The Truth Behind his Touch
CATHY WILLIAMS
Step into a world of sophistication and glamour, where sinfully seductive heroes await you in luxurious international locations.Women always jump at the click of his fingers…don’t they? Hot and flustered from the sweltering Milan heat, Caroline Rossi steps into the sleek offices of Giancarlo de Vito – only to feel plump, plain…and virtually invisible! Giancarlo’s ruthless ambition got him where he is today, but he’s never forgotten the hardships he overcame – or his thirst for a revenge only Caroline can help him exact…Used to women doing anything to please him, Giancarlo is confounded by Caroline – she just won’t play ball. To seek his vengeance Giancarlo will have to turn on the legendarily irresistible de Vito charm…
‘You’re attracted to me, and the faster you face that, the better off you’ll be …’
‘And how do you figure that out, Giancarlo? How?’
‘Your head’s telling you what you should want but here I am … a real man … and you just can’t help yourself. Don’t worry. Amazingly, it’s mutual …’
Caroline went white at his brutal summary of everything she didn’t want to face. Her behaviour made no sense to her. She didn’t approve of him one bit and yet she had succumbed faster than she could ever have dreamt possible.
Had he thought that he was complimenting her when he’d told her that he amazingly found her attractive? Did he seriously think that it felt good to be somebody’s novelty for five minutes before he returned to the sort of woman he usually liked? Warning bells were ringing so loudly in her head that she would have been a complete idiot not to listen to them.
‘Okay—’ Caroline’s words tumbled over one another and she kept her eyes firmly fixed on the fast approaching shoreline ‘—so I find you attractive. You’re right! Satisfied? But I’m glad you’ve dragged that out of me because it’s only lust, and lust doesn’t mean anything! Not to me, anyway. So there. Now it’s out in the open and we can both forget about it!’
About the Author
CATHY WILLIAMS is originally from Trinidad, but has lived in England for a number of years. She currently has a house in Warwickshire, which she shares with her husband Richard, her three daughters, Charlotte, Olivia and Emma, and their pet cat, Salem. She adores writing romantic fiction, and would love one of her girls to become a writer—although at the moment she is happy enough if they do their homework and agree not to bicker with one another!
Recent titles by the same author:
THE SECRET SINCLAIR
HER IMPOSSIBLE BOSS
IN WANT OF A WIFE?
THE SECRETARY’S SCANDALOUS SECRET
Did you know these are also available as eBooks?Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
The Truth Behind
His Touch
Cathy Williams
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
CAROLINE fanned herself wearily with the guide book which she had been clutching like a talisman ever since she had disembarked from the plane at Malpensa airport in Milan, and took the time to look around her. Somewhere, nestled amongst these ancient, historic buildings and wide, elegant piazzas, lay her quarry. She knew that she should be heading directly there, bypassing all temptations of a cold drink and something sweet, sticky, chocolatey and deliciously fattening, but she was hot, she was exhausted and she was ravenous.
‘It will take you no time at all!’ Alberto had said encouragingly. ‘One short flight, Caroline. And a taxi … Maybe a little walking to find his offices, but what sights you’ll see. The Duomo. You will never have laid eyes on anything so spectacular. Palazzos. More than you can shake a stick at. And the shops. Well, it is many, many years since I have been to Milan, but I can still recall the splendour of the Vittorio Gallery.’
Caroline had looked at him with raised, sceptical eyebrows and the old man had had the grace to flush sheepishly, because this trip to Milan was hardly a sightseeing tour. In fact, she was expected back within forty-eight hours and her heart clenched anxiously at the expectations sitting heavily on her shoulders.
She was to locate Giancarlo de Vito, run him to ground and somehow return to Lake Como with him.
‘I would go myself, my dear,’ Alberto had murmured, ‘but my health does not permit it. The doctor said that I have to rest as much as possible—the strain on my heart … I am not a well man, you understand …’
Caroline wondered, not for the first time, how she had managed to let herself get talked into this mission but there seemed little point dwelling on that. She was here now, surrounded by a million people, perspiring in soaring July temperatures, and it was just too late in the day to have a sudden attack of nerves.
The truth was that the success or failure of this trip was really not her concern. She was the messenger. Alberto, yes, he would be affected, but she was really just his personal assistant who happened to be performing a slightly bizarre duty.
Someone bumped into her from behind and she hastily consulted her map and began walking towards the small street which she had highlighted in bold orange.
She had dressed inappropriately for the trip, but it had been cooler by the lake. Here, it was sweltering and her cream trousers stuck to her legs like glue. The plain yellow blouse with its three-quarter-length sleeves had looked suitably smart when she had commenced her journey but now she wished that she had worn something without sleeves, and she should have done something clever with her hair. Put it up into some kind of bun, perhaps. Yes; she had managed to twist it into a long braid of sorts but it kept unravelling and somehow getting itself plastered around her neck.
Caught up in her own physical discomfort and the awkwardness of what lay ahead, she barely noticed the old mellow beauty of the cathedral with its impressive buttresses, spires and statues as she hurried past it, dragging her suitcase which behaved like a recalcitrant child, stopping and swerving and doing its best to misbehave.
Anyone with a less cheerful and equable temperament might have been tempted to curse the elderly employer who had sent them on this impossible mission, which was frankly way beyond the scope of their duties. But Caroline, tired, hot and hungry as she was, was optimistic that she could do what was expected of her. She had enormous faith in human nature. Alberto, on the other hand, was the world’s most confirmed pessimist.
She very nearly missed the building. Not knowing what exactly to expect, she had imagined something along the lines of an office in London. Bland, uninspiring, with perhaps too much glass and too little imagination.
Retracing her steps, she looked down at the address which she had carefully printed on an index card, and then up at the ancient exterior of stone and soft, aged pinks, no more than three storeys tall, adorned with exquisite carvings and fronted by two stone columns.
How difficult could Giancarlo be if he worked in this wonderful place? Caroline mused, heart lightening.
‘I cannot tell you anything of Giancarlo,’ Alberto had said mournfully when she had tried to press him for details of what she would be letting herself in for. ‘It is many, many years since I have seen him. I could show you some pictures, but they are so out of date. He would have changed in all these years … If I had a computer … But an old man like me … How could I ever learn now to work one of those things?’
‘I could go and get my laptop from upstairs,’ she had offered instantly, but he had waved her down.
‘No, no. I don’t care for those gadgets. Televisions and telephones are as far as I am prepared to go when it comes to technology.’
Privately, Caroline agreed with him. She used her computer to email but that was all, and it was nigh on impossible trying to access the Internet in the house anyway.
So she had few details on which to go. She suspected, however, that Giancarlo was rich, because Alberto had told her in passing that he had ‘made something of himself’. Her suspicion crystallised when she stepped into the cool, uber-modern, marbled portico of Giancarlo’s offices. If the façade of the building looked as though it had stepped out of an architectural guide to mediaeval buildings, inside the twenty-first century had made its mark.
Only the cool, pale marble underfoot and the scattering of old masterpieces on the walls hinted at the age of the building.
Of course, she wasn’t expected. Surprise, apparently, was of the utmost importance, ‘or else he will just refuse to see you, I am convinced of it! ‘.
It took her over thirty-five minutes to try to persuade the elegant receptionist positioned like a guard dog behind her wood-and-marble counter, who spoke far too quickly for Caroline to follow, that she shouldn’t be chucked out.
‘What is your business here?’
