‘I’ll tell her to come up and you can meet her.’
Billie pursed her lips. ‘Theo comes with me. Sorry, if you don’t like that, but that’s the way it’s going to be.’
‘Don’t try to fight me,’ Gio warned her softly. ‘If you fight, I will fight back and inevitably you’ll get hurt.’
‘Nothing you do could hurt me now,’ Billie declared staunchly, refusing to be intimidated. ‘And why don’t you quit while you’re ahead, Gio? I’ve agreed to turn my whole life upside down, to marry you and meet your family. How much more do you want or expect? When do you learn to compromise?’
‘I don’t,’ Gio said succinctly, his strong jaw line squared. ‘Not when it comes to my son and your involvement with an individual I don’t want you mixing with.’
‘That individual you don’t want me mixing with was with me when I was in labour for two endless days!’ Billie snapped back at him in a low intense voice that shook with emotion. ‘She was there for me and Theo when you weren’t and I was darned glad to have her!’
An almost imperceptible pallor spread beneath Gio’s bronzed skin and his thick lashes screened his gaze to grim darkness. ‘I would have been there for you if you’d told me you were pregnant—’
‘I don’t think so, Gio. You were a newly married man back then,’ Billie reminded him without any expression at all.
‘Go, then, if it means so much to you,’ he urged with chilling bite.
‘It does mean that much to me. I’m always loyal to my friends,’ Billie declared with quiet dignity.
Gio glowered at her, lustrous dark eyes shimmering gold. ‘Once, first and foremost, you were loyal to me.’
Billie dealt him a wry look. ‘And where did that loyalty get me at the end of the day?’ she quipped, stepping into the lift.
Gio wanted to snatch her back out of the lift and Theo with her but her reference to that word, ‘compromise’ had sunk in. He had ninety per cent of what he wanted and he would have the whole once they were married. In the short term, he could afford to be generous, he told himself sternly. But Billie had changed and he could no longer ignore the fact. She was ready to go toe-to-toe with him and fight. In some ineffable way she had grown up and the girl who had looked at him with starry eyes as if he were a knight in shining armour was no more. He didn’t like that one little bit.
Even less did Gio appreciate the way he was feeling, shaken up and stirred, insanely abandoned by her departure, all reactions totally at war with the cool, adult, detached reserve with which he preferred to view the world. Above all, he didn’t like people to get too close; he didn’t want or miss the messy emotional responses that encouraged weakness, self-delusion and loss of control. He could only be content when calm and discipline ruled.
So, what was it about Billie that could make him feel so at odds with himself? She disturbed him, made him overreact, he decided grimly, hoping that that was a temporary affliction he would soon overcome. It seemed particularly ironic that she was also the only woman who had ever given him a sense of peace and contentment. But that was not the effect she was having on him at present. He had a great deal of work to accomplish before he could hope to take time off after the wedding. Mulling over the problem and the challenges, Gio was quick to decide that it would be more sensible to take a short break from Billie and the unwelcome and disturbing hothouse emotions she unleashed.
* * *
‘You can’t give me the house,’ Dee told Billie squarely. ‘I’m not going to live off you. I can afford to pay rent.’
Billie was reluctant to hurt her cousin’s feelings by pointing out that once she was married to Gio she would have little use for the rental payment. Dee was fiercely independent and had learned young that she had to be that way. The few times she had depended on others, Dee had been let down.
‘Are you hoping to sell the shop as a going concern?’ Dee asked.
‘It’s as much my baby as Theo is,’ Billie admitted. ‘I really don’t want to part with it at all.’
Dee looked at her anxiously and then, biting her lower lip, leant forward. ‘Would you let me try to run it for a three-month trial period?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘I picked up quite a bit from you when I was helping you set it up and as long as I used a bookkeeper I think I could manage.’
Billie studied the blonde woman in surprise, never having suspected that her cousin had a yen to work in the shop. ‘I had no idea you would be interested.’
‘Well, I am interested, always have been to be honest...but I knew you couldn’t afford a full-time employee, so there wasn’t much point mentioning it.’