‘Don’t worry,’ Leah urged, smoothing Lucy’s tumbled hair in a soothing gesture. ‘She’s fine.’
Sally anchored the ornate diamond tiara that Gio had sent over for Leah that very morning into her springy black curls. It could only outshine the delicate diamond drop earrings her brother had given her as an equally surprise gift. The trio of women descended the stairs where Ari awaited them.
‘You look amazing,’ Ari murmured with pride. ‘Gio’s a very lucky man.’
They left the house at a relaxed speed because it wasn’t far to the big church above the village built a generation back by the Stefanos family.
Her heart in her mouth, Leah walked into the packed building on Ari’s arm, her bouquet of flowers clutched tightly in her hand. She focused on Gio’s tall, elegant silhouette at the altar and wondered who his best man was. She hurt for Gio, though, because he had not a single family member present to celebrate his marriage, and she marvelled at the hard-hearted grandparents who had rejected him for his father’s sins. She decided that when she got the right moment she would ask him more about his mother’s parents because life was too short for such cold, judgemental separations, she reflected. Perhaps they were terrible snobs who could not overlook his unfortunate beginnings, but Gio wasstilltheir blood.
She was ruefully amused by her passionate need to protect Gio from anyone who might hurt him. She was beginning to really care about him, to see both his strengths and his flaws, and she supposed that was the proof that she was starting to love him. And wasn’t there a possibility that her love would enrich their marriage and make their connection a deeper one? Even though Gio could infuriate her at times, she only had to think of him persuading Sally to give him Spike and his tolerating Spike with all his eccentricities on his beautiful yacht and her heart simply squeezed tight inside her chest.
Hadn’t he been hurt enough in life by his dysfunctional background and unhappy first marriage? She had seen those shadows in his eyes, had recognised that he had suffered and that he had learned to guard his heart to protect himself. But he would soon discover that their newborn children’s very vulnerability would break through that shell: she was convinced of it.
‘You look ravishing,bella mia,’ Gio murmured as the priest began the ceremony.
Leah looked up at him and meshed with diamond-bright eyes fringed by lush black spiky lashes and her heart speeded up and her thoughts fell into oblivion. She watched the wedding ring threaded onto her finger and then slid on his, laughing when he had to help as the ring caught on his knuckle. And then it was done and they were married and she walked down the aisle again with his hand at her back and she was in a daze as they posed briefly for the photographer. They were wafted back to the house and the smooth service of the wedding caterers waiting to look after them and their guests. A flurry of introductions to Gio’s friends followed.
After the wedding breakfast, a nagging ache in her lower back kept her seated when everyone else was on the floor and she blamed herself for standing around too long before the meal. Cleo joined her when she was freshening up and said approvingly, ‘I don’t think Gio had a single ex on his guest list.’
‘Well, why would he have?’ Leah asked in surprise.
A glass of wine in her hand and possibly a little merry, Cleo told her the tale of her own wedding when Ari had happily invited those ex-girlfriends of his who had remained friends. The women had seemingly only attended to make shrewish criticisms of the bride.
‘I’m surprised that you didn’t strangle him,’ Leah remarked with a grimace as the two women found a secluded corner to sit in and watch the festivities. ‘Look, I wanted to say something about the wedding gift, which Gio didn’t look overjoyed to receive. I think Gio was soshockedthat—’
Cleo giggled. ‘Oh, I don’t blame him. Ariwasoverstepping giving thecastelloas a wedding pressie. It was contentious after what had happened beforehand and he did put Gio in an awkward position—’
‘What do you mean?’ Leah prompted with a frown of comprehension. ‘What happened beforehand?’
‘Well, you know.’ Cleo was slurring a little, clearly struggling to find the right words. ‘Ari trying to use thecastelloas a bribe to persuade Gio to marry you... I mean, that wasn’t a good idea, was it? It put Gio’s back up and, obviously, he was coming here anyway the minute he found out where you were. That’s the only reason he went to see Ari in the first place—he was desperate to find you.’
Those explanations fell like stones thrown into a tranquil pond. Listening in shock and disbelief, Leah mentally raced from zero stress to a heightened unbearable level of stress. Her brother had tried to bribe Gio into offering her marriage? That fast, the bottom fell out of Leah’s world. Every illusion was shattered and her enjoyment of her beautiful wedding destroyed. How could her brother have dared to do such a thing? To lower her to that level? And how could Gio not have warned her?
‘Oh, my goodness,’ Cleo framed, her hand flying to her mouth in dismay as she realised what she had let drop. ‘Ari’s going to kill me!’
‘I’ll talk to them both when I get them alone...er, later,’ Leah mumbled, espying Gio across the room where he was chatting to several men. The truth had knocked her right off her perch, she acknowledged wretchedly. She had been feeling happy, looking forward to the future, maybe she had even been feeling a tiny bit smug as she looked at Gio’s beautiful dark angel face and started thinking of him as beinghers.
Only, by the sound of it, Gio had never been hers, nor had he had any intention of marrying her until her brother had interfered. My word, she had to be stupid to have accepted Gio’s sudden volte face. She had miraculously moved from being the pregnant woman whose word he didn’t trust to the pregnant woman he believed was carrying his children and badly wanted to marry. How come she hadn’t smelt a rat in that sudden transformation?
Once again, it seemed, she had fallen victim to her own poor judgement. She had seen what she wanted to see, discarded anything that hinted at a less positive angle and she had accepted Gio’s every word as though each were solid golden proof of truth and honourable intentions. But, evidently, Gio had simply packaged up what he believed she wanted from him and handed it to her complete with a fabulous engagement ring. And who had put the idea of marriage into his head? Her own brother!
A flush on her cheeks, a rage locked in her heart and a tightness in her throat that made it difficult to swallow, Leah fixed a smile to her face as Gio extended his hand to her and drew her under his arm while he chatted. The evocative scent of him, the citrusy tang of some designer cologne overlaying clean, warm male made her stiffen because she was not in the mood to be that close to him or to once again be made viscerally aware of his sexual attraction.
‘I need some fresh air,’ Gio admitted, walking her out through one of the sets of doors open onto the veranda.
Leah sank down into a comfortable seat while Gio lounged back against the rail opposite her, his long, lean powerful legs splayed. ‘You’re flushed...are you too warm?’
‘A little but it’s cooler out here.’ She sighed, connecting uneasily with diamond-bright eyes.
‘Please don’t be offended when I say that I can’t wait to get back to the yacht,’ Gio murmured wryly. ‘I’m not naturally sociable by nature and I would like just to have you all to myself. I’ve barely seen you since the wedding craziness kicked off.’
She supposed that for him, second time around, all the palaver of a big wedding did strike him as excessive. ‘What was your first wedding like?’
‘A casual quick thing. We were students. It was a civil ceremony followed by a few friends celebrating together in a bar,’ Gio proffered smoothly.
And by the sound of it, much more Gio’s relaxed style, although that thought made Leah think that she wasn’t really being fair to him. Some men didn’t enjoy the fuss of a traditional wedding with all the bell and whistles. Unfortunately, she wasn’t in the mood to be fair, she acknowledged. In fact up until the moment that Cleo had wrenched the scales from her eyes, Leah had been thoroughly enjoying her wedding. Her dress, her flowers, even the sparkly shoes that Sally had correctly forecast would be hurting her within hours. She flexed her bare toes, the shoes long since abandoned in favour of comfort. So what if her dress trailed a little? It wasn’t as though she was likely to ever wear it again.
‘Were you thinking of moving the yacht?’ Leah asked tautly.