‘Ah …’
‘Are you expected?’
‘Not exactly …‘
‘Are you aware that Signore de Vito is an extremely important man?’
‘Er …’ Then she had practised her haltering Italian and explained the connection to Giancarlo, produced several documents which had been pored over in silence and the wheels of machinery had finally begun to move.
But still she would have to wait.
Three floors up, Giancarlo, in the middle of a meeting with three corporate financiers, was interrupted by his secretary, who whispered something in his ear that made him still and brought the shutters down on his dark, cold eyes.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked in a clipped voice. Elena Carli seldom made mistakes; it was why she had worked for him so successfully for the past five-and-a-half years. She did her job with breathtaking efficiency, obeyed orders without question and seldom made mistakes. When she nodded firmly, he immediately got to his feet, made his excuses—though not profusely, because these financiers needed him far more than he needed them—and then, meeting dismissed, he walked across to the window to stare down at the paved, private courtyard onto which his offices backed.
So the past he thought to have left behind was returning. Good sense counselled him to turn his back on this unexpected intrusion in his life, but he was curious and what harm would there be in indulging his curiosity? In his life of unimaginable wealth and vast power, curiosity was a rare visitor, after all.
Giancarlo de Vito had been ferociously single-minded and ruthlessly ambitious to get where he was now. He had had no choice. His mother had needed to be kept and after a series of unfortunate lovers the only person left to keep her had been him. He had finished his university career with a first and had launched himself into the world of high finance with such dazzling expertise that it hadn’t been long before doors began to open. Within three years of finishing university, he’d been able to pick and choose his employer. Within five years, he’d no longer needed an employer because he had become the powerhouse who did the employing. Now, at just over thirty, he had become a billionaire, diversifying with gratifying success, branching out and stealing the march on competitors with every successive merger and acquisition and in the process building himself a reputation that rendered him virtually untouchable.
His mother had seen only the tip of his enormous success, as she had died six years previously—perhaps, fittingly, in the passenger seat of her young lover’s fast car—a victim, as he had seen it, of a life gone wrong. As her only offspring, Giancarlo knew he should have been more heartbroken than he actually was, but his mother had been a temperamental and difficult woman, fond of spending money and easily dissatisfied. He had found her flitting from lover to lover rather distasteful, but never had he once criticized her. At the end of the day, hadn’t she been through enough?
Unaccustomed to taking these trips down memory lane, Giancarlo shook himself out of his introspection with a certain amount of impatience. Presumably the woman who had come to see him and who was currently sitting in the grand marble foyer was to blame for his lapse in self-control. With his thoughts back in order and back where they belonged, he buzzed her up.
‘You may go up now.’ The receptionist beckoned to Caroline, who could have stayed sitting in the air-conditioned foyer quite happily for another few hours. Her feet were killing her and she had finally begun cooling down after the hours spent in the suffocating heat. ‘Signora Carli will meet you up at the top of the elevator and show you to Signore De Vito’s office. If you like, you may leave your … case here.’
Caroline thought that the last thing the receptionist seemed to want was her battered pull-along being left anywhere in the foyer. At any rate, she needed it with her.
And, now that she was finally here, she felt a little twist of nervousness at the prospect of what lay ahead. She wouldn’t want to return to the lake house empty-handed. Alberto had suffered a heart attack several weeks previously. His health was not good and, his doctor had confided in her, the less stress the better.
With a determined lift of her head, Caroline followed the personal assistant in silence, passing offices which seemed abnormally silent, staffed with lots of hard-working executives who barely looked up as they walked past.
Everyone seemed very well-groomed. The women were all thin, good-looking and severe, with their hair scraped back and their suits shrieking of money well spent.
In comparison, Caroline felt overweight, short and dishevelled. She had never been skinny, even as a child. When she sucked her breath in and looked at herself sideways through narrowed eyes, she could almost convince herself that she was curvy and voluptuous, but the illusion was always destroyed the second she took a harder look at her reflection. Nor was her hair of the manageable variety. It rarely did as it was told; it flowed in wild abandon down her back and was only ever remotely obedient when it was wet. Right now the heat had added more curl than normal and she knew that tendrils were flying wildly out of their impromptu braid. She had to keep blowing them off her face.
After trailing along behind Elena—who had introduced herself briefly and then seen fit to say absolutely nothing else on the way up—a door was opened into an office so exquisite that for a few seconds Caroline wasn’t even aware that she had been deposited like an unwanted parcel, nor did she notice the man by the window turning slowly around to look at her.
All she could see was the expanse of splendid, antique Persian rug on the marble floor; the soft, silk wallpaper on the walls; the smooth, dark patina of a bookshelf that half-filled an entire wall; the warm, old paintings on the walls—not paintings of silly lines and shapes that no one could ever decipher, but paintings of beautiful landscapes, heavy with trees and rivers.
‘Wow,’ she breathed, deeply impressed as she continued to look around her with shameless awe.
At long last her eyes rested on the man staring at her and she was overcome with a suffocating, giddy sensation as she absorbed the wild, impossible beauty of his face. Black hair, combed back and ever so slightly too long, framed a face of stunning perfection. His features were classically perfect and invested with a raw sensuality that brought a heated flush to her cheeks. His eyes were dark and unreadable. Expensive, lovingly hand-tailored charcoal-grey trousers sheathed long legs and the crisp white shirt rolled to the elbows revealed strong, bronzed forearms with a sprinkling of dark hair. In the space of a few seconds, Caroline realised that she was staring at the most spectacular-looking man she had ever clapped eyes on in her life. She also belatedly realised that she was gaping, mouth inelegantly open, and she cleared her throat in an attempt to get a hold of herself.
The silence stretched to breaking point and then at last the man spoke and introduced himself, inviting her to take a seat, which she was only too happy to do because her legs felt like jelly. His voice matched his appearance. It was deep, dark, smooth and velvety. It was also icy cold, and a trickle of doubt began creeping in, because this was not a man who looked as though he could be persuaded into doing anything he didn’t want to do.
‘So …’ Giancarlo sat down, pushing himself away from his desk so that he could cross his long legs, and stared at her. ‘What makes you think that you can just barge into my offices, Miss …?’
‘Rossi. Caroline.’
‘I was in the middle of a meeting.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ She stumbled over the apology. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt anything. I would have been happy to wait until you were finished …’ Her naturally sunny personality rose to the surface and she offered him a small smile. ‘In fact, it was so wonderfully cool in your foyer and I was just so grateful to rest my legs. I’ve been on the go for absolutely ages and it’s as hot as a furnace out there.’ In receipt of his continuing and unwelcoming silence, her voice faded away and she licked her lips nervously.
Giancarlo was quite happy to let her stew in her own discomfiture.
‘This is a fantastic building, by the way.’
‘Let’s do away with the pleasantries, Miss Rossi. What are you doing here?’
‘Your father sent me.’
‘So I gather. Which is why you’re sitting in my office. My question is why? I haven’t had any contact with my father in over fifteen years, so I’m curious as to why he should suddenly decide to send a henchman to get in touch with me.’
Caroline felt an uncustomary warming anger flood through her as she tried to marry up this cold, dark stranger with the old man of whom she was so deeply fond, but getting angry wasn’t going to get her anywhere.
