Читать книгу Rags To Riches Collection - Джанис Мейнард, Rebecca Winters - Страница 39

‘DO YOU think you can force the trap open with something—maybe a stick or tree branch?’ Beth asked Cesario anxiously as he knelt by the injured dog.

‘It should release if I step on the spring mechanism,’ he told her, after studying the contraption for a few minutes. ‘I imagine a shepherd has had a problem with foxes worrying his sheep and has set traps to try and protect his flock. Move away. An injured animal can behave unpredictably and the dog might turn on you.’

She looked into the dog’s pained eyes. ‘I don’t think he’ll bite me,’ she said softly. As she knelt down she heard a ripping sound, and gave a rueful sigh when she saw that her skirt had snagged on a bramble. ‘Oh, well—like all my clothes it only cost a few pounds from a charity shop.’

‘I imagine the dress you were wearing last night cost considerably more than a few pounds,’ Cesario said dryly.

‘Actually, no. That dress is my best bargain find, and I was pleased that the money I paid for it went to a charity supporting multiple sclerosis sufferers, because my mother had the illness for many years and eventually lost her life to it.’

With her eyes focused on the dog, Beth did not see the intent glance Cesario gave her. He stepped on the spring and the trap jaws shot apart, releasing its victim. ‘Careful,’ he warned, when she immediately lifted the dog up, but the animal was clearly grateful to be free and lay quiet and utterly trusting in Beth’s arms.

‘Its leg is cut,’ she noted worriedly, seeing blood on the dog.

‘A flesh wound.’ Cesario gave the animal a cursory inspection. ‘Set it down and I expect it will find its way back to its owner.’

He frowned when Beth turned her almond-shaped eyes on him and gave him a look that seemed to imply he was as callous as a mass-murderer.

‘I’m not going to abandon the poor creature—although I suspect its owner might have done,’ she said regretfully. ‘It looks half starved.’

‘It is a he.’ Cesario studied the dog’s matted coat. ‘And he’s certainly not the most attractive dog I’ve ever seen.’

‘Just because he isn’t beautiful is no reason not to give him a home,’ Beth said fiercely, thinking of all the times she had been disappointed not to have been chosen by foster parents when she had lived in the children’s home. ‘Please can we take him back to the castle? I’m sure Filomena will allow him to stay in the kitchens—at least until his leg is healed. I’ll pay for his food.’

Cesario muttered a curse beneath his breath and strode over to his horse. For all her elfin fragility Beth was incredibly determined—and deeply compassionate, he brooded as he watched her tenderly stroke the ugly dog.

‘We need to get out of the rain before we drown,’ he growled. Not giving her the chance to argue, he put his hands on her waist and lifted her and the dog up onto the saddle. She was soaked to the skin and shivering. ‘Take these for a second,’ he ordered, dropping the reins into her hand while he shrugged out of his coat and draped it around her shoulders.

The leather coat still retained the heat from Cesario’s body, and the lingering male scent of him teased Beth’s senses. ‘I’m already wet. It doesn’t make sense for you to get soaked too,’ she mumbled, but received an impatient look.

‘In the space of forty-eight hours you’ve turned my life upside down and landed me with a baby and a flea-bitten mutt. The last thing I need now is for you to catch pneumonia,’ Cesario told her grimly before he hooked his foot in the stirrup and swung himself up onto the horse’s back behind her.

When they reached the castle ten minutes later, Cesario rode round to the stables, dismounted and lifted Beth down, gritting his teeth when her slender body briefly brushed against him. He bitterly resented his overwhelming awareness of her. Clearly he’d gone too long without sex, he thought sardonically. In Rome there were a number of women he could call—casual mistresses who understood he was not in the market for commitment and who would be happy to satisfy his libido knowing that he would be a generous lover in return.

Taking the dog, he strode into an empty horse box and set it down in the straw. The cut on its leg was not too deep, and while he cleaned the wound Beth knelt beside him and stroked the animal’s head to keep it calm.

‘Do you think he’ll be okay? Poor creature. He must have been so frightened in the trap,’ she said softly.

Her innate gentleness touched something deep inside Cesario. He stared at her pale fingers as she fondled the dog’s ears and imagined her touching him, caressing his naked flesh and encircling his manhood with those delicate white hands. Her hair smelled of rain and the faint scent of lemons. His eyes were drawn lower, and through her wet blouse he could see the outline of her dusky pink nipples.

