The Italian's One-Night Love-Child (8 page)

‘I was
saying
that there are one or two things that I need to tell you before Mum and Dad come back down.’

Cristiano’s antennae immediately went onto red alert.

‘You mean aside from explaining how it is that your parents seemed to know who I was without any introductions having to be made?’

‘I…um…told them about you.’

‘Really. And what exactly did you say? I’m keen to know, considering your amazing capacity for stretching the truth.’ His eyes drifted lazily from her flushed face down to her breasts—breasts which he had known intimately, had tasted and luxuriated in. It made no difference that they were well hidden under the capacious jumper. His memory was more than up to supplying an image of the luscious body beneath it.

Bethany’s brain threatened to shut down. ‘I told them…you know…that we met while I was out in Italy…’

‘Oh, so they
knew
that you were in Italy. That’s a promising start. Did they know that you were house-sitting for a random stranger whom you had decided to impersonate?’

‘Yes, they knew that I was house-sitting!’

‘Lose the pious tone, Bethany. It doesn’t suit you. And I take it that you didn’t breathe a word about your charade of being one Ms Amelia Doni…? Hmm…?’

Bethany could feel the slight dampness of perspiration on the palms of her hands, but she kept them well covered in the sleeves of her jumper. ‘No,’ she admitted.

‘Didn’t think so. Your parents didn’t strike me as the sort of people who would find it an amusing anecdote. So what exactly did you tell them about me?’

‘Right. Okay.’ Bethany cleared her throat and braced herself. ‘I know you probably think it a bit peculiar that I would even mention you, considering things didn’t exactly end well.’

‘Understatement of the year, don’t you think?’

‘But they’re very moral people. Great believers in the sanctity of relationships…’

‘Obviously a trait that they didn’t pass on to you, then.’

‘You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?’

‘Any reason why I should?’

‘I just don’t think that this is such a great time for us to be arguing.’ Her eyes flicked towards the door but her parents were still safely upstairs. Knowing them as well as she did, they would be taking their time, giving her time to be alone with Cristiano. She felt faint when she thought about the length, breadth and width of her crazy deception.

‘What have the moral values of your parents got to do with anything?’ Cristiano suddenly asked. Astute at reading all situations, two and two in this case was not adding up to four. Even for Bethany, downright liar, possible thief, massive opportunist and altogether unpredictable entity, there were strands of her conversation that were just not adding up to anything he could catch hold of.

‘Can I just say that I never, ever expected you to turn up here out of the blue?’ Bethany could feel her heart thudding in her chest as though it was about to explode. ‘I mean you’re a sophisticated guy. I guess I thought that you’d look back at what we had as nothing more than a pleasant interlude. I didn’t think ahead how you would react if you ever found out about…you know…’

Cristiano could smell a dodge a mile off but he was willing to let the cross-examination ride because, sooner or later, she would get down to answering all the questions flying around in his head. The ones which she was ostensibly dancing around at the moment.

‘Dashing.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘
Dashing
. Wasn’t that the word your mother used to describe me?’

‘Right. Yes. Dashing. And adventurous.’

‘Dashing and
adventurous
?’

Bethany nodded miserably.

‘Why am I beginning to find this all a little surreal?’ He stood up and began pacing the room, pausing to look at the happy photos in frames on the mantelpiece, on the bookcase in the corner, on the small round table by the window. Here were parents who were immensely proud of their offspring. Within a five metre radius, a lifetime of joyful memories was played out in a succession of pictures.

‘I know it must seem a bit crazy…’

‘A
bit
?’ He swung round to look at her, pinning her to the chair with an intensity that brought her out in goosebumps. She had thought it difficult dealing with the remembered version of Cristiano. She now knew that
difficult
took on a whole new meaning when it came to dealing with the real thing.

While she struggled to put her thoughts into order and find a way of explaining
the surreal situation
, Cristiano strolled over to her chair and then leaned down, supporting himself on the sides of her chair and instantly bringing every nerve in her body to attention.