‘And who are you anyway? My father is hardly a spring chicken. Don’t tell me that he’s managed to find himself a young wife to nurse him faithfully through his old age?’ He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers together. ‘Nothing too beautiful, of course,’ he murmured, casting insolent, assessing eyes over her. ‘Devotion in the form of a young, beautiful, nubile wife is never a good idea for an old man, even a rich old man …’
‘How dare you?’
Giancarlo laughed coldly. ‘You show up here, unannounced, with a message from a father who was written out of my life a long time ago. Frankly, I have every right to dare.’
‘I am not married to your father!’
‘Well, now the alternative is even more distasteful, not to mention downright stupid. Why involve yourself with someone three times your age unless you’re in it for the financial gain? Don’t tell me the sex is breathtaking?’
‘I can’t believe you’re saying these things!’ She wondered how she could have been so bowled over by the way he looked when he was obviously a loathsome individual, just the sort of cold, unfeeling, sneering sort she hated. ‘I’m not involved with your father in any way other than professionally, signore!’
‘No? Then what is a young girl like you doing in a rambling old house by a lake with only an old man for company?’
Caroline glared at him. She was still smarting at the way his eyes had roamed over her and dismissed her as ‘nothing too beautiful’. She knew she wasn’t beautiful but to hear it casually emerge from the mouth of someone she didn’t know was beyond rude. Especially from the mouth of someone as physically compelling as the man sitting in front of her. Why hadn’t she done what most other people would have in similar circumstances and found herself an Internet café so that she could do some background research on the man she had been told to ferret out? At least then she might have been prepared!
She had to grit her teeth together and fight the irresistible urge to grab her suitcase and jump ship.
‘Well? I’m all ears.’
‘There’s no need to be horrible to me, signore. I’m sorry if I’ve ruined your meeting, or … or whatever you were doing, but I didn’t volunteer to come here.’
Giancarlo almost didn’t believe his ears. People never accused him of being horrible. Granted, they might sometimes think that, but it was vaguely shocking to actually hear someone come right out and say it. Especially a woman. He was accustomed to women doing everything within their power to please him. He looked narrowly at his uninvited visitor. She was certainly not the sort of rakethin beauty eulogised in the pages of magazines. She was trying hard to conceal her expression but it was transparently clear that the last place she wanted to be was in his office, being interrogated.
Too bad.
‘I take it my father manipulated you into doing what he wanted. Are you his housekeeper? Why would he employ an English housekeeper?’
‘I’m his personal assistant,’ Caroline admitted reluctantly. ‘He used to know my father once upon a time. Your father had a one-year posting in England lecturing at a university and my father was one of his students. He was my father’s mentor and they kept in touch after your father returned to Italy. My father is Italian. I think he enjoyed having someone he could speak to in Italian.
‘Anyway, I didn’t go to university, but my parents thought it would be nice for me to learn Italian, seeing that it’s my father’s native tongue, and he asked Alberto if he could help me find a posting over here for a few months. So I’m helping your father with his memoirs and also pretty much taking care of all the admin—stuff like that. Don’t you want to know … um … how he is? You haven’t seen him in such a long time.’
‘If I had wanted to see my father, don’t you think I would have contacted him before now?’
‘Yes, well, pride can sometimes get in the way of us doing what we want to do.’
‘If your aim is to play amateur psychologist, then the door is right behind you. Avail yourself of it.’
‘I’m not playing amateur psychologist,’ Caroline persisted stubbornly. ‘I just think, well, I know that it probably wasn’t ideal when your parents got divorced. Alberto doesn’t talk much about it, but I know that when your mother walked out and took you with her you were only twelve …’
‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this!’ Intensely private, Giancarlo could scarcely credit that he was listening to someone drag his past out of the closet in which it had been very firmly shut.
‘How else am I supposed to deal with this situation?’ Caroline asked, bewildered and dismayed.
‘I am not in the habit of discussing my past!’
‘Yes, well, that’s not my fault.’ She felt herself soften. ‘Don’t you think that it’s a good thing to talk about the things that bother us? Don’t you ever think about your dad?’
His internal line buzzed and he spoke in rapid Italian, telling his secretary to hold all further calls until he advised her otherwise. Suddenly, filled with a restless energy he couldn’t seem to contain, he pushed himself away from the desk and moved across to the window to look briefly outside before turning around and staring at the girl on the chair who had swivelled to face him.
She looked as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth—very young, very innocent and with a face as transparent as a pane of glass. Right now, he seemed to be an object of pity, and he tightened his mouth with a sense of furious outrage.
‘He’s had a heart attack,’ Caroline told him abruptly, her eyes beginning to well up because she was so very fond of him. Having him rushed into hospital, dealing with the horror of it all on her own had been almost more than she could take. ‘A very serious one. In fact, for a while it was touch and go.’ She opened her satchel, rummaged around for a tissue and found a pristine white handkerchief pressed into her hand.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered shakily. ‘But I don’t know how you can just stand there like a statue and not feel a thing.’
Big brown eyes looked accusingly at him and Giancarlo flushed, annoyed with himself because there was no reason why he should feel guilty on that score. He had no relationship with his father. Indeed, his memories of life in the big house by the lake were a nightmare of parental warfare. Alberto had married his very young and very pretty blonde wife when he had been in his late forties, nearly twenty-five years older than Adriana, and was already a cantankerous and confirmed bachelor.
It had been a marriage that had struggled on against all odds and had been, to all accounts, hellishly difficult for his demanding young wife.
His mother had not held back from telling him everything that had been so horrifically wrong with the relationship, as soon as he had been old enough to appreciate the gory detail. Alberto had been selfish, cold, mean, dismissive, contemptuous and probably, his mother had maintained viciously, would have had other women had he not lacked even basic social skills when it came to the opposite sex. He had, Adriana had wept on more than one occasion, thrown them out without a penny—so was it any wonder that she sometimes needed a little alcohol and a few substances to help her get by?
So many things for which Giancarlo had never forgiven his father.
He had stood on the sidelines and watched his delicate, spoilt mother—without any qualifications to speak of, always reliant on her beauty—demean herself by taking lover after lover, searching for the one who might want her enough to stick around. By the time she had died she had been a pathetic shadow of her former self.
‘You have no idea of what my life was like, or what my mother’s life was like,’ Giancarlo framed icily. ‘Perhaps my father has mellowed. Ill health has a habit of making servants of us all. However, I’m not interested in building bridges. Is that why he sent you here—because he’s now an old man and he wants my forgiveness before he shuffles off this mortal coil?’ He gave a bark of cynical, contemptuous laughter. ‘I don’t think so.’
She had continued playing with the handkerchief, twisting it between her fingers. Giancarlo thought that when it came to messengers, his father could not have been more calculating in his choice. The woman was a picture of teary-eyed incomprehension. Anyone would be forgiven for thinking that she worked for a saint, instead of for the man who had made his mother’s life a living hell.
His sharp eyes narrowed and focused, taking in the details of her appearance. Her clothes were a fashion disaster—trousers and a blouse in a strange, sickly shade of yellow, both of which would have been better suited to someone twice her age. Her hair seemed to be escaping from a sort of makeshift braid, and it was long—really long. Not at all like the snappy bobs he was accustomed to seeing on women. And it was curly. She was free of makeup and he was suddenly conscious of the fact that her skin was very smooth, satin smooth, and she had an amazing mouth—full, well-defined lips, slightly parted now to reveal pearly-white teeth as she continued to stare at him with disappointment and incredulity.
