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‘Your love for him shines in your eyes,’ the Contessa said softly.
Leah was in the best of good moods and feeling sentimental when the limousine delivered her home to thecastello. She walked in the front door held wide by a curiously tense Jacobo and glanced up with a smile as Gio stalked into the hall.
‘My goodness, I wasn’t expecting you back until tomorrow,’ she told him chirpily.
‘Was that why you felt confident enough to believe that I wouldn’t realise that you’d betrayed my trust?’
CHAPTER TEN
AND,THATFAST, Leah knew that somehow Gio also knew where she had been and her tummy sank like a stone to her very toes. ‘How did you find out where I was?’ she almost whispered, horror gripping her when she collided with the biting, stinging chill of his glittering wolfish gaze.
In all their relationship, Gio had never looked at her like that: with raging hostility, fierce condemnation and an even more terrifying coldness. It suggested that in his eyes she had put herself beyond the pale and done something absolutely unforgivable. Her tummy twisted, sudden pallor now stamping her taut features.
‘It wasn’t difficult. You hadn’t bothered to cover your tracks because you didn’t know I’d be arriving back early. I wanted to surprise you.’ Gio visibly gritted his even white teeth at that recollection. ‘Dio mio, didn’t that turn out well? Almost as well as when I decided to surprise Gabriella. I don’t learn, do I?’
‘Gio,’ she began breathlessly.
‘I called your driver to ask where you were. In the future if you’re trying to hide something, you need to bribe your driver,’ Gio warned her flatly.
And it was only at that moment that she truly understood how very shaken up and upset he was underneath that cold front of control. He was, after all, standing in the hall loudly saying private things where anyone might have overheard them, but she rather suspected Jacobo had guessed that trouble was in the air and he had quietly removed himself and every other staff member from the vicinity.
‘Come into the drawing room.’ Leah’s voice was almost a whisper because tension had stolen the breath from her lungs.
‘Oh, you’ve definitely been visiting thegrandparents,’ Gio derided. ‘This is a living room.’
In a daze, caught unprepared as she had been, that statement of reverse snobbery made her spread her gaze round the confines of the vast opulent room, with its huge wooden carved hearth bearing the Zanetti coat of arms, ornate tall ceiling and decorative drapes. ‘No, it won’t ever be a living room unless you deconstruct it. It’s a drawing room because it was made like this to impress and intimidate visitors. Ordinary people don’t have spaces like this in their homes,’ she told him as though they were having a perfectly normal dialogue instead of a heart-wrenching fight that was tearing her apart inside herself.
That Gio could be hurt and angry enough to compare her to his ex-wife, who had lied about her pregnancy and slept with another man, appalled her. ‘I would have told you that I was planning to visit your grandparents, but I didn’t want to do it until I’d met them and sussed them out... I didn’t want them upsetting you in some way,’ she admitted doggedly, determined to explain her reasoning. ‘I was sort of vetting them for you in advance.’
‘Naturally, it wouldn’t have occurred to you that, ironically just like them, I had a certain prejudiced reason to keep my distance?’ Gio raised an ebony brow enquiringly. ‘They brought up my mother and she was a sociopath who didn’t have a single drop of love or compassion in her heart, even for her child. Why would I seek them out now that I am no longer vulnerable enough to actually need them?’
Leah bit her tongue, unwilling to get into such a discussion when it was for him and his grandparents to bridge all the unmentionable things that had happened to him. She didn’t think his mother’s parents would be that surprised to find out how she had treated him. She had noticed that they had not uttered a word in their daughter’s defence and had not referred to her as a victim either. ‘Perfectly normal, decent people end up raising sociopaths. It’s not their fault any more than it’s yours that your parents were...unpleasant—’
‘Grazie millefor that vote of confidence,’ Gio mocked that understatement. ‘But it doesn’t excuse your betrayal in any way.’
Leah thrust the door shut behind her and protested, ‘I didn’t betray you... I wouldneverbetray you, Gio!’
‘But you did,’ Gio threw back at her with icy bitter precision. ‘You betrayed me the instant you went behind my back to see my grandparents without my knowledge. I trusted you, Leah. Do you know how long it’s been since I trusted a woman?’ he demanded. ‘I trusted you with all my secrets and you deceived me today.’
Leah lifted her head high. ‘No, that’s not how it was. There was no betrayal of trust involved—’
‘How can there not have been when you went to seethem?’ Gio accused with wrathful emphasis. ‘You didn’t even mention what you were thinking about doing and you didn’t discuss it with me—’
‘How the heck could I discuss it with you when you’re not rational about it?’ Leah slammed back at him, her own temper finally sparking in self-defence. ‘You lit up like a firework whenever I tried to talk about them!’
‘And you’re surprised? After the rejection I had from them?’ he parried rawly.
‘No, I thought about that. You were young, Gio...you didn’t think it through...approaching them when other people were around and without warning. They got it wrong and theyknowthey got it wrong that day—’
‘It’s best that they remain in the past alongside my late parents,’ Gio opined curtly.
‘I assure you that I didn’t share anything you’ve ever told me about either of your parents with them. I didn’t spill any secrets and neither did they. That wasn’t my business and I knew that. I only said that you were a wonderful guy—’
‘You expect me to believe that?’ Gio raked back at her. ‘You positively bounced back into this house looking very pleased with yourself. So, I assume your visit to them went well on your terms. It won’t get you anywhere because I want nothing to do with them. So, why did you do it?’
‘I—’
‘I noticed that your brother was somewhat impressed by the fact that my grandparents were titled,’ Gio continued harshly. ‘And they do have an elite standing in social circles. Is that kind of social status and acceptance so important to you that you would rate that higher than my wishes and needs?’
