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Edward had no idea how low morale was amongst his staff and would have been deeply hurt if he’d been here today to discover what Giancarlo had so slickly uncovered.
So maybe it was right that Edward wasn’t going to be here to see the transformation of his precious company, she concluded.
He waited until they were driving towards Kensington before making any comment. ‘Things are even worse than I envisaged,’ he said.
‘I know,’ she agreed. There was nothing to be gained from pretending otherwise.
‘How long have you known?’
Her shrug conveyed her reluctance to answer. ‘Don’t ask me to criticise Edward because I will not,’ she told him and turned her head to stare bleakly out of the cab’s side window.
‘You admire the fact that he has run his own company into the ground?’ The snap in his tone was laced with sarcasm.
Natalia kept her face turned away and said nothing in answer. For what could she say in Edward’s defence that would not be betraying his darkest secrets? She couldn’t. It was as simple as that. Edward’s pride was just too important to her.
Strange, she mused, how one person could become the axis your life revolved around in such a short length of time. This time six months ago she hadn’t even known of Edward’s existence. This time six months ago she had been alone and sad, and seeing nothing bright in her future to make her feel any better, then—wham—everything had changed with one single glance across a café table.
It could still make her heart leap just to think of him, think of his loving face and his loving eyes, and that silly expression that would come over both, which would say without words—I still can’t believe that you belong to me.
But she did, and nothing—nothing in this big world was ever going to take that away from her.
So her silence remained a wall she maintained between them as they travelled. Whatever Giancarlo was thinking about that silence did not really affect her. The man professed to care about Edward. And she did trust him to do what was best for his brother-in-law’s company. But she would never trust him with Edward’s heart, for it would take another man who had been hurt as deeply as Edward to understand its secrets.
The restaurant was a small, smart, popular place serving Italian cuisine. And Giancarlo was known there. The proprietor himself escorted them to their reserved table conversing with Giancarlo in their native language as they went. But she could tell the man beside her was in no mood to share polite conversation with anyone right now.
The proprietor helped her into her seat. Giancarlo sat down opposite. Menus were produced. A bottle of sparkling water appeared from seemingly nowhere. And the telling fact that Giancarlo must have ordered it, since no other table had the same thing, made her aware that, whatever else was going on inside his head, he could still call up the short, throw-away conversation about her drinking preferences, which they’d had yesterday.
At last the proprietor took his effusive leave. Giancarlo heaved out a sigh that made her smile in wry understanding of its necessity. He saw the smile—and matched it with one of his own. ‘He is Sicilian; I supposed you guessed it. We come from the same village.’
Only you lived on top of the hill while he lived at the bottom, she presumed simply because of the proprietor’s constant if metaphorical cap-doffing.
‘Don’t expect to use that,’ he warned, arching a mocking brow at the menu she was holding. ‘For I think we are about to be treated to the full repertoire of Sicilian cuisine.’
‘Good or bad?’ she asked, made curious by his rueful expression.
‘Edward hates it,’ he replied and instantly had her withdrawing back behind her protective wall…
Giancarlo saw it happen, sat back in his seat with a heavy sigh and lifted a long-fingered hand up to his tie knot as if he was going to loosen it with an impatient yank, then changed his mind and dropped the hand to his lap instead. ‘Your loyalty to him becomes you, Miss Deyton. But have you tried to consider that loyalty in this case may well be misplaced?’
‘You clearly don’t like him very much. I do, which means we have a conflict of opinion that does not encourage an exchange in confidences.’
‘You are mistaken,’ he corrected. ‘I am very fond of Edward. I just dislike the fact that he seems hell-bent on destroying everything he used to hold so dear.’
‘Grief does that to some people,’ she replied, having no idea that, in making that comment, Giancarlo was talking about more than just Edward’s crumbling business.
‘You said that with the conviction of experience,’ he remarked, following the shadow which crossed her face.
‘My mother died fourteen months ago,’ she confessed, keeping her lashes lowered so he wouldn’t see the pain in her eyes. ‘Unexpectedly, like Marco,’ she added. ‘And even you know the kind of effect that shock and grief can have on you.’
‘I didn’t use it as an excuse to neglect my responsibilities,’ he grimly pointed out.
Well, I did, and Edward did—as did Giancarlo’s own sister, Alegra—though she was sure he didn’t want to hear that, Natalia mused grimly, and reached for the bottle of water, mainly for something to do to hide the sudden heaviness of heart she was feeling.
‘And your father—?’ he asked, wondering what he had to say about his twenty-five-year-old daughter’s affair with a man almost twice her age.
To Giancarlo’s surprise her skin went as pale as the cloth covering the table.
‘My mother never married.’
