The Sicilian's Mistress

‘I never did expect you to. You’re far too used to people doing the running for you. You never, ever put yourself out for anybody,’ Milly pointed out with quiet dignity. ‘So that’s that, then. We’re at the end of the road.’

‘Spare me the clichés at least,’ Gianni ground out as she walked straight-backed to the door. ‘Tell me, am I being dumped again?’

Milly thought about it, and nodded.

‘This is a wind-up,’ Gianni drawled in icy condemnation. ‘This is a power-play.’

‘Goodbye,’ she said gruffly.

He did come up north. His limo got bogged down in a country lane. He was fit to be tied when he ended up lodged in a very small and far from luxurious hotel. And he was furious when she wouldn’t let him come to the estate to pick her up for the weekend. He didn’t appreciate being told that she didn’t want to shock the head gardener and his wife, who were letting her stay in their guest-room. By the time she had finished explaining that a humble student trainee couldn’t have a very rich, flash older boyfriend without her reputation taking a nosedive, and the all too human effect that might have on her receiving a fair assessment of her work, Gianni was not in a very good mood.

‘So I’ll buy you a big garden of your own,’ he announced, in the dark of the night.

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘Then I’ll buy the garden for myself. I’ll pay you to look after it for me!’

‘You’re embarrassing me,’ she groaned. ‘Stop living in fantasy land.’

‘When I’ve got free time, I’d like you to be available occasionally.’

‘I know how that feels. You’re away much more than I am,’ she complained sleepily, looking forward to spending two entire nights with him, snuggling up to him with a euphoric smile in the darkness.

‘Do you think the head gardener and his wife would be shocked if I delivered you back strangled?’ Gianni mused reflectively. ‘What am I doing here in this lousy dump with you?’

Sex, she reflected. Sex and only sex—and it was an ongoing source of amazement to her that her body could possibly have such a hold on him. It was a perfectly ordinary body. Slender, well-honed, but far from being centrefold material. Yet he kept on coming back to her. She was developing expectations on that basis. That worried her terribly. After all, some day soon he would lose interest and vanish for good.

He came up north three more weekends. She was so happy she couldn’t hide it from him. It was getting harder and harder to obey her own rules. It was as if he knew her rules and worked overtime to try and get her to compromise them. That next summer he was away a lot, and she pined, went off her food, couldn’t sleep. He gave her a mobile phone and she accepted it, and used it much more than she felt she should.

Then they had their six-month anniversary, and she was stupid enough to mention it. He frowned. ‘That long?’ he questioned with brooding coolness, and went silent on her for the rest of the evening.

He didn’t call her for a week after that. So she ca

lled him in a temper and told him he was history and that she was going to find a man who would treat her with the respect she deserved.

‘Tell him in advance how demanding you are,’ Gianni advised helpfully. ‘That you have a very hot temper, a habit of saying things you don’t mean and a stubborn streak a mile wide.’

‘I’m finished with you—’

‘I’ll pick you up for dinner at eight, and if you’re not there, I’m not waiting. It’s time to join the grown-ups and stop playing hard to get.’

Just before she started back at college, she suffered what appeared to be a really bad bout of tonsillitis, and instead of getting better she lost her energy and her appetite. Gianni was in South America. She told him that she thought she had the flu and soldiered on, exhausted, to her classes and her part-time job. By the time Gianni flew back to London she was so weak that walking from the bed to the door was enough to reduce her to a perspiring wreck.

Gianni was furious with her. He got another doctor. Acute glandular fever was diagnosed. She was told she would have to rest for weeks. She wouldn’t be fit for her classes or for any other form of work—and by the way, the doctor added, physical intimacy was out for the foreseeable future too. That quickly, her whole world fell apart. At the time she just could not comprehend why Gianni, threatened by weeks of celibacy, should still seem so incredibly supportive.

Forty-eight hours later, she was flown to Paris in Gianni’s private jet and installed in a fabulous townhouse with a garden. When she was least able to oppose him Gianni made his move, at supersonic speed.

His every argument had been unanswerable. Who would look after her in London? How could he take care of her from a distance? And she loved Paris, didn’t she? If she couldn’t study and she couldn’t work, she might as well regard her lengthy convalescence as a vacation. And the sad truth was that she was so desperately grateful that Gianni wasn’t abandoning her she didn’t protest that much.

He was really wonderful when she was ill. She learnt that he liked to be needed, and that in constantly asserting her independence she had been missing out on probably the very best side of him. From that time on, Gianni became the love of her life, the centre of her existence. She stopped trying to contain her own feelings. The last barriers came down. She told him she loved him. He froze, but he didn’t back off. The more she told him, the less he froze, and eventually he even began to smile.

And she decided then that maybe if she absolutely showered him in love and trust and affection, if she gave and gave and gave, with complete honesty and generosity, she might break his barriers down too. Her only goal was that he should return her love. So she never did go back to complete her college course.

Gianni became her full-time occupation. He finally got everything the way he wanted. He got to buy her clothes and jewellery, to switch her between the house in Paris and the apartment in New York, according to what best suited his travelling itinerary. She became his mistress full-time without ever acknowledging what she had become. And he was right; she was deliriously happy—right up until the day she discovered she was pregnant.

In the heat of passion, Gianni had on several occasions neglected to take precautions. She knew that. He knew that. But, like so much else, they had never discussed the fact that he had taken that risk.

Yet the evening she broke the news Gianni went into shock, like a teenager who had honestly believed it couldn’t possibly be that easy to get a girl pregnant.