‘I’m sorry you’re still so bitter about the past,’ she murmured quietly. ‘But he would really like to see you. Why is it too late to mend bridges? It would mean the world to him.’
‘So have you managed to see anything of our beautiful city?’
‘What? No. No, I’ve come directly here. Look, is there anything I can do or say to convince you to … to come back with me?’
‘You have got to be kidding, haven’t you? I mean, even if I were suddenly infused with a burning desire to become a prodigal son, do you really imagine that I would be able to drop everything, pack a bag and hop on the nearest train for Lake Como? Surprise, surprise—I have an empire to run.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘I’m a very busy man, Miss Rossi, and I have already allotted you a great deal of my very valuable time. Now, you could keep trying to convince me that I’m being a monster in not clapping my hands for joy that my father has suddenly decided to get in touch with me thanks to a bout of ill health …’
‘You make it sound as though he’s had a mild attack of flu! He’s suffered a very serious heart attack.’
‘For which I am truly sorry.’ Giancarlo extended his arms wide in a gesture of such phoney sympathy that Caroline had to clench her fists to stop herself from smacking him. ‘As I would be on learning of any stranger’s brush with death. But, alas, you’re going to have to go back empty-handed.’
Defeated, Caroline stood up and reached down for her suitcase.
‘Where are you staying?’ Giancarlo asked with scrupulous politeness as he watched the slump of her shoulders. God, had the old man really thought that there would be no consequences to pay for the destructive way he had treated his wife? He was as rich as they came and yet, according to Adriana, he had employed the best lawyers in the land to ensure that she received the barest of settlements, accessed through a trustee who had made sure the basics, the absolute basics, were paid for, and a meagre allowance handed over to her, like a child being given pocket money, scarcely enough to provide any standard of living. He had often wondered, over the years, whether his mother would have been as desperate to find love if she had been left sufficient money to meet her requirements.
Caroline wearily told him, although she knew full well that he didn’t give a damn where she was staying. He just wanted her out of his office. She would be returning having failed. Of course, Alberto would be far too proud to do anything other than shrug his shoulders and say something about having tried, but she would know the truth. She would know that he would be gutted.
‘Well, you make sure you try the food market at the Rinascente. You’ll enjoy it. Tremendous views. And, of course, the shopping there is good as well.’
‘I hate shopping.’ Caroline came to a stop in front of the office door and turned around to find that he was virtually on top of her, towering a good eight or nine inches above her and even more intimidating this close up than he had been sitting safely behind his desk or lounging by the window.
The sun glinted from behind, picking out the striking angles of his face and rendering them more scarily beautiful. He had the most amazing eyelashes, long, lush and dark, the sort of eyelashes that most women could only ever have achieved with the help of tons of mascara.
She felt a sickening jolt somewhere in the region of her stomach and was suddenly and uncomfortably aware of her breasts, too big for her height, now sensitive, tingly and weighty as he stared down at her. Her hands wanted to flutter to the neckline of her blouse and draw the lapels tightly together. She flushed with embarrassment; how could she have forgotten that she was the ugly duckling?
‘And I don’t want to be having this polite conversation with you,’ she breathed in a husky, defiant undertone.
‘Come again?’
‘I’m sorry your parents got divorced, and I’m really sorry that it left such a mark on you, but I think it’s horrible that you won’t give your father another chance. How do you know exactly what happened between your parents? You were only a child. Your father’s ill and you’d rather carry on holding a grudge than try and make the most of the time you have left of him. He might die tomorrow, for all we know!’
That short speech took a lot out of her. She wasn’t usually defiant, but this man set her teeth on edge. ‘How can you say that, even if you were interested in meeting him, you couldn’t possibly get away because you’re too important?’
‘I said that I have an empire to run.’
‘It’s the same thing!’ She was shaking all over, like a leaf, but she looked up at him with unflinching determination, chin jutting out, her brown eyes, normally mild, flashing fire. ‘Okay, I’m not going to see you again …’ Caroline drew in a deep breath and impatiently swept her disobedient hair from away her face. ‘So I can be really honest with you.’
Giancarlo moved to lounge against the door, arms folded, an expression of lively curiosity on his face. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes glittered. She was a woman in a rage and he was getting the impression that this was a woman who didn’t do rages. God, wasn’t this turning into one hell of a day?
‘I don’t suppose anyone is really ever honest with you, are they?’ She looked around the office, with its mega-expensive fittings, ancient rug, worn bookshelves, the painting on the wall—the only modern one she had glimpsed, which looked vaguely familiar. Who was really ever that honest with someone as wealthy as he appeared to be, as good-looking as he was? He had the arrogance of a man who always got exactly what he wanted.
‘It’s useful when my man who handles my stocks and shares tells me what he thinks. Although, in fairness, I usually know more than he does. I should get rid of him but—’ he shrugged with typical Italian nonchalance ‘—we go back a long way.’
He shot her a smile that was so unconsciously charming that Caroline was nearly knocked backwards by the force of it. It was like being in a dark room only to be suddenly dazzled by a ray of blistering sunshine. Which didn’t distract her from the fact that he refused to see his father, a sick and possibly dying old man. Refused to bury the hatchet, whatever the consequences. Charming smiles counted for nothing when it came to the bigger picture!
‘I’m glad you think that this is a big joke,’ she said tightly. ‘I’m glad that you can laugh about it, but you know what? I feel sorry for you! You might think that the only thing that matters is all … all this … but none of this counts when it comes to relationships and family. I think you’re … you’re arrogant and high-handed and making a huge mistake!’
Outburst over, Caroline yanked open the office door to a surprised Elena, who glanced at her with consternation before looking behind to where her boss, the man who never lost his steely grip on his emotions, was staring at the small, departing brunette with the incredulous expression of someone who has been successfully tackled when least expecting it.
‘Stop staring,’ Giancarlo said. He shook his head, dazed, and then offered his secretary a wry grin. ‘We all lose our cool sometimes.’
CHAPTER TWO
MILAN was a diverse and beautiful city. There were sufficient museums, galleries, basilicas and churches to keep any tourist busy. The Galleria Vittorio was a splendid and elegant arcade, stuffed with cafés and shops. Caroline knew all this because the following day—her last day before she returned to Alberto, when she would have to admit failure—she made sure to read all the literature on a city which she might not visit again. It was tarnished with the miserable experience of having met Giancarlo De Vito.
The more Caroline thought about him, the more arrogant and unbearable he seemed. She just couldn’t find a single charitable thing to credit him with. Alberto would be waiting for her, expecting to see her arrive with his son and, failing that, he would be curious for details. Would she be honest and admit to him that she had found his sinfully beautiful son loathsome and overbearing? Would any parent, even an estranged parent, be grateful for information like that?
She looked down to where her ice-cold glass of lemonade was slowly turning warm in the searing heat. She had dutifully spent two hours walking around the Duomo, admiring the stained-glass windows, the impressive statues of saints and the extravagant carvings. But her heart hadn’t been in it, and now here she was, in one of the little cafés, which outside on a hot summer day was packed to the rafters with tourists sitting and lazily people-watching.
Her thoughts were in turmoil. With an impatient sigh, she glanced down at her watch, wondering how she would fill the remainder of her day, and was unaware of the shadow looming over her until she heard Giancarlo’s velvety, familiar voice which had become embedded in her head like an irritating burr.
‘You lied to me.’
Caroline looked up, shading her eyes from the glare of the sun, at about the same time as a wad of papers landed on the small circular table in front of her.
