Loving Gigi (10 page)

Kane’s words echoed in her head. “You’re stronger than you think.”
He’s right. I’m not running away this time. I need to do this.

She left her room and headed downstairs to find Julia.

“Gigi, I’d like to speak to you for a moment.” Gio stood at the door of what looked like his study.

“Of course,” Gigi said.

Gio led her to a pair of settees and motioned for her to sit. She did, but he continued to stand. “How is your room?”

“Lovely,” Gigi answered in awkward politeness. She couldn’t help adding, “Huge.”

A small smile pulled at Gio’s lips. “I’m glad. I want you to be comfortable here.”

Is this where I’m supposed to lie and say I am?
“Thank you.”

“There are things you need to know, things you would have heard before now if you had been willing to speak with any of us.”

Gigi stood, rising as her temper did. “Don’t speak to me like I’m a child.”

“Sit down,” Gio commanded as if he were indeed addressing one.

Gigi remained standing and squared her shoulders. “No. I’m fine the way I am. Say whatever it is you want me to hear.”

Running a hand through his hair, Gio looked irritated by her defiance. “You don’t have to turn this into a confrontation.”

“Yes, I do. We both know you have an ugly side. I’m just warning you I am not the kind of person who responds well to intimidation or your patronizing tone.”

“An ugly side? What the hell are you talking about?”

Old anger surfaced with memories. For a moment, Gigi was eavesdropping from behind the shutters of the palazzo. What she’d held back for so long spilled out. “I heard you with my mother after our father died. I know what you said to her because I was there. So you can pretend to care about me, but I know you’re not sincere. Why do you really want to meet me, Gio?”

“You were there?” Gio asked, going pale. “I didn’t know. I didn’t even know you existed.”

With a chest tight with anger, Gigi let out what she’d held in for so long. “But if you had, things would have been different? I don’t believe that. My father used to tell me stories about you and your brothers—”

“Your brothers, too,” Gio said tightly.

Gigi continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “He said you would accept me, but that wasn’t what I witnessed. My father warned my mother not to let me contact any of you while Patrice was alive. Mamma thought it was to protect me, but I think he didn’t want to embarrass his real family with me. Is that what this visit is about? Do you want to threaten me, too, if I go public?”

“I don’t care who knows about you.” Gio threw a hand up in the air. “If we’re so embarrassed by you, why are we hosting a dinner for you tomorrow night?”

“I don’t know.” Gigi threw up both of her hands in a similar frustrated gesture.

“Do you mind if I join you?” Julia asked softly from the doorway.

Gio waved his wife in. She went to his side and whispered something into his ear. He nodded and took a seat.

Julia then turned to Gigi and gave her a sympathetic smile. “Why don’t we all sit down?”

In the face of Julia’s sweet voice and calm nature, Gigi felt her anger draining out of her. She took the seat across from Gio. Julia sat beside her husband on the settee. She looked back and forth between them and said lightly, “Let’s start over. Whenever I have a problem with someone I try to begin where we agree. Gio, you want to get to know your sister, don’t you?”

“Why else would I have been trying to contact her for the last five years?” Gio asked gruffly. Julia gave him a look, and he shifted uncomfortably as if he were a child being reprimanded. Gigi would have found it amusing if her stomach wasn’t tied up in so many nervous knots that she was afraid she’d lose her lunch on the expensive rug beneath her feet. Gio looked into his wife’s eyes for a moment, then to Gigi’s utter shock, his expression completely softened. “Yes, more than anything, I want Gigi here and in our lives.”

Gigi’s eyes were still round with surprise when Julia turned to her. “And Gigi, no matter what happened in the past, you’re here because you want to get to know your brothers. Am I right?”

Gigi nodded and shrugged with one shoulder.

Julia took her husband’s hand in hers. “Then that’s where you both start. That’s what’s important. Everything else will sort itself out if you remember why you’re here.” She met Gigi’s eyes. “I’ll let you in on a little secret about your brothers, Gigi. Something they can’t tell you themselves. When you deal with them, it’s best to pretend they were raised by wolves. Ignore the snarling and snapping. They don’t mean it.”

Gio arched an eyebrow at Julia and challenged, “Wolves?”

Julia looked back at him unapologetically. “Do you want my help or not?”

