His father measured the flash of Jo’s steady sapphire gaze and said, ‘You must understand. Giannimarriedyou to rehabilitate his image. Being plunged back into another scandal is not what he expected or even prepared for.’
‘Possiblyyoudon’t understand that I don’t intend to shoulder any responsibility for someone telling bold and wicked lies about me,’ Jo cut in curtly, her apparent composure lurching because she had not been ready for the older man to instantly throw the reason for their marriage in her face. It struck her that her father-in-law had judged her guilty the instant he’d learned of the tabloid piece even if he was being less obvious about the fact than Gianni was. But no, it wasn’t possible that Gianni could believe such a character assassination, she reasoned. Gianniknewher. He knew her nature, her moral outlook. He could not possibly credit that she could have slept with Ralph behind Jane’s back...could he?
‘Obviously, you’re going to say that it’s all lies...and yet you did step into that woman’s shoes after he ended things with her,’ Gianni reminded her very drily. ‘Even if I didn’t know you or much about anyone involved, you wouldn’t be the first woman to lie to me.’
Losing colour, Jo jerked shakily upright. ‘I’m not having this conversation with you in your father’s presence. I’m going upstairs to get dressed.’
‘I’m returning to London immediately,’ the older man declared with a hint of awkwardness and regret that ironically made her like him a tiny bit better. Most particularly, when her bridegroom was still regarding her much as if she had suddenly sprouted hooves and horns. What was the matter with Gianni? What had happened to his quick and clever brain?
As Gianni alerted the pilot to return his father to the airport, he was reeling in shock. Federico had arrived at the castle barely thirty minutes earlier and yet Gianni, famous for his fast reactions, wasstillreeling in shock and disgust. He could not explain to his own satisfaction why he felt so shattered by what that newspaper story had told him. Jo’s coolness under fire had merely made him more suspicious, giving him an unwelcome view of his bride as a practised dissembler. Why had he been so convinced that Jo was the exact opposite of most of the other women he had known?
Why the hell, when he had previously been such a cynic,hadhe decided that Josephine Hamilton was in an entirely different category from the liars, swindlers and gold-diggers who littered his own past?
After all, liars and adulterers came in all shapes and sizes. Gianni had seen enough men and women behaving badly over the years to know that. Unluckily for her, Gianni had a particular aversion to the disloyal, dishonest, and unfaithful, having seen his own father in that guise from childhood. And he could not deny that the idea of Jo sneaking around behind backs to sleep with a man engaged to another woman filled him with rampant revulsion.
But why was hesoangry?
It was her past, it was before they had even got togetherandthe guy was dead and buried, the saner side of his mind argued. But it didn’t change his mood one iota. He was furious with Jo for ripping apart his good-living image of her and he was furious with himself for being savagely disappointed in her. He had genuinely believed that she was above such behaviour and incredibly honest, only nasty reality had washed a film of grime over that conviction.
Even so, in his heart, Gianni did knowwhyhe was so enraged. He had believed in Jo, admired her character, even begun to like her. And although it was most unlike him, he had somehow managed to place Jo on a very tall pedestal. Regrettably, she had fallen off it with a resounding crash and it had happened so fast that his mind was still spinning with a sense of incredulity. Initially, he had had a ferocious argument with Federico and had been ready to defend Jo until his dying breath...and then he had read that article and tied it in with what he already knew. And the awareness that he could still be so gullible as to place that amount of faith in a woman’s honour and decency hugely embarrassed him.
Worst of all, however, he told himself bitterly, the reason he had married her had become redundant for there was no way her grubby affair with a man promised to another woman could clean up his image. That meant that he had also taken on the money pit on false pretences. Federico had warned him that he was insane to take on Ladymead without setting a strict budget, but then his father had never enjoyed the kind of wealth that his son had inherited. And something about Jo had made Gianni, usually the shrewd businessman when it came to cost, want to be as generous as proved necessary. He tossed back a second brandy without savouring the vintage.
Upstairs in her bedroom, Jo was all fingers and thumbs as she fought her way into linen shorts and a tee. Gianni was acting crazy, she reflected in consternation. He hadn’t asked her any questions; he had simply assumed that that horrible story was the truth. Did she strike him as that kind of woman? Or was that distrust innate in him with women? She was shaken by the way he had looked at her and acted. She hadn’t recognised him in that angry mood, all warmth and familiarity stripped from him, and all that did was make her wonder if she hadeverhad a clue as to what really went on inside Gianni.
