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After this, marriage was permanently off Gino’s agenda. If he couldn’t marry Jordan, then he wouldn’t marry anyone.
In an amazingly short period of time Jordan was fully dressed, looking exactly as she had when he’d first seen her tonight. Except for her hair. As she hooked her bag over her shoulder she tossed her head at him, flicking her hair back from her face.
‘I never forgot you, you know,’ she threw at him. ‘Never. A girlfriend of mine said it was because you were unfinished business. She said it was a pity I couldn’t look you up, so that I could see you weren’t as fantastic as I thought you were. And she was right. You’re not. Oh, you’re still great at sex—I’ll give you that. You know exactly how to turn a girl on. But that’s a small talent in the wider scheme of things. I want a man who knows what he wants and goes after it. Who doesn’t let anything stand in his way. You’re obviously not that kind of man.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know,’ she said, with a curl of her top lip. ‘Actions speak a lot louder than words, Gino.’
‘You’re making a big mistake,’ he said as she headed for the door.
She reached for the doorknob, then stopped to cast a cold glance over her shoulder. ‘No, I’m ending a big mistake. You’re finished business now,’ she said, then wrenched open the door. ‘Ciao.’
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_e87667e2-f22a-5a2c-b144-117e51cef2da)
JORDAN managed to make it home without shedding a tear. Pride prevented her from breaking down in the hotel, or during the taxi ride home. But the moment she was alone, with her door safely locked behind her, everything came crashing in around her.
Her legs suddenly buckled and she sank to the floor where she stood. Her knees hit the tiled foyer first, and her cry was not one of physical pain but of emotional distress.
‘Oh, Gino,’ she sobbed as her head tipped forward into her hands.
And there she stayed, as if she was in prayer.
But she wasn’t praying, she was weeping. And despairing.
For there were no illusions left for her now.
All these years she’d thought that her memory of Gino had been spoiling her relationships with men. And maybe that was true. But it had been a bittersweet memory, because she’d always believed Gino had loved her.
But he hadn’t loved her. He’d merely wanted her, the way he’d wanted her tonight. Not for anything lasting, just for sex.
That discovery had been bad enough. Finding out that his whole persona had been an illusion was even worse. He wasn’t some struggling Italian immigrant, trying to make a good life for himself through hard work. He was a silver-tail, slumming it for a while up here in Sydney. Roughing it—with her.
Tonight had just been a shorter version of what he’d done ten years ago.
Okay, so he probably had been going to change his flight till Sunday. But his motive had still been totally selfish. After all, why look a gift-horse in the mouth?
And, brother, what a gift-horse she was where he was concerned. Fifteen miserable minutes and she’d been up there in his room, ready and willing to take her clothes off. Ready for just about anything.
If she hadn’t found that plane ticket he would have had his wicked way with her for the whole weekend, then flown off back to Melbourne, to his real life and his real girlfriend.
Thinking about that had Jordan sitting back on her heels and wiping the tears from the cheeks. What on earth was she doing, crying over such a man? He was a bastard through and through.
Scooping in a gathering breath, Jordan got to her feet and walked quickly to her bedroom. No more was she going to let Gino Betolli spoil things for her. No more. When Chad rang her in the morning she would accept his proposal of marriage, and she would do her level best not to think of Gino ever again.
But such resolves were easy to make, Jordan came to realise, once she’d stripped off and stepped into the shower. Living them was not so easy.
Her body—especially her naked body—kept reminding her of Gino, the after-effects of his torrid lovemaking conspiring to keep him in her mind. Just moving the soapy sponge lightly between her legs made her belly tighten and her breath catch.
This was what had happened to her when she’d lived with Gino. She’d been in a perpetual state of arousal. Her flesh had craved his constantly, craved release from the sexual tension he created in her.
It craved release now…
Jordan dropped the sponge, then slowly slid her back down the wet tiles till she was sitting on the shower floor. Her arms lifted to wrap around her drawn-up knees, her head dropping forward as she surrendered once more to tears.
