Now he was explaining to her how he had managed to acquire his expertise in a boat. He had always been drawn to the water. He had had his first sailing lesson at the age of five and by the age of ten had been adept enough to sail on his own, although he had not been allowed. By the time he had left the lake for good, he could have crewed his own sailboat, had he been of legal age.
Caroline nodded, murmured and thought about that kiss. She had been kissed before but never like that. Neither of the two boyfriends she’d had had ever made her feel as though the ground was spinning and freewheeling under her feet; neither had ever made her feel as if the rules of time and space had altered, throwing her into a wildly different dimension. With an eye for detail she never knew she possessed, she marvelled at how a face so coldly, exquisitely beautiful could inspire such craven weakness deep inside her when she had never previously been drawn to men because of how they looked. She wondered at the way she had fallen headlong into that kiss, never wanting it to stop when she barely liked the guy she had been kissing.
‘Hello? Calling Planet Earth …’
‘Huh?’ Caroline blinked and realised that the sailboat was now practically at a standstill. The sound of the water lapping gently against the sides was mesmeric.
‘If you stay in that position any longer, your joints will seize up,’ Giancarlo informed her drily. ‘Stand up. Walk about.’
‘What if I topple the boat over and fall in?’
‘Then I’ll rescue you. But you’ll be easier to rescue if you stripped off to your swimsuit. You are wearing a swimsuit underneath those clothes, aren’t you?’
‘Of course I am!’
‘Then, off you go.’ To show the way, he dispensed with his shirt, which was damp from his exertions, and laid it flat to dry.
Caroline felt her breath catch painfully in her throat as all her misbehaving senses went into immediate overdrive. Her lips felt swollen and her breasts were tender. She wanted to tell him to look away but knew that that would have been childish. She gave herself a stern little lecture—how many times had she worn this swimsuit? Hundreds! In summer, she would often go down to the beach with her friends. She never went in the water but she lazed and tanned and had never, not once, felt remotely self-conscious.
With a mental shrug, she quickly peeled off her clothes, folding them neatly and accepting the soft towel which Giancarlo had packed in a waterproof bag, then she stood up and took a few tentative steps towards the side of the boat. In truth, she felt much, much calmer than when she had first stepped on the small vessel. There were far too many other things on her mind to focus on her fears.
Watching her, Giancarlo felt a sudden, unexpected rush of pure sexual awareness. She was staring out to sea, her profile to him, offering him a view of the most voluptuous body he had ever laid eyes on, even though her one-piece black swimsuit was the last word in old-fashioned and strove to conceal as much as possible. She had the perfect hourglass figure that would drive most men mad. With the breeze making a nonsense of her plait, she had finally unravelled it and her hair fell in curls almost to her waist. He found that his breathing had become shallow, and his arousal was so prominent and painful that he inhaled sharply and began busying himself with the other towel which he had packed.
A youth spent on water had primed him for certain necessities: towels, drinks, something to snack on and, of course, sun-tan lotion.
He had taken up a safer position, sitting on his towel, when she turned to him with a little frown. He was tempted to tell her to cover herself up as he looked through half-closed eyes at her luscious breasts, which not even her sensible swimsuit could downplay.
‘I never even asked,’ Caroline said abruptly. ‘Are you married?’ Proud of herself for having ventured into the unknown and terrifying realms of standing at the side of the boat, she now made her way to where he was sitting and spread her towel alongside his to sit.
‘Do I look like a married man?’
Caroline considered her father. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘And I know that you’re not wearing a wedding ring, but lots of married men don’t like jewellery of any kind. My dad doesn’t.’
‘Not married. No intention of ever getting married. You’re staring at me as though I’ve just announced a ban on Christmas Day. Have I shocked you?’
‘I just don’t understand how you can be so certain of something.’
Giancarlo remained silent for such a long time that she wondered whether he was going to answer. He was now lying down on the towel, his hands folded behind his head, a brooding, dangerous Adonis in repose.
‘I don’t talk about my private life.’
‘I’m not asking you to bare your soul. I was just curious.’ She hitched her legs up and wrapped her arms around them. ‘You’re so … uptight.’
‘Me—uptight?’ Giancarlo looked at her with incredulity.
‘It’s as though you’re scared of ever really letting go.’
‘Scared? Uptight?‘
‘I don’t mean to be offensive.’
‘I never knew I had such a boundless capacity for patience,’ Giancarlo confessed in a staggered voice. ‘Do you ever think before you speak?’
‘I wouldn’t have said those things if you had just answered my question but it doesn’t matter now.’
Giancarlo sighed heavily and raked his fingers through his hair in sheer frustration as Caroline stubbornly lay down, closed her eyes and enjoyed the sunshine.
‘I’ve seen firsthand how unreliable the institution of marriage is,’ he admitted gruffly. ‘And I’m not just talking about the wonderful example set by my parents. The statistics prove conclusively that only an idiot would fall for that fairy-tale nonsense.’
Caroline opened her eyes, propped herself up on one elbow and looked at him with disbelief.
‘I’m one of those so-called idiots.’
‘Now, I wonder why I’m not entirely surprised?’
‘What right do you have to say that?’
