The Truth Behind his Touch

by Cathy Williams

  ‘Of course I wasn’t! Although I was tempted, just in case you didn’t show up.’ She stood aside; Giancarlo took a step through the front door and confronted the house in which he had spent the first twelve years of his life. It had changed remarkably little. The hall was a vast expanse of marble, in the centre of which a double staircase spiralled in opposing directions to meet on the impressive galleried landing above. On either side of the hall, a network of rooms radiated like tentacles on an octopus.

  Now that he was back, he could place every room in his head: the various reception rooms; the imposing study from which he had always been banned; the dining-room in which portraits of deceased family members glared down at the assembled diners; the gallery in which were hung paintings of great value, another room from which he had been banned.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I show up?’ Giancarlo turned to face her.

  She looked more at home here, less ill at ease, which was hardly surprising, he supposed. Her hair which she had attempted to tie back in Milan was loose, and it flowed over her shoulders and down her back in a tangle of curls, dark brown streaked with caramel where the sun had lightened it.

  ‘You might have had a change of heart,’ Caroline admitted in a harried voice, because yet again those dark, cloaked eyes on her were doing weird things to her tummy. ‘I mean, you were so adamant that you didn’t want to see your father and then all of a sudden you announced that you’d changed your mind. It didn’t make sense. So I thought that maybe you might have changed your mind again.’

  ‘Where are the staff?’

  ‘I told you, most of the house is shut off. We have Tessa, the nurse who looks after Alberto. She lives on the premises, and two young girls take care of cleaning the house, but they live in the village. I’m glad you decided to come after all. Shall we go and meet your father? I guess you’ll want to be with him on your own.’

  ‘So that we can catch up? Exchange fond memories of the good old days?’

  Caroline looked at him in dismay. There was no attempt to disguise the bitterness in his voice. Alberto rarely mentioned the past, and his memoirs, which had taken a back seat over the past few weeks, had mostly got to the state of fond reminiscing about his university days and the places he had travelled as a young man. But she could imagine that Alberto had not been the easiest of fathers. When Giancarlo had agreed to visit, she had naively assumed that he had been willing, finally, to overlook whatever mishaps had drastically torn them apart. Now, looking at him, she was uneasily aware that her simple conclusions might have been a little off the mark.

  ‘Or even just agree to put the past behind you and move on,’ Caroline offered helpfully.

  Giancarlo sighed. Should he let her in to what he had planned? he wondered.

  ‘Why don’t you give me a little tour of the house before I meet my father?’ he suggested. ‘I want to get a feel of the old place. And there are a couple of things I want to talk to you about.’

  ‘Things? What things?’

  ‘If you don’t fancy the full tour, you can show me to my bedroom. What I have to say won’t take long.’

  ‘I’ll show you to your room,’ she said stiffly. ‘But first I’ll go and tell Alberto where we are, so he doesn’t worry.’

  ‘Why would he worry?’

  ‘He’s been looking forward to seeing you.’

  ‘I’m thinking I will be in my old room,’ Giancarlo murmured. ‘Left wing. Overlooking the side gardens?’

  ‘The left wing’s not really used now.’ Making her mind up, she eyed his lack of luggage and began heading up the stairs. ‘I’ll take you up to where you’ll be staying. If we’re quick, I’m sure your father won’t get too anxious. And you can tell me whatever it is you have to tell me.’

  She could feel her heart beating like a sledgehammer inside her as she preceded him up the grand staircase, turning left along the equally grand corridor, which was broad enough to house a chaise longue and various highly polished tables on which sat bowls of fresh flowers. Caroline had added that touch soon after she had come to live with Alberto and he had grumpily acquiesced, but not before informing her that flowers inside a house were a waste of time. Why bother when they would die within the week?

  ‘Ah, the Green Room.’ Giancarlo looked around him and saw the signs of disrepair. The room looked tired, the wallpaper still elegant but badly faded. The curtains he dimly remembered, although this was one of the many guest rooms into which he had seldom ventured. Nothing had been changed in over two decades. He dumped his overnight bag on the bed and walked across to the window to briefly look down at the exquisite walled garden, before turning to her.

