The Truth Behind his Touch (17 page)

He had woken next to her at a ridiculously early hour and had paused to look at her perfectly contented face as she slept on her side, one arm flung up, her hands balled into fists, the way a baby would sleep. She had looked incredibly young, and incredibly tempting. He had had to resist the urge to wake her at the ungodly hour of five-thirty to make love. Instead he had taken a cold shower and had spent most of the day counting down to when he would walk through the front door. Never before could he remember having such a craving to return to his apartment. ‘Wherever he laid his hat’ had never been his definition of home.

He frowned as a sudden thought occurred to him.

‘Did something happen today?’ he asked slowly. ‘I take no responsibility for my fellow Italians, but it’s not unheard of for some of them to be forward with tourists. Did you get into some bother while you were sightseeing? Someone follow you? Made a nuisance of himself?’ He could feel himself getting hot under the collar, and he clenched and
unclenched his fists at the distasteful thought of someone pestering her, making her day out a misery.

‘Something
did
happen,’ Caroline said quietly, her eyes sliding away from him because even the sight of him was enough to scramble her brains. ‘But nothing like what you’re saying. I didn’t get into any bother when I was out. And, by the way, even if someone
had
made a nuisance of himself I’m not a complete idiot. I would have been able to handle the situation.’

‘What, then?’

‘I had a visit.’ This time she rested her eyes steadily on his beautiful face. A person could drown in those dark, fathomless eyes, she thought. Hadn’t
she
?

‘A visit
here
?’

Caroline nodded. ‘Tall. Leggy. Blonde. You might know who I mean. Her name was Lucia.’

G
IANCARLO
stilled.

‘Lucia was
here
?’ he asked tightly. The hard lines of his face reflected his displeasure. Lucia Fontana was history, one of his exes who had taken their break-up with a lot less grace than most. She was a supermodel at the height of her career, accustomed to men lusting after her, paying homage to her beauty, contriving to be in her presence. She was also, in varying degrees, annoying, superficial, vain, self-centred and lacking in anything that could be loosely termed
intelligence
. She had met him at a business function, an art exhibition which had been attended by the glitterati, and she had pursued him. His mistake had been lazily to go along for the ride. ‘What the hell was she doing here?’

‘Not expecting to find
me
,’ Caroline imparted tonelessly. She toyed with the idea of telling him that the blonde had, at first, assumed that she was the maid, the hired help dressed inappropriately for the job of scrubbing floors and cleaning the toilets. She decided to keep that mortifying titbit to herself.

‘I apologise for that. Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.’

Caroline shrugged. Did he expect her to be grateful for that heartening promise, just because she happened to be the flavour of the month, locked in a situation which neither
of them could ever have foreseen? She felt an uncharacteristic temptation to snort with disgust.

‘I expect there’s probably a whole barrel-load of them lurking in the woodwork, waiting to crawl out at any minute.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Women. Exes. Glamorous supermodels you threw over or, in the case of this one, a glamorous supermodel who threw
you
over.’

‘Lucia? Did she tell you that she left me?’ Giancarlo felt a surge of white-hot rage rip through him. He knew that he had badly dented her ego when he had dumped her, but the thought of her coming to his apartment and lying through her pearly-white teeth made him see red.

‘Well, I guess it must have been difficult for her to conduct a relationship with someone when she was travelling all over the place, but she said that she’s back now and you can contact her whenever you want. Pick up where you left off.’

No; he was not going to start explaining himself. No way. That was a road he had never been down and he wasn’t about to go down it now. It just wasn’t in his nature to justify his behaviour, not that he had anything
to
justify!

‘And this is what you’ll be expecting me to do, is it?’ he asked coolly.

Caroline felt her heart breaking in two. She hadn’t realised how much she had longed to hear him deny everything the other woman had said. His silence on the subject was telling. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t going to race over to Lucia’s apartment and fling himself at her feet, but surely if the other woman had been lying he would have denied her story?

‘You’ve gone into a mood because, despite everything, you don’t trust me.’

‘I’m not in a mood!’

‘That’s not what my eyes are telling me. Lucia and I were finished months ago.’

‘But did you end it or did
she
?’

‘What difference does it make? You either trust me or you don’t.’

‘Why should I trust you, Giancarlo?’ She had been determined not to lose her rag, but looking at his proud, aristocratic face she wanted to slap him. Her own crazy love for him, her stupidity in thinking that what they had meant something, rose up like bile to her throat.

