Behind the Castello Doors

by Chantelle Shaw

  The idea of living on hand-outs from Cesario was abhorrent to her pride. She had grown up in the children’s home, hating the feeling that she was reliant on charity, and since she’d left school she had always worked to support herself. She would have to take a crash course in Italian, she fretted, and then maybe she could find work in Oliena—although who would look after Sophie while she was working?

  Cesario pulled on his trousers and took a clean shirt from the wardrobe before he walked over to the bed.

  ‘We’ll discuss things when I get back,’ he murmured, leaning over her and brushing his lips across hers.

  Maybe a few days away from her would clear his mind and help him to decide what he actually wanted, he thought. He knew he had surprised Beth when he’d asked her to stay with him. Hell, he’d surprised himself. It wasn’t unreasonable of her to want to know if he had a timescale in mind, but, strangely, the more he thought about it the more insistently the words for ever pushed into his brain.

  The sound of the helicopter landing in the courtyard was almost a relief. He had four days of intense business negotiations ahead and he needed to focus, concentrate—not let his mind wander to a girl with green eyes and a smile that turned his insides to jelly.

  He kissed her mouth, lingeringly, and wondered briefly if he could send one of his top executives to Japan in his place. ‘Four days isn’t long.’ He did not tell her it sounded like a lifetime. He picked up his jacket and walked across the room, but hesitated in the doorway and turned back to her.

  ‘Hurry back,’ she said softly.

  ‘I will. Tesoro …’

  And suddenly everything made sense to Cesario. He stared at her, his heart pounding, but then his phone rang and he knew it was his pilot reminding him he had to leave now if he was going to make it to the airport in time to catch his flight to Japan. This wasn’t the moment to ask Beth about for ever.

  His eyes held hers. ‘I didn’t say it earlier, but you make me happy too,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’ll see you soon, mia bella.’

  The castle felt empty without Cesario—and so did Beth. She kept reminding herself that he wouldn’t have told her she made him happy unless it was true, but in the long sleepless hours of the night her doubts multiplied like weeds after a rain shower. She did not doubt that he cared about Sophie. And the way he had looked at her before he had left for Japan made her think that perhaps he even cared about her a little too. But could she really live as his mistress, knowing that one day in the not too distant future he would tire of her?

  He phoned once, but sounded distracted. He’d spent a long day in the boardroom, he explained, and now he was relaxing at his hotel. The woman’s voice that Beth heard in the background probably belonged to his PA, she told herself. But the gremlin inside her head reminded her that Cesario hadn’t made any promises of commitment to her and she had no right to ask him who he was relaxing with.

  Cesario’s affairs never last for long. Allegra Ricci had told her that the night they had gone to the ballet. So how long was long? Weeks? Months before his desire for her died? Her old insecurities returned. She was the care home kid who had always been overlooked by foster parents. No one had wanted her then, and once Cesario’s sexual interest in her faded she would become an encumbrance, tolerated only because he felt some misplaced sense of duty towards Sophie.

  Cesario felt a cramping sensation in his gut as the car swept into the castle courtyard. Nervous tension was not something he’d ever suffered from before and the experience was not pleasant. He was dog-tired, but that was hardly surprising when he had worked eighteen-hour days in order to push the Japanese deal through early. He ran his hand over the stubble on his jaw and gave a rueful grimace. He needed a shower, a drink, and Beth—in reverse order, he acknowledged as he felt the familiar tug of anticipation in his groin.

  He wondered if she had missed him as much as he had missed her. The car drew to a halt, and when his driver opened the door he took a deep breath before he climbed out. He recalled the unguarded expression in Beth’s eyes when she had asked him to hurry back, and he slipped his hand into his pocket to curl his fingers around a small square box.

  Dio! Butterflies wearing clogs were dancing in his stomach. But he had never put his heart on the line before—and the prospect of what he was about to do was frankly terrifying.

  He nodded to his driver and ran up the front steps. He was disappointed that it was Teodoro who walked across the hall to greet him, not Beth, but, Madonna, the mood he was in he was almost tempted to kiss the elderly butler, who had been more of a father figure to him than his own father had ever been.

  It took a few seconds for him to realise something was wrong. Teodoro’s usually inscrutable face was visibly upset.

  ‘What is this?’ he demanded as the butler handed him an envelope. ‘Where’s Beth?’

  ‘She left the castle with the bambina yesterday.’

  Cesario stared at his name written in Beth’s neat handwriting. The butterflies in his stomach had gone, leaving behind a hollow nothingness. For a moment he was seven years old again, running into the castle to see his mother. Teodoro had handed him a letter then too—a brief note from her, telling him that she was sad she’d had to leave him but promising that she would always think of him. He didn’t know if she had kept her promise because he had never seen her again.

  He dragged his mind back to the present. There could be a number of reasons for Beth’s unexpected departure, he told himself. But his hands shook as he ripped open the envelope and skimmed his eyes down the page.

  The agency I used to work for phoned to offer me an interview for a job as nanny with a family on the south coast of England. It sounds ideal as they are happy for me to combine caring for Sophie with looking after their two children. The position comes with my own living accommodation, and it will be a wonderful place to bring up Sophie and allow me to be independent. You have no responsibility for either of us, and I could not live as your mistress indefinitely.