Gio inclined his head without another word, and Gigi marveled at the hint of humor in his eyes. “Go on.”

Julia turned back to Gigi. “I heard some of what you said as I came in. Gio was wrong that day, but he was wrong for the right reason.” She gave her husband’s hand a supportive squeeze and quickly glanced up to check his expression. It was carefully blank. “I’m not saying anything we haven’t spoken about, Gio. I know it would be nice to rewrite history or simply forget it, but there is still one person who deserves to hear it. She’ll never be one of you until she does.”

Gio took Julia’s hand beneath his and placed it on his thigh as if he garnered some courage by doing so. “Father was right to hide you from my mother. For as long as I can remember, and until the day she died, she was consumed by an anger that knew no boundaries. She had no conscience. She would have turned you against us or destroyed you. I don’t know what I would have done had I known about you the day I went to retrieve father’s body. I’d like to think it would have changed everything, but who knows? My mother had a way of making the world look darker than it was.” He shook his head. “No, it wasn’t all her. I allowed myself to be manipulated. I followed where she led, but it was my choice to do so.”

Julia leaned against Gio’s side and said softly, “That’s a harsher view than I take on what you did. You thought you were protecting your mother.”

“I threatened to take the home away from Leora if she ever spoke of being with my father.” He rubbed his hands over his face, and when he looked back at Gigi his eyes were full of a sadness Gigi understood too well. “I’ll understand if you can’t forgive me, Gigi, but don’t let me be the reason you stay away from the rest of your family. You’ll love Luke as a big brother. Although he may mother-hen you if you let him. He’s flying back from Ohio tomorrow to meet you. I’ve never seen Nick as excited about anything as he was when he heard you were coming for a visit. And Max is flying in from visiting his in-laws in Florida to meet you. You don’t have to stay with us if you don’t want to, but don’t leave. Not because of me.”

Tears had started spilling down Gigi’s cheeks as Gio spoke. He wasn’t a man who seemed comfortable talking about his feelings or the past, but he was doing it for her, and it was both confusing and beautiful at the same time. It also made Gigi want to believe him more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. “You really didn’t know about me?”

“I didn’t, Gigi. I swear it on my life.”

Wiping away her tears, Gigi nodded. This was the man she’d witnessed once before, the brother she’d hoped he could be. “When I saw you with Julia at your wedding, you were different than how I remembered you.”

Gio stood and said harshly, “You were at our wedding? How did no one know?”

Julia stood beside him and said, “Let me translate that for you. He means he wishes he had known because he would have loved to have shared our day with you.”

Gigi met Julia’s eyes and said with a touch of sarcasm, “Which you know because you speak wolf?”

“Fluently,” Julia said, and a large smile spread across her face. “Lucky for you, it’s not a difficult second language to acquire.”

Gio shook his head in exasperation. “At work I’m a man people fear.” He hugged Julia. “I don’t suppose I can convince you to fear me just a little? You know, so the rest of the family doesn’t turn on me like the wild pack they are.”

Julia laughed and gave Gio a pat on the cheek. “I’m sorry to say, sweetie, but if we have a little girl there will be no saving you. She’s going to wrap you around her little finger.”

“Is that so?” He was smiling warmly, not at all afraid of the possibility. “And what if we have a boy?”

“I hope he turns out to be just as strong and as loyal as his father.”

The scene should have been uncomfortable, but somehow Gigi didn’t feel excluded. Watching her brother with his wife was actually reminding Gigi of a time in her childhood when her father had joked with her mother the same way. For once, that memory wasn’t accompanied by resentment. Could getting to know her brothers do more than reopen old wounds? Could it help heal them as well?

And how could she not admire Julia? She had walked into an escalating, explosive conversation and had somehow brought brother and sister to, if not a loving place, at least common ground. “You’re going to be an amazing mother, Julia.”

Julia blushed and hugged Gio. “I hope so. I’ve never been happier.”

Gio wrapped both of his arms around her and kissed her forehead. “Me, either.” He met Gigi’s eyes over Julia’s head. “We still have things we need to discuss, but they can wait. Tonight let’s enjoy a quiet dinner. Tomorrow there won’t be a peaceful place to hide in this house.”

