‘It’s hard enough for couples in love to have a good marriage,’ Leah reasoned tightly. ‘And we wouldn’t have that love even to start with—’
‘But we’ve got the passion and the good intentions. We both want what’s best for our children and we want to give them the chances and the stability that we missed out on—’
Leah was tense. He was keen to make the effort, she acknowledged, and unexpectedly serious about what was truly important in life. He had finally come clean with her about his background. He had been honest with her as well about the broken marriage that had soured him on trust, women and love. Was it masochistic of her to now want to know every gruesome detail about his first wife? Theonlywoman he had ever loved? Simply human nature, she reckoned ruefully, and irrelevant to their current predicament. She very much wanted what Gio was offering: a father for her twins and a loving stable home. She could provide the home without his help, but she suspected that a caring father figure would be worth a great deal more to her children than she could calculate.
He was giving her a choice, a clear choice. Either she assumed the worst of him and embraced single parenthood or she took a risk on getting hurt and gave marriage a chance. Common sense suggested she go with the flow, but Leah was also uneasily conscious that she was already much more attached to Gio than she should be. And how would that play out in the very sensible but bloodless marital relationship he was suggesting? Her feelings created an inequality she could not deny but surely it was better to have tried than not to try at all, she reasoned ruefully. Trying to protect her own heart when it would deny her children a full-time father would be selfish.
‘I... I suppose we should give it a try...at least,’ Leah reasoned out loud, only to gasp as Gio dropped down on the seat beside her, plucked the ring from her and lifted her hand to thread the magnificent ring onto the correct finger. ‘Gio! For goodness’ sake!’ she censured then.
‘At least I’ve got enthusiasm to offer, which is more than I can say for you,’ Gio riposted in a tone of reproach.
Studying her beautiful ruby ring, Leah flushed to the roots of her hair. ‘You took me by surprise and I’m terrified of making a mistake—’
‘And how do you think I feel the second time around?’ Gio quipped, tugging her closer and losing patience when he failed in that ambition due to the siting of the parasol support. With a ground-out imprecation, he sprang upright and bent to scoop her bodily up into his arms, pausing with a belated frown to ask stiffly, ‘Is this OK?’
Wildly disconcerted at finding herself in his arms and striving not to agonise over how much she must weigh in her current condition, for there was nothing slender about a woman due to soon deliver twins, Leah looked up at him with shaken eyes. Their sudden proximity had knocked her even more off balance. ‘Depends on what you’re planning to do next—’
Gio quirked an ebony brow, an expression of unholy amusement glittering in his eyes and tugging at the corners of his handsome mouth. ‘A kiss to celebrate our engagement?’
A faint little quiver rippled through Leah, darting down into her pelvis and tightening every muscle low in her belly. ‘I suppose that would be acceptable.’
Gio sat down again with a wicked grin.‘Acceptable?’he groaned with a shudder. ‘Kill me now.’
Her gaze colliding with those wolfish pale blue eyes, her heartbeat stuttered, and her mouth ran dry. ‘When have you ever beenonlyacceptable?’ she whispered shakily, struggling to prevent her body from relaxing too obviously into the coiled virile heat of his lean, powerful body.
‘You tell me,’ Gio urged.
‘I like the ring,’ she told him, her hands flying up to frame his sculpted cheekbones, slender fingers stroking down over the rough black stubble beginning to darken his jawline. ‘But I don’t feel engaged yet—’
Gio shifted her closer and the ache at her liquid core intensified as she felt the unmistakeable thrust of his erection. ‘That’s not a challenge I can meet in a public place...your brother’s security team is watching us with binoculars. The lenses are glinting in the sun. Your brother’s not my biggest fan and they know it—’
‘Ari will feel different when he knows we’re getting married,’ Leah forecast, leaning closer, her breasts pushing against his broad chest as she twisted on his lap to fully align their mouths.
Gio rejoiced in the awareness that he would have taken Leah’s brother by surprise, which of course had been exactly his intention. He took the initiative then, brushing, tasting, the tip of his tongue delving deep, sending an arrow of stabbing heat to the very heart of Leah and making her tremble. With a gruff sound breaking free of his throat, Gio stood up again and deposited her very carefully back on her seat. ‘Definitely not the place,’ he told her in a raw undertone of hunger. ‘Join me on the yacht for dinner tonight—’
‘Ican’t!’ Leah confessed in dismay. ‘Ari and Cleo are coming back with friends tonight for the christening tomorrow. I have to be here. You’d be welcome as well—’
Gio doubted that possibility when he had told her brother impolitely what he could do with the Castello Zanetti he had bought as an inducement. There was no denying that that unselfish act had cost Gio a pang when he had spent more than half of his life desperate to attain ownership of the only piece of history, family and heritage he was entitled to claim by blood and birth. But Gioknewhe could not give way to blackmail or hope to hold onto his bride’s respect if he grasped at the grubby offer of his mother’s former family home. He had tossed that proposal back at the Greek, while knowing that he had every intention of proposing to Ari’s sister and refusing to admit to the fact.
‘I have a surprise for you on the yacht,’ Gio admitted.
‘Is this the equivalent of an invitation to see your etchings?’ Leah teased with a glint of genuine amusement in her vivid dark eyes. ‘The ring was enough of a surprise for one day.’
‘I can’t get this surprise out from beneath my bed,’ Gio confided. ‘Although he gets up on the bed in the middle of the night to sleep in comfort. He is theweirdestlittle animal.’
Her startled eyes rounded in disbelief. ‘Spike? You’ve got Spike?’ she exclaimed incredulously. ‘But he was adopted! A family gave him a home before I moved out here. I was really disappointed, but I was just too late to make a claim on him.’
‘Apparently, Spike fell foul of the family cat,’ Gio confided. ‘They returned him and I have been allowed, not, I stress, to adopt him...but tofosterhim to bring him out here to you. He’s had all his jabs but I would hesitate to bring him ashore with your brother’s guard dogs patrolling. I think they would traumatise him.’
‘Oh, my goodness... Spike,’ Leah sighed in a blissful whirl, happy tears stinging her eyes. ‘Can we go right now?’
Gio guided her over to the buggy still sitting parked and helped her in. He was smiling. He had never had to seduce a woman onto his yacht before and it had also never occurred to him that he would sink to the level of using a dog as a means of persuasion. But he really didn’t care, not when for once he had got it right with Leah.
Evidently alerted by his staff, Ari had phoned Leah before she’d even got into Gio’s motorboat at the pier. She hovered next to it while she answered his questions. ‘Yes, he’s here and we’re going to get married... I think sooner rather than later makes sense,’ she told her disconcerted brother, who seemed understandably, she thought, stunned by her announcement. ‘Maybe you think this is a little sudden—’
‘No...no, I think it’s...timely,’ Ari selected warmly. ‘You can get married on the island this week—’
‘Thisweek...are you crazy?’ Leah gasped as Gio lifted her gently and lowered her down while the crewman held the bobbing boat steady.