The Truth Behind his Touch

‘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.’