was like a violent rip tide and that unnerved him. The son of a vicious, brutal man, he had learned from adolescence to control his emotions. He had grown up in an abusive home with a father who often lost his temper and responded with his fists. That cautious attitude had bled over into a defensive control that kept any too strong feeling firmly at bay.
He did, however, register that he had got it wrong yet again with Leah and his sculpted jaw line clenched hard. He wished she came with an operating manual he could read and comprehend. He was a male of a technical bent and he liked instructions. Right now with Leah, he felt as if he were stumbling around trying to cope in daylight while he was blindfolded. He was starting to realise that throughout his life he had only ever enjoyed the most superficial of relationships and that belated awareness daunted him. But he couldlearn, he told himself grimly; he could be different if he worked hard enough at it. It wasn’t as though he were stupid—indeed Gio enjoyed a genius level IQ, which was what had rescued him from the mean streets of a poor, remote Italian town.
Leah was a little teary-eyed with Cleo. Seeing her babies for the first time had been an intensely emotional moment and she had badly needed to share it with someone, only her children’s father had, sadly, been the wrong someone. That closing question about the DNA test Gio had fixated on was the proverbial last straw for Leah. She told her delighted sister-in-law that as soon as it could be arranged, she would be delighted to join her newly discovered family in Greece. After all, Gio had made it painfully obvious that there was nothing to keep her in London...
It took Gio Zanetti almost four months to throw in the towel and admit defeat in his efforts to find Leah. He was a very stubborn man, but she had simply disappeared into thin air. Her former foster mother had confided that she would need Leah’s permission to tell him where she was and, since that had not been forthcoming, it had told Gio all he needed to know about Leah’s opinion of him. The detective agency he had hired had got nowhere trying to locate her and Gio had slowly come to believe that only someone as wealthy as he was himself could have made it possible for Leah to stage so complete a vanishing act. It was for that reason that Gio had finally bitten the bullet and arranged to meet Ari Stefanos.
Only if hewasto learn that Stefanos was behind her disappearance, Gio reflected grimly, he was highly likely to slaughter the Greek where he stood. Gio had ploughed through weeks of serious concern over Leah’s well-being. He had even gone to the police when Sally had first refused to tell him where Leah was. He had ultimately decided that Leah was almost certainly carryinghischildren because, clearly, Leah wanted nothing to do with him, socially, sexually or financially, so why would she have lied about who she had conceived her babies with? No other interpretation of her behaviour made sense. He thought of her composed response to his suspicion that she had had a past relationship with Stefanos and gritted his teeth. Whatever the relationship had been, it had obviously not amounted to much when Leah hadn’t slept with the other man.
‘Mr Stefanos will see you now...’ The announcement broke into Gio’s intense thoughts and knocked him back to reality.
‘To what do I owe the honour?’ Ari Stefanos enquired smoothly as he crossed his office and extended a lean hand in greeting.
And that fast, in the other man’s decidedly constrained welcome, Gio recognised that he had been entirely correct in his misgivings about the Greek. He shook hands and said without any expression at all, ‘Clearly, you know about Leah and I—’
‘I do,’ Ari confirmed.
‘And you know where she is?’
‘She’s staying on the island of Spinos. But not so fast, Zanetti,’ Ari countered with an edge of disrespect that made Gio’s wide shoulders straighten into a rigid line, anger firing in his broad muscular chest. ‘I have a proposition to put to you and I would like to outline that with you first and hear your answer before we go any further. I’ve ordered coffee—’
‘Not for me, thanks,’ Gio demurred curtly. ‘What is the proposition? And what is your role in my personal relationship with Leah that you feel you have the right to—?’
‘I’m her brother,’ Ari declared boldly. ‘Her closest male relative and I wish to protect her from further harm and distress.’
Her...brother? Gio was astonished. That idea hadn’t even occurred to him. Yet he had considered every other possible connection between them from the workplace to a friend of a friend. ‘But you’re an only child—’
‘My father had a hidden second family. In Leah’s current situation, I want you to marry her to protect her name and reputation. That may strike you as very old-fashioned but, in some fields, Iama very old-fashioned man. Your children should carry your surname and if you do not marry her, they will have mine. I am not asking you to make it a true marriage, but merely to go through the ceremony and part at some mutually agreeable point in the future—’
‘Thisis what Leah wants?’ Gio interrupted in disbelief.
