‘How did you shred my copy?’ Billie demanded in sudden wonderment.
‘I went into your storage boxes,’ Gio admitted, a tinge of heat accentuating his cheekbones at the look of disbelief growing in her gaze. ‘I realised it was wrong and I wanted to destroy it. I didn’t want you to realise what I’d tried to do at some later stage of our lives.’
‘Well, you don’t have that to worry about that now. It’s come back to haunt you much sooner than you expected,’ Billie pointed out, wondering how much she should be mollified by the apparent destruction of the document and his evident change of heart. At least he knew when he’d done something wrong, she thought limply, struggling to find a bright side to her predicament.
Gio studied her, his full attention locked to her flickering changes of expression. ‘I didn’t want to lose you.’
‘You didn’t want to lose Theo,’ Billie corrected. ‘I wish you’d just been honest from the beginning. I’m not unreasonable, Gio, and from the moment you reappeared I was willing to share Theo with you, honestly and fairly.’
‘It was a very dirty trick to plant that clause in the pre-nup,’ Gio acknowledged with a humility that astounded her.
‘But very typical of you,’ Billie responded. ‘Clever, devious, cold-blooded.’
‘I’m never cold-blooded when it comes to you. I had the pre-nup drawn up that way because...’ Gio hesitated, lean, strong face rigid ‘...not because I was trying to take Theo off you, but because...’
‘Because what?’ Billie snapped in sudden frustration.
‘Because I knew you’d never leave him and if I had the right to keep him, you wouldn’t leave me either!’ Gio yelled back at her full force, making her jump in fright.
Billie gaped at him. ‘But I had no intention of leaving you.’
‘You left me before!’ Gio bit out rawly.
Billie stared at him, fighting to hide her fascination and astonishment. ‘But don’t you think there was some excuse for me leaving you then, when you were marrying another woman?’ she reasoned very gently.
His lean, darkly handsome features froze as if she had slapped him. He released his breath in a long pent-up hiss. ‘Marrying Calisto was the worst mistake I ever made...but I thought, I truly believed at the time that I was doing the right thing.’
Billie thought about what Theon had told her about the way he had raised Gio and the values he had emphasised and suppressed a sigh. ‘But it wasn’t the right thing for you.’
‘I am so sorry for hurting you,’ Gio framed in a roughened undertone, lustrous dark eyes unshielded and filled with overwhelming regret. ‘If I could go back and change it, I would...but I can’t. If it’s any consolation, I hurt myself as well. For two years my life was miserable because you weren’t part of it any longer, so I definitely paid for making the wrong choice. My happiest day since the day I lost you was the day when I finally found out where you were living.’
In her entire experience of Gio, Billie had never thought to hear such admissions from him. Initially the shock of what he was telling her almost struck her dumb and then the natural warmth of her nature sent her hurtling across the room to wrap both arms round him in comfort. ‘Oh, Gio, you are an idiot sometimes,’ she whispered helplessly.
‘I honestly didn’t believe you would leave me. When I found the apartment empty...well, it was a very bad moment for me and I did everything I could to fight feeling the way I did, but everything in my life felt wrong after that,’ he confessed raggedly. ‘Calisto got a bad deal from me as well. I didn’t want her, I wanted you, and when you disappeared you were all I could think about.’
Belatedly Billie understood his ex-wife’s hatred for her. ‘Did she love you? She must’ve been jealous and hurt...’
‘No, love wasn’t part of our arrangement, nor was jealousy. If it had been she would never have agreed to me still keeping you in my life.’
‘You told her about me? She actually agreed to you continuing to see me?’ Billie prompted, shaken even though she recalled him saying something in that line before.
‘I preferred to be honest with her from the start. Cal wanted social position. Her family are wealthy but have little status. She wanted to be Gio Letsos’ wife for what it meant to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, I couldn’t live with her,’ Gio admitted with a grimace of recollection. ‘She was nasty to my family and she lies at the drop of a hat about the most trivial things. After promising to have a family with me, she then confessed that she didn’t ever want to have a child. In short, we were both dissatisfied with our marriage and she agreed to the divorce.’