He swallowed and said roughly, ‘I’m sure he’ll be fine. I’ll tell the groom to give him plenty of food.’

‘Thank you.’ Her shy smile caused a cramping sensation in Cesario’s gut. But then her expression became anxious. ‘I must get back to Sophie. I’ve been out for ages and she’s bound to be awake by now.’

‘She was crying before I came to look for you. But after I fed her she settled and seemed happy enough when I left her with Filomena,’ Cesario told her.

‘You fed her?’ Beth chewed on her lip. ‘Was she all right? I mean, she’s only used to me, and.’

‘She didn’t choke when I gave her a bottle of formula, if that’s what you mean,’ Cesario said dryly. ‘I’m quite capable of caring for a baby. I used to regularly feed my son.’

‘You must miss your little boy.’

He stiffened at Beth’s gentle comment. ‘I think of him every day,’ he admitted roughly.

To his relief she did not offer the unhelpful platitude that time was a great healer, as so many people did when they learned that he had lost a child. Instead, she tentatively reached out and placed her hand over his as they knelt on the stable floor next to the stray dog, and her silence soothed his ragged soul far more than meaningless words of sympathy.

‘I miss Mel terribly,’ she said at last. ‘I feel so sad that she’s not here to watch Sophie grow up.’ She sighed. ‘I still miss my mum, too, even though she’s been dead for twelve years.’

‘You said she was ill for a long time?’

Beth nodded. ‘She was diagnosed with MS when I was about five, and as her condition degenerated she wasn’t able to walk and was confined to a wheelchair. She never complained, though, she just tried to get on with life. But it can’t have been easy. My father had to give up work to look after her, so we didn’t have much money. Mum used to get upset that I had to miss out on things like birthday parties and school trips.’

Cesario glanced at her curiously. ‘You told me you became friends with Melanie Stewart when you lived in a children’s home. Is your father dead too?’

‘No.’ She hesitated. ‘He…went away. He had an affair with another woman and left Mum and me to move in with his girlfriend.’

‘Dio!’ Cesario did not know how to respond. As a boy he had been devastated when his mother had left the castle to be with her lover, but his feeling of abandonment was nothing compared to how Beth had surely felt at her father’s callous behaviour.

‘Who took care of your mother after he left?’

‘I did, for a while. I didn’t mind,’ Beth assured him. ‘I wanted to stay with Mum. But when her MS got worse she had to go into a specialist nursing home and she died soon after. Social Services asked my dad if I could live with him, but he had decided to emigrate to Australia with his new partner and didn’t want me.’ She gave a casual shrug, hoping to disguise the hurt she had felt at her father’s rejection. ‘That’s when I went into care.’

She lifted her head and met Cesario’s gaze. ‘I don’t have a great opinion of fathers. I thought you wouldn’t want Sophie—just as my father didn’t want me—and I only came to Sardinia because I promised Mel I would search for you. I don’t want your money,’ she continued fiercely. ‘Even if the test proves that you are Sophie’s father I don’t expect anything from you. All I want is to be a mother to her.’

Beth pictured Sophie’s sweet little face and she felt an ache of longing to hold the baby in her arms. She had only been away from Sophie for an hour, and already she missed her. What must it be like for Cesario to live every day missing his little boy? she thought. No wonder he seemed so grim. She understood only too well that grief felt like a lead weight inside. Most nights she still shed tears for Mel. But she sensed that Cesario kept his emotions locked deep in his heart, and his way of dealing with his pain was to ignore it.

The dog was lying quietly and appeared to be comfortable. After tucking more straw around it, Beth stood up and hurried over to the stable door. ‘I must get back. I’ve been away from Sophie for far too long.’

Cesario also got to his feet. ‘Dinner will be at eight again tonight. Teodoro will come to the nursery to escort you to the dining room.’

A shudder ran through Beth as she recalled the bitter confrontation that had taken place between them the previous evening. She was ashamed to remember how excited she had felt when she’d changed into her only nice dress in preparation for having dinner with Cesario. But he had shattered her silly romantic fantasy when he had accused her of being a thief while she had worked at Devington Hall.

She paused in the doorway and turned back to him. ‘I would prefer to eat in the nursery tonight. If Filomena is too busy to serve my dinner upstairs I’ll pop down to the kitchen and make a sandwich.’