‘You wouldn’t have looked twice at someone like me if we’d met under more normal circumstances, would you?’

‘I refuse to get embroiled in a hypothetical discussion of what might or might not have happened. We met and you’ve had more than ample proof of how attracted I am to you.’

‘But I’m not
your type
. I guess I knew that all along—deep down. But your girlfriend made it very clear that—’

‘Lucia is
not
my girlfriend. Okay, if it means that much to you to know what happened between us, I’ll tell you! I went out with the woman and it turned out to be a mistake. There’s only room for one person in Lucia’s life and that’s Lucia. She’s an airhead who can only talk about herself. No mirror is safe when she’s around, and aside from that she’s got a vicious tongue.’

‘But she’s beautiful.’ Caroline found that she no longer cared about who had done the breaking up. What did it matter? Dig deep and the simple fact was that Lucia was more his type than
she
was. He liked them transient; playthings that wouldn’t take up too much of his valuable time and wouldn’t make demands of him.

‘I dumped her and she took it badly.’ He hadn’t meant to explain himself but in the end he had been unable
not
to.

‘Well, it doesn’t matter.’

‘It clearly does or you wouldn’t be making such a big deal of this.’

Caroline thought that what was nothing to him was a very big deal for her, except there was no way that he would understand that because he hadn’t dug himself into the same hole that she had. Every sign of hurt would be just another indication to him of how deeply embedded she had become in their so-called relationship.

What would he do if he discovered that she was in love with him? Laugh out loud? Run a mile? Both? She was determined that he wouldn’t find out. At least then she would be able to extract herself with some measure of dignity instead of proving Lucia right, proving that she had made the fatal error of thinking that she meant more to Giancarlo than she did.

Unable to contain her agitation, she stood up and paced restlessly towards the window, peering outside in search of inspiration, then she perched on the broad ledge so that she was sitting on her hands. That way, they kept still.

‘I was embarrassed,’ Caroline told him. She swallowed back the tears of self-pity that were vying for prevalence over her self-control. ‘I hadn’t expected to open the door to one of your ex-girlfriends, although it’s not your fault that she showed up here. I realise that. She said some pretty hurtful things and that’s not your fault either.’

Considering that he was being exonerated of all blame from the sound of it, Giancarlo was disturbed to find that he didn’t feel any better. And he didn’t like the remote expression on her face. He preferred it when she had been angry, shouting at him, backing him into a corner.

‘It
did
make me think, though, that what we’re doing is … Well, we need to stop it.’

‘Work that one through for me. One stupid woman turns
up uninvited on my doorstep and suddenly you’ve decided that what we have is a bad idea? We’re adults, Caroline. We’re attracted to one another.’

‘We’re deceiving an old man into thinking that this is something that it isn’t, and I should have listened to my conscience from the start. It’s not just about having fun, never mind the consequences.’

Giancarlo flushed darkly, for once lost for words. If Lucia had been in the room, he would have throttled her. It was unbelievable just how wrong the evening had gone. The worst of it was that he could feel Caroline slipping away from him and there was nothing he could do about it.

‘The fact is, that woman was right. I’m not your type.’ She couldn’t help herself. She left a pause, a heartbeat of silence, something he could fill with a denial. ‘You’re not my type. We’ve been having fun, and in the process leading Alberto into thinking that there’s more to what we have than there actually is.’

‘It’s crazy to come back to the hoary subject of
type
.’ Even to his own ears he sounded like a man on the back foot, but any talk about the value of ‘having fun’, which seemed to have become dirty words, would land him even further in the quagmire. He raked frustrated fingers through his hair and glowered at her.

‘Maybe if Alberto wasn’t involved things might have been a bit different.’

‘Isn’t it a bit late in the day to start taking the moral high ground?’

‘It’s never too late in the day to do the right thing.’

‘And a woman who meant nothing to me, who was an albatross around my neck after the first week of seeing her, has brought you to this conclusion?’

‘I’ve woken up.’ She felt as though she was swallowing
glass and her nerves went into frantic overdrive as he stood up to walk towards her.

Everything about him was achingly familiar, from the smell of him to the supple economy of his movements. Her imagination only had to travel a short distance to picture the feel of his muscular arms under his shirt.

She half-turned but her breathing was fast. More than anything else in the world, she didn’t want him to touch her.

‘I know it’s late, but I really think I’d like to get back to the villa.’

‘This is crazy!’

‘I need to be—’

‘Away from me? Because if you stay too close you’re scared that your body might take over?’ He muttered a low oath in the face of her continuing silence.

