Charley lifted her hands in a gesture of defeat.
‘Very well then. If you must know, I applied for the course without telling my family what I was going to be studying. They thought… That is to say I really wanted to do an arts degree and study Fine Arts, but I knew my father would laugh at me, and say that I was far too much of a clumsy tomboy to be allowed anywhere near fine art. My sisters are both so pretty, and so feminine; I am the plain, awkward one of the family. I knew that for my own sake my father would try to persuade me to study something else—something more practical.’
Charley gave a small sigh, whilst Raphael digested her words in silence. He would certainly not have described Charley as either awkward or plain. It was true that hers was not the chocolate box variety of ‘pretty’, but in Raphael’s estimation Charley possessed something far more potent. His body certainly thought so, from the way it responded to the delicate air of hidden sensuality she carried with her.
‘But I was offered the course so they let me do it. I was less than a year into it when our parents were killed. Then we found out there was no money and that the house, our childhood home, was heavily mortgaged and would have to be sold. Lizzie, my elder sister, was working in London at the time for a top-notch interior designer, and then Ruby told us that she was pregnant. She was only seventeen. Lizzie and I both felt so guilty; she was practically still a baby herself. We had to do something. We couldn’t just abandon Ruby and her babies as the babies’ father had, so Lizzie moved back to Cheshire and set up her own small business, and…’
‘And you decided to sacrifice your own plans in order to earn money to help support your family?’
‘It wasn’t a sacrifice,’ Charley protested immediately. ‘We wanted to stay together and support one another.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t a sacrifice then, but I think you feel that it is now,’ Raphael corrected her. ‘I think that now, here in Italy, you have become aware of all you have denied yourself.’
Charley couldn’t look at him. Was it just her plans to take a Fine Arts degree and all that went with it to which he was referring? Or had he guessed about the other things she had denied herself—things like being free to be herself, and not the family tomboy, to explore and enjoy her sexuality as that self? She hoped not. That would be too humiliating for her to bear.
‘Being in Italy has made me realise how much I would have enjoyed studying art,’ she admitted in a stifled voice, unable to look at him as she did so. ‘And of course the recession has changed things. Before it happened I told myself that if my job got too unbearable I could always leave and find another one, and that maybe one day I’d get the opportunity to study and travel, but now of course that’s impossible. I do wish—’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘There’s no point in talking about what one can’t have, and I am very grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to work on something so very special.’
Inwardly Charley cursed herself. She had done it again—admitting that she was grateful to him, humbling and even humiliating herself, making herself far too vulnerable by her tacit admission that she so desperately wanted to be part of the renovation project. Maybe so, but at least she had been true to herself and to her own code, Charley comforted herself. She couldn’t pretend that she had no wish to be involved in the project to renovate the garden when the exact opposite was the case.
Raphael turned away from Cha
rley, not wanting her to see in his expression the feelings he didn’t even want to acknowledge to himself. Her speech, her gratitude, the fact that her emotions about the garden were so in accord with his own, had rubbed against a vulnerable place within himself—a wound only half healed that he had believed until now was fully healed. Beneath the thin skin that covered that wound lay emotions and regrets so painful and dark that he could not bear to admit they were there. A whole adult lifetime dedicated to pretending that such a wound did not exist was now in danger of being ripped aside to reveal the truth. But that truth could not be acknowledged. He must adhere to the course he had set himself. He must not waver. Inwardly Raphael cursed Charley for the effect she was having on him, and damned himself for even thinking of weakening.
Raphael’s silence made Charley feel anxious. Something had changed. She could almost feel the coldness now emanating from him, replacing what had previously been close to a shared openness about the importance of the garden. Now that was gone, and when Raphael swung back towards her, his expression shielded by the shadows, his voice was hard with warning as he told her, ‘According to your project notes, you’ve allowed three months for clearing the site.’
Charley nodded her head.
‘I want to see that work done in two months, not three.’
‘That can’t be done,’ Charley protested. The intimacy they had shared earlier was over, she recognised, and Raphael was once again a man who was making it plain exactly how he felt about her and her ability to do the job he would no doubt have preferred to give to someone else.
‘Anything can be done if one goes about it in the right way.’ And that included finding a way to stop his senses from being so aware of her and his body from aching for her, Raphael reminded himself inwardly. ‘As I have already told you,’ he informed Charley, ‘I expect my orders to be followed and carried out. There is no room on this project for a project manager who cannot achieve what needs to be achieved. If you feel you cannot do that…’
He was challenging her—setting her targets that could not be achieved because he wanted to get rid of her.
Well, she would show him.
‘Very well,’ she told him. ‘But it will be expensive.’ Now she was the one challenging him—to pay up or back down.
‘Half as much again as you have already allowed for the cost of bringing in the extra manpower, but worth it for what it will save in time,’ Raphael agreed with a dismissive shrug, before adding warningly, ‘However, what is in question is not whether or not I am prepared to incur additional costs where I think it necessary but whether—or not—you are up to the task of managing this project.’
Charley had had enough. What had happened to their earlier harmony and the belief she had had then that he was prepared to give her a chance? They shared a recognition of just what the garden must once have been. Or had she just imagined it? Because she had wanted to connect emotionally with him? Charley’s heart thudded into her ribs. That was nonsense. He meant nothing to her. It was the job that was important. Nothing else.
Was it? So why was she feeling so hurt and rejected, so sharply reminded of the way she had so often felt as a child, when her parents had compared her looks unfavourably to those of her sisters, making her aware that she was not good enough and that they wished that she was different—just as Raphael obviously didn’t feel that she was good enough, and wished that the project was being managed by someone else.
It was such a blow after the intimacy and understanding she felt they had shared that Charley couldn’t stop herself from bursting out, ‘You want to get rid of me, don’t you? You want me to fail. You want to bully me into saying I can’t cope, just as my boss wants to bully me into handing in my resignation so that he can give my job to his daughter. Well, much as I’d love to oblige you both, and set myself free from the necessity of having to put up with you, I can’t and I won’t. I need this job, and I need it because, as I have already told you, without the money I earn from it my sisters and I could lose our home. Because of that I will manage this project successfully—no matter how hard you try to push me into leaving.’
Raphael turned away from her again. He was loath to admit it, but there was an element of truth in her accusation that he wanted to get rid of her. And not just because he doubted her ability to handle the project successfully. No, it was the effect she was having on him physically as a man that was the prime cause of his desire to get her out of his life. Raphael wasn’t used to his body, his senses, challenging the rules he had made for the way he lived his life. The reality was that they had never done so before, and certainly not to the extent they were now—invading his thoughts and his judgement with their increasingly intense demands.
‘There are other jobs,’ he told Charley unsympathetically.
Charley looked at him in disbelief, and then shook her head.
‘I don’t know what world you live in,’ she told him scornfully, ‘but it isn’t the real world. There’s a recession on—but of course that won’t affect people like you. Thousands of people are out of work, and thousands more—of which I am one—are living in fear of losing their job. If that wasn’t the case do you think I would stay in this one?’
Now she had done it, Charley thought miserably, her anger giving way to anxiety as she recognised how outspoken she had been.
‘I can manage this project successfully,’ she told Raphael. ‘And I will manage it successfully.’