Cool grey eyes trapped her gaze. ‘Be ready for eight o’clock, Beth,’ he murmured, in a pleasant voice that held an underlying hint of steel. ‘Or I’ll come and fetch you.’

His arrogance was infuriating. She felt an uncharacteristic spurt of temper and opened her mouth to argue, but the warning gleam in his eyes made her reconsider and she chose to walk away in dignified silence.

* * *

Her faithful grey skirt was beyond repair, Beth discovered later, after she had bathed and fed Sophie and settled her in her cot. She was trying to decide what to wear to dinner. Her green dress was out of the question—after the way Cesario had humiliated her last night she doubted she would ever wear it again. Her only other choice was her black skirt, which was even older than the grey one and several inches too long. Fortunately her relatively new navy blouse had been laundered and returned to her wardrobe by Carlotta. It couldn’t be helped that she looked as though she was attending a funeral. She did not want Cesario to think she had dressed to impress him, she reminded herself, as she pulled her hair back from her face and secured it in a tight knot on top of her head.

Teodoro was waiting for her when she stepped out of the nursery, and as she followed him down the stairs she was conscious of her heart thumping erratically beneath her ribs. Just as on the previous evening, Cesario was already in the dining room, looking dangerously sexy in tailored black trousers and a white silk shirt open at the throat to reveal a vee of olive-gold skin and a smattering of black hairs that Beth knew from the night of the landslide covered his chest and arrowed down over his abdomen.

She felt a rush of nervousness when Teodoro left the room and closed the door behind him, leaving her alone with the enigmatic master of the Castello del Falco. She wished he would speak, or give one of his rare smiles, but he subjected her to a silent, intent scrutiny, his eyes lingering on the pulse thudding at the base of her throat.

‘Did you think you could hide your beauty from me by dressing like a nun?’ he demanded harshly. ‘Or were you hoping that your drab attire would quash my desire for you? If so, you were mistaken.’ He reached out a hand, and before Beth realised his intention he released the clip that secured her chignon so that her hair tumbled in a stream of brown silk down her back.

‘How dare you?’ Her shocked response died on her lips as he slid his hand beneath her hair and cupped her nape, exerting gentle force to draw her inexorably closer to him. His eyes glittered like tensile steel, but she recognised the savage hunger in their depths and trembled as the memory of how he had kissed her in the rain flooded her mind.

All the time she had been bathing and playing with Sophie after she had returned to the castle she had determinedly not allowed herself to think about the wild passion that had exploded between her and Cesario. But now, as she stared at his hard-boned face, she was consumed by a primitive urgency for him to crush her against his chest and claim her mouth with fierce possession.

As his head slowly lowered she held her breath. She trembled with longing to feel his lips slide over hers, for his tongue to probe between them, demanding access to the moist interior of her mouth. Mindlessly, she swayed towards him, but to her shame and dismay he stiffened and jerked his head back, as if he was determined to fight the sexual alchemy that smouldered between them.

‘Let’s eat,’ he said curtly, and he stepped away from her and held out a chair for her to sit down at the table. ‘Filomena has left food on the hot-plate so that we can serve ourselves. What would you like to drink?’

‘Lemonade, please.’ Somehow Beth managed to make her voice sound normal and act as if she was unaffected by Cesario, even though inside she was shaking with reaction to him. She could not risk drinking wine tonight, when it was imperative she keep a clear head, she thought desperately.

She ate the starter of fish soup without fully appreciating its delicate flavour. To follow, Cesario served her a plate of round-shaped pasta, similar to ravioli, which Beth discovered was filled with potato and mint and was accompanied by a tomato and basil sauce.

‘The dish is called sa fregula and is a traditional Sardinian recipe,’ he explained, when she tasted the pasta and commented on its delicious flavour. He took a sip of his red wine and glanced across the table at her. ‘Teodoro told me you were asking him about the history of the castle?’

Relieved that their conversation seemed to be avoiding her personal life, Beth nodded. ‘It’s such a fascinating place. How old did you say it is?’

‘The original building dates back to the thirteenth century. Over time it was extended, and in more recent years modern additions such as electricity and a better plumbing system were installed. I imagine my ancestors did not bathe very often when water had to be drawn from the well and carried to the bedchambers on the upper floors of the castle,’ he said, amusement glinting in his eyes.