She was so shocked to see him towering over her, blocking out the sun like a dark avenging angel, that she half-spilled her drink in her confusion.
‘What are you doing here? And how did you find me?’ Belatedly she noticed the papers on the table. ‘And what’s all that stuff?’
‘We need to have a little chat and this place isn’t doing it for me.’
Caroline felt her heart lift a little. Maybe he was reconsidering his original stance. Maybe, just maybe, he had seen the light and was now prepared to let bygones be bygones. She temporarily forgot his ominous opening words and the mysterious stack of papers in front of her.
‘Of course!’ She smiled brightly and then cleared her throat when there was no reciprocal smile. ‘I … You haven’t said how you managed to find me. Where are we going? Am I supposed to bring all this stuff with me?’
Presumably, yes, as he spun round on his heels and was scouring the piazza through narrowed eyes. Did he notice the interested stares he was garnering from the tourists, particularly the women? Or was he immune to that sort of attention?
Caroline grabbed the papers and scrambled to follow him as he strode away from the café through a series of small roads, leaving the crush of tourists behind.
Today, she had worn the only other outfit she had brought with her, a summer dress with small buttons down the front. Because it left her shoulders bare, and because she was so acutely conscious of her generous breasts, she had a thin pink cardigan slung loosely over her—which wasn’t exactly practical, given the weather, but without it she felt too exposed and self-conscious.
With the ease of someone who lived in the city, he weaved his way through the busier areas until they were finally at a small café tucked away from the tourist hotspots, although even here the ancient architecture, the charming square with its sixteenth-century well, the engravings on some of the façades, were all photo opportunities.
She dithered behind him, feeling a bit like a spare part as he spoke in rapid Italian to a short, plump man whom she took to be the owner of the café. Then he motioned her inside where it was blessedly cool and relatively empty.
‘You can sit,’ Giancarlo said irritably when she continued to hover by the table. What did his father see in the woman? He barely remembered Alberto, but one thing he did remember was that he had not been the most docile person in the world. If his mother had been a difficult woman, then she had found her match in her much older husband. What changes had the years wrought, if Alberto was happy to work with someone who had to be the most background woman he had ever met? And once again she was in an outfit that would have been more suitable on a woman twice her age. Truly the English hadn’t got a clue when it came to fashion.
He found himself appraising her body and then, surprisingly, lingering on her full breasts pushing against the thin cotton dress, very much in evidence despite the washed-out cardigan she had draped over her shoulders.
‘You never said how you managed to find me,’ Caroline repeated a little breathlessly as she slid into the chair opposite him.
She shook away the giddy, drowning feeling she had when she looked too hard at him. Something about his animal sex-appeal was horribly unsettling, too hard to ignore and not quite what she was used to.
‘You told me where you were staying. I went there first thing this morning and was told by the receptionist that you’d left for the Duomo. It was just a question of time before you followed the herd to one of the cafés outside.’
‘So … have you had a rethink?’ Caroline asked hopefully. She wondered how it was that he could look so cool and urbane in his cream trousers and white shirt while the rest of the population seemed to be slowly dissolving under the summer sun.
‘Have a look at the papers in front of you.’
Caroline dutifully flicked through them. ‘I’m sorry, I have no idea what these are—and I’m not very good with numbers.’ She had wisely tied her hair back today but still some curling strands found their way to her cheeks and she absent-mindedly tucked them behind her ears while she continued to frown at the pages and pages of bewildering columns and numbers in front of her, finally giving up.
‘After I saw you I decided to run a little check on Alberto’s company accounts. You’re looking at my findings.’
‘I don’t understand why you’ve shown me this. I don’t know anything about Alberto’s financial affairs. He doesn’t talk about that at all.’
‘Funny, but I never thought him particularly shy when it came to money. In fact, I would say that he’s always had his finger on the button in that area.’
‘How would you know, when you haven’t seen him for over a decade?’
Giancarlo thought of the way Alberto had short changed his mother and his lips curled cynically. ‘Let’s move away from that contentious area, shall we? And let’s focus on one or two interesting things I unearthed.’ He sat back as cold drinks were placed in front of them, along with a plate of delicate little tortas and pastries. ‘By the way, help yourself …’ He gestured to the dish of pastries and cakes and was momentarily sidetracked when she pulled her side plate in front of her and piled a polite mound, but a mound nevertheless, of the delicacies on it.
‘You’re actually going to eat all of those?’ he heard himself ask, fascinated against his will.
‘I know, I shouldn’t really. But I’m starving.’ Caroline sighed at the diet which she had been planning for ages and which had yet to get underway. ‘You don’t mind, do you? I mean … they’re not just here for show, are they?’
‘No, di niente.’ He sat back and watched as she nibbled her way through the pastries, politely leaving one, licking the sweet crumbs off her fingers with enjoyment. A rare sight. The stick-thin women he dated pushed food round their plates and would have recoiled in horror at the thought of eating anything as fattening as a pastry.
Of course, he should be getting on with what he wanted to say, but he had been thrown off course and he still was when she shot him an apologetic smile. There was an errant crumb at the side of her mouth and just for an instant he had an overwhelming urge to brush it off. Instead, he gestured to her mouth with his hand.
‘I always have big plans for going on a diet.’ Caroline blushed. ‘Once or twice I actually did, but diets are deadly. Have you ever been on one? No, I bet you haven’t. Well, salads are all well and good, but just try making them interesting. I guess I just really love food.’
‘That’s … unusual. In a woman. Most of the women I meet do their best to avoid the whole eating experience.’
Of course he would be the type who only associated with model types, Caroline thought sourly. Thin, leggy women who weighed nothing. She wished she hadn’t indulged her sweet tooth. Not that it mattered because, although he might be good-looking—well, staggering, really—he wasn’t the sort of man she would ever go for. So what did it matter if he thought that she was overweight and greedy into the bargain?
‘You were saying something about Alberto’s financial affairs?’ She glanced down at her watch, because why on earth should he have the monopoly on precious time? ‘It’s just that I leave tomorrow morning and I want to make sure that I get through as much as possible before I go.’
Giancarlo was, for once in his life, virtually lost for words. Was she hurrying him along?
‘I think,’ he asserted without inflection, ‘that your plans will have to take a back seat until I’m finished.’
‘You haven’t told me whether you’ve decided to put the past behind you and accompany me back to Lake Como.’ She didn’t know why she was bothering to ask the question because it was obvious that he had no such intention.
‘So you came here to see me for the sole purpose of masterminding a jolly reunion …’
‘It wasn’t my idea.’
‘Immaterial. Getting back to the matter in hand, the fact is that Alberto’s company accounts show a big, gaping black hole.’
Caroline frowned because she genuinely had no idea what he was talking about.
‘Si,’ Giancarlo imparted without a shade of regret as he continued to watch her so carefully that she could feel the colour mounting in her cheeks. ‘He has been leaking money for the past ten years but recently it’s become something more akin to a haemorrhage …’
Caroline gasped and stared at him in sudden consternation. ‘Oh my goodness. Do you think that that’s why he had the heart attack?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I didn’t think he took an active interest in what happened in the company. I mean, he’s been pretty much a recluse since I came to live with him.’
‘Which would be how long ago?’
‘Several months. Originally, I only intended to come for a few weeks, but we got along so well and there were so many things he wanted me to do that I found myself staying on.’ She fixed anxious brown eyes on Giancarlo, who seemed sublimely immune to an ounce of compassion at the news he had casually delivered.
