Standing only bare feet away from him, she was shockingly aware of how incredibly handsome he was, how tall, how well built. His beautifully tailored dark pinstriped suit fitted him perfectly and it was designer fashionable, cut to enhance his broad chest and lean muscular thighs. Unaffected by Jo’s self-consciousness, Fairy located a rug, turned three times and settled down happily for a snooze.
‘For charity. When you visit you’re always collecting for something but you don’t usually go for the formality of making an appointment,’ Gianni clarified lazily, studying her with veiled eyes, the stirring sexual pulse at his groin all too familiar and fiercely resisted.
Josephine Hamilton was exquisite. There was no other word. The pretty child had grown into an incredibly beautiful woman with a mane of golden hair, sapphire-blue eyes, a delicate little nose and a luscious pink mouth. She was a slender five feet four or so with the grace of a ballet dancer and sometimes when he saw her, she could still take his breath away. A member of the church choir, she had been among the carol singers that had called at Belvedere the previous Christmas, her lovely face the only one he’d noticed in the crowd, her jewelled eyes shining, golden hair rumpled and, for once, she had been smiling at him.
Gianni laughed at her blank look. ‘You were collecting for the homeless last time you were here, and you did very well out of my dinner guests. Your speech could have wrung water from a stone.’
Jo coloured again. ‘Yes, they were very generous, but I wouldn’t have called in had I known that you were entertaining.’
‘Come and sit down,’ he suggested as his housekeeper bustled in with a tray of coffee and cakes.
‘Nothing for me,’ Jo said tightly, both nervous and embarrassed as she sank down into a basketwork cushioned chair.
‘You usually eat like a horse,’ Gianni remarked in surprise. ‘What’s wrong? You seem very tense.’
Jo stiffened. ‘You’re treating me like a welcome visitor and that doesn’t feel right when I’ve come to ask you for a loan,’ she confided uncomfortably.
It was so Jojo to just blurt it out like that and he was wryly amused. ‘I’m not a bank,’ he said quietly.
‘The banks said no.’
Gianni concealed his amusement with difficulty. ‘You really shouldn’t be telling me that in advance.’
Jo lifted her chin. ‘I’m not stupid. I know you would check that out.’
‘What do you need the loan for?The money pit?’
Jojo compressed her lips, offended by that label being attached to her home. ‘The roof is in a bad way and the wiring is causing problems. I want to set up a bed and breakfast and the regulations are extremely strict.’
Gianni schooled his shrewd gaze. His father had been obsessed with acquiring Ladymead and ridding the neighbourhood of the eccentric Hamiltons and the folksy business operations they had cobbled together to stay afloat. Officially, Gianni had owned Belvedere since he was thirteen and the presence of a Tudor dump on the other side of the screening wall his parent had erected bothered him not at all.
‘Of course, I’m not expecting you to help out of the goodness of your heart.’
‘Well, you know I have none of that,’ Gianni inserted drily.
‘You didn’t report McTavish for biting you,’ Jo reminded him in disagreement.
‘You’d never have forgiven me.’
‘I know you don’t like long-winded speeches, so I’ll get straight to the point. We’re willing to sell the lakeshore land to you.’
Gianni gritted his teeth and groaned. How did he tell her that when the Hamiltons eventually went bust he would buy Ladymead on the cheap, close the shops and install tenants? It was an historic building, as he had reminded his father, and it couldn’t be demolished. But what exasperated him the most was Jo’s admission that she was planning a bed and breakfast operation.
‘How on earth could you cope with guests in the house? You’re already run ragged trying to keep the place going,’ Gianni demanded impatiently. ‘You would have to renovate the entire house and you would need staff. Trixie would need to stop worshipping at her shrine to nature in the back garden. Sybil would have to stop taking in every stray animal that comes along. Your grandmother, who isn’t getting any younger, would never get out of the kitchen. It’s not a viable proposition.’
‘I didn’t ask foryouropinion,’ Jo told him tartly.
Gianni sprang up restively. ‘Too bad...you’re getting it. It’s a totally impractical ambition.’
‘And you just expect me to accept your judgement on that score, do you?’ Jo slung back at him angrily.
‘I do,’ Gianni delivered succinctly. ‘I know you have a business degree, but you’ve not used it or been out in the world. You don’t have the experience to—’
‘If being out in the world means shagging some trollop in a questionable club and making sleazy headlines, then I don’t think I want to beoutin the world as you put it!’ Her face flushed, her hands knotted into fists, her sapphire eyes alight with fury, Jo stared him down in challenge.
CHAPTER TWO
GIANNIFROZE,UNPREPAREDFORthat level of anger and vitriol from her lips because Josephine Hamilton was known far and wide as a very kind woman with endless compassion, a woman who never put a foot wrong. And she had just hit a spectacular own goal. His lean, darkly handsome features were taut but his glittering dark-as-night eyes took on an arrested expression as he stared back at her rigid figure because all of a sudden, he was seeing possibilities he had never dreamt he might consider. She had a backbone of steel and an astonishing streak of honesty, regardless of the circumstances, and he respected those traits.