‘Not one word,’ Gio cut in fiercely. ‘I want my son. You’ve had all the time with him that you ever wanted. It’s my turn now and I’m taking it.’
Billie reached a sudden decision. She would go to the hotel and allow Gio the time and space to get acquainted with Theo. Surely that major concession would cool his temper and calm him down? Sadly, she couldn’t feel sure of the outcome. Gio’s anger was shockingly new to her and she could still feel that anger sizzling from him in invisible sparks that could ignite into an explosion. Right now, opposition would probably only make him angrier and given a few hours’ respite he would surely cool off and develop a more practical outlook, she reasoned frantically.
Billie withdrew a case from the hall cupboard and carried it up to her room. She packed the basics for herself and her son and then went downstairs to throw Theo’s feeding essentials into a holdall. In the kitchen she scribbled a note to Dee, telling her where she had gone and that she would phone.
‘Dee won’t be able to work tonight if I’m not here to babysit for her,’ Billie protested as she pulled on a light cotton jacket. Beneath the onslaught of Gio’s appraisal she suddenly felt like a complete mess and she turned her head away, stiff with self-loathing. Her toffee-coloured corkscrew curls were never going to compare to Calisto’s blade-straight blonde locks. Her hips were never going to be boyishly lean, nor would her boobs ever be dainty handfuls. Short of a body transplant, she was what she was. Wearing only a smattering of make-up, she looked very ordinary. It was ironic that she was so casually dressed because she hadn’t wanted Gio to think that she had made a special effort for him. It was not a comfort that looking less than her best now felt like striking an own goal.
‘I’ll hire a babysitter for your cousin.’
‘I can’t let her down like this, Gio. It took so long for her to find a job with hours that suited.’
‘I said I’ll take care of it and I will,’ Gio incised, grabbing her case from the hall and yanking open the front door, determined to let nothing come between him and his ultimate objective. ‘Trust me.’
His chauffeur was waiting on the step to collect her case. After a moment’s hesitation, Billie passed over her holdall as well, snatched a tiny jacket off the handles of the pram below the stairs and went up to lift Theo out of his cot. Trust me! Perhaps the strangest thing was that she did trust Gio because he had told her the truth even when she didn’t want to hear it and he had never broken his word to her.
Her son was sleepy and warm as toast. She nuzzled her cheek against his smooth skin and breathed in his glorious baby scent before threading his short little arms into the jacket. Even in the very dark mood he was in, Gio had stated that their son needed both of his parents, she reminded herself staunchly. He wasn’t trying to split them up; he was only making threats to make her listen and do what he wanted. Possibly all he really wanted was a couple of days with free access to Theo so that he could get to know him and he couldn’t have that opportunity without including Billie in the arrangements.
A built-in safety seat for a child sat in the rear seat of the limousine. Billie settled Theo in and did up the buckle while her son craned his head to stare at Gio with big brown eyes. Silence fell while the two of them sized each other up. Gio had a cell phone in his hand and the light danced across the metallic finish. Theo stretched out a hand to grab the phone and Billie was incredulous when Gio handed it over.
‘You can’t give him that!’ Billie exclaimed as the phone went straight into Theo’s mouth to be chewed. ‘He tries to eat everything.’
Billie filched the phone back. Theo looked at his empty hand and wailed while Billie passed the phone back to Gio out of her son’s view. She dug a toy out of the holdall to give her son. He studied it with a jutting lower lip and threw it down.
‘He wants the phone back,’ Gio breathed in wonderment.
‘Of course he does...it’s got lots of buttons. The brightest, shiniest new toy always gets his interest.’
They drew up outside the hotel. Billie climbed out and leant back into the car to unbuckle Theo but Gio was one step ahead of her and was already hoisting Theo into his arms. She followed them into the hotel. Theo loved new places just as much as new toys and his curly dark head was turning this way and that with keen interest. Billie stepped into the lift. Theo beamed at her from the vantage point of his father’s arms, clearly very pleased with the exchange.
Billie was surprised to enter a different suite from the one that Gio had previously used. ‘Have you changed to another floor?’
‘Of course, we needed more space,’ Gio pointed out while Theo frantically wriggled in his arms. With a sigh, Gio gave way and gently lowered Theo to the wooden floor. The little boy crawled off at high speed, grabbed at the leg of a fancy sofa and hauled himself upright, grinning with satisfaction.
‘Theo’s a clever boy,’ Billie praised warmly.
Her son’s sturdy little legs began to wobble and he toppled down onto his bottom in a sudden loss of balance and burst into floods of tears. Gio scooped him up again and held him high above his head. In his usual mercurial fashion, Theo forgot his moment of misery and burst out laughing instead at finding himself airborne. Gio made aeroplane noises like a little boy and whirled his son energetically round the room while Billie watched with a dropped jaw, not entirely sure that she could credit what she was seeing. Gio, shedding his dignity and distance, Gio smiling with unabashed enjoyment.
‘It’s time he had lunch,’ Billie remarked.
The game between father and son concluded. A high chair was delivered along with the case and Billie started to feed Theo, who wanted to feed himself and complained vociferously between mouthfuls until she finally gave him the spoon. Theo stuck the spoon in the carton of yogurt with a victorious smile. Billie was still in a daze, her mind still engaged in replaying Gio acting as she had never before seen him act. Only an hour earlier, he had been threatening her with an adverse report to social services.
It had been an utterly ruthless threat that had chilled Billie to the marrow. A couple of years earlier, before Dee began getting her life straightened out, Dee’s children had been put into care. Although she had got the twins back again and no longer even received visits to check on her progress, any allegation of negligent childcare made against the household where Dee lived would certainly result in a full investigation being made by the authorities. Billie could not bear the threat of that happening to her cousin again. It would flatten Dee’s confidence, make her feel like an unfit mother again and if people realised that social services were checking up on her it would rouse local gossip. There was very little that Billie would not have done to protect Dee from such a development.
Yet the same male who had voiced that chilling threat had shown an entirely different side of himself to their son. With Theo, Gio had been playful, uninhibited, almost joyful, three traits she would never ever have associated with Gio’s cool, calm and reserved nature. She recognised that Gio’s interest in his son was considerably more powerful than she had ever dreamt it would be and she wondered uneasily where that left her in the triangle. He had said he wanted his son. What exactly did that mean?
Gio strode into one of the rooms leading off the spacious reception room and reappeared in jeans and a trendy striped cotton sweater. Billie couldn’t drag her eyes from his lean, dark, devastating face as he watched entranced while Theo piled up his bricks and smashed them down again, giggling at the noise he was making. The tight jeans delineated every muscle in Gio’s long, powerful thighs and narrow hips as he squatted down on the floor beside Theo. Billie’s gaze ran over his washboard-flat stomach to the bulge below his belt and she averted her eyes, as hot and cold as someone with a fever. And mortifyingly, she knew precisely what was wrong with her. The kind of craving she had for Gio didn’t go away, didn’t take a back seat when you wanted it to, didn’t fade when you knew it should; it just went on and on, the gift that kept on giving.
Sometimes wanting