The Sicilian's Mistress (16 page)

‘G
IANNI
…it's me,' Milly announced tautly, her grip so tight on the phone that her knuckles showed white.

‘I'm listening,' Gianni responded softly.

‘Connor's asking about you all the time.' Milly's troubled eyes were pinned to where her son sat listlessly swinging his feet. ‘When I asked you to leave, I overlooked the fact that he's lost a whole life too. The last thing he needs right now is for you to vanish as well—'

‘I can be with you in two hours,' Gianni interposed, smooth as silk, but she sensed the buzz of his satisfaction nonetheless. ‘Why did you wait four days to contact me?'

Milly tensed. ‘I needed some time to myself.'

Before he could ask her what she had decided to do about the marriage question, she finished the call. Then she breathed in very deep to steady herself.

She had lunch with Connor, who could hardly eat for excitement. Leaving him in Barbara's care, she then took herself off outdoors, keen to be elsewhere when Gianni arrived to spend time with their son.

An afternoon spent energetically digging in the walled kitchen garden which had been abandoned to the forces of nature for a good twenty years proved therapeutic. She was going to marry Gianni.
Of course
she was. If he married her, he could hardly use her recent past as a weapon against her in any custody battle. As a wife she would be safer. That way, and only that way, could she ensure that Gianni would find it extremely difficult to try and remove their son from her care.

And if she didn't marry him mightn't he eventually marry someone else? With sudden violence, Milly slashed a bram
ble out of her path. Once she would not have believed that possible. Once she would have sworn that Gianni would die single. But that conviction had died when Gianni had stunned her by proposing. Even if it was only for his son's benefit, Gianni was finally prepared to offer commitment. If Milly turned him down, sooner or later he would end up marrying some other woman.

And that was a development which Milly
knew
she would not be able to bear. She was possessive. She was very possessive. Currently hating and resenting Gianni to the same degree with which she loved him did not blind Milly to her own vulnerability. To stand by on the sidelines and watch Gianni with another woman would be to tear herself to shreds. After all, she reflected painfully, she already knew what that experience felt like. So there was a lot to be said for choosing to be miserable
with
Gianni now that she had faced the fact that she would be even more miserable without him.

‘I really love it when you dress up for me like this,
cara
…'

Milly jerked, froze, and then slowly lifted her golden head. Silhouetted against the fading light of the afternoon, Gianni was poised several feet away, a faint smile on his wide, sensual mouth. His navy cashmere coat hung open to reveal a formal pinstripe suit cut to faithfully follow his powerful frame and his long, long legs. He looked spectacular. Her eyes widened, her mouth ran dry, her heart just lurched.

Milly leant on her spade for support. Her tumbled hair was roughly caught back with a piece of twine. She wore ancient jeans, a warm but shapeless sweater and workman-like boots. Her lack of elegance didn't trouble her. But she could see it was troubling Gianni, who was reading all sorts of deeper messages into her appearance. Women wore make-up in bed with Gianni. Women spent hours dressing to go out with him. He never had known quite how to handle
her unconcern at letting him occasionally see her just as she was, bare of both fashion and artifice.

‘You lost track of time. You didn't realise I'd arrived,' Gianni decided instantly.

Milly was not in a conciliatory mood. ‘I could hardly have missed the helicopter landing, and that was what…two, three hours ago?'

‘Your phone is switched off. Barbara Withers told me where to find you.' Gianni couldn't quite conceal his irritation that he had been reduced to asking such a question. ‘You shouldn't be working outdoors in this weather.'

‘You're annoyed I wasn't waiting for you at the house,' Milly interpreted without the slightest difficulty. ‘But why come all the way down here to get an answer you don't need? The last time you were here you made it clear that you saw my answer as a foregone conclusion.'

His lean, strong face darkened, brilliant eyes veiling to reveal only a watchful glimmer of gold.

‘And,'
Milly continued flatly, aiming a particularly vicious jab of the spade at the undergrowth surrounding her, ‘as usual you were right. How
can
I say no?'

