The Truth Behind his Touch

by Cathy Williams

  ‘I’m not in the slightest attracted to your son!’ Caroline felt compelled to set the record straight. ‘You’re one-hundred percent right. We’re completely different, total opposites. In fact, I’m surprised that I managed to put up with him for such a long time. I suppose I must have been so engrossed with the whole sailing business that I barely noticed him at all.’ By the time she had finished that ringing declaration, her voice was shrill and slightly hoarse. She was unaware of Giancarlo behind her and when he spoke it sent shivers of awareness racing up and down her spine, giving her goose bumps.

  ‘Now, now,’ he drawled softly. ‘It wasn’t as bad as all that, was it, Caroline?’

  The way he spoke her name was like a caress. Alberto was looking at them with unconcealed, lively interest. She had to put a stop to this nonsense straight away.

  ‘I never said it was bad. I had a lovely day. Now, if you’ll all excuse me …’ As an afterthought, she said to Tessa, ‘You’ll be joining us tonight for dinner, won’t you?’ But, as luck would have it, Tessa was going to visit her sister and would be back later, in time to make sure that Alberto took his medication—which at least diverted the conversation away from her. She left them to it, with Alberto informing Tessa that he was feeling better and better every day, and he would be in touch with the consultant to see whether he could stop the tablets.

  ‘And then, my dearest harridan, you’ll be back to the daily grind at the hospital, tormenting some other poor, innocent soul. You’ll miss me, of course, but don’t think for a moment that I’ll be missing you.’ Caroline left him crowing as she hurried towards the staircase.

  She took her time having a long, luxurious bath and then carefully choosing what she would wear. Everything, even the most boring and innocuous garments, seemed to be flagrantly revealing. Her tee shirts stretched tautly across her breasts; her jeans clung too tightly to her legs; her blouses were all too low-cut and her skirts made her think how easy it would be for his hand to reach under to the bare skin of her thighs.

  In the end she settled for a pair of leggings and a casual black top that screamed ‘matronly’.

  She found them in the sitting-room where a tense silence greeted her arrival.

  Alberto was in his usual position by the window and Giancarlo, on one of the upright chairs, was nursing what looked like a glass of whisky.

  Caught off-guard by an atmosphere that was thick and uncomfortable, Caroline hovered by the door until Alberto waved her impatiently in.

  ‘I can’t face the dining-room tonight,’ he declared, waving at a platter of snacks on the sideboard. ‘I got the girl to bring something light for us to nibble on here. For God’s sake, woman, stop standing there like a spectre at the feast and help yourself to something to drink. You know where it all is.’

  Caroline slid her eyes across to Giancarlo. His long legs were stretched out, lightly crossed at the ankles. For all the world he looked like a man who was completely relaxed, but there was a threatening stillness about him that made her nervous.

  She became even more nervous when Alberto said, with a barb to his voice, ‘My son and I were just discussing the state of the world. And, more specifically, the state of my world, as evidenced in my business interests.’

  Giancarlo watched for her reaction with brooding, lazy interest. So the elephant in the room had been brought out into the open. Why not? If the dancing had to begin, why not be the one to start the music instead of waiting? So much easier to be the one in control and, of course, control was a weapon he had always wielded with ruthless efficiency.

  ‘Your colour’s up, Alberto,’ Caroline said worriedly. She glared at Giancarlo, who returned her stare evenly. ‘Perhaps this isn’t the right time to.’

  ‘There is no right time or wrong time when it comes to talking about money, my girl. But maybe we should carry on our little discussion later, eh, my boy?’ He impatiently gestured for Caroline to bring him the tray of snacks but his sharp eyes were on Giancarlo.

  So he’d done it, Caroline thought in a daze, he’d actually gone and done it. She could feel it in her bones. Giancarlo had tired of dancing around the purpose for his visit to the villa. Maybe her rejection had hastened thoughts of departure and he had decided that this would be as good a time as any to finally achieve what he had intended to achieve from the very start. Perhaps Alberto’s declarations of improving health had persuaded Giancarlo that there was no longer any need to beat around the bush. At any rate, Alberto’s flushed face and Giancarlo’s cool, guarded silence were saying it all.