‘I don’t mind heading back tonight.’

‘Forget it! You can leave in the morning, and I’ll make sure that I’m not under your feet tonight. I’ll instruct my driver to be here for you at nine. My private helicopter will take you back to the villa.’ He turned away and began striding towards the bedroom. After a second’s hesitation, Caroline followed him, galvanised into action and now terrified of the void opening up at her feet, even though she knew that there was no working her way around it.

‘I know you’re concerned about Alberto getting the wrong impression of you.’

She hovered by the door, desperate to maintain contact, although she knew that she had lost him. He was turning away, stripping off his shirt to hurl it on the antique chair that sat squarely under the window.

‘I’ll tell him that your meetings were so intensive that we thought it better for me to head back to the coast, to get out of the stifling heat in Milan.’

Giancarlo didn’t answer. She found her feet taking her forwards until she was standing in front of him.

‘Giancarlo, please. Don’t be like this.’

He paused and looked at her with a shuttered expression. ‘What do you want me to say, Caroline?’

She shrugged and stared mutely down at her feet.

‘Where are you going to go? I mean, tonight? You said that you’ll make sure that you aren’t under my feet.’ She placed one small hand on his arm and he looked down at it pointedly.

‘If you want to touch, then you have to be prepared for the consequences.’

Caroline whipped her hand away and took a couple of unsteady steps back. He had said that before. Once. And back then, light-years ago, she had reached out and touched because she had wanted to fall into bed with him. Now she wanted to run as fast as she could away from him. How had she managed to breach the space between them? It was as if her body, in his presence, had a mind of its own and was drawn to him like a moth to a flame.

‘This is your apartment. It’s—it’s silly for you to go somewhere else for the night,’ she stammered.

‘What are you suggesting? That I climb into bed next to you and we both go to sleep like chaste babes in the wood?’

‘I could use one of the spare bedrooms.’

‘I wouldn’t trust me if I were you,’ Giancarlo murmured, keen eyes watching her as she went a delicate shade of pink. ‘You might just wake up to find me a little too close for comfort. Now, I’m going to have a shower. Do you want to continue this conversation in the bathroom?’

Her heart was still beating fast twenty minutes later when Giancarlo reappeared in his sitting-room, showered, changed and with a small overnight bag. He looked refreshed, calm and controlled. She, on the other hand, was
perched on the edge of the sofa, her back erect, her hands primly resting on her knees. She looked at him warily.

‘You do know,’ he said, dropping his bag on one of the sprawling sofas and strolling towards the kitchen, where he proceeded to pour himself a drink, ‘that I’ll be heading back to the coast once this series of meetings is finished? So I need to know exactly what I’m going to be walking into.’

‘Walking into?’ She was riveted by the sight of him in a pair of faded jeans and a polo shirt in a similar colour, so different from the businessman who had walked through the door, and all over again she agonised as to whether she had made the right decision. Distressed and disconcerted by Lucia’s appearance, had she overreacted? She loved Giancarlo! Had she blown whatever chance she had of somehow getting him to feel the way she felt? If they had continued seeing one another, would love eventually have replaced lust?

As soon as she started thinking like that, another scenario rushed up in her head. It was a scenario in which he became bored and disinterested, in which she became more and more needy and clingy. It was a scenario in which another Lucia clone came along, leggy, blonde and dim-witted, to lure him away from the challenge of someone who spoke too freely. He might find her frankness a novelty now, but it was not a trait he was used to—and did a leopard ever change its spots?

But the way he looked …

She swallowed and told herself just to
focus
.

‘Now that you’ve seen the light, are you even planning on being there at the end of the week?’

‘Of course I am! I told you that I’m prepared to go along with this for a short while longer, but we’re going to have to
show your father that we’re drifting apart so that he won’t be upset when we announce that it’s over between us.’

‘And any clues on how we should do that? Maybe we could stage a few arguments? Or you could play with the truth and tell him that you met one of my past girlfriends and you didn’t like what you saw.’

Caroline thought of Lucia and she glanced hesitantly at Giancarlo. ‘Were all your girlfriends like that?’

‘Come again?’

‘All your girlfriends, were they like Lucia?’

Giancarlo frowned, taken aback by the directness of the question and the gentle criticism he could detect underlying it.

‘I know that Lucia might have annoyed you,’ she continued. ‘But were they all like her? Have you ever been out with someone who wasn’t a model? Or an actress? I mean, do you just go out with women because of the way they look?’