She ran her fingers over the polished wooden end-panel of the cot, which was decorated with exquisitely carved rabbits and squirrels, and recalled the second-hand cot she had bought for Sophie. It hadn’t looked too bad once she had repainted it, she thought ruefully. But it was nothing compared to this beautiful antique.
‘Thank you for allowing Sophie to sleep here. This cot is amazing. Is it very old?’
‘It was commissioned by one of my ancestors in the early seventeen hundreds. Documents in the library show that the then master of the Castello del Falco and his wife had been childless for twenty years before she became pregnant and gave birth to a son,’ Cesario explained, keeping his voice low, so as not to wake Sophie. ‘I imagine that my ancestor was overjoyed to finally have an heir, and he requested the most skilled craftsmen to make furniture for his son’s nursery.’
‘The butler told me that this used to be your son’s room.’ Beth hesitated when she saw Cesario stiffen but could not contain her curiosity. ‘Teodoro said that he no longer lives at the castle?’
‘No.’
From his curt response it was clear that Cesario did not wish to continue with the subject. His face was shuttered, and the sudden bleakness in his eyes made Beth wish she had kept quiet. Whatever mystery surrounded his son, it was no business of hers.
But after a moment, to her surprise, he continued harshly. ‘Nicolo and his mother died in an accident four years ago. He was just two years old.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She was stunned by his shocking revelation, and her response sounded banal and inadequate, but she did not know what else to say. Nothing about Cesario Piras was as she had expected. The impression she had gained from Mel was that he was a womanizer who had not even bothered to ask her name before he’d had sex with her.
Of course Mel had been used to that kind of boorish behaviour from men, she thought heavily. They had never discussed it, but she wasn’t completely naive. She had guessed that Mel had occasionally supplemented her income from her job as a glamour model by offering a more intimate service to men she met at parties.
The idea that Cesario might have paid to sleep with Mel had made Beth reluctant to search for him. She had been convinced that he would not be interested in a baby who had resulted from a cold-blooded sexual encounter, and the only reason she had come to Sardinia was because she had promised Mel.
But Cesario did not act like a heartless playboy. He was a widower who had lost his wife and son in tragic circumstances. And, although it was not yet known if Sophie was his child, his gentleness when he had cradled her in his arms had brought a lump to Beth’s throat and evoked a wistful longing that her own father had cared about her enough to stick around during her childhood.
She stared down at Sophie’s angelic little face. ‘I can’t imagine how terrible it must be to lose a child. I may not have given birth to Sophie but I love her as much as if she was my own baby. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to her. She’s all I have left of Mel,’ she said huskily. ‘Since I was twelve years old Mel was the only person I cared about and who cared about me.’
She blinked away her tears and lifted her head to meet Cesario’s hooded gaze. ‘What will happen if the DNA test reveals that you are Sophie’s father?’ she asked desperately. ‘You said that you will want her to live here at the castle. But I have been a mother to her since the day she was born and she needs me. You can’t send me away from her. It would be too cruel.’
The glimmer of tears in Beth’s vivid green eyes had an unsettling effect on Cesario. He knew nothing about her other than what she had told him, and until he’d heard back from the private investigator he’d called an hour ago to check her out he had no reason to trust her or believe her story. But her emotive outburst had struck a chord in him.
‘Nothing can be decided until the results of the test are known,’ he said tersely. He moved away from the cot. ‘For now, I suggest you get to bed. Will Sophie sleep for the rest of the night?’
‘She’ll probably wake at about three for a feed. Because she’s so tiny she still needs a bottle during the night,’ Beth explained. ‘But then she usually sleeps soundly for six or seven hours.’ She could not hold back a yawn. ‘Actually, her sleep pattern works well for me because in England I start work at 5:00 a.m and finish at nine every morning. I leave Sophie with my neighbour.’
Cesario frowned. ‘What work do you do that early in the day?’