Giancarlo held both hands up in surrender. ‘I don’t want to get into an argument with you, Caroline. The weather’s glorious, I haven’t been out on a sailboat for the longest while. In fact, this is pretty much the first unscheduled vacation I’ve had in years. I don’t want to spoil it.’ He waited for a few seconds and then raised his eyebrows with amusement. ‘You mean you aren’t going to argue with me?’ He shot her a crooked grin that made her go bright red.
‘I hate arguing.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
But he was still grinning lazily at her. She felt all hot and flustered just looking at him, although she couldn’t drag her eyes away. It was impossibly still out here, with just the sound of gentle water and the far-away laughter of people on the nearest sailboat, which was still a good distance away. Suddenly, and for no reason, Caroline felt as though they were a million miles from civilisation, caged in their own intensely private moment. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to be kissed by him again, and that decadent yearning was so shocking that her mouth fell half-open and she found that she was holding her breath.
‘Okay, but you have to admit that you give me lots to argue about.’
‘I absolutely have to admit that, do I?’
The soft, teasing amusement in his voice made her blush even harder. Suddenly it seemed very important that she remind herself of all the various reasons she had for disliking Giancarlo. She loathed arguing and had never been very good at it, but right now arguing seemed the safest solution to the slow, burning, treacly feeling threatening to send her mind and body off on some weird, scary tangent.
‘So, what about girlfriends?’ she threw recklessly at him.
‘What about girlfriends?’ Giancarlo couldn’t quite believe that she was continuing a conversation which he had deemed to be already closed. She had propped herself up on one elbow so that she was now lying on her side, like a figure from some kind of crazily erotic masterpiece. The most tantalizing thing about her was that he was abso
lutely convinced that she had no idea of her sensational pulling power.
‘Well, I mean, is there someone special in your life at the moment?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I … I just don’t want to talk about Alberto …’ Caroline clutched at that explanation. In truth, the murky business between Giancarlo and his father seemed a very distant problem as they bobbed on the sailboat, surrounded by the azure blue of the placid lake.
‘And nosing where you don’t belong is the next best thing?’ He should have been outraged at the cavalier way with which she was overstepping his boundaries, but he didn’t appear to be. He shrugged. ‘No. There’s no one special in my life, as you call it, at the moment. The last special woman in my life was two months ago.’
‘What was she like?’
‘Compliant and undemanding for the first two months. Less so until I called it a day two months later. It happens.’
‘I guess most women want more than just a casual fling. Most women like to imagine that things are going to go somewhere after a while.’
‘I know. It’s a critical mistake.’ Giancarlo never made it a habit to enquire about women’s pasts. The present was all that interested him. The past was another country, the future a place in which the less interest shown, the better.
Breaking all his own self-imposed restrictions, he asked, with idle curiosity, ‘And what about you? Now that we’ve decided to shelve our arguments over Alberto for a while, you never told me how it is that someone of your age could be tempted to while away an indefinite amount of time in the middle of nowhere with only an old man for company. And forget all that nonsense about enjoying walks in the garden and burying yourself in old books. Did you come to Italy because you were running away from something?’
‘Running away from what?’ Caroline asked in genuine bewilderment.
‘Who knows? Maybe the country idyll proved too much, maybe you got involved with someone who didn’t quite fit the image, was that it? Was there some guy lurking in paradise who broke your heart? Was that why you escaped to Italy? Why you’re content to hide away in a big, decaying villa? Makes sense. Only child … lots of expectations there … doting parents. Did you decide to rebel? Find yourself the wrong type of man?’
‘That’s crazy.’ She flushed and looked away from those too-penetrating, fabulous bitter-chocolate eyes.
‘Is it? Why am I getting a different impression here?’
‘I didn’t get involved with the wrong type of guy.’ Caroline scoffed nervously. ‘I’m not attracted to … This is a silly conversation.’
‘Okay, maybe you weren’t escaping an ill-judged, torrid affair with a married man, but what then? Were the chickens and the sheep and the village-hall dances every Friday night all a little too much?’
Caroline looked at him resentfully from under her lashes and then hurriedly looked away. How had he managed to turn this conversation on its head?
‘Well?’ Giancarlo asked softly, intrigued. ‘You can’t make the rules to only suit yourself. Two can play at this little game of going where you don’t belong …’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! I may have become just a little bored, but so what?’ She fidgeted with the edge of the towel and glared at him, because she felt like a traitor to her parents with that admission, and it was his fault. ‘Italy seemed like a brilliant idea,’ she admitted, sliding a sideways look at him, realising that he wasn’t smirking as she might have expected. ‘London was just too expensive. You need to have a well-paid job to go there and actually be able to afford somewhere to rent, and I didn’t want to go to any of the other big cities. When Dad suggested that he get in touch with Alberto, that brushing up on my Italian would be a helpful addition to my CV, I guess I jumped at the chance. And, once I got here, Alberto and I just seemed to click.’
‘So why the guilty look when I asked?’
‘I think Mum and Dad always expected that I’d stay in the country, live the rural idyll just round the corner from them, maybe get married to one of the local lads …’
‘They said so?’
