‘Because what?’ Billie snapped in sudden frustration.
‘Because I knew you’d never leave him and if I had the right to keep him, you wouldn’t leave me either!’ Gio yelled back at her full force, making her jump in fright.
Billie gaped at him. ‘But I had no intention of leaving you.’
‘You left me before!’ Gio bit out rawly.
Billie stared at him, fighting to hide her fascination and astonishment. ‘But don’t you think there was some excuse for me leaving you then, when you were marrying another woman?’ she reasoned very gently.
His lean, darkly handsome features froze as if she had slapped him. He released his breath in a long pent-up hiss. ‘Marrying Calisto was the worst mistake I ever made...but I thought, I truly believed at the time that I was doing the right thing.’
Billie thought about what Theon had told her about the way he had raised Gio and the values he had emphasised and suppressed a sigh. ‘But it wasn’t the right thing for you.’
‘I am so sorry for hurting you,’ Gio framed in a roughened undertone, lustrous dark eyes unshielded and filled with overwhelming regret. ‘If I could go back and change it, I would...but I can’t. If it’s any consolation, I hurt myself as well. For two years my life was miserable because you weren’t part of it any longer, so I definitely paid for making the wrong choice. My happiest day since the day I lost you was the day when I finally found out where you were living.’
In her entire experience of Gio, Billie had never thought to hear such admissions from him. Initially the shock of what he was telling her almost struck her dumb and then the natural warmth of her nature sent her hurtling across the room to wrap both arms round him in comfort. ‘Oh, Gio, you are an idiot sometimes,’ she whispered helplessly.
‘I honestly didn’t believe you would leave me. When I found the apartment empty...well, it was a very bad moment for me and I did everything I could to fight feeling the way I did, but everything in my life felt wrong after that,’ he confessed raggedly. ‘Calisto got a bad deal from me as well. I didn’t want her, I wanted you, and when you disappeared you were all I could think about.’
Belatedly Billie understood his ex-wife’s hatred for her. ‘Did she love you? She must’ve been jealous and hurt...’
‘No, love wasn’t part of our arrangement, nor was jealousy. If it had been she would never have agreed to me still keeping you in my life.’
‘You told her about me? She actually agreed to you continuing to see me?’ Billie prompted, shaken even though she recalled him saying something in that line before.
‘I preferred to be honest with her from the start. Cal wanted social position. Her family are wealthy but have little status. She wanted to be Gio Letsos’ wife for what it meant to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, I couldn’t live with her,’ Gio admitted with a grimace of recollection. ‘She was nasty to my family and she lies at the drop of a hat about the most trivial things. After promising to have a family with me, she then confessed that she didn’t ever want to have a child. In short, we were both dissatisfied with our marriage and she agreed to the divorce.’
‘But then why is she carrying on this way trying to upset me and wreck our marriage?’
‘I can only think I hurt her ego by not wanting her more than I wanted you. Obviously marrying you straight after the divorce offended her as well but we won’t be having any more trouble from that quarter,’ Gio asserted with conviction. ‘That lawyer will be removed from my team and Leandros doesn’t get on with Cal any better than I do, so there won’t be any leaked info from him with regard to our lives.’
Ready to toss the issue of Calisto and his brief marriage on a back burner, Billie was instead thinking about what Gio had said about the pre-nup agreement he had had her sign. ‘Why were you afraid of me leaving you again?’ she murmured.
‘My father left me, my mother left me and somehow you became even more important to me than they were,’ Gio framed with dogged determination but obvious difficulty in explaining that to her. ‘After I found my mother dead, I taught myself to close out emotions because it was the only way I could cope with the way my sisters’ lives and mine had imploded. I preferred to stay in control. I felt threatened whenever emotion tried to take over. I found the way I seemed to need you totally unnerving...’
Billie was so stunned by that speech that the best she could manage was, ‘Oh, dear...’
‘I couldn’t believe that you could try and send me away once I found you again.’