Read Online The Truth Behind his Touch by Cathy Williams - Free Book Online Page B

head, he realised that he had held on to a memory that was nearly two decades old and clearly out of date.
    ‘Father …’
    ‘Caroline. You’re gaping. Why don’t you offer a drink to our guest? And I will have a whisky while you’re about it.’
    ‘You’ll have no such thing.’ Back on familiar ground, Caroline moved past Giancarlo to adopt a protective stance by her employer, who made feeble attempts to flap her away. Looking at their interaction, Giancarlo could seethat it was a game with which they were both comfortable and familiar.
    Just for a few seconds, he was the outsider looking in, then that peculiar feeling was gone as the tableau shifted. Caroline walked across to a cupboard which had been reconfigured to house a small fridge, various snacks and cartons of juice.
    He was aware of her chattering nervously, something about it being time efficient to have stuff at hand for Alberto because this was his favourite room in the house and he just wasn’t as yet strong enough to continually make long trips to the kitchen if he needed something to drink.
    ‘Of course, it’s all supervised,’ she babbled away, while the tension stretched silent and invisible in the room. ‘No whisky here. Tessa and I know that that’s Alberto’s Achilles’ heel so we have wine. I put some in earlier, would that be okay?’ She kept her eyes firmly averted from the uncomfortable sight of father and son, but in her head she was picturing them circling one another, making their individual, quiet assessments.
    Given half a chance, she would have run for cover to another part of the house, but her instinct to protect Alberto kept her rooted to the spot.
    When she finally turned around, with drinks and snacks on a little tray, it was to find that Giancarlo had taken up position on one of the chairs. If he was in any way uncomfortable, he wasn’t showing it.
    ‘Well, Father, I have been told that you’ve suffered a heart attack—’
    ‘How was the drive here, Giancarlo? Still too many cars in the villages?’
    They both broke into speech at the same time. Caroline drank too much far too quickly to calm her nerves and lapsed into an awkward silence as ultra-polite questionswere fielded with ultra-polite answers. She wondered if they were aware that many of their mannerisms were identical—the way they both shifted and leaned forward when a remark was made; the way they idly held their glasses, slightly stroking the rim with their fingers. They should have bonded without question. Instead, Giancarlo’s cool, courteous conversation was the equivalent of a door being shut.
    He was here. He was talking. But he was not conversing.
    At least he had kept his word and nothing, so far, had been mentioned about the state of Alberto’s finances, although she knew that her employer must surely be curious to know why his son had bothered to make the trip out to Lake Como when he displayed so little enthusiasm for the end result.
    Dinner was a light soup, followed by fish. One of the local girls had been brought in, along with the two regular housekeepers, to take care of the cooking and the clearing away. So, instead of eating in the kitchen, they dined in the formal dining-room, which proved to be a mistake.
    The long table and the austere surroundings were not conducive to light-hearted conversation. Tessa had volunteered to have her meal in the small sitting-room adjoining her bedroom, in order to give them all some space to chat without her hovering over Alberto, checking to make sure he stuck to his diet. Caroline heartily wished she could have joined her, because the atmosphere was thick with tension.
    By the time they had finished their starters and made adequately polite noises about it, several topics of conversation had been started and quickly abandoned. The changes in the weather patterns had been discussed, as had the number of tourists at the lakes, the lack of snow the previous winter and, of course, Alberto asked