  ‘I feel I ought to tell you that my decision to come here wasn’t entirely altruistic,’ he told her bluntly. ‘I wouldn’t want you having any misplaced notions of emotional reunions, because if you have, then you’re in for a crashing disappointment.’

  ‘Not entirely altruistic?’

  ‘Alberto’s rocky financial situation has—how shall I put it?—delivered me the perfect opportunity to finally redress certain injustices.’

  ‘What injustices?’

  ‘Nothing you need concern yourself with. Suffice to say that Alberto will not have to fear that the banks are going to repossess this house and all its contents.’

  ‘This house was going to be repossessed?’

  ‘Sooner or later.’ Giancarlo shrugged. ‘It happens. Debts accumulate. Shareholders get the jitters. Redundancies have to be made. It’s a short step until the liquidators start converging like vultures, and when that happens possessions get seized to pay off disgruntled creditors who are out of pocket.’

  Caroline’s eyes were like saucers as she imagined this worst-case scenario.

  ‘That would devastate Alberto,’ she whispered. She sidled towards the bed and sat down. ‘Are you sure about all this? No. Forget I asked that. I forgot that you never make mistakes.’

  Giancarlo looked at the forlorn figure on the bed and clicked his tongue impatiently. ‘Isn’t it a good thing that he’ll be spared all of that? No bailiffs showing up at the door, demanding the paintings and the hangings? No bank clamouring for the house to be put on the market to the highest bidder, even if the price is way below its worth?’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked at him dubiously.

  ‘So you can wipe that pitiful look from your face immediately!’

  ‘You said that you were going to … what, exactly? Give him the money? Won’t that be an awful lot of money? Are you that rich?’

  ‘I have enough,’ Giancarlo stated drily, amused by her question.

  ‘How much is enough?’

  ‘Enough to ensure that Alberto’s house and company don’t end up in the hands of the receivers. Of course, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean …’ He pushed himself away from the window and strolled through the bedroom, taking in all those little signs of neglect that were almost impossible to spot unless you were looking for them. God only knew, the house was ancient. It was probably riddled with all manner of damp, dry rot, termites in the woodwork. Having grown up in a house that dated back centuries, Giancarlo had made sure that his own place was unashamedly modern. Dry rot, damp and termites would never be able to get a foothold.

  ‘I mean that what is now my father’s will inevitably become mine. I will take over his company and return it to its once-thriving state and naturally I will do the same with this villa. It’s in dire need of repair anyway. I’ll wager that those rooms that have been closed off will be in the process of falling to pieces.’

  ‘And you won’t be doing any of that because you care about Alberto,’ Caroline spoke her thoughts aloud while Giancarlo looked at her through narrowed eyes, marvelling at the way every thought running through her head was reflected in the changing nuances of her expressions.

  ‘In fact,’ she carried on slowly, her thoughts rearranging themselves in her head to form a complete pictur
e of what was really going on, ‘you’re not interested in reconciling with your father at all, are you?’

  Giancarlo wasn’t about to encourage any kind of conversation on what she considered the rights and wrongs of his reasons for coming to the lake, so he maintained a steady silence—although the resigned disappointment in her voice managed to pierce through his rigid self-control in a way that was infuriating. Her huge, accusing eyes were doing the same thing as well and he frowned impatiently.

  ‘It’s impossible to reconcile with someone you can barely recall,’ he said in a flatly dismissive voice. ‘I don’t know Alberto.’

  ‘You know him enough to want to hurt him for what you think he did to you.’

  ‘That’s a ridiculous assumption!’

  ‘Is it? You said yourself that you were going to buy him out because it would give you the chance to redress injustices.’