‘Are you … are you sure you’ve got your facts right?’
‘I’m never wrong,’ he said drily. ‘It’s possible that Alberto hasn’t played an active part in running his company for some time now. It’s more than possible that he’s been merrily living off the dividends and foolishly imagining that his investments are paying off.’
‘And what if he only recently found out?’ Caroline cried, determined not to become too over-emotional in front of a man who, she knew, would see emotion in a woman as repellent. Besides, she had cried on him yesterday. She still had the handkerchief to prove it. Once had been bad enough but twice would be unforgivable.
‘Do you think that that might have contributed to his heart attack? Do you think that he became so stressed that it affected his health?’ Horribly rattled at that thought, she distractedly helped herself to the last pastry lying uneaten on her plate.
‘No one can ever accuse me of being a gullible man, Signorina Rossi.’ Giancarlo was determined to stick to the script. ‘One lesson I’ve learnt in life is that, when it comes to money, there will always be people around who are more than happy to scheme their way into getting their hands on some of it.’
‘Yes. Yes, I suppose so. Whatever. Poor Alberto. He never mentioned a word and yet he must have been so worried. Imagine having to deal with that on your own.’
‘Yes. Poor Alberto. Still, whilst poring over these findings, it occurred to me that your mission here might very well have been twofold.’
‘The doctor said that stress can cause all sorts of health problems.’
‘Focus, signorina!’
Caroline fell silent and looked at him. The sun wafting through the pane of glass made his hair look all the more glossy. She vaguely noticed the way it curled at the collar of his shirt. Somehow, it made him look very exotic and very European.
‘Now are you with me?’
‘There’s no need to talk down to me!’
‘There’s every need. You have the most wandering mind of anyone I’ve ever met.’
Caroline shot him a look of simmering resentment and added ‘rude’ to the increasingly long list of things she didn’t like about him.
‘And you are the rudest person I’ve ever met in my entire life!’
Giancarlo couldn’t remember the last time anyone had ever dared to insult him to his face. He didn’t think it had ever happened. Rather than be sidetracked, however, he chose to overlook her offensive remark.
‘It occurred to me that my father’s health, if your story about his heart attack is to be believed, might not be the primary reason for your visit to Milan.’
‘If my story is to be believed?’ She shook her head with a puzzled frown. ‘Why would I lie about something like that?’
‘I’ll answer a question with a question—why would my father suddenly choose now to seek me out? He had more than one opportunity to get in touch. He never bothered. So why now? Shall I put forward a theory? He’s wised up to the fact that his wealth has disappeared down the proverbial tubes and has sent you to check out the situation. Perhaps he told you that, if I seemed amenable to the idea of meeting up, you might mention the possibility of a loan?’
Shocked and disturbed by Giancarlo’s freewheeling assumptions and cynical, half-baked misunderstandings, Caroline didn’t know where to begin. She just stared at him as the colour drained away from her face. She wasn’t normally given to anger, but right now she had to stop herself from picking her plate up and smashing it over his arrogant head.
‘So maybe I wasn’t entirely accurate when I accused you of lying to me. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that you were conveniently economical with the full truth …’
‘I can’t believe I’m hearing you say these things! How could you accuse your own father of trying to squeeze money out of you?’
Giancarlo flushed darkly under her steady, clear-eyed, incredulous gaze. ‘Like I said, money has a nasty habit of bringing out the worst in people. Do you know that it’s a given fact that the second someone wins a lottery, they suddenly discover that they have a hell of a lot more close friends and relatives than they ever imagined?’
‘Alberto hasn’t sent me here on a mission to get money out of you or … or to ask you for a loan!’
‘Are you telling me that he had no idea that I was now a wealthy man?’
‘That’s not the point.’ She remembered Alberto’s statement that Giancarlo had made something of himself.
‘No? You’re telling me that there’s no link between one semi-bankrupt father who hasn’t been on the scene in nearly two decades and his sudden, inexplicable desire to meet the rich son he was happy to kick out of his house once upon a time?’
‘Yes!’
‘Well, if you really believe that, if you’re not in cahoots with Alberto, then you must be incredibly naive.’
‘I feel very sorry for you, Signor De Vito.’
‘Call me Giancarlo. I feel as though we almost know each other. Certainly no one can compete with you when it comes to delivering offensive remarks. You are in a league of your own.’
Caroline flushed because she was not given to being offensive. She was placid and easy-going by nature. However, she was certainly not going to apologise for speaking her mind to Giancarlo.
‘You are pretty offensive as well,’ she retaliated quietly. ‘You’ve just accused me of being a liar. Maybe in your world you can never trust anyone …’
‘I think it’s fair to say that trust is a much over-rated virtue. I have a great deal of money. I’ve learnt to protect myself, simple as that.’ He gave an elegant shrug, dismissing the topic. But Caroline wasn’t quite ready to let the matter drop, to allow him to continue believing, unchallenged, that he had somehow been targeted by Alberto. She wouldn’t let him walk away thinking the worst of either of them.
‘I don’t think that trust is an over-rated virtue. I told you that I feel sorry for you and I really do.’ She had to steel herself to meet and hold the dark, forbidding depths of his icy eyes. ‘I think it’s sad to live in a world where you can never allow yourself to believe the best in other people. How can you ever be happy if you’re always thinking that the people around you are out to take advantage of you? How can you ever be happy if you don’t have faith in the people who are close to you?’
Giancarlo very nearly burst out laughing at that. What planet was this woman from? It was a cutthroat world out there and it became even more cutthroat when money and finances were involved. You had to keep your friends close and your enemies a whole lot closer in order to avoid the risk of being knifed in the back.
‘Don’t go getting evangelical on me,’ he murmured drily and he noted the pink colour rise to her cheeks. ‘You’re blushing,’ he surprised himself by saying.
‘Because I’m angry!’ But she put her hands to her face and glared at him. ‘You’re so … so superior! What sort of people do you mix with that you would suspect them of trying to use you for what you can give them? I didn’t know anything about you when I agreed to come here. I didn’t know that you had lots of money. I just knew that Alberto was ill and he wanted to make his peace with you.’
The oddest thing seemed to be happening. Giancarlo could feel himself getting distracted. Was it because of the way those tendrils of curly hair were wisping against her face? Or was it because her anger made her almond-shaped eyes gleam like a furious spitting cat’s? Or maybe it was the fact that, when she leant forward like that, the weight and abundance of her breasts brushing against the small table acted like a magnet to his wandering eyes.
It was a strange sensation to experience this slight loss of self-control because it never happened in his dealings with women. And he was a connoisseur when it came to the opposite sex. Without a trace of vanity, he knew that he possessed a combination of looks, power and influence that most women found an irresistible aphrodisiac. Right now, he had only recently broken off a six-month relationship with a model whose stunning looks had graced the covers of a number of magazines. She had begun to make noises about ‘taking things further’; had started mentioning friends and relatives who were thinking of tying the knot; had begun to show an unhealthy interest in the engagement-ring section of expensive jewellery shops.
Giancarlo had no interest in going down the matrimonial path. There were two vital lessons he felt he had taken away from his parents: the first was that there was no such thing as a happy-ever-after. The second was that it was very easy for a woman to turn from angel to shrew. The loving woman who was happy to accommodate on every level quickly became the demanding, needy harridan who needed reassurance and attention round the clock.
