The Truth Behind his Touch. CATHY WILLIAMS

      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