  Giancarlo was fiercely protective of his private life. He never discussed his past with anyone and many women had tried. They had seen it as a stepping stone to getting to know him better, had mistakenly thought that, with the right amount of encouragement, he would open up and pour his heart out. It was always a fatal flaw.

  ‘Alberto divorced my mother and did everything legally possible to ensure that, whilst the essentials were paid, she was left with the minimum, just enough to get by. From this—’ he gestured in a sweeping arc to encompass the villa and its fabulous surroundings ‘—she was reduced to living in a small modern box in the outskirts of Milan. You can see that I carry a certain amount of bitterness towards my father.

  ‘However, it has to be said that, were I a truly vengeful person, I would not have returned here and I certainly would not be contemplating a lucrative buy-out. Lucrative from Alberto’s point of view, that is. A lot less lucrative from where I’m standing, because his company will need a great deal of money pouring into it to get it off the starters’ gate. Face it, I could have read those financial reports, turned my back, walked away. Waited until I read about the demise of his company in the financial section of the newspapers. Believe me, I seriously considered that option, but then … Let’s just say that I opted for the personal touch. So much more satisfying.’

  Caroline was finding it impossible to tally up Giancarlo’s version of his father with her own experiences of Alberto. Yes, he was undoubtedly difficult and had probably been a thousand times more so when he had been younger, but he wasn’t stingy. She just couldn’t imagine him being vindictive towards his ex-wife, although how could she know for sure?

  One thing she did know now was that Giancarlo might justify his actions as redressing a balance but it was revenge of a hands-on variety and no part of her could condone that. He would rescue his father in the certain knowledge that guilt would be Alberto’s lifelong companion from then onwards. He would attack Alberto’s most vulnerable part: his pride.

  She stood up, hands on her hips, and looked at him with blazing eyes.

  ‘I don’t care how you put it, that’s absolutely rotten!’

  ‘Rotten, to step in and bail him out?’ Giancarlo shook his head grimly and took a couple of steps towards her.

  He had his hands in the pockets of his trousers and his movements were leisurely and unhurried, but there was an element of threat in every step he took that brought him closer and Caroline fought to stay her ground. She couldn’t wrench her eyes away from him. He had the allure of a dangerous but spectacularly beautiful predator.

  Looking down at her, Giancarlo’s dark eyes skimmed the hectic flush in her cheeks, her rapid, angry breathing.

  ‘You’re a spitfire, aren’t you …?’ he murmured lazily, which thoroughly disconcerted Caroline. She wasn’t used to dealing with men like this. Her experience of the opposite sex was strictly confined to the two men she had dated in the past, both of whom were gentle souls with whom she still shared a comfortable friendship, and work colleagues after she had left school.

  ‘No, I’m not! I never argue. I don’t like arguing.’

  ‘You could have fooled me.’

  ‘You do this to me,’ she breathed, only belatedly realising that somehow that didn’t sound quite right. ‘I mean …’

  ‘I get you worked up?’

  ‘Yes! No.’

  ‘Yes? No? Which is it?’

  ‘Stop laughing at me. None of this is funny.’ She drew her cardigan tightly around her in a defensive gesture that wasn’t lost on him.

  ‘For a young woman, your choice of clothes is very old-fashioned. Cardigans are for women over forty.’

  ‘I don’t see what my clothes have to do with anything.’ But she stumbled over her words. Was he trying to throw her? He was succeeding. Now, along with anger was a creeping sense of embarrassment.

  ‘Are you self-conscious about your body?’ This was the sort of question Giancarlo never asked any woman. He had never been a big fan of soul-searching conversations. He had always preferred to keep it light, and yet he found that he was really curious about the hell cat who claimed not to be a hell cat. Except when in his presence.

  Caroline broke the connection and walked towards the door but she was shaking like a leaf.

  She stood in the doorway, half-in, half-out of the bedroom, which suddenly seemed as confining as a prison cell when he was towering above her.

  ‘And when do you intend to tell Alberto everything?’