‘No, but …’
‘They would have wanted you to fly the nest.’
‘They wouldn’t. We’re very close.’
‘If they wanted to keep you tied to them, they would never have suggested a move as dramatic as Italy,’ Giancarlo told her drily. ‘Trust me, they aren’t fools. This would have been their gentle way of helping you to find your own space. Shame, though.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was really beginning to warm to the idea of the unsuitable lover.’
Caroline’s breath caught sharply in her throat because she was registering how close they were to one another, and lying on her side, she felt even more vulnerable to his watchful dark eyes. Conscious of her every movement, she awkwardly sat up and half-wrapped the towel over her legs.
‘I … I’m not attracted to unsuitable men,’ she croaked, because he appeared to be waiting for a reply to his murmured statement, head slightly inclined.
‘Define unsuitable …’ He lazily reached over to the cooler bag which he had brought with him, and which she had barely noticed in her panic over the dreaded sailing trip, and pulled out two cold drinks, one of which he handed to her.
Held hostage to a conversation that was running wildly out of control, Caroline could only stare at him in dazed confusion. She pressed the cold can to her heated cheeks.
‘Well?’ Giancarlo tipped his head back to drink and she found that she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him, from the motion of his throat as he swallowed and the play of muscles in his raised arm.
‘I like kind, thoughtful, sensitive men,’ she breathed.
‘Sounds boring.’
‘It’s not boring to like good guys, guys who won’t let you down.’
‘In which case, where are these guys who don’t let you down?’
‘I’m not in a relationship at the moment, if that’s what you’re asking,’ Caroline told him primly, hoping that he wouldn’t detect the flustered catch in her voice.
‘No. Good guys can be a crashing disappointment, I should imagine.’
‘I’m sure some of your past girlfriends wouldn’t agree with that!’ Bright patches of colour had appeared on her cheeks, and her eyes were locked to his in a way that was invasive and thrilling at the same time. Had he leant closer to her? Or had she somehow managed to shorten the distance between them?
‘I’ve never had any complaints in that department,’ Giancarlo murmured. ‘Sure, some of them have mistakenly got it into their heads that they could persuade me to be in it for the long term. Sure, they were disappointed when I had to set them straight on that, but complaints? In the sex department? No. In fact—’
‘I’m not interested,’ Caroline interrupted shrilly.
Giancarlo dealt her a slashing smile tinged with a healthy dose of disbelief.
‘I guess you haven’t met a lot of Italian studs out here,’ he said, shamelessly fishing and enjoying himself in a way that had become alien to him. His high-pressured, high-octane, high-stressed, driven everyday life had been left behind on the shores of Lake Como. He was playing truant now and loving every second of it. His dark eyes drifted down to her full, heaving breasts. She might have modestly half-covered her bare legs with the towel but she couldn’t hide what remained on display, nor could he seem to stop himself from appreciating it.
‘I didn’t come here to meet anyone! That wasn’t the point.’
‘No, but it might have been a pleasant bonus—unless, of course, you’ve left someone behind? Is there a local lad waiting for you in the wings? Someone your parents approve heartily of? Maybe a farmer?’
Caroline wondered why he would have picked a farmer, of all people. Was it because he considered her the outdoor kind of girl, robust and healthy with pink cheeks and a hearty appetite? The kind of girl he would never have kissed unless he had been obliged to, as a distraction from the embarrassment of havin
g the girl in question make a fool of herself and of him by having a panic attack at the thought of getting into a boat? She sucked her stomach in, gave up the losing battle to look skinny and stood up to move to the side of the boat, where she held the railings and looked out to the lake.
The shore was a distant strip but she wasn’t scared. Just like that, her irrational fear of water seemed to have subsided. There wasn’t enough room for that silly phobia when Giancarlo was doing crazy things to her senses. And, much as he got under her skin, his presence was weirdly reassuring. How did that work?
She was aware that he had moved to stand behind her and in one swift movement she turned around, her back to the waist-high railing. ‘It’s so peaceful and beautiful here.’ She looked at him steadily and tried hard to focus just on his face rather than on his brown, hard torso and its generous sprinkling of dark hair that seemed horribly, unashamedly masculine. ‘Do you miss it? I know Milan is very busy and very commercial, but you grew up here. Don’t you sometimes long for the tranquillity of the open spaces?’
‘I think you’re confusing me with one of those sensitive types you claim to like,’ Giancarlo murmured. He clasped the railing on either side of her, bracing himself and locking her into a suffocating, non-physical embrace, his lean body only inches away from her. ‘I don’t do nostalgia. Not, I might add, that I have much to be nostalgic about.’
The smile he shot her sent a heat wave rushing through her body. She was barefoot and her toes curled against the smooth wooden planks of the sailboat. God, she could scarcely breathe! Their eyes tangled and Caroline felt giddy under the shimmering intensity of his midnight-dark eyes.
She could barely remember what they had been talking about. The quiet sounds of the water had receded and she thought she could hear the whoosh of blood rushing through her veins and the frantic pounding of her heart.
She wasn’t aware of her eyes half closing, or of her mouth parting on a question that was never asked.
The Truth Behind his Touch Page 8