‘Oh, Gino,’ she cried. ‘Gino…’
The phone woke her, its persistent ringing getting through the blissful oblivion which had finally descended on Jordan last night, courtesy of the painkillers she’d taken—strong ones she used when she had a migraine. Unfortunately, they had to tendency to leave her a little groggy the next day.
Rolling over with a groan, she picked up the extension near her bed and shoved it between her ear and the pillow.
‘Yes?’ Not exactly a breezy hello.
‘Jordan? Is that you?’
The sound of Chad’s voice had her sitting up and pushing her tangled hair out of her eyes. A glance at the bedside clock shocked her. It was nearly ten.
‘Yes, it’s me,’ she said more brightly. ‘Have you arrived yet?’
‘Just. Thought I’d ring you before I got out in the New York traffic. You sounded sleepy just now. Did I wake you?’
‘Sort of. I…um…I had a late night.’
‘A late night doing what?’
A rush of guilt had Jordan being grateful Chad couldn’t see her. Not that he was all that intuitive. Chad was the sort of man who only saw what he wanted to see. He honestly thought her turning down his proposal was just her playing hard to get. He clearly had no doubts that she would say yes, even leaving the engagement ring with her—a family heirloom which had belonged to his grandmother.
‘Working,’ she lied. ‘I have to wrap up the Johnson case on Monday, remember?’
‘You’ve become a bit obsessed by that case, don’t you think?’
‘No.’ Her client was a young woman whose husband had been killed in a train derailment. Shock and grief had sent her into early labour, with their premature baby boy not making it. When the government had finally offered her compensation, several years later, they hadn’t included anything for the pain and loss of her child. They’d called her son a foetus, not worthy of consideration as a human being. She’d come to Jordan wanting not a fortune, but justice.
Jordan aimed to get justice for her. Which she would—if she could get her head into gear and prepare a killer of a closing argument this weekend.
‘You work too hard, Jordan.’
‘I enjoy my work, Chad.’ More than enjoyed. She’d feel totally empty without it.
‘Have you thought about what I asked you the other night?’
Jordan’s chest tightened. She’d known he’d get round to this sooner or later.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘And?’
This was it: the moment of truth. Did she have the courage of her convictions? Or was she going to weaken and let Gino keep spoiling things for her?
She had a choice. She could pine over a relationship which had been doomed from the start. Or she could choose a new relationship which had everything going for it.
Okay, not quite everything. But everything that mattered. Great sex was not the be all and end all, she reasoned. Besides, it wasn’t that Chad was a hopeless lover. He certainly wasn’t. The problem—if there was one—lay in her own responses. Gino had somehow programmed her not to respond totally to any other man. He, and he alone, could make her lose her head and lose control. Last night had proved that.
But this phenomenon only occurred when he was around. He wasn’t around now. He would never be around again.
The time had come to stop hiding behind her illogical passion for a man who, by his own admission, would never marry her. Next year she would be thirty. In ten years she’d be forty.
Time to make a decision.
‘Yes, Chad,’ she said firmly. ‘I will marry you.’
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_462b3d98-710b-5398-8a42-7f7ae2c048a1)
GINO was on the top floor of his latest skyscraper construction-in-progress, making his way carefully along a not-too-wide girder, when his cellphone rang. He waited till he reached the relative safety of a corner before fishing it out of his pocket.
‘Gino Bortelli,’ he said, one arm wrapped securely around a post. The breeze was quite strong up that high.
‘What is this I hear about you breaking up with Claudia?’ came his mother’s highly accented voice.
Gino smothered a sigh. The grapevine in the Italian community was very fast and usually accurate.
‘It’s no big deal, Mum. She wasn’t right for me, and I wasn’t right for her. We agreed to go our separate ways.’
‘That is not the way I hear it, Gino. Claudia is very upset with you.’
Very upset that she wasn’t marrying into the Bortelli money would be more like it.