He went on to tell her more about the history of the Castello del Falco, and Beth gradually relaxed, intrigued by his stories and seduced by his deep, accented voice that caressed her senses like velvet against her skin.

‘It’s amazing to think of people living here hundreds of years ago,’ she murmured, surprised to realise that while she had been listening to him she had eaten the whole plate of food he had served her.

‘The Nuragic civilisation is known to have lived on Sardinia much longer ago than mere hundreds of years,’ he said, handing her a cup of coffee. ‘The landscape is dotted with more than seven thousand ancient stone structures called Nuraghi. Archaeologists believe they were built round about the fifteenth century BC and they are thought to have been homesteads of communities who lived in the Bronze Age.’

Beth’s eyes widened. ‘And the buildings are still standing today? I’d love to see them.’

‘Many have become ruins over time, of course, but the basic structures remain. There is a settlement called Serra Orrios close to Oliena, at Dorgali, and also an ancient tomb called the Giant’s Grave of Thomes which, as the name suggests, is believed to have been a burial chamber.’ His smile held genuine warmth at her enthusiasm. ‘Perhaps there will be time while you are staying here for you to visit Dorgali.’

Beth’s stomach dipped at his words which were a stark reminder that the length of her stay at the castle was determined by when the DNA test could be done. If Mel had been wrong and Cesario wasn’t Sophie’s father she would take the baby back to England. But if Sophie was his—what would happen then? she wondered fearfully.

Desperate for something to say, she glanced around the room at the many paintings that lined the walls. One portrait in particular, of a stern-faced man dressed in modern-day clothes, caught her attention.

‘My father,’ Cesario told her, following her gaze.

‘He looks…’ Beth hesitated, wishing she had not started the conversation. ‘Very aristocratic.’

‘He was a cold, remote man.’ Cesario stared at the portrait. ‘I was terrified of him when I was a child. He was never physically violent towards me,’ he explained, when Beth looked horrified, ‘but there are other forms of cruelty. He believed that Piras men should never feel emotions and certainly never reveal them.’

He gave a sardonic laugh. ‘You see the pennant hanging on the wall, decorated with the family crest of two swords? The translation of my family motto is “Victory and Power are All”. For my father the Piras name and the pursuit of power were all he cared about, and he was determined to instil those values into me.’

‘What about your mother?’ Beth asked, trying to hide her shock at Cesario’s revelations about his upbringing by the man whose austere features were staring down at her from above the fireplace. Teodoro had told her that Cesario’s father had died several years ago, but the butler had not mentioned his mother. ‘Her portrait isn’t in here,’ she noted, realising that the only paintings of women hanging in the dining room were probably a few hundred years old.

‘No, my father had every trace of her removed from the castle when she ended their marriage. When I was seven years old I came home from boarding school, excited at the prospect of seeing her. But she had gone without even saying goodbye and I never saw her again.’

‘Didn’t she ever visit you, or invite you to her new home?’

He shook his head. ‘My father paid her a large sum of money in return for her agreement to sign sole custody of me over to him. When I asked my father if I could see her he told me what he had done, and I swear he took pleasure in explaining that my mother had preferred money to her only child.’ His mouth curled into a mirthless smile. ‘It was a salutary life lesson,’ he said harshly.

Beneath his sardonic tone Beth glimpsed the hurt young boy he had once been. She glanced at the portrait of his grim-faced father and her heart softened towards Cesario. Rejection by a parent was something she had experienced too, and she wondered if, like her, Cesario found it hard to trust. Some parents, like her mother, were wonderful role models, she mused. But others, like her father and both of Cesario’s parents, could cause untold harm to a child’s emotional stability.

‘Not all women are like that,’ she said quietly. ‘Not all women think money is more important than a loving relationship.’

‘Is that so?’ Cesario drawled cynically, casting his mind over past affairs he’d had with women who had regarded his wealth as his main attraction. Yet he knew there was some truth in Beth’s words. He had never considered offering to pay Raffaella off, as his father had done his mother. Raffaella had loved Nicolo, but her desperate bid to snatch him from the castle had resulted in tragedy.

The peal of the castle’s internal phone shattered the tense silence that had fallen in the dining room. Cesario stood up and strode across the room to answer it. ‘Sophie is awake,’ he relayed a few moments later. ‘Carlotta can’t settle her.’