‘Leah doesn’t even know we’re meeting. Of course she doesn’t know, and she would not welcome my interference, but I fully understand what will make her happy and a father for her twins will make her happy,’ Ari informed him drily. ‘Are you even willing to make that kind of commitment? I do have a small inducement to offer...the Castello Zanetti became my property at the end of last month—’
The urge to knock Ari’s teeth down his throat was growing mightily in Gio and both of his hands were slowly clenching into fists. ‘How did you persuade the old man to sell to you?’ he bit out rawly.
‘I’m now a family man. Your lifestyle wasn’t to his taste...any more than mine would have been prior to my marriage,’ Ari pointed out drily. ‘I don’t want the property. I merely bought it as an—’
‘Inducement,’Gio slotted in with cutting emphasis. ‘I don’t respond well to blackmail—’
‘And I don’t respond well to anyone disrespecting my sister,’ Ari countered.
‘Ididn’tdisrespect her!’ Gio ground out furiously, outraged at the manner in which he was being condemned when hehadtried to reach an accommodation with Leah. Admittedly, he had failed in that goal, but he believed that he had been civil and restrained.
Who did Ari Stefanos think he was to try and move Gio and Leah around like pieces on his chess board? He wasn’t for sale and Leah and her pregnancy were not a situation under Stefanos’ control. Leah was very much Gio’s business and he would decide what happened next,nother brother!
Leah stretched her toes in her shaded arbour overlooking the sea on her brother’s estate and sighed as she slowly wakened. As her pregnancy advanced, she had discovered that she catnapped on a regular basis and now that she was only a few weeks from delivery, that tendency had increased. In her own opinion she was as large as a beached whale and her exhaustion was understandable, only she also knew she was living a life where she was spoiled rotten and waited on hand and foot, so she felt guilty.Guiltyfor lazing about and reading and chatting and eating,guiltyfor not having a job any more,guiltyfor spending the money she had never had before,guiltyfor missing Gio...
And there it was, the fly in her ointment, the shadow on her day, the secret tripwire in her brain...this shameless missing of a guy who had started out as a harmless one-night stand before transforming into the most stubborn, tactless, persistent and hatefully annoying man alive! When had she caught feelings again? After Oliver, she had promised herself that she wouldn’t do that again, not at least until a long, long time had gone by and her judgement had improved. But meeting Gio Zanetti had simply upended her life and then Ari had found her and everything had become so complicated that her head ached just trying to think about it. Stress was bad for her and the medics had warned her of the risks, so she breathed in slow and deep to calm herself lest her blood pressure start causing problems again.
While doing that she patted her stomach with a possessive soothing hand, thinking warmly of her babies, active little creatures according to the number of nights they had kept her awake with their squirming and fluttering movements. She was a little envious of Cleo, whose twin boys had already been safely born, two beautiful healthy children called Andreas and Nikolas. Their christening was to be held the following day and Ari and Cleo were flying in to join her that very evening. The island of Spinos was gloriously peaceful, or at least the Stefanos beach house was, she adjusted, thinking of the busy resort at the far end of the island and the equally bustling village nearby. Gradually she raised herself into a seated position and opened her eyes. Midway through reaching for a chilled drink from the cooler at her feet, she froze.
A yacht the size of theTitanicwas now anchored out in the bay dominating all it surveyed. It was huge, one of those mega yachts she had read about in a magazine but never actually seen in reality, and that was saying something because when Ari was in residence they received some very wealthy visitors, who arrived in their own boats.Virgo,it was called, she thought with a frown, wondering why that name seemed vaguely familiar to her. While watching Ari’s security men setting off in a motorboat to greet the new arrivals, she watched two other speedboats race from the yacht towards the shore. One veered off to greet Ari’s security but the other continued towards the pier.
