made it clear that she didn’t want her around, and whose two much younger daughters had very quickly taken over the room in her father’s apartment that was supposed to have been hers. She had been so desperate to win her father’s love that she had even gone to the extent of dying her hair black, because Melinda and her girls had black hair. Black hair, too much make-up and short, skimpily cut clothes—all an attempt to find a way to be the daughter she had believed her father wanted, an attempt to find the magic recipe that would turn her into a daughter he could love.
Her father had obviously admired and loved his glamorous PA, so Louise had reasoned that if she were more glamorous, and if men paid her attention, then her father would be bound to be as proud of her as he was of Melinda and as he had surely once been of her mother. When that had failed she’d settled for trying to shock him. Anything was better than indifference.
At eighteen she had been so desperate for her father’s attention that she’d have done anything to get it—anything to stop that empty, hungry feeling inside her that had made it so important that she succeed in becoming her father’s most loved and cherished daughter instead of the unloved failure she had felt she was. Sexually she had been naive, all her emotional intensity invested in securing her father’s love. She’d believed, of course, that one day she would meet someone and fall in love, but when she did so it would be as her father’s much loved daughter, someone who could hold her head up high—not a nuisance who was constantly made to feel that she wasn’t wanted.
That had been the fantasy she’d carried around inside her head, never realising how dangerous and damaging it was, because neither of her parents had cared enough about her to tell her. To them she had simply been a reminder of a mistake they had once made that had forced them into a marriage neither of them had really wanted.
‘But when you started your degree you were living with your grandparents, not your father.’
The sound of Caesar Falconari’s voice brought her back to the present.
An unexpected and dangerous thrill of sensation burned through her—an awareness of him as a man. A man who wore his sexuality as easily and unmistakably as he wore his expensive clothes. No woman in his presence could fail to be aware of him as a man, could fail to wonder …
Disbelief exploded inside her, caused by the shock of her treacherous awareness of him. Where on earth had it come from? It was so unlike her. So … Sweat beaded her forehead and her body was turning hot and sensually tender beneath her clothes. What was happening to her? Panic rubbed her nerve-endings as raw as though they had been touched with acid. This wasn’t right. It wasn’t … wasn’t permissible. It wasn’t … wasn’t fair.
A stillness like the ominous stillness that came just before the breaking of a storm gripped her. This should not be happening. She didn’t know why it was. The only awareness of him she could permit herself to have was an awareness of how dangerous and damaging he could be to her. She must not let him realise the effect he was having on her. He would enjoy humiliating her. She knew that.
But she wasn’t an emotionally immature eighteen-year-old any more, she reminded herself as she struggled to free herself from the web of her own far too vulnerable senses to find safer ground.
‘As I’m sure you know, given that you obviously know so much about my family history, my bad behaviour—especially with regard to my father’s new wife-to-be and the impact she felt it might have on her own daughters—caused my father to ask me to leave.’
‘He threw you out.’
Caesar’s response was a statement, not a question.
There it was again—that twisting, agonising turning of the knife in a new guilt to add to the old one he already carried.
Given that for the last decade he had dedicated himself to improving the lot of his people, what he had learned about Louise and the uncaring and downright cruel behaviour she had been subjected to by those who should have loved and protected her, could never have done anything other than add to his burden of guilt. It had never been his intention to hurt or damage her—far from it—and now, knowing what he did, he could well understand why she had never responded to that letter he had sent, acknowledging his guilt and imploring her to forgive him.
It went against the grain of everything that being a Sicilian father meant to abandon one’s child, yet at the same time for a family to be so publically shamed by the behaviour of one of its members left a stain on that family’s name that would be passed down unforgotten and unforgiven throughout the generations.
Louise could feel her face starting to burn. Was it through guilt or a still-rebellious sense of injustice? Did it matter? It certainly shouldn’t. The counselling she had undergone as part of the training for her career as a much sought after reconciliation expert, working to help bring fractured families back together again, had taught her the importance of allowing oneself errors of judgement, acknowledging them, and then moving on from them.
‘He and Melinda had plans to start a new life together in Australia. It made sense for him to sell the London apartment. Technically I was an adult anyway, as I was eighteen. I was going to university. But, yes, in effect he threw me out.’
So she had been left alone and uncared for whilst he had been on the other side of the world, learning all he could about improving the lot of the poorest people in that world in a bid to expiate his guilt and find a new way of living his life that would benefit his own people.
There was no point in telling her any of that, though. It was plain how antagonistic she was towards him and anything he might have to say.
‘And that was when you moved in with your grandparents?’ he continued. It was, after all, easier to stick to practicalities and known facts than to stray onto the dangerous unstable territory of emotions.
Louise felt the tension gripping her increase. Hadn’t he already done enough, damage, hurt and humiliated her enough without dragging up the awfulness of the past?
Even now she could hardly bear to think about how frightened she had been, or how abandoned and alone she had felt. Her grandparents had saved her, though. With the love they had shown her, they had rescued her.
That had been the first time in her life she had truly understood the importance of giving a child love and security, and all that family love could mean. That was when her whole life had changed and she herself with it. That was when she had promised herself that, whatever it took, one day she would repay her grandparents for their love for her.
‘Yes.’
‘That must have been a very brave gesture on their part, given …’
‘Given what I had done? Yes, it was. There were plenty of people in their local community who were ready to criticise and condemn them, just as they had already condemned me. I had brought shame on my grandparents and by association could potentially bring shame on their community. But then you know all about that, don’t you? You know how shamefully and shockingly I behaved, and how I humiliated and damaged not just myself but my grandparents and all those connected with them. You know how my name became a byword for shame in our community and how my grandparents suffered for that. Suffered for it but still stood by me. And because of that you will also know why I am here now, enduring this further humiliation by you.’
He wanted to say something—to tell her how sorry he was, to remind her that he had tried to apologise—but at the same time he knew that he had to stand strong. There was far more at stake here than their own emotions. Whether they liked it or not they were