His clean, masculine scent filled her nostrils and inflamed her senses and her eyes fluttered, riveted to his striking face.
Dashing
didn’t even begin to do justice to his strikingly handsome, lean, bronzed face. Awash with fear and panic, she was still aware of her body reacting to his proximity, her nipples tightening with remembered pleasure and her mouth softening. She looked down quickly but not so quickly that Cristiano didn’t see her unconscious reaction to him.

He felt a kick of satisfaction. So
something
had been real. She might have lied about everything under the sun because a trip to sunny Barbados had been just too good an opportunity to pass up, but she hadn’t lied about wanting him. When she had fallen into his arms, it had been the real thing. Furthermore, if he still wanted her, and it was a big
if
, then she was his for the taking.

‘So I’m dashing,’ he prompted, his voice smooth and cool, ‘and adventurous…’

‘Could you please…stop looming over me?’ Bethany squeaked in response, and Cristiano anchored himself even more firmly to her chair.

‘Why? Does it make you feel uncomfortable? Does your guilty conscience bother you when I’m up this close and personal? Or maybe…’ he felt a burst of savage, unwelcome desire as his libido went into overdrive ‘…you’re terrified that what you really want is for your
dashing, adventurous
ex-lover to get even more up close and personal…’ He was rewarded by a fleeting look in her eyes that gave him the answer he had already suspected. Satisfied, he stood up and
sauntered back to his own chair. If this were a game, which it most definitely was not, he figured he had scored the first point.

‘So…you were telling me why you had an insane desire to spill the beans about our little fling to your parents…’

This time it was Bethany’s turn to stand up. She walked towards the door, which was slightly ajar, and shut it completely. Her parents would be tactfully keeping out of the way but sooner rather than later they would head down for a bit of family bonding and the last thing she needed was to have her conversation eavesdropped.

When she sat back down, it was on the sofa next to his chair, close enough to talk without having to raise her voice, even though her body was still humming from the dangerous thrill of being so close to him. She didn’t want to dwell on the mortifying fact that he had seen right through her, deep down to the helpless longing she had felt then and now. Had he also seen how
bone deep
it was? Like a stubborn weed, it fought through everything, including his hostility, condemnation and glacial contempt. She could hardly blame him, given the circumstances, that he would use her own weakness for him against her. If he had tried to kiss her just then, she didn’t think that she would have been able to resist. The fact that he had brought her to that point only to pull back would have satisfied just a bit of his wounded pride and dented ego and she tried very hard to look at it from his point of view. Fair was fair, after all.

Which didn’t mean that she wasn’t still smarting from his rejection.

‘Yes. Right.’

‘And, by the way,
how
adventurous am I? Exactly?’

Bethany drew in a shaky breath. ‘You wouldn’t believe,’ she said.

‘I’m surprised you wanted to paint a picture of our sex life with your parents,’ Cristiano remarked sardonically.

‘Sorry?’

‘Well…’ he shrugged, still on a high from having irrefutable proof that she was as hot for him as he was for her and from successfully exerting his will-power and turning her down ‘…if your parents are as moralistic as you tell me, then I’m a little surprised that you would discuss our sex life with them. Or was it more in the nature of a cosy mother and daughter chat?’

‘Of course I haven’t discussed our sex life with my mum! She’d be mortified!’

‘Then what the hell are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about what you do!’

This time it was Cristiano’s turn to look at her in pure bewilderment. Even for him, this was a leap too far. ‘What do I do?’

‘You make loads of money,’ Bethany said feverishly. ‘Running that empire of yours, but obviously that wasn’t, you know, enough.’

‘Wasn’t it?’ His clogged up brain was refusing to clear. He also didn’t like the shifty way she was refusing to look him in the eye. She might have lied through her teeth the entire time they’d been together but she had never been one to avoid eye contact. She was avoiding it like crazy now.

‘Well, no.’ She sighed and a sense of inevitability gave her the courage to carry on in a more normal voice. ‘You weren’t satisfied building empires so you decided to embark on a programme of good deeds.’

