Gio frowned, astonished by the sudden realisation that he could know so little about his wife’s background. Momentarily he marvelled that he had never asked her anything beyond the most basic questions, but, after learning that she had virtually no living relatives that she knew of, he had seen no reason to probe deeper. ‘He was a drunk?’
‘No, that’s too harsh. He drank to escape my grandma’s nagging. She was kind of sour in nature. If he was a drunk,’ Billie extended, ‘he was a nice drunk because he was never mean, but his liver failed and he was ill for a long time. That’s when I first began missing school because my grandma wouldn’t look after him the way he needed to be looked after and I felt so guilty leaving him to her care every day.’
‘Surely there was some care offered by the state?’
‘No, there’s actually very little help available. Grandma was told he wasn’t sick enough to get a bed in a nursing home even though he was terminally ill. Once he had passed, it was just her and me...and she never liked me, said I reminded her of my mother.’ Billie grimaced. ‘You can’t really blame her. My mother dumped me on her and never came back. She was a bitter woman, who just never saw the good in anyone. I got to go back to school for a couple of years and then Grandma’s health failed too and that was the end of that.’
Gio was stunned by what he was belatedly learning. ‘How is it that I’m only finding out all this about you now?’ he could not help asking, as if he thought the oversight might somehow be her fault.
Tactfully concealing her wonder at that question, Billie shot him a wry glance. ‘Gio, back then, in your eyes, when I wasn’t physically in front of you, I didn’t exist.’
Gio tensed. ‘That’s untrue.’
‘Do you recall that cabinet with drawers I once mentioned where I was tucked in my own tiny drawer, only to be taken out and appreciated by you on special occasions? Seriously, I wasn’t joking—that was what it was like.’
His lean dark features were grim. ‘What you’re really saying is that I’m a colossally selfish individual.’
‘You were self-absorbed and very driven. Let’s face it, when we were together your main focus was always business. I also think you were too posh to be comfortable with the difference in our backgrounds. Ignoring it was easier. I think as long as I was willing to be quiet about it, you preferred not to be reminded that I was once a humble cleaner,’ Billie told him gently.
‘I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation!’ Gio ground out angrily, his temper, kept on a short leash all day, whipping up in a sudden surge hotter than lava. ‘Or that you could ever have had such a low opinion of me!’
In mute frustration, Billie closed her eyes and counted to ten. ‘It’s done and dusted, Gio—it’s the past. I’m not attacking you. I’m only being honest. I wasn’t perfect either. I should have stood up to you, demanded more, but I was too young and in my very first relationship.’
‘You lied about your age.’ Gio was quick to pounce on that reminder.
Billie nodded peaceably, refusing to rise to the bait because there was no way she was about to engage in a massive row with Gio about their past. After all, everything had changed now and they were making a new start at a very different level of intimacy.
‘I’ve got some work to do,’ Gio said in a tone of finality.
Billie smiled, knowing his first refuge when emotion threatened was work. ‘I’ll walk back indoors with you.’
Gio settled with his laptop in the library, which was set up like a high-tech office for his use. Theos, he still found himself thinking furiously, he was not and he never had been a selfish person. On one issue, Billie was correct: he had no need whatsoever to revisit the past. That conviction in place, Gio struggled to concentrate on the lines of figures on his laptop screen and he was fine until the moment that the matter of the pre-nuptial settlement contract squeezed into his mind and practically obliterated everything else in the process. He rang the housekeeper to discover where Billie’s possessions had been stored since being shipped out the previous week.
It occurred to him then without warning that even the devil could not have devised a more colossally selfish or fiendish document. He refused to act like a male engaged in a covert operation, but on some level of his brain he was astounded by what he was about to do when he finally stood in the room confronted with a heap of boxes. After all, when was Billie ever likely to lift that contract out and reread it? Why the hell was he so damned rattled by a very minor risk? Perspiration dampened his lean, bronzed features. He was engaging in a cover-up and the knowledge didn’t sit well with him. But prior to that contract he had never once been dishonest with Billie. He hovered, studying the boxes. That document could hurt her, he reflected broodingly, and he latched onto that excuse for what he was about to do with alacrity.