He had watched his mother contrive to play the perfect partner on so many occasions that he had lost count. He had watched her perform her magic with whatever man happened to be the flavour of the day for a while, had watched her bat her eyelashes and flutter her eyes—but then, when things began winding down, he had seen how she had changed from eager to desperate, from hard-to-get to clingy and dependent. The older she had got, the more pitiful a sight she had made.
Of course, he was a red-blooded man with an extremely healthy libido, but as far as Giancarlo was concerned work was a far better bet when it came to reliability. Women, enjoyable as they might be, became instantly expendable the second they began thinking that they could change him.
He had never let any woman get under his skin and he was surprised now to find his thoughts drifting ever so slightly from the matter at hand.
He had confronted her, having done some background research, simply to have his suspicions confirmed. It had been a simple exercise in proving to her—and via her to Alberto—that he wasn’t a mug who could be taken for a ride. At which point, his plan had been to walk away, warning guns sounding just in case they were tempted to try a second approach.
From the very second Caroline had shown up unannounced in his office, he had not allowed a shred of sentiment to colour his judgement. Bitter memories of the stories handed down to him from his mother still cast a long shadow. The truth he had seen with his very own eyes—the way her lack of any kind of robust financial settlement from a man who would have been very wealthy at the time had influenced her behaviour patterns—could not be overlooked.
‘You must get bored out there,’ Giancarlo heard himself remark when he should have really been thinking of concluding their conversation so that he could return to the various meetings waiting for him back at the office. Without taking his eyes off her, he flicked a finger and more cold drinks were brought to their table.
Caroline could no more follow this change in the conversation than she could have dealt with a snarling crocodile suddenly deciding to smile and offer her a cup of tea. She looked at him warily and wondered whether this was a roundabout lead-up to another scathing attack.
‘Why are you interested?’ she asked cautiously.
‘Why not? It’s not every day that a complete stranger waltzes into my office with a bombshell. Even if it turns out to be a bombshell that’s easy to defuse. Also—and I’ll be completely honest on this score—you don’t strike me as the sort of person capable of dealing with the man I remember as being my father.’
Caroline was drawn into the conversation against her will. ‘What do you remember?’ she asked hesitantly. With another cold drink in front of her, the sight of those remaining pastries was awfully tempting. As though reading her mind, Giancarlo ordered a few more, different ones this time, smiling as they were placed in front of her.
He was amused to watch the struggle on her face as she looked down at them.
‘What do I remember of my father? Now, let’s think about this. Domineering. Frequently ill-tempered. Controlling. In short, not the easiest person in the world.’
‘Like you, in other words.’
Giancarlo’s mouth tightened because this was an angle that had never occurred to him and he wasn’t about to give it house-room now.
‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘No, you shouldn’t, but I’m already getting used to the idea that you speak before you think. Something else I imagine Alberto would have found unacceptable.’
‘I really don’t like you at all,’ Caroline said through gritted teeth. ‘And I take back what I said. You’re nothing like Alberto.’
‘I’m thrilled to hear that. So, enlighten me.’ He felt a twinge of intense curiosity about this man who had been so thoroughly demonised by his ex-wife.
‘Well.’ Caroline smiled slowly and Giancarlo was amazed at how that slow, reluctant, suspicious smile altered the contours of her face, turning her into someone strangely beautiful in a lush, ripe way that was even more erotic, given the innocence of everything else about her. It put all sorts of crazy thoughts in his head, although the thoughts lasted only an instant, disappearing fast under the mental discipline that was so much part and parcel of his personality.
‘He can be grumpy. He’s very grumpy now because he hates being told what he can and can’t eat and what time he has to go to bed. He hates me helping him physically, so he’s employed a local woman, a nurse from the hospital, to help him instead, and I’m constantly having to tell him that he’s got to be less bossy and critical of her.
‘He was very polite when I first arrived. I think he knew that he was doing my dad a favour, but he figured that he would only have to be on good behaviour for a few weeks. I don’t think he knew what to do with me, to start with. He’s not been used to company. He wasn’t comfortable making eye contact, but none of that lasted too long. We discovered that we shared so many interests—books, old movies, the garden. In fact, the garden has been invaluable now that Alberto is recovering. Every day we go down to the pond just beyond the walled rose-garden. We sit in the folly, read a bit, chat a bit. He likes me to read to him even though he’s forever telling me that I need to put more expression in my voice … I guess all that’s going to have to go …’
Giancarlo, who hadn’t thought of what he had left behind for a very long time, had a vivid memory of that pond and of the folly, a weird gazebo-style creation with a very comfortable bench inside where he likewise had enjoyed whiling away his time during the long summer months when he had been on holiday. He shook away the memory as if clearing cobwebs from a cupboard that hadn’t been opened for a long time.
‘What do you mean that you guess that’s all “going to have to go”?’
Caroline settled worried eyes on his face. For someone who was clearly so intelligent, she was surprised that he didn’t seem to follow her. Then she realised that she couldn’t very well explain without risking another attack on Alberto’s scruples.
‘Nothing,’ she mumbled when his questioning silence threatened to become too uncomfortable.
‘Tut tut. Are you going to get tongue-tied on me?’
The implication being that she talked far too much, Caroline concluded, hurt.
‘What do you mean? And don’t bother trying to be coy. It doesn’t suit you.’
Caroline didn’t think she could feel more loathing for another human being if she tried.
‘Well, if Alberto has run into financial difficulties, then he’s not going to be able to maintain the house, is he? I mean, it’s enormous. Right now, a lot of it isn’t used, but he would still have to sell it. And please don’t tell me that this is a ploy to try and get money out of you. It isn’t.’ She sighed in weary resignation. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you that. You won’t believe me anyway.’ Suddenly, she was anxious to leave, to get back to the house on the lake, although she had no idea what she was going to do once she got there. Confront Alberto with his problems? Risk jeopardising his fragile health by piling more stress on his shoulders?
‘I’m not even sure your father knows the truth of the situation,’ she said miserably. ‘I’m certain he would have mentioned something to me.’
‘Why would he? You’ve been around for five seconds. I suggest the first person on his list of confidants would probably have been his accountant.’
‘Maybe he’s told Father Rafferty. I could go and see him at the church and find out if he knows about any of this. That would be the best thing, because Father Rafferty would be able to put everything into perspective. He’s very practical and upbeat.’
‘Father Rafferty …?’
‘Alberto attends mass at the local church every Sunday. Has done for a long time, I gather. He and Father Rafferty have become close friends. I think your father likes Father Rafferty’s Irish sense of humour—and the odd glass of whisky. I should go. All of this …’
‘Is probably very unsettling, and probably not what you contemplated when you first decided to come over to Italy.’
‘I don’t mind!’ Caroline was quick to reply. She bit back the temptation to tell him that someone had to be there for Alberto.
Giancarlo was realising that his original assumption, which had made perfect sense at the time, had been perhaps a little too hasty. The woman was either an excellent, Oscar-winning actress or else she had been telling the truth all along: her visit had not been instigated for financial purposes.
Now his brain was engaged on a different path; he sat back and looked at her as he stroked his chin thoughtfully with one long, brown finger.
‘I expect this nurse he’s hired is a private nurse?’
Caroline hadn’t given that a second’s thought, but now she blanched. How much would that be costing? And didn’t it prove that Alberto had no idea of the state of his finances? Why, if he did know, would he be spending money on hiring a private nurse who would be costing him an arm and a leg?
