But what would it cost her personally to marry a man she didn’t love? A man who was very unlikely ever to love her? That was the big question...
CHAPTER THREE
‘WHATAREYOUagonising about?’ Gianni prompted as he ignited the car engine.
‘I’m not agonising about anything,’ Jo lied.
In reality, Jo was glancing back with a near wince at the couple of colourless forgettable romances she had had over the years. She didn’t even count Ralph, who had asked her to marry him purely as a face-saving move. He had never been more than a friend. Sadly, she had only ever met one man who inspired anything more than liking in her and that felt like a personal failure. She had told herself off for being too choosy, too critical, particularly when she had always been conscious that she wanted a long-term relationship and children in her future.
And yet here she was, twenty-four years old and still a virgin and the only man she had ever really,reallyfancied was Gianni Renzetti. What did that say about her? That she was an unrealistic dreamer? Gianni had always seemed totally unobtainable. But now he had shocked her with a proposition she could never have foreseen, and the sensible side of her brain was in conflict with the idealistic side.
‘About marrying me?’ Gianni guided the powerful car smoothly into the rough, potholed lane that led to her family home and slowed down to a snail’s pace. ‘If the marriage didn’t work out, if we were miserable a few years down the road, we could separate, and it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Unfortunately, you don’t like risks,cara, and I accept that you must see me as a high-risk venture.’
‘Where do you get the idea that I don’t like risks?’ Jo demanded curtly, annoyed by the confidence with which he spoke.
‘You choose the safe, sensible path most of the time. You did your business degree and you brought it home and let your family bury you alive intheirproblems. You don’t seem to have a single streak of ruthlessness. If you had, you would have walked away and made your own life.’
‘My family and my homearemy life. I had a poor start as a baby but my family loved me enough to overlook those beginnings and they gave me a very happy childhood,’ Jo argued vehemently.
Jo was troubled just thinking about what she might have been like without the family who had raised her and given her so much love. She didn’t remember her mother and knew little about her but she knew that her mother had wanted to share her child with her family. And truly, there was nothing Jo wouldn’t do for that same family, who had given her so much, and she knew that she owed every ounce of her strength and self-respect to the way she had been brought up.
Gianni parked the car. ‘You can keep your family close if you marry me,’ he murmured in silken addition.
Jo shot him a furious glance. ‘Iknow! Is there anything you won’t use to get your own way?’
‘Probably extraordinarily little,’ Gianni breathed, his wide mobile mouth taking on a cynical twist. ‘You should probably ask me about the scandal.’
In receipt of that unexpected piece of advice, Jo turned red with mortification and, reaching for the door handle, opened the door to clamber out in haste. ‘It’s none of my business.’
Gianni sprang out of the driver’s seat and stalked round the low-slung bonnet of the car like a man bracing himself. ‘I asked you to marry me. You have a right to know the facts. The woman concerned was a model, not someone I knew whom I could trust. We dined together in a private room at the club. I had no suspicion that I was being set up as, to be frank, I had utilised a private room in that way before. Sex without even leaving the building...it was convenient for both me and the women concerned.’
Jo’s face felt so hot it felt as though it were on fire. Heaven forbid, she thought helplessly, that any man would ever view the sharing of her body as a mere convenience.
‘I left myself open to extortion. That kind of behaviour in my position was reckless. I didn’t think. I didn’t pause to consider what I was doing or where I was. I just took what was on offer for all the usual dumb male reasons.’
‘Oh, dear,’ Jo mumbled uncomfortably.
An involuntary laugh of appreciation escaped Gianni. ‘I was a complete idiot,’ he admitted, closing long fingers round her narrow wrist to ease her closer.
‘No arguments from this corner.’ Her mouth ran dry as she looked up at him in the moonlight.
He looked breathtakingly handsome, a powerful intensity etched in his lean, hard features and in the narrowed set of his stunning dark golden eyes. He ran a finger slowly across her cheekbone and her gaze widened, her breathing fracturing as he eased her back against the bonnet of the car. ‘I want to kiss you.’
‘Go ahead,’ she heard herself mumble without hesitation because having got this close to Gianni she had no intention of denying herself that experience. Unsteady on her feet, nervous as a cat on hot bricks, she trembled when he brought her into full contact with his lean, powerful body. His arms closed round her, lifting her up to him as he circled her closed lips with his, plucking at the lower with his teeth, sending a shard of sharp craving arrowing down into her belly. His mouth travelled everywhere but where she wanted, teasing and dancing across her cheek before grazing down the soft slope of her neck and making her shudder in reaction and arch into his heat and strength.
‘Don’t do that. I’m on an incredibly short fuse,’ Gianni growled, one hand suddenly splaying across the rounded curve of her bottom and pressing her into the cradle of his thighs, acquainting her with the hot, hard thrust of the erection shaped by the fine material of his tailored trousers.
Her tummy flipped, warmth and moisture gathering between her thighs as he finally found her mouth and took it with raw hunger.
The power of that smouldering kiss shot through her like an electric shock and her arms wrapped around him, hanging onto him to ensure she stayed upright, fingertips curling into the black hair at his nape. Her body was going haywire, her temperature soaring. His tongue stroked hers and the fierce pulse of desire clenched tight at the heart of her. In turmoil under that racing onslaught of sensation, Jo pulled back.
Gianni closed his hand over hers to prevent her from moving away. ‘Are you going to take me indoors to speak to your family? Or are you planning to run away?’
Some inner strength powered Jo into raising her head high even though she was still quaking inside herself from the force of the reaction she was containing. ‘Neither. I will deal with my family alone when I’ve reached a decision.’
‘Then give me a decision over breakfast tomorrow at Belvedere. Eight. If we’re going to do this, we need to move quickly,’ Gianni murmured softly.
Jo had forgotten about the time constraints, and she ground her teeth together. She wanted to hold him at a distance because of the way he had made her feel in his arms and breakfast was only a matter of hours away, not long enough in which to recover her equilibrium and make the most major decision of her life to date.