The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance. Annie West

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СКАЧАТЬ settled with his laptop in the library, which was set up like a high-tech office for his use. Theos, he still found himself thinking furiously, he was not and he never had been a selfish person. On one issue, Billie was correct: he had no need whatsoever to revisit the past. That conviction in place, Gio struggled to concentrate on the lines of figures on his laptop screen and he was fine until the moment that the matter of the pre-nuptial settlement contract squeezed into his mind and practically obliterated everything else in the process. He rang the housekeeper to discover where Billie’s possessions had been stored since being shipped out the previous week.

      It occurred to him then without warning that even the devil could not have devised a more colossally selfish or fiendish document. He refused to act like a male engaged in a covert operation, but on some level of his brain he was astounded by what he was about to do when he finally stood in the room confronted with a heap of boxes. After all, when was Billie ever likely to lift that contract out and reread it? Why the hell was he so damned rattled by a very minor risk? Perspiration dampened his lean, bronzed features. He was engaging in a cover-up and the knowledge didn’t sit well with him. But prior to that contract he had never once been dishonest with Billie. He hovered, studying the boxes. That document could hurt her, he reflected broodingly, and he latched onto that excuse for what he was about to do with alacrity.

      Gio had never unpacked a box in his life but he wasn’t surprised by the discovery that every box was labelled and incredibly neatly filled because Billie was very, very organised and always had been. In the third box, he hit the pay dirt of finding files full of papers and in the second file he espied the contract and ripped it out, but not before he frowned down at a certificate for wine tasting and found beneath it one for art appreciation. He went through the whole file, checking the dates, learning what he knew he should have learned years sooner.

      There was a burning behind his eyes that made them feel scratchy and he felt oddly hollow, as though someone had gutted him without warning. Feeling rather as though he had been beaten up, Gio replaced everything where he had found it with the exception of the contract and strode off to pour himself a very stiff drink. The contract went through the shredder but the relief he had expected to feel was utterly absent. He had gone digging where he had no business digging, he conceded sardonically, and he rather thought that in the process he had got what he deserved.

      ‘Theon wants you to join him for afternoon tea,’ Sofia told Billie cheerfully around three that afternoon. ‘It’s a big honour.’

      Billie grinned. ‘I liked him.’

      ‘I think the feeling’s reciprocated,’ Gio’s sister responded with a laugh as she guided Billie across the villa to the wing of the house Theon occupied.

      A manservant showed her out onto a big shaded balcony where Theon awaited her. ‘I believe this is an honour,’ Billie remarked with a grin.

      ‘How on earth have you escaped Gio?’ his grandfather enquired mockingly.

      ‘Something I said annoyed him... He’s taken refuge in work,’ Billie confided, marvelling at how very comfortable she felt in the older man’s company.

      ‘I overheard that conversation,’ Theon admitted, disconcerting her. ‘This balcony is directly overhead.’

      Billie reddened but sat down. ‘Oh, well, it’s all within the family,’ she said without great concern because it wasn’t as if she and Gio had been hurling insults at each other or discussing anything she considered particularly private, although she knew that put in the same position Gio would have been furious.

      ‘I thought I should bring you up to date on some family history, as I doubt very much that Gio has done the job for me,’ Theon commented.

      ‘I know about his parents’ divorce,’ Billie contributed. ‘And I know his father really didn’t have much to do with him after it.’

      ‘Dmitri was a weak man. There, I have said it,’ the older man said wryly. ‘For years I wouldn’t admit that to myself because he was my son...’

      ‘It’s challenging to accept faults in those we care about most,’ Billie murmured soothingly.

      ‘You love Gio a great deal—it shines from you,’ his grandfather told her. ‘He’s a very lucky man.’

      Billie flushed and decided not to embarrass herself with a denial while she poured the tea. ‘I hope he always thinks so. He’s much more complicated than I am...’

      ‘And that’s why I invited you for tea,’ Theon told her. ‘I’m very much afraid that his complexity can be laid at my door. I raised Gio from the age of eleven after his mother died.’

      ‘I had no idea she died while he was still so young,’ Billie said in surprise as she buttered a scone and deliberated with some gastronomic anticipation on whether to have raspberry or strawberry jam with her cream.

      ‘Ianthe couldn’t cope alone after Dmitri divorced her for Marianne. I had no idea how bad things had become for Gio’s mother,’ Theon told her heavily. ‘Perhaps if my wife had still been alive she would have had the wisdom to foresee the problems and she would have encouraged me to offer help in time to prevent a tragedy.’

      Billie set down her scone after one delicious bite. ‘A tragedy?’ she pressed.

      ‘Ianthe hanged herself...and Gio found her,’ the older man recounted with a shudder. ‘I will carry the burden of my guilt to the end of my days.’

      Eyes widening, Billie had lost colour. ‘I had no idea...’

      ‘I didn’t think you would, which is why I told you,’ Gio’s grandfather confessed. ‘The effect on Gio was catastrophic. He had lost his father, his home and then his mother, only a few months later.’

      Billie shook her head slowly, cringing at the thought of such a huge loss being inflicted on Gio and his sisters while they were still so young. ‘That must have been dreadful for him,’ she muttered unsteadily, her heart swelling. ‘He would’ve felt responsible—’

      ‘I worried that Gio would inherit the same excessively emotional personality that both Dmitri and Ianthe demonstrated in the way they led their lives. That kind of emotional intensity leads to instability.’

      ‘Not always,’ Billie inserted gently.

      Theon shook his white head. ‘I wanted to be sure that Gio did not repeat his father’s mistakes. It was too much responsibility to place on a child’s shoulders. In many ways I taught him the wrong values,’ he explained with unashamed guilt etched in his lined features. ‘I expected, wanted him to marry well...and we all know how successful that proved to be. I put far too much emphasis on wealth, status and family duty—’

      ‘But,’ Billie cut in with an apologetic look, ‘at the end of the day, Gio is a highly intelligent adult and totally independent and he made his own decisions.’

      ‘Ne...yes, and he married you without telling any of us because he refused even to risk the fact that I might have tried to interfere.’

      ‘Probably,’ Billie agreed thoughtfully. ‘But he’s not enough in touch with his own feelings to even know that.’

      ‘You know him so well,’ Theon pronounced with appreciation. ‘Now we’ve got the difficult bit over, shall we enjoy our scones?’

      * СКАЧАТЬ