  Caroline felt crushed by the weight of bitter disappointment. She realised that there had been a part of her that had really hoped that Giancarlo would ditch his stupid desire for revenge and move on, underneath the posturing. She had glimpsed the three-dimensional, complex man behind the façade and had dared to expect more. God, she’d been a fool.

  She sank into the deepest, most comfortable chair by the sprawling stone fireplace. From there, she was able to witness, in ever-increasing dismay, the awkwardness between father and son. The subject of money was avoided, but it lay unspoken in the air between them, like a Pandora’s box waiting for the lid to be opened.

  They talked about the sailing trip. Alberto politely asked what it felt like to be back on the water. Giancarlo replied that, of course, it was an unaccustomed pleasure bearing in mind that life in Milan as a boy had not included such luxuries as sailing trips, not when money had been carefully rationed. In a scrupulously polite voice, he asked Alberto about the villa and then gave a little lecture on the necessity for maintenance of an old property because old properties had a nasty habit of falling apart if left unattended for too long. But of course, he added blandly, old places did take money. Had he ever thought of leaving or was possession of one of the area’s most picturesque properties just too big a feather in his cap?

  After an hour and a half, during which time Ella had removed the snacks and replaced them with a pot of steaming coffee, Caroline was no longer able to bear the crushing discomfort of being caught between two people, one of whom had declared war. She stood up, said something polite about Tessa being back soon and yawned; she would be off to bed. With a forced smile, she parroted something to Alberto about making sure he didn’t stay up much longer, that he was to call her on her mobile if Tessa was not back within the hour so that she could help him upstairs. She couldn’t look at Giancarlo. His brooding silence frightened her.

  ‘You should maybe come up with me.’ She gave it her last best shot to avert the inevitable, but Alberto shook his head briskly.

  ‘My son and I have matters to discuss. I can’t pretend there aren’t one or two things that need sorting out, and might as well sort them out now. I’ve never been one to run from the truth!’ He was addressing Caroline but staring at Giancarlo. ‘It’s much better to get the truth out than let things fester.’

  Caroline imagined the showdown—well, in Giancarlo’s eyes, it was a showdown that had been brewing for the best part of his life and he had come prepared to win it at all costs. She was being dismissed but still she hesitated, searching valiantly for some miracle she could produce from nowhere, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. But there was no miracle and she retreated upstairs. The villa was so extensive that there was no way she could possibly pick up the sound of raised voices, nor could she even hear whether Tessa had returned or not to rescue Alberto from his own son.

  She fell into a fitful sleep and awoke with a start to the moon slanting silver light through the window. She had been reading and her book had dropped to the side of the bed. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the darkness and a few more seconds for her to remember what had been worrying her before she had nodded off: Alberto and Giancarlo. The unbearable tension, like a storm brewing in the distance, waiting to erupt with devastating consequences.

  Groaning, she heaved herself out of the four-poster bed, slipped on her dressing gown and headed downstairs, although she wasn’t quite
sure what she expected to find.

  Alberto’s suite of rooms lay at the far end of the long corridor, beyond the staircase. Hesitating at the top of the winding staircase, Caroline was tempted to check on him, but first she would go downstairs, make sure that the two of them weren’t still locked in a battle to the bitter end. Truth, as Alberto had declared, was something that could take hours to hammer out—and in this case the outcome would be certain defeat for Alberto. He would finally have to bow to Giancarlo and put his destiny in his hands. With financial collapse at his door, what other alternative would there be?

  She arrived at the sitting-room to see a slither of light under the shut door. Although she couldn’t hear any voices, what else could that light mean except that they were both still in the room? She pushed open the door before she could do what she really wanted to do, which was to run away.

