your sister still here in Sydney?’ Emilio asked.
‘No, she flew back to London ten days ago,’ she said, looking into the contents of her glass with a little frown. ‘The press were hounding her. They were hounding us both. I found it a little scary …’ She bit her lip and drained her glass as if she wanted to stop any more words coming out of her mouth.
‘It must have been a very difficult time for you both,’ he said.
She lifted her gaze to his; her eyes were like stormy grey-blue ice cubes, hard, cold and resentful. ‘I’d rather not talk about it if you don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I’m still trying to sort it out in my head. So is Sienna.’
‘Perhaps you can invite her to stay at my villa for a few days,’ Emilio said. ‘I would like to meet her.’
She gave another shrug of indifference. ‘Whatever.’
Emilio signalled for the waiter to refresh their drinks. He sat back in his seat and observed Gisele as she tucked an imaginary strand of hair behind her ear, another one of her I’m-out-of-my-depth-and-trying-not-to-show-it mannerisms. She was not as immune to him as she tried to make out. He had seen the flare of female interest in her gaze. He had felt the shiver of reaction on her skin when he had touched her. One kiss would prove he could have her back where he wanted her.
‘Tell me about your shop,’ he said. ‘How did you come about buying the business?’
She dropped her gaze to the drink the waiter had just set before her. ‘When I came back … from Italy I … I wanted a secure base,’ she said. ‘I liked the idea of working for myself. Having more control, that sort of thing. I’d sold some items to the owner in the past and she gave me the first option of buying.’
‘It’s a big commitment for a young woman of just twenty-five, or twenty-three as you were then,’ Emilio said. ‘Did your parents help you?’
Gisele put her glass down. ‘At first, but then things got a bit tricky after my father got sick. He had a few debts we didn’t know about until after he’d died. Bad business decisions, a bit of gambling with the stock market that didn’t pay off as well as he’d hoped. I had to help my mother … I mean Hilary out.’
Emilio put his drink down on the coaster on the table between them. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t send a card,’ he said. ‘I’d heard he was terminally ill. I should have made contact to offer my condolences. It must have been a very difficult time for you and your mother.’
She looked back at the contents of her glass; the grip of her fingers was so tight around the stem he wondered if it would snap. ‘He took eight and a half miserable months to die,’ she said. ‘Not once in all that time did he ever say anything about me having a twin sister.’ She looked at him at that point, her grey-blue gaze blazing with anger. ‘Both my parents knew our relationship had broken up because of that sex tape but still neither he nor my mother said a word. I can never forgive them for that.’
Emilio carefully removed the wineglass from her stiff fingers and put it to one side. ‘I can understand your anger towards them but our relationship broke up because I didn’t trust you,’ he said. ‘If anyone is to blame it is me.’
Gisele met his gaze in the long silence that ensued. ‘You know what really upsets me?’ she asked.
‘Tell me,’ he said, still holding her gaze.
‘How did they choose?’ she asked.
‘You mean who got which twin?’ he asked.
Gisele blew out a hissing breath. ‘I can’t get it out of my mind,’ she said. ‘How did they do it? How could my mother, my biological mother, give me up? And how could my father ask it of her? And not only that, what was my adoptive mother thinking by agreeing to bring up her husband’s love child? Did she have no self-respect?’
Emilio bent his forearms on his thighs so he could reach Gisele’s tightly knotted hands. He took them both in one of his, stroking the tension away as best he could. ‘Have you asked her about it?’ he said.
She looked at him with flashing eyes. ‘Of course I’ve asked her,’ she said. ‘She said she did it to keep my father happy. She spent their whole married life trying to make him happy but it never worked.’
‘From what you told me, your family always seemed so perfect to me,’ Emilio said, still stroking her hands. ‘You never said anything about them being unhappy together.’
Gisele looked down at their joined hands and hastily pulled hers away. She sat straighter in her seat, ramrod straight, angry straight, keep-away-from-me straight. ‘I never liked admitting it to anyone but I always felt I wasn’t good enough for either of my parents,’ she said. ‘I tried my best but nothing I did or achieved seemed to please them. My mother wasn’t the maternal type. She never liked cuddling me or playing with me. She employed a nanny to do that. Now I understand why. I wasn’t her child.’ She drew in another painful-sounding breath and continued, ‘My father was just as bad. Deep down, I think he really wanted a son. My mother certainly couldn’t give him one, but then his mistress gave him two daughters so he chose one. But I’ve often wondered if he thought he’d chosen the wrong one or whether he wished he had just walked away from both of us. He was stuck in a loveless marriage until the day he died, out of guilt presumably. All of those long stonewalling silences between him and my mother over the years suddenly made a whole lot of sense.’
Emilio frowned. He had never heard Gisele talk so honestly about her childhood. He had thought she had come from a reasonably happy and stable home. He had envied her background, given the bleak misery of his. It made him realise how little he had known her, even though he’d been days off marrying her. He had been struck by her beauty but had given little thought to who she was, what she valued and how she wanted her life to run. He had swept her off her feet, dazzled her with his wealth and charm, and yet had not known for a moment how deeply insecure she really was. It was like looking at her for the first time. The same beauty was there but so too was a fragility that he had not seen the first time around. But then she had been devastatingly hurt and he, to his shame, had done that to her, even more so than her parents. He wasn’t sure how he could ever fix that terrible mistake but he was determined to try. ‘How is your sister dealing with this?’ he asked.
Gisele let her stiff shoulders drop. ‘She’s a lot more chilled about it than me,’ she said. ‘I guess growing up with a single mother who was known to be a bit of a tear-away has toughened her up rather a lot. It sounded like Sienna was the parent rather than the child most of the time. She told me there were always a lot of men coming and going in her mother’s life. It can’t have been an easy childhood but she just made the best of it.’
‘Is she disappointed she didn’t get to meet your father?’
‘Yes and no, I suppose,’ Gisele said, frowning a little. ‘I think she would’ve given him a serve for what he did. She’s a bit of a straight shooter. I think I could do with some lessons from her, actually. It’s about time I learned to speak up for myself.’
‘I think you’re doing rather a good job of it,’ Emilio said with a crooked smile. ‘Perhaps I am wrong after all. Maybe you have changed.’
Her eyes glittered as they held his. ‘You’d better believe it.’
Emilio allowed a little silence to pass before he spoke. ‘Did you give the keys and all the relevant paperwork for your shop to