Gino had been astounded at how vicious Claudia had become when he’d told her it was over between them. Suddenly she’d shown her true colours, using quite obscene language which everyone in the restaurant had heard. There’d been no hint of a broken heart, just ambition thwarted. After she’d flounced out all the other patrons in the place had stared at him, making Gino wish he’d chosen to break up with her in a more discreet and private place.
That had been last Sunday—two days ago. In hindsight, he was surprised it had taken his mother this long to find out. Maybe he should have told her himself. But since returning to Melbourne on Saturday he hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with his family.
It was because of them that he’d had to leave Jordan in the first place. And he’d not been able to go back for her. They’d sucked him emotionally dry till he no longer wanted get married and have children. The last ten years had been filled with nothing but unending responsibility and pressure, with him putting his mother’s and sisters’ needs first, never his own.
But enough was enough.
‘Claudia was more in love with my money than she was with me, Mum,’ he said firmly. ‘Trust me on that. Look, I can’t stay and chat. I’m working.’
His mother sighed. ‘You work too hard, Gino. You should take some time off.’
‘Maybe I will. But not today.’
‘Before you go, did you decide what you were going to do with that derelict site in Sydney? The one Papa bought all those years ago?’
‘Everything’s underway. It’s going to be a twenty-storey tower with apartments on the top ten floors, office space on the lower ten, shops on the ground floor, and parking underneath. I signed the contract with the architect last Friday.’
‘That is good, Gino. Papa would be pleased.’
‘How can he be pleased about anything, Mum, when he’s dead?’
‘Gino! How can you say such a wicked thing? Have you no faith? Your papa is watching over us from heaven. He would be very proud of you.’
Gino shook his head. There was no arguing with his mother’s faith. So he didn’t bother.
‘He would be even prouder,’ she added, ‘if you married and carried on the Bortelli name.’
‘I am still only thirty-six, Mum. I have plenty of time for that yet. Look, I have to go.’
‘Will you be coming to dinner next Sunday?’
His mother held a big family get-together on the last Sunday of every month. Gino usually attended. He liked playing with his nieces and nephews. But he hated the thought of being bombarded by questions over why Claudia wasn’t with him.
‘I can’t, Mum. Sorry. I have to go to Sydney to meet up with this architect. He wants to show me some preliminary plans.’
Not true. But his mother wasn’t to know that. Still, he would have to go somewhere. Maybe to the snow? He liked skiing, and there was still some good snow in the ski-fields. He’d tire himself out every day and make sure he fell asleep each night the moment his head hit the pillow.
He hadn’t slept well since returning from Sydney, his mind constantly tormented with what ifs.
What if he hadn’t made that foolish promise to his father?
What if he’d been able to go back for Jordan without feeling lousy?
What if he’d told her the truth about himself before they’d gone up to his hotel room last Friday night?
This last what if was easily answered: he’d been too aroused to delay, or to risk Jordan rejecting him after his explanations.
His need for her had transcended common-sense.
Was he still in love with her? he wondered. Or did he just want to escape with her again, as he had all those years ago?
She’d claimed she’d never forgotten him.
Gino believed her.
How could either of them forget the fantasy life they’d lived together, such an erotically charged existence, full of passion and pleasure? But underneath all the sex had been true affection. He hadn’t just used Jordan, he’d truly cared for her—and she for him.
But they were different people now. She was more cynical and less trusting. And he was…well, he was trapped by his previous deceptions.
And yet he would give anything, do anything, to be with her like that again.
‘You should spend more time with your family, Gino,’ his mother chided.
Gino’s teeth clenched down hard in his jaw, the cords in his neck standing out. ‘I have to go, Mum. Ciao.’
He grimaced as he hung up, the Italian word for goodbye reminding him of the last time he’d heard it. On Jordan’s lips, as she swept out of the hotel room. And out of his life.
His life…
Gino glanced down at the city spread out below him. He was on top of the world so to speak. On top of the world financially as well as professionally. He had more money than he would ever need, a fancy penthouse and a fancy car: a Ferrari, no less.