‘A
programme of good deeds
? Sorry, but you’re losing me here.’

‘I know. I guessed I might. And I know you’re not going to like what you’re about to hear, but it can’t be helped. Well, it probably
could
have…’

‘Just get on with it, Bethany!’

Bethany looked at him for a few seconds. She wanted to imprint this image of him in her head. It wasn’t a great image because he was as angry as hell with her, although not quite as angry as when he had first arrived. However, it would prove to be a far more comforting image of him than the one which would be presented after she had fully explained herself.

‘I told my parents that you were involved in building all sorts of stuff in…well…in dangerous places…places where there are no amenities…for example in the depth of Africa and in war-torn zones…you know, doing your bit to help ease the suffering of helpless victims all over the world…’

Cristiano shook his head as though that simple gesture would sort out her confusing babble. Then he ran his fingers through his hair before staring at her with a perplexed frown.

‘I
build all sorts of stuff in dangerous places
? What sort of stuff?’

‘I don’t know! Stuff. Schools! Community centres! Medical facilities!’

‘In the
depths of Africa
?’

‘Some of them, yes. And other areas where there’s conflict, so to speak.’

‘I don’t get it. Have you lost your mind? I realise that you must be a compulsive liar, but what the hell did you think you were playing at?’

‘You weren’t supposed to find out!’

‘I must be missing something here, but what exactly was the
point
of turning me into some kind of do-gooder? No, let me ask you something even more fundamental. What was the point of telling your parents about me in the first place? It wasn’t as though they were ever going to find out and, even if they had, it’s the twenty-first century. However
moralistic your parents are, surely they’re up to speed with the fact that men and women have relationships, some of which don’t last for ever! You have two sisters! Are you going to tell me that both of them have spent a lifetime saving themselves for the right guy and have never been on a date with a man in the meanwhile?’

‘No, of course not!’

‘Then why the elaborate confession to two people who could happily have remained in the dark? And why not just stick to the facts? You met a guy. You had fun for a couple of weeks. The end.’ A brief silence greeted this clearly rational observation, during which Bethany’s colour went from shell-pink to scarlet as she prayed for the ground to open and swallow her up or, even more unlikely, for her to open her eyes, blink twice, stretch and realise that the past few months had been nothing more than a weirdly convoluted dream.

‘Is your obsession with lying so rampantly out of control?’ Cristiano looked at her with narrowed eyes as he tried to get his head round her bizarre admission. ‘If so, then you need to seek help.’ He stood up. ‘And I refuse to go along with this deception.’

Bethany scrambled to her feet and grabbed his hand. The physical contact sent a sharp burst of red-hot awareness rushing through her at speed and she immediately dropped her hand.

‘Wait! I’m not finished!’

‘No?’ Cristiano’s mouth curled into a derisive smile. ‘More to come? Aside from the missionary service to parts of the world I’ve never so much as visited? I’m struggling to think of what more you can add to my glowing recommendations.’

‘Can we sit back down? Please? I realise you probably
think that you’ve entered a mad house…but there are some other things you…you need to know…’

Only because she looks particularly fetching with that desperate, wide-eyed look on her face…and, hell, the woman was born to be a roller coaster ride, so where was the harm in giving her another few minutes…?

Bethany was relieved that he had listened to her. Having watched the clock like a hawk before her parents had arrived, she was now watching it again in anticipation of them coming down the stairs and making a straight line for the sitting room, where the conversation would go who knew where. Time suddenly seemed a commodity in very limited supply.

‘I said all those things because…what we had was rather more involved as far as my parents are concerned. And before I tell you what I mean by that…’ She half wished that he would interrupt with something nasty and accusatory instead of just looking at her in silence waiting for her to carry on. Her hands, still tucked protectively in the long sleeves of her baggy jumper, were clammy.

‘Before I tell you what I mean by that…’ she repeated, stretching that one harmless sentence out for as long as she possibly could, ‘I just want you to know that I sent you to all those places…’