‘She’s due a feed.’ Beth glanced at her watch and was shocked to see how late it was. The hours she’d spent with Cesario had flown by, and even more startling was the realisation that she had enjoyed his company. She felt guilty that she had forgotten about Sophie’s 11:00 p.m. feed and jumped up from the table.

Cesario opened the door and followed her out of the dining room. ‘I’ll escort you up to the nursery. I doubt you can remember the way yet through the rabbit warren of corridors.’

Sophie’s cries could be heard as they walked along the first-floor landing. As soon as they reached the nursery Beth hurried over to the cot and lifted the red-faced, sobbing baby into her arms.

‘It’s all right, sweetheart, I’m here now,’ she soothed, her guilt that she had left Sophie again for a few hours increasing when she discovered that the baby’s sleepsuit was wet. She deftly stripped off the wet suit, changed Sophie’s nappy and popped her into clean nightwear, working quickly while the baby yelled indignantly at having to wait for her milk.

‘Is her formula ready?’ Cesario queried.

‘No.’ Beth groaned. ‘I need to make up a couple of feeds for the night.’

‘Let me take her while you prepare her bottle.’

As he cradled Sophie against his chest Cesario felt a strange sensation inside him, as if tight bindings around his heart were slowly unravelling. He did not know if she was his child but it did not seem important. All that mattered was that he comforted her, and he murmured to her in Italian the lullaby ‘Stella Stellina’—Star, Little Star—that he had often sung to his son.

Sophie stopped crying and focused her big brown eyes on him. If she was his daughter he would love her as he had loved Nicolo, Cesario vowed fiercely. But what would he do about Sophie’s guardian? Beth had convinced him with her utter devotion to the baby that she loved Sophie as much as if she were her own child. It would not be fair to send her away.

Perhaps he could employ her as Sophie’s nanny? he brooded. That way they could both be part of the baby’s life. But he did not relish the idea of Beth living at the castle while he was plagued by this damnable fascination with her. She had only been here for two days and he was racked with an unprecedented hunger to possess her slender body.

In many ways it would be easier if Sophie was not his. That way he could send Beth back to England with a clear conscience and get on with his life. No doubt he would soon forget her once she could no longer cast her siren spell over him with her slanting green eyes, he thought self-derisively.

The sound of her voice dragged him from his thoughts. ‘I knew you had a magic touch,’ she said as she emerged from the small kitchen area adjoining the nursery, holding a bottle of baby formula. ‘Nothing normally pacifies Sophie when she’s due a feed.’

The way Sophie responded to Cesario was uncanny, Beth thought when he carefully transferred the baby into her arms and she settled down in a chair to feed her. Was it possible that she somehow sensed Cesario was her father? Was it blood calling to blood? And if that was true then surely Sophie belonged here at the Castello del Falco.

Sophie was almost asleep by the time she had finished her milk, and after laying her in the cot Beth walked over to the window where Cesario was standing, looking out at the impenetrable darkness that cloaked the castle and the surrounding mountains.

‘I think she’ll settle now—until she wakes for her early-morning feed,’ she murmured, feeling her heart give a little flip when she glanced at him and found that he had turned his head and he was watching her with an indefinable expression in his grey eyes.

‘You should get to bed too, after your eventful day. I hear you’ve sweet-talked Filomena into allowing your dog to sleep in her kitchen?’

She flushed and gave him an anxious look, relieved to see amusement in his eyes rather than annoyance. ‘Harry was lonely on his own in the stables.’

Dark brows winged upwards. ‘Harry?’

‘I had to call him something,’ Beth said defensively. ‘When I was a little girl we had a dog called Harry who I loved to bits. But my father said he had enough to do looking after my mother and he sold him.’ She sighed. ‘Filomena says her sister might give Harry a home. I won’t be able to take him back to England with me, and it wouldn’t be fair to keep a dog in a one-bedroom flat on the fifth floor.’

‘It doesn’t sound an ideal place to bring up a child, either.’

She bit her lip. ‘No, it isn’t. If it turns out that Sophie is not your child, I’ll apply to the local council to see if we can be rehoused. Somewhere with a garden for her to play in would be nice.’ She thought of the beautiful castle gardens and imagined Sophie as a toddler, running across the grass. ‘But there’s a long waiting list for housing in London.’

‘Agreeing to be the guardian of your friend’s baby was a huge undertaking,’ Cesario said brusquely. ‘You are young and you have your whole life ahead of you—a career, relationships. You have sacrificed the independent life you could have had to bring up another woman’s child.’

