Gianni half spread expressive brown hands and then clenched them tight into defensive fists, his strong profile rigid as steel. He swallowed hard. ‘Yes. Long before that night I saw you together at the apartment, I was very jealous,’ he bit out raggedly.
Milly was stunned by that revelation. ‘I can’t believe that… I mean, why on earth—?’
‘You had a bond with him. You talked about things I was totally out of touch with…house music, clubs. You used the same street dialect, shared the same in jokes,’ Gianni enumerated with harsh emphasis. ‘You were the same generation. I introduced you to dinner dates, antiques and art galleries, and occasionally you were bored out of your skull and I knew it.’
Milly was savaged by that shattering outpouring of feelings she would never have dreamt Gianni could experience. Insecurity, vulnerability concerning the age-gap between them. ‘You couldn’t expect us to share every taste, every interest…’
‘I didn’t feel that way until Stefano came into the picture.’
‘I thought you were pleased we got on so well.’
‘Sure I was pleased.’ Gianni’s agreement was raw with self-contempt. ‘I’d ring you from the other side of the world and in the background my kid brother would be cracking jokes and making you laugh. I was eaten with jealousy and there was nothing I could do about it.’ He moved restively about the room like a trapped animal, forced to pace round a too small cage. ‘But until that night I saw you with him I knew it was all in my own mind; I knew I was being unreasonable!’
Suddenly Milly was grasping why Gianni had been so quick to believe her capable of betraying him. Jealousy rigidly suppressed—a fertile and dangerous breeding ground for distrust and suspicion. Yet she had never suspected that Gianni was jealous. Once he had even told her that he was grateful she had Stefano for company. His ferocious pride had ensured he went to great lengths to conceal his own weakness.
‘I was planning to surprise you that night. I was in a really good mood. But I went haywire when I saw you on our bed with Stefano. That was my every worst fear come true. If I had stayed one second longer I would’ve torn him apart with my bare hands!’ Gianni asserted in a smouldering undertone, ashen pale. ‘I couldn’t stand to even look at you. So I didn’t.’
So I didn’t. He always protected himself from what he didn’t want to deal with emotionally.
‘As usual, you took the easy out,’ Milly sighed with immense regret.
The sudden silence seemed to swell.
‘It wasn’t the easy way out, cara mia,’ Gianni contradicted from between bloodlessly compressed lips, feverish colour scoring his stunning cheekbones.
Milly hardened herself to the distinct shock spreading in the dark, deep flashing eyes pinned to hers. Now that the truth had come out, she wasn’t prepared to allow him to duck that issue. ‘Gianni, most men would’ve confronted us there and then. It’s all right saying that you might have ripped Stefano apart. Frankly, I couldn’t have cared less what you did to him that night! No, it was what you did afterwards that destroyed us.’
Gianni’s breathing pattern fractured audibly. ‘His lies destroyed us.’
‘No. Your refusal to see me again did that,’ Milly countered painfully, her blue eyes saddened. ‘And I’m not interested in what you thought I’d done. I’d been with you for two years and I was carrying your child. I had the right to expect a meeting with you. But what did you do? You wouldn’t even take a call from me and then you took off to the Caribbean with another woman!’
Gianni latched on to that last condemnation with something very much like relief. ‘Accidenti, you don’t need to worry about that!’ he assured her. ‘We never actually made it between the same sheets. When it came down to it, I wasn’t interested.’
‘That’s not the point,’ Milly groaned, refused to be sidetracked into betraying the pleasure she’d received from that information. ‘The point is that you let me down by refusing to face up to the situation between us.’
‘Let me get this straight, cara mia,’ Gianni breathed raggedly, as if she had suddenly discharged a shotgun into his back, brilliant eyes burning in stark golden disbelief. ‘You’re accusing me…Gianni D’Angelo…of running away like a spineless little jerk!’
Milly winced.
‘Only you were trying to wrap it up a bit!’ Gianni grated, outraged by her silence.
‘Why did you take so long to tell Stefano that I was pregnant?’
Disconcerted, Gianni frowned. ‘It was private, no business of his.’
‘He’s your brother.’
‘When I hadn’t yet decided how I intended to resolve the situation, I wasn’t prepared to discuss it with anybody but you,’ Gianni framed impressively.
‘And not even with me if you could help it,’ Milly tacked on helplessly. ‘You spent that time trying to decide whether to keep me or dump me, didn’t you?’
Gianni glowered at her. ‘Dio…it wasn’t like that at all!’
‘The speed with which you grabbed the first excuse you had to ditch me isn’t in your favour,’ Milly informed him.
‘At the time, I was thinking of marrying you!’
‘Thinking?’ Milly repeated, unimpressed. ‘Only it never got further than that. I trusted you. I relied on you. I loved you for two years and yet it still wasn’t enough to convince you that we had something that it might have been worth trying to save.’ Feeling her eyes smarting with oversensitive tears, Milly started to twist away.