The Man Behind the Scars(38)

Louise didn't consider herself to be Sicilian, but perhaps there was  enough of that blood in her veins for her always to have felt not just  the loss of love but also the public humiliation that came from not  being loved by her father. Italian men-Sicilian men-were usually  protective and proud of the children they fathered. Her father had not  wanted her. She had got in the way of his plans for his life. As a  crying, clingy child and then a rebellious, demanding teenager she had  first irritated and then annoyed him. For her father-a man who had  wanted to travel and make the most of his personal freedom-marriage and  the birth of a child had always been shackles he did not want. Because  of that alone her attempts to command her father's attention and his  love had always been doomed to failure.

Yet she had clung determinedly to the fictional world she had created  for herself-a world in which she was her father's adored daughter. She'd  boasted about their relationship at the exclusive girls' school her  mother had insisted on sending her to, with daughters of the titled, the  rich and the famous, clinging fiercely to the kudos that went with  having such a high-profile and good-looking parent. He'd had a role as  the front man of a hugely popular quasi-academic TV series, which had  meant that her fellow pupils accepted her only because of him.

Such a shallow and fiercely competitive environment had brought out the  worst in her, Louise acknowledged. Having learned as a child that "bad'  behaviour was more likely to gain her attention than "good', she had  continued with that at school, deliberately cultivating her "bad girl'  image.

But at least her father had been there in her life, to be claimed as  being her father-until Melinda Lorrimar, his Australian PA, had taken  him from her. Melinda had been twenty-seven to Louise's eighteen when  they had gone public with their relationship, and it had perhaps been  natural that they should compete for her father's attention right from  the start.                       
       
           



       

How jealous she had been of Melinda, a glamorous Australian divorcee,  who had soon 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.