Milly listened to the quiet thud of the door closing on his exit and slumped, bitterly ashamed of her own behaviour. He had levelled the score. He had had the last word. Although, as usual, language hadn’t played much part in her defeat. But it hadn’t always been like that between them, she reminded herself fiercely. Once she had been strong enough to hang onto her pride and independence and protect herself from a male determined not to commit himself…
Five years ago, on the very first day they met and admitted to diametrically opposed expectations, Gianni had accurately forecast that one of them was set to crash into a solid brick wall.
Gianni had wanted a no-strings-attached affair, but Milly had wanted and needed something much deeper. Within the first week, she had recognised the disturbing intensity of her own emotional response to him. And the discovery that one kiss could set a bushfire burning inside her had been no more welcome.
Milly had tried to back off and protect herself by making loads of rules to ensure that she never emulated poor Lisa with Stevie. No man was going to turn her into a puppet on a string! So, if Gianni hadn’t called far enough in advance, she’d always been busy. If Gianni had just turned up without calling, she’d always been on the way out of the door to a pressing engagement. If Gianni had been late, she’d gone out and stayed out. And she had never, ever called him.
But then Gianni had gone over to New York for three weeks, and her whole world had turned gloomy grey. She’d begun marking off days on the calendar, hanging over the phone anxiously, and driving herself crazy with the suspicion that he might have other women in his life.
‘Have you?’ Milly had asked baldly, the first time she’d seen him again.
‘Of course I have,’ Gianni admitted without hesitation. ‘I travel a great deal. Anything else would be impractical.’
Feeling as if she had been slugged by a sack of coal, Milly cleared her throat. ‘But if we have an affair, that would change…wouldn’t it?’ she almost whispered.
Gianni lifted one broad shoulder in an infinitesimal shrug, too slick an operator to be entrapped by a verbal response.
But Milly had got her answer in that silence. And, having naively assumed that even Gianni would concede that intimacy should be accompanied by total fidelity, she was shocked and furious. ‘All I can say is, thank heaven I found this out before I slept with you!’ she slung as she rose from her seat and stalked out of the restaurant.
‘I don’t like public scenes. Nor do I admire jealous, possessive women,’ Gianni imparted chillingly, outside on the pavement.
‘Then what are you doing with me?’ Milly demanded. ‘I’m jealous and I’m very possessive, so get out of my life now and don’t come back!’
Gianni stayed away another full month.
Milly lost a stone in weight, but she didn’t wait by the phone; she didn’t ever expect to see him again. But Gianni was waiting for her to come home one evening when she finished her supermarket shift.
One look and she was sick with simultaneous nerves and sheer, undiluted joy. Gianni took her back to his Park Lane apartment. He dropped the news that she no longer had competition. She asked him how she could be sure of that. Gianni could freely admit that he didn’t trust anybody, but, faced with her lack of faith in him, he was outraged. They almost had another fight.
She was in tears, and then he kissed her—a standard Gianni response when things got too emotional. And the wild passion just blazed up so powerfully inside her she finally surrendered. He was astonished when he realised he was her first lover.
Making love with Gianni was glorious; staying for breakfast feeling totally superfluous while he made calls and read stockmarket reports was something less than glorious.
So Milly drew up a new set of rules. No staying overnight. No asking when she would see him again. Always saying goodbye with a breezy smile. By then, she knew she was in love with him, but she was well aware that he didn’t love her. He found her good company. She made him laugh. He couldn’t get enough of her in bed. But never once did he do or say anything that gave her any hope that their affair might last.
As part of her college course that year Milly had to spend two months gaining practical experience of working in a large garden or park. She was allotted a place on a big private estate far from London. When she informed Gianni that she would be going away, they had a blistering row.
‘How the hell am I supposed to see you up there?’ he demanded incredulously.
‘You’re out of the country at least two weeks out of every four,’ she reminded him.
‘Porca miseria…you can’t make a comparison like that!’
‘Don’t say what you’re dying to say,’ she warned him tautly. ‘It’ll make me very angry.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
So she said it for him. ‘You think your life and your business empire are one hundred times more important than anything in mine.’
‘Obviously they are,’ Gianni stated without flinching. ‘And, while we’re on the subject, I can think of a thousand more suitable career choices than a peculiar desire to go grubbing about in the dirt of somebody else’s garden!’
‘It’s what I want to do. It’s what I’ll be doing a long, long time after you’re gone. So really, in every way, it has to take precedence,’ Milly retorted shakily.
‘Over me?’ Gianni breathed chillingly. ‘Haven’t I offered to find you a decent job?’
‘I’m happy with the career choice I’m training for.’
‘Fine. Just don’t expect me to follow you north to the rural wastes!’