make a fabulous family home. I wish I could afford to buy you out at the end of the time, but I can't. I would never be able to afford the maintenance costs, for one thing.'
'My half is not going to be for sale,' he said with an implacable edge to his tone.
Emma's forehead wrinkled in a frown. 'It seems rather a large place for a bachelor.'
'Perhaps, but I want to retain ownership regardless.'
'So will you live here permanently?' she asked.
'For some of the year perhaps,' he said. 'I am thinking of appointing a manager to keep the place running while I am away.'
'That sounds like a good idea,' Emma said. 'It would be a shame for it to be empty for long periods.'
He went silent for several moments, his gaze focussed on the contents of his wineglass. 'I have missed the place,' he said almost wistfully. 'I am not quite ready to let it go. There are some ghosts to lay to rest first.'
Emma was starting to see there was more to Rafaele Fiorenza than she had originally thought. It was no wonder he liked to hold the balance of control in all of his relationships. After his experiences as a child he would abhor being vulnerable in any context. He would never allow himself to love anyone in case they turned against him or deserted him.
He reminded her of a wounded wolf who would only attend to his pain in private. She felt her animosity towards him soften, the anger she had felt from the first moment of meeting him melting away to be replaced by compassion and an acute, almost painful desire to understand.
What had put those lines of strain about his mouth or those dark shadows that came and went in the black-brown depths of his gaze? What made his smile teasing and playful one minute and bitter and cynical the next? What would it take to crack open the hard nut of his heart she wondered. What dark secrets were locked away in there?
CHAPTER SIX
AFTER the waiter had brought their meals to the table, Emma concentrated on the delicious seafood risotto set before her, in an attempt to get her emotions in check. What sort of romantic fool would she be to fancy herself in love with Rafaele? She barely knew him and, besides, anyone could see he wasn't a for ever type of guy. She could sense the restlessness in him, the way he worked so hard and played harder, to escape whatever demons drove him.
Emma put her fork down and reached for her wineglass to find his dark, contemplative gaze resting on her. Her heart suddenly felt as if a silk ribbon were being pulled right through the middle of it, making her breath catch in her throat.
'You mentioned the other day you have a sister,' he said. 'What happened to your parents?'
Emma put her glass back down with a little clatter against her dinner plate. 'I would have thought your private investigator contact would have told you when you had him dig up the dirt on my background.'
Rafaele let out a rusty breath. 'I am sorry, Emma, but if you had been in my position you would have done the same.'
She held his gaze for a beat or two, but dropped it to say, 'I haven't seen either of my parents since I was twelve years old when my sister and I were taken into foster care. Our parents were both heroin addicts. The prolonged drug use fried their brains. They died within months of each other, my father from a stab wound from a drug deal gone wrong, my mother from an overdose.'
Rafaele frowned as her quietly spoken words sank in. No wonder she had been so upset about him looking into her background. It also explained why she was so keen to have financial security to make up for what she had missed out on as a child. His own childhood had been painful enough, but to have such incompetent and potentially dangerous parents would have been soul-destroying. He could see now why she had hooked up with his father, to find an older father-figure who would indulge her every whim. Rafaele wouldn't go as far as excusing her for prostituting herself in such a way, but at least he understood her motive for doing so.
'I am sorry you had such a rough time of it,' he said. 'I have always thought it is a pity one cannot choose one's