‘My life is different, certainly, but I don’t regard having Sophie a sacrifice. I love her more than anything, and I intend to do everything I can to give her a happy childhood.’

Beth gave a faintly wistful smile. ‘When I was a little girl I dreamed of being a ballerina. I was desperate to go to ballet classes like the other girls at school, but Mum couldn’t afford it—especially after my father left us. When Sophie is older I want her to have the opportunity to do everything she wants to do.’

Cesario dragged his gaze from Beth’s earnest face and resumed his contemplation of the night sky, where silver stars were now pinpricking the velvet blackness.

‘You have a ridiculously soft heart, Beth Granger,’ he said roughly. He paused. ‘So who planted Alicia Devington’s diamond earrings in your room?’

Beth gave him a startled look. In the darkened nursery his profile seemed all angles and planes, and the glimmering moonlight flickering over his scar made him look as harsh and unyielding as his ancestors who had once strode along the battlements of the Castello del Falco.

She swallowed, before replying shakily, ‘Hugo Devington.’

His head swivelled round and he pierced her with an intent stare. ‘Why would Hugo Devington have wanted you to appear to be a thief?’

‘Because he needed a reason to sack me after I’d threatened to—’ She broke off and stared down at her fingers as she twisted them together, sickened by unpleasant memories that she had spent the past six months trying to forget. She sensed Cesario’s impatience and forced herself to continue. ‘After I threatened to tell Mrs Devington that her husband had tried to. assault me.’

‘What do you mean by assault?’

Colour flared on her cheeks. ‘Sexually,’ she muttered.

‘Santa Madre! You mean he raped you?’ Cesario felt a violent urge to find Hugo Devington and tear him limb from limb.

‘No—it didn’t get that far. At first he just used to make comments about my body, and if I ever happened to be alone in a room with him he would stand too close and.’ her blush deepened ‘.pat me on the bottom, but then make a joke of it.’

She sighed. ‘I didn’t know what to do, so I just tried to keep out of his way. But then one evening, when Mrs Devington was out, he called me into his study, saying he wanted to discuss one of his sons.’ She unconsciously twisted her fingers tighter together, unaware that Cesario had noted the betraying sign of her distress. ‘Well, to cut a long story short, he tried to kiss me. I pushed him away, of course, and then he got angry and grabbed me. He put his hand up my skirt and tried to…touch me. I managed to fight him off, but he came after me, and so I threatened that I would tell his wife what he had done. I hoped that would be the end of it—that he wouldn’t try anything again—but the next day Mrs Devington’s earrings went missing, and when she searched the house she found them in my room. She wanted to call the police and have me arrested, but Hugo stopped her and said it would be better if I was sacked and left Devington Hall immediately.’

‘Why didn’t you insist that the police were called?’ Cesario demanded. ‘You hadn’t stolen the earrings, so why didn’t you try to defend yourself? Why didn’t you report to the police that Devington had sexually assaulted you?’

‘I had no proof. No one would have believed my word over that of a famous barrister. You didn’t believe me,’ she reminded him.

‘Last night I wasn’t aware of all the facts.’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘I owe you an apology. I’d just received a report from my private investigator and I had no reason not to believe that what he’d heard about you was true.’

Beth bit her lip. ‘Why do you believe me now? I could be lying.’

Cesario studied her elfin features. Her pale, almost translucent skin was bare of make-up and her silky brown hair was beautifully natural. There was no artifice about her, and he wondered with a jolt if her virginal air could also be real.

‘You wear your honesty like a badge,’ he said roughly. ‘Your emotions are transparent—your love for Sophie, your kindness to an injured animal. I don’t think you are capable of lying either by word or action.’

His voice deepened, and the seductive huskiness in his tone sent a quiver through Beth. He was watching her through half-closed lids and the searing intensity of his gaze made her catch her breath.

‘Your body did not lie when I kissed you. I felt the sweet urgency of your response.’ He framed her face with his hands and gently stroked her hair behind her ears before he traced the fragile line of her jaw. ‘You are as much a prisoner of this damnable desire that burns between us as I am, mia bella.’

She could not deny it—not when his mouth was so close to hers that his warm breath whispered across her lips. She wanted him to kiss her so desperately that her whole body trembled, and when he closed the few inches that separated his mouth from hers a soft sigh escaped her and she parted her lips with an innocent eagerness that caused Cesario’s gut to clench.