‘I clean offices for a big company close to where I live. My neighbour Maureen’s husband is a postman. She’s used to getting up early when he goes to work, and she babysits until I get home from my shift.’
‘You work as a cleaner?’
Something in his tone made Beth flush. ‘It’s not easy to find a job which fits in with caring for a baby,’ she said defensively. She was usually mild-natured, so perhaps it was because she was tired but his disdainful expression sent a spurt of anger through her. ‘There’s nothing wrong with being a cleaner. It’s a vital service. You must employ dozens of domestic staff to look after this huge castle—it’s not done by magic, you know.’
Cesario’s dark brows winged upwards. So the little brown mouse had a temper. Twin spots of colour briefly flared on Beth’s cheeks, but they faded, leaving her looking deathly pale. His mouth tightened.
‘I was not expressing a criticism of your job—merely thinking that it is no wonder you resemble a wraith when you clearly get little sleep. And from the look of you—’ his eyes skimmed over her slender figure ‘—not enough time to eat regular meals.’
Beneath his scrutiny Beth was conscious that her faded old dressing gown was fit for the bin. Looking down, she realised that the front was gaping open and she quickly drew the edges together. Not that her body was very exciting, she acknowledged ruefully. Cesario looked distinctly unimpressed by her lack of curves. She guessed he favoured voluptuous blondes. Presumably it had been Mel’s provocative sex-appeal that had attracted Cesario to sleep with her a year ago.
For some reason the thought evoked a corrosive burning sensation in the pit of Beth’s stomach. How on earth could she feel jealous of her best friend who was no longer alive? she asked herself disgustedly.
It suddenly seemed to have been a very long day and she was desperate to be alone. ‘I do eat,’ she told him curtly. ‘But I’m naturally scrawny. I admit I’m very tired, though, so I’ll say goodnight, Mr Piras.’
Scrawny was not the word he would have used to describe Beth Granger, Cesario brooded. He could not understand why her fragile figure and elfin features were having such a profound effect on him, but the stirring of sexual desire in his groin was as insistent as it was unexpected.
Irritated with himself, he strode towards the door. ‘My name is Cesario,’ he reminded her. ‘Buonanotte, Beth. I hope you and Sophie both sleep well.’
CHAPTER FOUR
AFTER checking on Sophie, Beth went straight to bed. She resolutely pushed all thoughts of Cesario to the back of her mind and fell asleep almost instantly.
A strange rumbling noise dragged her from a disturbing dream where she had been running down a long corridor lined with evil-looking stone gargoyles which turned into living creatures. She sat up, her heart racing, and switched on her bedside lamp.
Her watch showed that it was 2:00 a.m. The castle was silent, and she wondered if the noise had been part of her dream. But then it came again, as loud and violent as thunder. The storm must have moved closer. But she had never known thunder to growl continuously for so long. Going back to sleep was impossible when the noise was so loud.
Another booming crash seemed to make the walls of the castle shake. She leapt out of bed and hurried through to the nursery. Sophie was still sleeping peacefully and Beth was loath to disturb her. It seemed safer to leave the baby in the sturdy wooden cot while she went to investigate what was happening.
The corridor outside the nursery was illuminated by wall lamps which cast long shadows and flickered over several portraits housed
in ornate frames. The haughty-looking men and women must be Cesario’s ancestors, she guessed. Their black eyes seemed to follow her, and she could not repress a little shiver as she walked towards the head of the stairs.
There were no signs of life. Cesario and his staff must all be in bed. A terrible noise, louder than anything that had gone before, resounded through the castle. Panic-stricken, she screamed, and at that moment a door on the other side of the landing flew open.
‘What’s happened?’ a gravelly voice demanded.
Cesario stood in the doorway, his big broad-shouldered frame silhouetted in the light that streamed from the room behind him. He must have been in bed and on hearing the noise had dragged on his trousers. But his chest was bare, and in spite of her terror Beth felt a little tremor of something that was definitely not fear run down her spine.