‘You're going to marry me.' Ignoring the hostile undertones with the practised ease of a male who never looked for trouble with a woman unless it rose up and slapped him smack in the face, Gianni surveyed her with a slow smile curling his expressive mouth. He retained his cool like a cloaking device, but his eyes glittered like the heart of a fire.

‘But I have certain conditions,' Milly extended gently.

Caught off guard, Gianni strode closer, stepping off the path to mire his polished Italian leather shoes in mud.
‘Conditions?'

Milly threw back her slight shoulders like a boxer about to enter the ring. ‘To start with, I'd like you to have a medical, so that I can be assured that you have a completely clean bill of health.'

His winged brows lifted. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘Whether you choose to believe it or not, I have
not
been
intimate with anybody but you,' Milly stated, watching his strikingly handsome features freeze, his big, powerful body stiffen. ‘However, you can't offer me the same reassurance, and I feel I have the right to ask.'

Gianni drew himself up to his full height, dark eyes blazing derision. ‘
Porca miseria!
You think that you can make me believe that you didn't sleep with your fiancé?'

‘I don't really care what you believe…'

‘Then what kind of nonsense is this? I have never been promiscuous…why the hell are you looking at me like that?' he demanded in fierce condemnation.

Milly returned to her digging, thinking with inescapable bitterness and pain of the speed with which he had turned to another woman three years earlier. ‘You shouldn't need to be told.'

The tense silence thundered and shouted and snarled. Flailed by pain and anger, Milly hacked at winter-bare brambles. ‘I have cause to know that you're not always
careful
with—'

‘I have never taken risks like that with anybody but you!' Gianni shot back in a savage undertone.

‘Then why with me?' Milly glanced up enquiringly.

His lean brown hands closed into powerful fists. He swung restively away from her. ‘That was different…'

‘How was it different?'

He didn't answer her. ‘A clean bill of health,' he ground out instead, as if he was spitting tacks, apparently choosing to settle for the lesser of two evils. ‘OK. I already have that. My most recent medical was less than a month ago.'

But if Gianni thought he was getting off the hook that easily he was mistaken. Milly wasn't finished yet. ‘I will also expect total fidelity.'

His eyes shot like flaming golden arrows into hers, his incredulity unfeigned. ‘
Accidenti
…where do you get the nerve to demand that of
me
?'

‘I'm thinking of Connor's need for stability.' Cheeks
burning, because her own needs had risen first and foremost to her mind, Milly focused on the distant wall.

‘Connor?'
Gianni repeated rawly.

‘You must set Connor a good example. Our son must be able to respect our marriage. So you can't have a mistress,' Milly informed him, warming to her theme by the second. ‘And if I were to discover that you had been unfaithful, I'm afraid I would have to divorce you. I won't have Connor damaged by a destructive relationship.'

All tight-mouthed tolerance now fully breached, Gianni slashed a savage hand through the air. ‘You are lecturing me about…
fidelity
?' His Sicilian accent was so thick she had to strain to comprehend that final word.

‘I don't think it's a
lecture
to state what I want up front,' Milly responded stubbornly. ‘And, after all, you
did
say that you had put the past behind you…'

Sheer rage turned Gianni pale beneath his vibrant bronze skin. In seething silence he studied her, as if he just could not believe that she had dared to remind him of that statement.

‘And finally,' Milly added not quite steadily, watching the ice front settle over him like her most dangerous old enemy, ‘I'm not prepared to sign a pre-nuptial contract.'

At that provocative announcement Gianni appraised her with eyes that would have chilled a polar bear, aggression emanating from every dangerously still and silent inch of him.

‘Not because I have any desire to get my hands on a larger share of your wealth,' Milly explained heavily. ‘But because I believe that the absence of a pre-nuptial contract will make it easier for you to respect our marriage. You see, you don't respect me, but I think you
will
respect what a divorce might cost you.'

Gianni stared at her with cold, brooding menace.

