LITMIR.BIZ

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are rather big in the construction business. I didn’t want any special favours when I first came to Sydney. I’d not long finished an engineering degree at university in Rome, and I—’

      ‘Excuse me?’ she snapped. ‘Are you telling me you’re a qualified engineer? I thought you were a labourer.’

      ‘That’s what I was working as when I first met you.’

      Jordan looked totally bewildered. ‘But why? That would be like me still working as a waitress instead of a lawyer.’

      Gino sighed, then reached for the other bathrobe hanging on the back of the door. There seemed little point in staying naked. The erotic night he’d been planning was well and truly over.

      ‘Could we go out into the other room?’ he suggested, after he drew the robe on and tied the sash around his waist. ‘I could do with a drink.’

      He strode past her out into the hotel room proper, heading for the mini-bar.

      ‘Do you want a glass of wine?’ he asked, glancing over his shoulder at Jordan as she reluctantly followed him. ‘There’s a half-bottle of red here which isn’t too bad.’

      ‘No, thanks,’ she returned crisply. ‘What I want to know is why you lied to me about so many things.’

      ‘Perhaps you should sit down?’ he suggested, indicating the sofa opposite the television.

      She didn’t sit down, moving past the sofa to stand in front of the window, with her arms crossed and her eyes still sceptical.

      Gino poured himself a full glass of wine, taking a decent swallow before turning to face her across the room.

      ‘I was tired after studying for years. Tired of being pushed by my parents to be an over-achiever. It’s a common enough phenomenon in Italian families. I demanded a year off, to just be myself and not my father’s only son. I wanted to earn my own money. Be totally independent. Live a simpler, less stressful life. That was why I decided to work with my hands, and why I changed my name. Because I didn’t want my employer recognising the Bortelli name and treating me differently.’

      Jordan frowned. ‘People would recognise the Bortelli name even out here in Australia?’

      This was the moment Gino had been dreading. But the truth had to come out—especially if he wanted to continue seeing Jordan. And he did, very much.

      ‘I think you might have misunderstood something about me all those years ago,’ he began carefully. ‘I didn’t exactly come to Sydney straight from Rome. After I finished my degree I went home to my family first.’

      ‘So where in Italy does your family live?’

      ‘My family doesn’t live in Italy, Jordan. They migrated to Melbourne not long after I was born. That’s where they live. Melbourne.’

      She stared at him with stunned blue eyes. ‘You’re saying you’re Australian?’

      ‘I hold dual citizenship. Both Italian and Australian.’

      ‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this ten years ago?’

      ‘I wish now that I had. But back then I was also tired of being Italian. I needed a change. I needed to find myself. Then, after I met you, Jordan, I just needed you.’

      She stared at him, her eyes going cold again. ‘Only till your family needed you, Gino. Then you dropped me like a hot cake.’

      Gino sighed. She didn’t understand. She could never understand what it was like to be the only son in an Italian household.

      ‘If anything happens to me, Gino,’ his father used to say all the time, ‘then it is your job to look after the family. Your mother and your sisters. And the business, of course.’

      ‘And what about this weekend, Gino?’ Jordan threw at him. ‘Was it to be more of the same? You needed a change so you came to Sydney? Because Sydney is full of silly girls only too willing to give you sex?’

      ‘I came to Sydney on business,’ Gino pointed out, his sense of honour totally offended by her accusations. ‘I was going to fly back to Melbourne tomorrow, remember?’

      ‘Sorry,’ she quipped sarcastically. ‘I momentarily forgot under the pressure of all these amazing revelations. So you ran into me, and you thought, Wow, there’s good old Jordan—the dumb bird who let me screw her every which way. I’ll bet she’s good for another go. I’ll just give her a line of bull. She’d believe anything I tell her. And presto—you were right. I fell for it, hook, line and sinker.’

      ‘Jordan, stop it!’ Gino said, appalled at the way things were going.

      ‘Stop what?’ she snapped, her blue eyes blazing at him. ‘Stop telling you how it really is? Don’t the ladies do that to you down in Melbourne? No, of course they don’t. You’re a bigshot down there. They probably crawl to you on their hands and knees. Do you have a girlfriend, Gino? Do you make her go without panties? Do you do it to her all the time, the way you used to do it to me?’

      Gino felt his own temper begin to rise. He’d tried to be patient with her. Tried to explain. But she seemed determined to twist everything in her mind, to make everything they’d once shared sound ugly and sordid.

      ‘What in hell’s wrong with you?’ he snarled. ‘Why are you trying to spoil everything? Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth back then. But I did have my reasons. And I’m sorry I left you the way I did. But I had my reasons for that as well. My father was dying, damn it. I had to go home.’

      ‘Then why didn’t you come back? After your father died? Tell me that. You obviously had the resources to. Yet you chose not to. What kind of love was that, Gino?’

      ‘You really want to know?’

      ‘Yes. I really want to know.’

      Gino could see that all was lost. So what did it matter if he told her that last unpalatable truth?

      ‘I didn’t come back because you weren’t Italian.’

      Her mouth fell open. But no words came out.

      ‘I promised my father on his deathbed that when I married I would marry an Italian girl.’

      ‘You have to be kidding,’ she blurted out.

      ‘Unfortunately, no.’ He knew only too well that he had been afraid that if he came back to Jordan he would forget his promise and marry her.

      She shook her head at him, her eyes dropping limply to her sides. ‘And have you?’ she asked in a dull, flat voice. ‘Married an Italian girl?’

      ‘You think I would lie about something like that?’

      ‘I have no idea what you would lie about, Gino. I don’t know you. I never did. The man I lived with—and fell in love with—wasn’t real. He was a pretend man. A fantasy lover. The real Gino is a stranger to me. So I’m asking you again. Are you married?’

      ‘I told you. I’m not married.’

      ‘But you do have a girlfriend, don’t you?’

      ‘Yes,’ he bit out. ‘I do.’

      ‘So you’re a cheat as well as a liar!’

      Gino sucked in sharply. No one had spoken to him like this in his whole life.

      His shock deepened when she suddenly unsashed her robe and pushed it back off her shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. For a long moment she stood there, totally naked, her chin tipped up as she watched him devour every beautiful inch of her.

      When his flesh automatically responded, Gino’s fingers tightened defensively around his wine glass. He didn’t know what she was up to, but he suspected that if he made any move to touch her she would scream the place down.

      ‘You like what you see, Gino?’ she said at last, in a challenging

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