  The light came from one of the tall standard lamps that dotted the large room. Sprawled on the chair with his head flung back, eyes closed and a drink cradled loosely in one hand, Giancarlo looked heart-stoppingly handsome and, for once, did not appear to be a man at the top of his game. His hair was tousled, as though he had raked his fingers through it too many times, and he looked ashen and exhausted.

  She barely made a sound, but he opened his eyes immediately, although it seemed to take him a few seconds before he could focus on her, and when he did he remained where he was, slumped in the chair.

  ‘Where is Alberto?’

  Giancarlo swirled the liquid in his glass without answering and then swallowed back the lot without taking his eyes from her face.

  ‘How much have you drunk, Giancarlo?’ Galvanised into sudden action, Caroline walked briskly towards him. ‘You look terrible.’

  ‘I love a woman who tells it like it is.’

  ‘And you haven’t told me where Alberto is.’

  ‘I assure you, he isn’t hiding anywhere in this room. You have just me for the pleasure of your company.’

  Caroline managed to extract the glass from him. ‘You need sobering up.’

  ‘Why? Is there some kind of archaic house rule that prohibits the consumption of alcohol after a certain time?’

  ‘Wait right here. I’m going to go and make a pot of coffee.’

  ‘You have my word. I have no intention of going anywhere, any time soon.’

  For once, Caroline failed to be awed by the size and grandeur of the villa. For once, she wished that the kitchens didn’t involve a five-minute hike through winding corridors and stately reception rooms. She could barely contain her nerves as she anxiously waited for the kettle to boil, and by the time she made it back to the sitting-room, burdened with a tray on which was piled a mound of buttered toast and a very large pot of black, strong coffee, she half-expected to find that Giancarlo had disappeared.

  He hadn’t. He had managed to refill his glass and she gently but firmly removed it from him, brought the tray over to place it on the oval table by his chair and then pulled one of the upright, velvet-covered stools towards him.

  ‘What are you doing here, anyway? Did you come down to make sure that the duel at dawn hadn’t begun?’

  ‘You should eat something, Giancarlo.’ She urged a slice of toast on him and he twirled it thoughtfully between his fingers, examining it as though he had never seen anything like it before.

  ‘You are a very caring person, Caroline Rossi, but I expect you’ve been told that before. I can’t imagine too many women preparing me toast and coffee because they were worried that I’d drunk too much. Although …’ He half-leaned towards her, steadying himself on the arm of his chair. ‘I’ve never drunk too much—least of all when in the company of a woman.’ He bit into the toast with apparent relish and settled his lustrous dark eyes on her.

  ‘So, what happened? I don’t mean to pry …’

  ‘Of course you mean to pry.’ He half-closed his eyes, shifted a little in the chair, indicated that he wanted more toast and drank some of the very strong coffee. ‘You have my father’s welfare at heart.’

  ‘We can talk in the morning, when you’re feeling a little less, um, worse for wear.’

  ‘It would take more than half a bottle of whisky to make me feel worse for wear. I’ve the constitution of an ox. I made a mistake.’

  ‘I know. Well. That’s what people always say after they’ve drunk too much. They also say that they’ll never do it again.’

  ‘You’re not following me. I made a mistake. I screwed up.’

  ‘Giancarlo, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Of course you don’t. Why should you? To summarise—you were right and I was wrong.’ He rubbed his eyes, sighed heavily, thought about standing up and discovered that he couldn’t be bothered. ‘I came here hell-bent on setting the record straight. There were debts to be settled. I was going to be the debt collector. Well, here’s one for the book—the invincible Giancarlo didn’t get his facts straight.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was always led to believe that Alberto was a bitter ex-husband who had ensured that my mother got as little as possible in her divorce settlement. I was led to believe that he was a monster who had walked away from a difficult situation, having made sure that my mother suffered for the temerity of having a mind of her own. I was drip-fed a series of half-truths! I think another glass of whisky might help the situation.’

  ‘It won’t.’

  ‘You told me that there might be another side to the story.’