  ‘I should imagine that he will probably be the one who brings up the subject,’ Giancarlo said, still looking at her, almost regretful that the conversation was back on a level footing. ‘You seem to have a lot of faith in human nature. Take it from me, it’s misplaced.’

  ‘I don’t want you upsetting him. His doctor says that he’s to be as stress-free as possible in order to make a full recovery.’

  ‘Okay. Here’s the deal. I won’t open the conversation with a casual query about the state of his failing company.’

  ‘You really don’t care about anyone but yourself, do you?’ Caroline asked in a voice tinged with genuine wonder.

  ‘You have a special knack for saying all the wrong things to me,’ Giancarlo muttered with a frown.

  ‘What you mean is that I say things you don’t want to hear.’ She stepped quickly out into the corridor as he walked towards her. She was beginning to understand that being too close to him physically was like standing too close to an electric field. ‘We should go downstairs. Alberto will be wondering where we’ve got to. He tires easily now, so we’ll be having an early supper.’

  ‘And tell me, who does the cooking? The same two girls who come in to clean?’ He fell into step alongside her, but even though the conversation had moved on to a more neutral topic he was keenly aware of her still clutching the cardigan around her. His first impression had been of someone very background. Now, he was starting to review that initial impression. Underneath the straightforward personality there seemed to be someone very fiery and not easily intimidated. She had taken a deep breath and stood up to him in a way that not very many people did.

  ‘Sometimes. Now that Alberto is on a restricted diet, Tessa tends to prepare his meals, and I cook for myself and Tessa. It’s a daily fight to get Alberto to eat bland food. He’s fond of saying that there’s no life worth living without salt.’

  Giancarlo heard the smile in her voice. For his sins, his father had found himself a very devoted companion.

  For the first time he wondered what it would have been like to have had Alberto as a father. The man had clearly mellowed over time. Would they have had that connection? How much had he suffered because of his constant warfare with his wife?

  Irritated with himself for being drawn back into a past he could not change, Giancarlo focused on sustaining the conversation with a number of innocuous questions as they walked back down the grand staircase, Caroline leading the way towards the smallest of the sitting-rooms at the back of the house.

  Even with the majority of the rooms seemingly closed off, there was still a lot of ground to cov
er. Yet again he found himself wondering what the appeal was for a young woman. Terrific house, great grounds, pleasing views and interesting walks—but take those things out of the equation and boredom would gradually set in, surely?

  How bored had his mother been, surrounded by all this ostentatious wealth, trapped like a bird in a gilded cage?

  Alberto had met her on one of his many conferences. She had been a sparkling, pretty waitress at the only fancy restaurant in a small town on the Amalfi coast where he had gone to grab a couple of days of rest before the remainder of his business trip. She had been plucked from obscurity and catapulted into wealth, but nothing, she had repeatedly complained to her son over the years following her divorce, could compensate for the horror of living with a man who treated her no better than a servant. She had done her very best, but time and again her efforts had been met with a brick wall. Alberto, she had said with bitterness, had turned out to be little more than a difficult, unyielding and unforgiving man, years too old for her, who had thwarted all her attempts at having fun.

  Giancarlo had been conditioned to loathe the man whom his mother had held responsible for all her misfortunes.

  Except now he was prey to a disturbing sensation of doubt as he heard Caroline chatter on about his father. How disagreeable could the man be if she was so attached to him? Was it possible for a leopard to change its spots to that extreme extent?

  Before they reached the sitting-room, she paused to rest one small hand lightly on his arm.

  ‘Do you promise that you won’t upset him?’

  ‘I’m not big into making promises.’

  ‘Why is it so hard to get through to you?’

  ‘Believe it or not, most people don’t have a problem. In our case, we might just as well be from different planets, occupying different time zones. I told you I won’t greet him with an enquiry about the health of his finances, and I won’t. Beyond that, I promise nothing.’

  ‘Just try to get to know him,’ Caroline pleaded, her huge brown eyes welded to his as she dithered with her hand still on his arm. ‘I just can’t believe you know the real Alberto.’