‘And naturally he must be paying you,’ Giancarlo continued remorselessly. ‘How much?’ He named a figure that was so ridiculously high that Caroline burst out laughing. She laughed until she felt tears come to her eyes. It was as though she had found a sudden outlet for her stressful, frantic thoughts and her body was reacting of its own volition, even though Giancarlo was now looking at her with the perplexed expression of someone dealing with a complete idiot.
‘Sorry.’ She hiccupped her way back to some level of seriousness, although she could still feel her mirth lurking close to the surface. ‘You’ve got to be kidding. Take that figure and maybe divide it by four.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. No one could survive on that.’
‘But I never came here for the money,’ Caroline explained patiently. ‘I came here to improve my Italian. Alberto was doing me a favour by taking me in. I don’t have to pay for food and I don’t pay rent. When I return to England, the fact that I will be able to communicate in another language will be a great help to me when it comes to getting a job. Why are you staring at me like that?’
‘So it doesn’t bother you that you wouldn’t be able to have much of a life given that you’re paid next to nothing?’ Cheap labour, Giancarlo thought. Now, why am I not surprised? A specialised nurse would hardly donate her services through the goodness of her heart, but a young, clearly inexperienced girl? Why not take advantage? Oh, the old man knew the state of his finances, all right, whatever she exclaimed to the contrary.
‘I don’t mind. I’ve never been fussed about money.’
‘Guess what?’ Giancarlo signalled to the waiter for the bill. When Caroline looked at her watch, it was to find that the time had galloped by. She hadn’t even been aware of it passing, even though, disliking him as she did, she should have been counting every agonising minute.
‘What?’
‘Consider your little mission a success. I think it’s time, after all, to return home …’
CHAPTER THREE
GIANCARLO’S last view of his father’s house, as he had twisted around in the back of the car, while in the front his mother had sat in stony silence without a backward glance, was of lush gardens and the vast stone edifice which comprised the back of the house. The front of the house sat grandly on the western shores of the lake, perfect positioning for a view of deep blue water, as still as a sheet of glass, that was breathtakingly beautiful.
It was unsettling to be returning now, exactly one week after Caroline had left, seemingly transported with excitement at the fact that she had managed to persuade him to accept the supposed olive-branch that had been extended.
If she was of the opinion that all was joyful in the land of reconciliation, then Giancarlo was equally and coldly reserved about sharing any such optimism. He was under no illusions when it came to human nature. The severity of Alberto’s heart attack was open to debate and Giancarlo, for one, was coolly prepared for a man in fairly robust health who may or may not have persuaded a very gullible Caroline otherwise to suit his own purposes. His memories of his father were of a towering man, greatly into discipline and without an emotional bone in his body. He couldn’t conceive of him being diminished by ill health, although rapidly disappearing funds might well have played a part in lowering his spirits.
The super-fast sports car had eaten up the miles of motorway and only now, as he slowed to drive through the picturesque towns and villages on the way to his father’s house, were vague recollections beginning to surface.
He had forgotten how charming this area was. Lake Como, the third largest and the deepest of the Italian lakes, was picture-postcard perfect, a lush, wealthy area with elegant villas, manicured gardens, towns and villages with cobbled streets and piazzas dotted with Romanesque churches and very expensive hotels and restaurants which attracted the more discerning tourist.
He felt a pleasing sense of satisfaction.
This was a homecoming on his terms, just the way he liked it. A more in-depth perusal of Alberto’s finances had shown a company torn apart by the ravaging effects of an unprecedented economic recession, mismanagement and an unwillingness to move with the times and invest in new markets.
Giancarlo smiled grimly to himself. He had never considered himself a vengeful person but the realisation that he could take over his father’s company, rescue the old man and thereby level the scales of justice was a pleasing one. Really, what more bitter pill could his father ever swallow than know that he was indebted, literally, to the son he had turned his back on?
He hadn’t mentioned a word of this to Caroline when they had parted company. For a few minutes, Giancarlo found himself distracted by thoughts of the diminutive brunette. She was flaky as hell; unbelievably emotional and prone to tears at the drop of a hat; jaw-droppingly forthright and, frankly, left him speechless. But, as he got closer and closer to the place he had once called his home, he realised that she had managed to get under his skin in a way that was uniquely irritating. In fact, he had never devoted this much time to thinking about any one woman, but that, he reasoned sensibly, was because this particular woman had entered his life in a singularly weird way.
Never again would he rule out the unexpected. Just when you thought you had everything in control, something came along to pull the rug from under your feet.
In this instance, it wasn’t all bad. He fiddled with the radio, got to a station he liked and relaxed to enjoy the scenery and the pleasing prospect of what lay ahead.
He gave no house room to nerves. He was on a high, in fact, fuelled by the self-righteous notion of the wheel having turned full circle. Yes, he was curious to reacquaint himself with Alberto, but over the years he had heard so many things about him that he almost felt as though there was nothing left to know. The steady drip, drip, drip of information from a young age had eroded his natural inclination to question.
If anything, he liked to think that Alberto would be the one consumed by nerves. His business was failing and sooner or later, ill health or no ill health, Giancarlo was certain that his father would turn the conversation around to money. Maybe he would try and entice him into some kind of investment. Maybe he would just ditch his pride and ask outright for a loan of some sort. Either approach was possible. Giancarlo relished the prospect of being able to confirm that money would indeed be forthcoming. Wasn’t he magnanimous even though, all things considered, he had no reason to be? But a price would have to be paid. He would make his father’s company his own. He would take it over lock, stock and barrel. Yes, his father’s financial security would rest on the generosity of his disowned son.
He intended to stay at the villa just long enough to convey that message. A couple of days at most. Thereafter it would be enough to know that he had done what he had to do.
He didn’t anticipate having anything to say of interest to the old man. Why should he? They would be two strangers, relieved to part company once the nitty-gritty had been sorted out.
He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he very nearly missed the turning to the villa. This side of the lake was famous for its magnificent villas, most of them eighteenth-century extravaganzas, a few of which had been turned into hotels over the years.
His father’s villa was by no means the largest but it was still an impressive old place, approached through forbidding iron gates and a long drive which was surrounded on both sides by magnificent gardens.
He remembered the layout of these glorious spreading lawns more than he had anticipated. To the right, there was the bank of trees in which he had used to play as a child. To the left, the stone wall was barely visible behind rows upon rows of rhododendrons and azaleas, a vibrant wash of colour as bright and as dramatic as a child’s painting.
He slowed the car in the circular courtyard, killed the engine and popped the boot, which was just about big enough to fit his small leather overnight case—and, of course, his computer bag in which resided all the necessary documents he would need so that he could begin the takeover process he had in mind for his father’s company.
He was an imposing sight. From her bedroom window, which overlooked the courtyard, Caroline felt a sudden sick flutter of nerves.
Over the past seven days, she had done her best to play down the impact he had made on her. He wasn’t that tall, that good-looking or that arrogant, she convinced herself.
She had been rattled when she had finally located him and her nerves had thrown everything out of perspective.
Unfortunately, staring down at Giancarlo as he emerged from his sports car, wearing dark sunglasses and walking round to swing two cases out of the miniscule boot of his car, she realised that he really was as unbelievably forbidding as she had remembered.
She literally flew down the corridor, took the staircase two steps at a time and reached the sitting-room at the back of the house, breathless.
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