He was devastatingly sexy, with a toned, muscular physique that made her feel weak at the knees. Darkly tanned skin gleamed like burnished copper in the lamplight. His black tousled hair brushed his shoulders and his chest was covered with a mass of wiry hairs that arrowed down over his abdomen.
‘Are you hurt?’
Suddenly conscious that she was staring at him, Beth hastily dropped her gaze.
‘No. I … I was scared. That noise—what is it?’
‘I don’t know.’ He walked towards her, frowning when another thunderous crash rent the air.
‘At first I thought it was the storm, but it sounds as though the mountain is falling down,’ Beth said shakily. ‘Should we leave the castle?’
‘Definitely not. The Castello del Falco has stood for seven hundred years and we’re safer here than anywhere.’ Cesario looked grim. ‘You may be right about the mountain, though. The heavy rain that has been falling for the past few days could have triggered a landslide.’
Beth gasped. ‘But if part of the mountain is falling surely the castle will fall too?’ Her heart was racing so fast that she found it hard to breathe, but her mind was focused on one thing. ‘I left Sophie in the nursery. I must go and get her.’
She spun round, intent on racing back to the nursery, but a wave of dizziness like the one she had experienced when she had climbed the stairs earlier swept over her. The walls of the corridor seemed to be closing in on her, and she cried out as she fell forwards into black nothingness.
Growling an oath, Cesario lunged towards Beth and caught her as she crumpled. No wonder she had fainted, he thought as he lifted her in his arms and strode into his bedroom. She weighed next to nothing. He glanced down at her and his mouth tightened as he studied her hollow cheeks and the prominent line of her collarbone. What was it with women and dieting? He had never found extreme thinness attractive, which made his reaction to Beth all the more surprising.
She was not his type—so why had a flood of heat surged through him the instant he had swept her into his arms? And why did the brush of her silky brown hair against his bare chest evoke a throb of fierce, primitive lust in his groin? It did not help that her cotton nightgown was so thin he could see the outline of her body through it. The strap had slipped off her shoulder, exposing the upper slope of one small, pale breast, and the darker skin of her nipple was clearly visible through the material.
Her eyelashes fluttered against her white cheeks and then slowly lifted. Huge green eyes focused on him and Cesario felt uncomfortable that he had been looking at her without her knowledge. He felt like a voyeur, and quickly lowered her onto the bed and swung away.
‘Sophie!’ Struggling against the blackness that was threatening to suck her back down, and the horrible sensation that she was going to be sick, Beth hung on to the one thing that mattered. Feeling disorientated, she let her eyes scan an unfamiliar room—a vast room, with dark wood-panelled walls and an enormous fireplace. The four-poster bed she was lying on was ornately carved and draped with swathes of rich burgundy silk.
She remembered the strange, terrifying noises and Cesario’s warning of a possible landslide. If anything happened to Sophie.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and gasped when a firm hand gripped her shoulder.
‘Let me go. I want to go back to the nursery.’
‘I’ve just been to check on Sophie and she’s still fast asleep. Here—drink this.’
A glass was thrust into Beth’s hand. With Cesario looming over her she had little option but to take a sip of the amber liquid and she choked as fiery heat burned the back of her throat.
‘What is it?’ she croaked when she could speak.
‘Brandy. You fainted,’ Cesario told her tersely. ‘Drink it. It might put some colour back in your face.’
He was so forceful that she did not have the nerve to argue. She took another tiny sip, wrinkling nose in disgust. ‘I never drink spirits.’
‘Or eat food, from the look of you. I can only assume you are the type of woman who is obsessed with her looks and determined to diet until you resemble a skeleton.’
His derisive comment did what the brandy had failed to do and caused angry colour to flare in her cheeks. ‘I told you—I’m naturally thin. I do eat.’ But admittedly not very well, Beth acknowledged silently, thinking of the days when looking after Sophie took up so much of her time that all she could be bothered to cook for herself was toast.
‘Then why did you pass out?’