Milly shook her head in a sudden helpless gesture of despair. ‘Gianni…when I left Paris, I also left everything you ever gave me behind. The clothes, the jewellery, the credit
cards. I took nothing. Doesn't that at least prove that I'm not the mercenary type?' Her own voice emerged with a quality of pleading that embarrassed her, and hurriedly she compressed her lips.

Eyes black and reflective as mirrors, Gianni simply swung on his heel and started to walk away.

Milly suppressed a groan.

‘Gianni!' she called.

He didn't even pause.

She hurried after him and then forced herself to a halt, watching in frustration as he receded from her with every impossibly long stride. ‘Gianni, if you agree to my conditions…I'll try really hard to make everything the way it was!'

Abruptly he stopped dead, but he didn't turn round.

‘It's going to be very difficult, but I'll
try
to learn to trust you again,' Milly completed huskily, tears thickening her throat as she thought of what they had once had and had so brutally had taken from them.

Gianni swung back. He sent her a scorching look of rampant disbelief.
You
will try to trust
me
again? Speech wasn't necessary. A split second later, he turned his arrogant dark head away and strode through the crumbling gateway out of sight.

Well, you handled him like a real pro, didn't you? Never had Milly seen a satisfied smile die faster. And her own emotions were all over the place. Until Gianni had appeared, she honestly hadn't appreciated the depth of her own bitterness. But three years ago Gianni had hurt her
so
much. In a blaze of publicity, he had taken off to the Caribbean with a supermodel, infinitely more beautiful than Milly could ever be. And Milly had immediately to her house in Paris, and had sat waiting, torn apart but struggling to understand what he was going through, and still hoping against hope that their unborn child would eventually bring Gianni back within talking distance, even if it only meant he lifted the phone.

With deeply troubled eyes, she watched the helicopter
take off again as she walked back towards the house. She hadn't meant for that to happen. She hadn't meant to drive him away again. Connor would be upset. Oh, for heaven's sake, why didn't she just admit it?
She
was upset!

 

The following morning Milly's portable phone, switched on since Gianni's departure, buzzed at seven. She had just got out of the bath. She leapt for the phone.

‘You drive a hard bargain,' Gianni murmured softly. ‘But so do I…'

Sinking down on the carpet, huddled in a towel, Milly nodded without speaking, tension strangling her ability to respond.

‘You promise me that the past stays buried—'

‘I
can't
do that!'

‘And you don't ever tell me you love me again.'

Milly gritted her teeth and bowed her head over her knees.

Gianni loosed a cynical laugh. ‘I thought you'd be able to manage that one…'

‘I'm damned if I do…and I'm damned if I don't, aren't I?' Milly countered painfully.

‘Only a week ago you were madly in love with another man—'

‘And then I got my memory back and
everything
changed!' Milly argued vehemently. ‘Judging me on that isn't fair… I—'

She snapped her mouth shut in despair, for she knew now that she had never loved Edward. She had wanted to love him and had convinced herself that she did. The illusion had vanished the instant she got her memory back. But even before that point she had been responding to Gianni. Dear heaven, she had gone to bed with him again! Was it any wonder that he saw that wanton surrender as yet more evidence that her emotions ran only skin-deep?

‘Gianni…think what you want,' Milly sighed.

‘I always do. I also want to celebrate my way,' he murmured silkily. ‘I'll need you tonight at the house in Paris—'

She stiffened in astonishment. ‘You still
have
the house?'

Aware that Gianni had only bought that house for her occupation, and equally aware of the ruthless efficiency with which he usually cut loose from the past, she was genuinely amazed that he hadn't long since sold it.

‘Around seven,' Gianni continued, as if she hadn't spoken. ‘You'll be picked up this afternoon and you'll be back with Connor early tomorrow.'

‘But I don't have a passport!' Milly was wildly disconcerted by his proposition. ‘I lost it three years ago and I never applied for one as Faith Jennings, so if you're thinking that I—'