It was different from when he had kissed her in the rain. He was different…gentler; his hands shook a little as he slid them from her face to her throat and then traced the delicate line of her collarbone. He brushed his mouth over hers in a sensual tasting with an underlying tenderness that she found utterly beguiling. Slowly, like a flower unfurling in response to sunlight, she began to kiss him back, tentatively at first. But at his low groan of approval she grew bolder and parted her mouth so that he could explore her with his tongue.

‘Beth,’ he said in a low, urgent voice, as his restraint cracked and he pulled her up against his hard body. His arms tightened around her, one hand tangling in her hair as he angled her head and plundered her mouth with feverish passion.

She responded to him mindlessly, straining her slender body against him and lifting her hands to his face to ensure that he kept his lips on hers. The dark stubble shading his jaw felt abrasive beneath her fingertips. She gently traced the scar that sliced down his cheek and felt him stiffen, but after a moment the tension seemed to drain from him and he deepened the kiss, taking it to another level so that it became a flagrant ravishment of her senses.

Her heart-rate quickened when he slid his hand down from her shoulder to her breast and cupped the small mound in his palm. She could feel the warmth of his skin through her blouse and felt an intense longing for him to undo the buttons and slip his hand inside her bra to touch her bare flesh.

An image flashed into her mind of his darkly tanned fingers curled possessively around her pale breasts, and she shivered with a mixture of anticipation and faint trepidation. No man had ever seen her unclothed before, or caressed her naked body. But Cesario must have made love to dozens of women, perhaps hundreds, she thought, remembering how Mel had described him as a womaniser.

From the cot came a tiny murmur, little more than a sigh as Sophie changed position in her sleep. But the sound shattered the sensual spell that had held Beth enthralled and she tore her mouth from Cesario’s, shaking like a leaf blown in a storm as she snatched air into her lungs.

‘No…I can’t do this,’ she told him in a panicky voice.

What was she doing? her brain demanded. How could she contemplate giving her body to a man who had had a one-night stand with her best friend and who was very possibly the father of Mel’s baby?

Cesario’s eyes narrowed, but he dropped his hands to his sides and frowned when she immediately jerked back from him.

‘What’s the matter?’ His nostrils flared as he fought to control his frustration. His body throbbed with sexual anticipation and the only thought in his head was how desperately he wanted to carry Beth to his room, remove her clothes and position himself between her slim thighs. But the wariness in her eyes forced him to exert formidable will-power over his rampant desire.

He recalled how she had told him that her previous employer had tried to sexually assault her and he felt sick to his stomach. ‘Are you afraid of me?’ he grated.

‘No.’ Beth shook her head. Cesario sounded appalled, and she instinctively wanted to reassure him. ‘Not of you.’ She swallowed. ‘But of myself…of this.’

His assessment of her character had been correct. She could not lie even to protect her pride.

She gave a helpless shrug, unable to put into words how much he overwhelmed her. ‘We are little more than strangers,’ she said shakily. ‘If it wasn’t for Sophie we would never have met.’ She held his gaze and continued quietly. ‘You say you desire me, but perhaps you simply want a woman—any woman—to temporarily share your bed. And I am convenient, like Mel was.’

Cesario fought a strong urge to snatch her back into his arms and shake some sense into her, then kiss her senseless to prove beyond doubt that he desired her more than any woman he had ever met. But essentially she was right in her guess that he would only ever want a brief affair, he acknowledged. He doubted his hunger for her would be satisfied by taking her to bed for one night, but he did not want a long-term relationship, and his interest in his mistresses invariably waned after a few weeks.

And then there was Sophie to consider—the child who might be his, even though he had no memory of her mother. It was little wonder that Beth was regarding him with deep mistrust in her expressive green eyes.

Another whimper came from the cot. Beth tensed. ‘You should go,’ she whispered. ‘We’re disturbing her.’

Cesario’s mouth twisted as he envisaged the long night ahead of him. It promised to be hell when he was burning up for this pale English rose who could arouse him with one look or one glimpse of her shy smile. But she was right, of course. Sophie must come before any other consideration.

He nodded tersely and forced himself to move away from her. ‘Sleep well, then, Beth—if you can,’ he said sardonically, before he turned and strode out of the nursery.