‘Ralph and I were only friends...at least on my side,’ Jo adjusted, sticking scrupulously to the absolute truth for fear of causing further misapprehensions. ‘We weren’t engaged. Our supposed engagement was only a rumour, which I think he encouraged.’
‘No more!’ Gianni slashed a lean, powerful hand through the air, contriving somehow to express anger, disbelief and boredom all in that single gesture. ‘I refuse to listen to another word of this nonsense!’
‘You don’t believe me,’ Jo registered in consternation, blaming herself for not sooner correcting his impression that she had once been engaged to Ralph.
Gianni dipped his chin. ‘I don’t,’ he confirmed without remorse.
‘Where does that leave us, then?’ she asked numbly.
Gianni lifted and dropped a broad shoulder in dismissal before striding out of the room without another word. When she heard his bedroom door close upstairs, she shivered, wondering how she was supposed to disprove Jane’s contentions when she was so far away from home. A chorus of family disagreement would soon have disabused Gianni of his suspicions, but she was shaken by his inability to simply accept that she was telling the truth.
A little while later, she heard Gianni’s steps on the stone stairs and hunger drove her from her room. The table below the thick canopy of vines at the front of the castle was set for lunch and she sat back in her sunglasses scanning the magnificent view of the mountainous island. Directly ahead stretched a shaded drive through an avenue of stately palm trees that led down to an empty golden strand washed by the tide. Just as she finally noticed that there was only one place set at the table, she heard the whine of the helicopter and turned to watch it fly out across the sea until it became a vanishing speck. She breathed in slow and deep and planned an exploration of the nature reserve.
Later, as she wandered along deserted winding trails, she tried not to think that her marriage had crashed and burned on the very first day. Negative thoughts were not her friend. Gianni had an explosive temperament. He needed time to think and calm down. She had known that when she married him. She had suspected that the burning passion that powered everything he did from his work ethic to his libido could also be a problem. So, she would have to fix him...somehow. Teach him to talk? Put him in a cell so that he couldn’t walk away? Lock every outside door?
For the first twelve hours of his desertion, Jo was sanguine. She wandered round the island, explored the Roman ruins and she swam and lazed on the beach in the sun. The second day she was on edge, even after a long swim in the sea. And by lunchtime she was burning with a strong and rare anger.
She phoned Gianni.
He answered her call in the middle of another call and her lips compressed at the suspicion that her bridegroom had walked out on his new marriage and basically buried himself in the convenience of work. She wondered how often Gianni had buried life’s problems in the world of business and straightened her slight shoulders to brace herself.
‘Jojo...’ he breathed tautly.
Jo didn’t give him the chance to regroup. ‘I’m only calling to ask you to arrange transport for me to go home—’
‘Home?’he cut in, audibly taken aback by that decision. ‘To Ladymead?’
‘Where else? Sitting alone in luxury on a deserted island is not my idea of fun. You’ve gone.’
‘I’m coming back.’
‘When?’ Jo enquired briskly. ‘I have no intention of sitting here like faithful Penelope waiting on Odysseus.’
Torn between admiration that she had read Homer’sOdysseyand shocked surprise that she was calling his bluff, Gianni murmured quietly, his accent more noticeable than usual, ‘This evening...this has got out of hand.’
‘And before you return,’ Jo replied, ‘you accept certain facts, which anyone in my family could confirm for you. I didn’t have an affair with Ralph two years ago. I liked him as a friend and I felt considerable sympathy for him when he found his fiancée and his best friend in the same bed. I suspect Ralph would have liked a closer connection with me after that discovery, but I wasn’t interested. His parents were aware that we were only friends and they have been hurt and offended by that newspaper article because, of course, they know the truth. They’re having a lawyer’s letter sent to Jane and a retraction is to be printed in the newspaper.’
There was a short, dragging silence.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You have to say it in person or I don’t listen,’ Jo told him gently.
CHAPTER SIX
EARLYEVENING,ANDTHEsun was sinking in a peach-coloured sky, but summer sunshine still bathed the colourful terraced gardens in a shimmering veil of heat.
As the whine of a helicopter approaching the island sounded, Jo left her seat on the shaded roof terrace and darted over to the telescope that Gianni’s late grandfather had installed to survey the island from his hilltop eyrie. Breathless, she watched the helicopter land on the pad. Seconds later, a tall male sprang out to stride along the path through the trees and her heart started to beat very, very fast.
It was Gianni, sleek and spectacular in a cream lightweight suit teamed with an open-neck dark shirt. Light glimmered over his tousled black hair, accentuating the slant of his high cheekbones, the proud jut of his nose, the mobile slash of his passionate mouth and the hard, clean, angular line of his jaw. Her breath rattled in her dry throat and then she questioned what she was doing...spyingon him?Waitingfor him? Disturbed by that suspicion and annoyed with herself, Jo grabbed up her book and descended the winding stone staircase to the foot of the tower before strolling, flushed and a little out of breath, out onto the loggia, surprised to see that Sofia, the housekeeper, already had the table set for two.
Gianni came to an abrupt halt on the path and flipped off his sunglasses, dark golden eyes flashing over her before his lashes lowered to conceal his expression. For the first time ever in her experience of Gianni, he looked a little hesitant.
‘I was wrong. I screwed up,’ he bit out in a taut undertone as though he could not bear to wait any longer to offload those necessary words. ‘I’m deeply sorry.’
‘I need you to explainwhythough,’ Jo muttered uneasily. ‘Why you were so quick to assume?’
Gianni raked long brown fingers through his hair in a gesture of frustration. ‘I’m not good with words, Jojo...not when it comes to emotional stuff.’