“Who’s coming?” Gigi asked, suddenly a whole lot less sure what the next day would have in store for her.

Gio shrugged in resignation. “If I know my family, all of them.”

Gigi’s eyes flew to Julia’s for confirmation that she might have misunderstood. Julia smiled back apologetically. “I’ve been fielding calls all day. Everyone wants to meet you, Gigi.”

Gigi consoled herself with a thought she didn’t share.
I guess that’s better than no one wanting to.

Julia pushed away from her husband and checked her watch. “I have to meet with our house staff if we’re going to be ready for tomorrow. I was planning on fifty, Gio. You said Luke and Max are flying in. Are others doing the same?”

“Probably,” Gio said with a groan.

Julia spoke as she absently gave Gigi a hug. “I’ll plan for a hundred, then, but I’ll have extra food prepared just in case more come.”

“A hundred?” Gigi sat down with a thud.

Julia chuckled. “Welcome to the family, Gigi.”

*     *     *

Kane rolled over
in his bed and pulled a blanket over his head to stop the sunlight from searing through his still-closed eyelids. He hadn’t imbibed that much Scotch since his college days, and his thirty-five-year-old body was making him pay for every sip of it. His head was throbbing. His stomach was churning. If death didn’t feel like this, it was close.

“I told the office you had a stomach bug,” his father said from a chair beside Kane’s bed. Only Thom Sander would call in Kane’s absence as if his son was home sick from school and not the CEO of one of the country’s most profitable companies.

“I have a nine a.m. meeting I can’t cancel on.” The sound of his own voice was like a sledgehammer to his temple.

“Then it’s a shame it’s noon,” his father said dryly.

Kane sat straight up, almost lost the contents of his stomach on himself, then lay back down and covered his face with one arm. “Fuck. Ritmon does not like to be canceled on.”

“He’ll survive. He wants the deal as much as you do.”

“And you know that because?”

“I have my sources.”

“Dad, you’re retired. You’re not supposed to call my office and pump my people for information. And they know better than to tell you anything.”

“I hired half of them. And you should be grateful. Just because you run the company now, doesn’t mean I’m too senile to give you pointers now and then.”

Kane rolled onto his side and calculated the possibility of things getting very messy if he moved again. “I can’t argue about this right now. Thank you for calling the office. I’ll call them myself in about an hour.”

“You should have had the water and aspirin I tried to give you last night, but you were convinced you weren’t drunk.”

Kane groaned again. “I don’t remember that.”

“I’m not surprised. Your mother wanted to come over. She has her grandmother’s hangover cocktail. You can thank me later for saving you from that.”

“She knows I was drinking?”

“I wasn’t going to lie to her. I had to tell her why I wasn’t coming home last night.”

“You didn’t have to stay, Dad. I’m not a kid anymore.”

“You’ll understand when you have a family of your own, Kane. So, what are you going to do about Gigi?”

“Gigi?” Kane opened one eye.

His father crossed one leg over the other and looked at Kane with a wry smile. “Don’t even try to act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You spilled the whole story to me last night. Twice. You started to tell me a third time, but thankfully passed out before you could.”

Kane closed his eyes. “That’s just fucking perfect.”

“I’d tell you to mind your language, but I’ll hold off until I’m sure you’re completely sober. Then I’ll toss in a lecture about how alcohol never makes anything better and get it all done at once.”

“Funny, Dad. I’d laugh, but I’m not up to it right this moment.”

“Sarcasm, that’s a good sign. Sounds like you’re going to live.”

“That is yet to be determined.”

“Not that you asked for my opinion, but it looks like you and Gio need to talk.”

“Dad, I’m willing to pay you a million dollars if you go home now.”

His father laughed. “Most of your money is still my money until I die, so please, as a rule, offer smaller bribes.”

Kane opened his bloodshot eyes again. “Is this payback for something I did to you as a child? Because I don’t remember giving you shit like this.”

His father looked on with amusement he made no attempt to hide. “Kane, if you could see yourself right now, you’d be laughing, too. If I find you like this again, I’ll start to worry, but for now, I’m just enjoying watching the almighty Kane trying not to throw up all over himself. You were born thinking you’d rule the world, but a bottle of Scotch nearly did you in. Humbling, isn’t it? How frail we all are at the end of the day.”