  ‘There always is.’ Her heart constricted in sympathy. Unused to dealing with any kind of emotional doubt, Giancarlo had steadily tried to drink his way out of it. More than anything in the world, Caroline wanted to reach out and smooth away the lines of bitter self-recrimination from his beautiful face.

  ‘My mother had been having affairs. By the time the marriage dissolved, she was involved with a man who turned out to be a con artist. There was a massive settlement. My mother failed to do anything with it. Instead, she handed it over to a certain Bertoldo Monti who persuaded her that he could treble what she’d had. He took the lot and disappeared. Alberto showed me all the documents, the letters my mother wrote begging for more money. Well, he carried on supporting her, and in return she refused to let him see me. She informed him that I was settled, that I didn’t want contact. Letters he sent me were returned unopened. He kept them all.’

  Giancarlo’s voice was raw with emotion. Caroline could feel tears begin to gather at the back of her eyes and she blinked them away, for the last thing a man as proud as Giancarlo would want would be any show of sympathy. Not now, not when his eyes had been ripped open to truths he had never expected.

  ‘I expect that the only reason I received the top education that I did was because the money was paid directly to the school. It was one of those basics that Alberto made sure were covered because, certainly, there seems little question that my mother would have spent it or given it away to one of her many lovers, had she had it in her possession.’

  ‘I’m sure, in her own way, she never thought that what she was doing was bad.’

  ‘Ever the cheerful optimist, aren’t you?’ He laughed harshly, but when he looked at her, his eyes were wearily amused. ‘So, it would seem, is my father. Do you know, I used to wonder what you had in common with Alberto. He was a bitter and twisted old man with no time for anyone but himself. You were young and innocent. Seems you two have more in common than I ever imagined. He, too, told me the same thing—my mother was unhappy. He worked too hard. She was bored. He blamed himself for not being around sufficiently to build up a relationship with me and she took advantage of that. She took advantage of his pride, threatened to air all their dirty linen in public if he tried to pursue custody, convinced him that he had failed as a father and that visits would be pointless and disruptive. I was her trump card and she used me to get back at him.

  ‘God, do you know that when she died, Alberto requested to see me via a lawyer and I knocked him back? She
behaved badly, she warped my attitudes, but the truth is she was a simple waitress who was plucked from obscurity and deposited into a lifestyle with which she was unfamiliar and ill at ease. The whole thing was a mess. Is still a mess. Alberto didn’t know the extent of his financial losses. He’s relied on his trusted accountant for the past ten years and he’s been kept pretty much in the dark about the true nature of the company accounts. Of course, like a bull in a china shop, that was one of my choice opening observations.’

  ‘Stop blaming yourself, Giancarlo. You were a child when you left here. You weren’t to know that things weren’t as they seemed. Was … was Alberto okay when he heard? I guess in a way it’s quite a good thing that you came along to tell him, because if you hadn’t none of these secrets would have ever emerged. He’s old. How good is it for the two of you that all these truths have come out? How much better for you both to have reached a place where new beginnings can start, even though the price you’ve both paid has been so high?’

  This time Giancarlo offered her a crooked smile. ‘I suppose that’s one upbeat way of looking at it.’

  ‘And I know the situation between you hasn’t been ideal, but when it comes to Alberto and the money, how much worse for him to have been called into an impersonal office somewhere, told that everything he’d spent your life working for had been washed down the tubes?’

  ‘As things turn out.’ He closed his eyes briefly, giving her some stolen moments to savour the harsh, stunning contours of his face. Seeing him like this, vulnerable and flawed but brutally, fiercely honest with himself, did something strange inside her. A part of her seemed to connect with him in a way that was scary and thrilling.

  ‘As things turn out?’ she prompted, while her mind drifted to things going on in her head that made her heart beat faster and her pulses race. Could she be falling for the guy? Surely not? She would be crazy to do something like that, and she wasn’t crazy. But he made her feel alive, took her to a different level where all her emotions and senses were amplified in a way that was new and dangerous but also wonderful.