She sighed, wishing Cesario would let the matter drop. ‘I’m probably still a bit anaemic. I saw a doctor a couple of months ago because I kept feeling dizzy, and a blood test confirmed that my red blood cell count was low. He suggested that I take iron tablets and a vitamin supplement.’
‘And did you take them?’
‘I took the ones the doctor gave me, but I couldn’t afford to buy any more.’ She flushed when he gave her an impatient look. ‘Why are you so interested in the state of my health?’
How could he explain that Beth’s fragile appearance aroused his protective instincts? Cesario did not understand why she triggered such deeply primitive urges inside him. Lust, yes, but also an inexplicable desire to take care of her.
The usual women he met at parties and business functions were brittle socialites who were perfectly capable of looking out for themselves. And there was no reason to suppose that this woman was any different, he reminded himself.
‘Surely you must realise it is important to take care of your health for Sophie’s sake? You insist that you are devoted to her, but what would happen to her if you became seriously ill? If it is proved that she is my child how could you think I would allow you to take her back to England when you plainly cannot look after yourself properly, let alone a baby.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘But perhaps you were expecting me to hand over a big maintenance settlement so that you could pay for childcare and not have to be bothered with her yourself?’
‘I didn’t expect anything from someone who thinks it’s okay to have unprotected sex with a stranger,’ Beth retaliated. It was so out of character for her to lose her temper, but Cesario’s arrogance and his implication that she regarded Sophie as a means to getting her hands on his fortune goaded her beyond endurance. ‘If you want my opinion, I think you’re despicable,’ she told him, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘You must have known there was a risk Mel could fall pregnant. I suppose that’s why you had already disappeared from the hotel room when she woke up in the morning? You didn’t want to take responsibility for the possible outcome of your night of fun and so you didn’t stick around long enough to find out her name or give her details of how to contact you if she needed to.’
Cesario’s jaw hardened at her accusations, but to his shame he could not refute them. ‘I’ve explained that I have no memory of that night.’
‘That doesn’t excuse what you did.’
‘Or didn’t do,’ he said tightly. ‘Until the results of a DNA test are known we only have your friend’s word that I was the man she slept with.’
‘Mel was absolutely certain when she saw your picture in the newspaper that you are So
phie’s father.’
Beth felt intimidated by Cesario as he towered over her. She slid off the bed, but still had to tilt her head to look at him. She studied him covertly from beneath her lashes and felt a peculiar coiling sensation in the pit of her stomach as her eyes roamed over his naked chest. Seconds ago she had been furious with him, but now it was not anger that was making her heart beat uncomfortably fast.
His body had the sculpted perfection of a work of art, with the powerful muscles of his chest and abdomen clearly delineated beneath his satiny golden skin. Beth had never touched a man’s unclothed torso before, and she was shocked by her urgent longing to skim her hands over Cesario’s rippling muscles and follow the path of dark hairs that disappeared beneath the waistband of his trousers.
He was a callous womaniser, she reminded herself. Either he was lying when he said he did not remember the night he had spent with Mel, or he really had been so drunk that his mind was blank. Neither scenario earned respect. He was not the sort of man she could ever have imagined she would be attracted to, but it seemed that the mysterious alchemy of sexual desire paid no heed to the things she believed were important. Respect and admiration counted for nothing, she discovered, compared with the fierce yearning she felt for him to crush her against his bare chest and plunder her mouth with hungry passion.
The silence in the room was so intense that Beth was conscious of each breath she took. Part of her brain registered that the crashing noise from outside had stopped. She should return to her room and try to sleep before Sophie woke for her next feed, but she seemed to be trapped by invisible bonds and she could not prevent her eyes from straying to Cesario’s face.
Her heart gave a jolt when she discovered him staring at her with a burning intensity that sent molten heat coursing through her veins. Slowly and deliberately he trailed his gaze over her. Glancing down, Beth was embarrassed to realise that her nightdress was so thin from age and frequent washing that he could probably see right through it.
Behind the Castello Doors Page 5