But how dared he behave like that?
A little voice at the back of her brain reminded her that she had chosen not to tell him that her true relationship with Ralph had been platonic. On some foolish level, had she preferred to let Gianni believe that she had had, at least,oneserious relationship? Jo paled at that glimpse inside herself where she suddenly recognised her insecurity. She was insecure with Gianni because he was infinitely more experienced and sophisticated than she would ever be.
Nobody knew better than Jo that she had led a sheltered life, surrounded by outdated rules and protected by her family. Circumstances had confined her at Ladymead, depriving her of the independent choices and freedom that many young adults took for granted. Even as a student she had lived at home because it was so much cheaper to do so. And although she would not have brandished the fact, she suspected that she was naturally rather unadventurous in her habits. Marrying Gianni was far and away the most dangerous step and the biggest risk she had ever taken.
In point of fact, she acknowledged with piercing dismay, she and Gianni were a bad match with almost nothing in common. What did that leave her to work with when they had a dispute? He was burning up like a Roman torch and she was striving to stay calm and collected even though her tummy was lurching with nausea.
Jo went back into Gianni’s study. He was standing at the doors open onto the terrace with his back turned to her. ‘We need to sort this misunderstanding out,’ she told him bravely.
Gianni swung round to face her, his lean, strong face grim. ‘I’m not stupid,cara.This is no misunderstanding.’
Frustration currented through Jo, putting her even more on edge. ‘I didn’t have an affair with Ralph and if you’d ever met Ralph, you would know that. Jane’s lying. She’s the one who had the affair that made Ralph break off their engagement.’
‘Isn’t it strange how you never mentioned any of this before?’ Gianni sliced in, his wide mouth flattening, his narrowed dark eyes hard and unyielding. ‘You never acknowledged that Ralph evenhada previous engagement, and it wasn’t referred to at the funeral either—’
‘Why would it have been mentioned?’ It was Jo’s turn to interrupt, an edge of panic gaining inside her because she knew he wasn’t listening to her. ‘Ralph dumping Jane andherinfidelity kept the gossipmongers busy for months and he was horribly embarrassed and hurt by the whole business. Nobody was likely to mention that broken engagement.’
‘I don’t want to hear about Ralph or your grubby affair with him and I’m not interested either in hearing your counter-accusations against this Yerry woman,’ Gianni incised chillingly. ‘In one sense what you chose to get up to prior to our marriage is nothing to do with me, but in another it’s very muchmybusiness. I married you to clean up my image. I believed that you had a spotless reputation. That’s the only reason I married you.’
Pale as milk at that cutting clarification, Jo lifted her head high and tilted her chin. ‘I’m sorry if you don’t feel that you got value for money,’ she murmured flatly.
‘That’s not what I said, but it does express something of what I feel now,’ Gianni confessed in a raw undertone, volatile dark golden eyes full of condemnation. ‘I certainly wasn’t expecting a twenty-two-carat virgin, but Iwasexpecting a wife without a mess like this behind her and the subsequent mortification of her being exposed to derision in the media.’
Even though she hadn’t done anything wrong, Jo felt shamed, as though she were responsible for Jane’s deceitful attempt to rewrite history at Jo’s expense. Her cheeks flamed and she swallowed hard. He was talking down to her—how dared he? But on another level, she knew that she was still traumatised from becoming the target of such a character assassination. Her phone had kept on buzzing while she was getting dressed. She had a dozen missed calls from various people and she had texted Sybil, promising to call her back later. Ralph’s parents had also attempted to contact her and she would have to speak to them as well. They were quite an age and anything that disparaged their late son’s character would have deeply distressed them.
‘This is a storm in a teacup,’ Jo declared, trying another tack with Gianni in an attempt to dial down the tension.
‘It means a hell of a lot more than that to me!’ Gianni fired back at her, his seething dissatisfaction blazing in dark golden eyes, semi-concealed by dense black lashes. ‘I had complete faith in you and you’ve blown it.’
‘I’ve done nothing, Gianni,’ Jo countered steadily, holding her ground. ‘Jane Yerry is lying. I didn’t have an affair behind her back with her fiancé. I wasneverintimate with Ralph.’
‘And how likely am I to credit that in this day and age?’ Gianni derided.