  Thirty years after reading the note from his mother, Cesario once again experienced a gut-wrenching sense of abandonment—but this time he could not burst into tears and cling to Teodoro. Big boys don’t cry, he reminded himself grimly, and Piras men never revealed their emotions.

  Instead, he screwed Beth’s letter up in his fist and avoided the sympathetic expression in Teodoro’s eyes as he strode into his study and took a bottle of bourbon from the drinks cabinet. Clearly, he had been wrong to think Beth had feelings for him, to hope that she loved him. It was lucky he hadn’t revealed his feelings. Lucky he hadn’t made a fool of himself by telling her. He laughed bitterly and stared at the little square box on the coffee table in front of him. He’d chosen emeralds to match her eyes, and diamonds because, like her, they were pure and sparkling and utterly beautiful.

  He leaned back and rested his head on the top of the sofa. His throat ached. Maybe he was coming down with a virus? His eyes felt gritty and he squeezed them shut, ashamed of the hot wetness that seeped beneath his lashes.

  Maybe there was something wrong with him—something that made him unlovable and drove the people he cared about to leave him? His mother, his wife. He hadn’t loved Raffaella when he’d married her; they had both married for duty. But after their son had been born they had grown closer, and the discovery that she was having an affair had hurt him—although he had never shown it.

  He drained his glass, feeling the alcohol seep into his frozen blood. Raffaella and Nicolo were dead, and now Beth had gone, leaving him alone once more.

  Something brushed against his leg and he opened his eyes to find Beth’s scruffy dog sitting at his feet. ‘Okay, not completely alone,’ he acknowledged, reaching out to stroke Harry. The dog flopped down at his feet and howled mournfully. ‘You and me both, mutt,’ Cesario muttered, feeling the sound of the animal’s grief slice through his heart. ‘At least you know she cared about you.’

  Every time Beth had fussed over the dog and said ‘Love you, H
arry,’ Cesario had felt a stab of envy as he’d imagined her saying those words to him.

  But why would she have done when he had never given her any real indication of how he felt about her? He poured himself another whisky, but instead of drinking it he swirled the amber liquid around the glass.

  It wasn’t surprising that Beth’s unhappy childhood had made her wary and untrusting. Abandoned by her father, she had been devastated by the deaths of her mother and her best friend. Everyone she had ever loved had left her.

  Yet she had given herself to him with absolute trust and told him she wanted him to be the first man to make love to her. He couldn’t believe that had meant nothing to her. She had chosen to give her virginity to him, and every time they had made love these past weeks she had given herself so sweetly. so lovingly—as if she wanted to show him with her body what she did not have the courage to say in words.

  So why had she left? He raked a hand through his hair. It didn’t make sense. He must be wrong. Maybe he’d imagined that soft look in her eyes because he’d wanted to see it.

  ‘You make me happy,’ she’d once told him. Surely she wouldn’t have said it unless she’d meant it? Beth was fiercely honest; it was one of the qualities he loved most about her—that and her gentle smile and her beautiful green eyes, the way she stroked his hair in those moments of sweet lethargy after they had made love.

  Love! Cesario gave a hollow laugh. It was an emotion he had been denied during his childhood and it had been missing for most of his adult life. He had loved his son, but Nicolo’s death had nearly destroyed him and he had vowed never to love anyone again when he knew how much pain it could bring.

  He was in pain now; there was a terrible ache in his chest, a wrenching sensation of loss. But one thought drummed in his head. He had made Beth happy once and he was not going to let her go without trying to find out what had gone wrong. Determination replaced his despair and he jumped to his feet and strode to the door to call Teodoro.

  ‘I need to fly to England tonight. See if you can book me onto a flight, and arrange for the helicopter to take me to the airport.’

  The road that twisted up the mountainside was dappled gold from the setting sun, and the great jagged peaks all around were stained fiery orange. As the taxi turned a bend the Castello del Falco appeared, ancient and mellow in the fading light, its gates flung wide open as if they were welcoming Beth home.

  The taxi drew up in the courtyard and the driver unloaded her bags while she lifted Sophie in her baby-carrier from the car. He was the same man who had driven her from the castle down to Oliena the previous day, and he was clearly intrigued.

  ‘You will stay here for long?’ he queried in broken English.

  Beth gave him a tremulous smile. ‘I hope so.’ She did not add that if the master of the Castello del Falco refused to see her she would need the taxi driver’s services again. There was a good chance that Cesario would not want to listen to her, but she had to try.

  Waiting for her flight at the airport yesterday, she had finally faced up to why she had left him. She had been too scared to stay. The job opportunity had provided a good excuse for taking Sophie back to England. But the real reason she had run away was because she was afraid to accept the relationship Cesario had offered her, with all the uncertainty that being his mistress would mean.

  Like a spoilt child, she had been disappointed that he hadn’t offered what she had secretly hoped for. He hadn’t acted like Prince Charming in the fairy tale and declared his undying love for her, then swept her off to a church to put a ring on her finger. But he was a man, not a fantasy character. A man, moreover, who had known pain and loss and who had been taught to hide his emotions.

  Despite his past and his self-acknowledged difficulty in revealing his emotions Cesario had admitted that she made him happy. He had said he wanted a relationship with her, and just because he hadn’t said it with hearts and flowers she had put her pride before her love for him and gone away to sulk.

  She had never told him how she felt about him, Beth thought guiltily. Maybe he wouldn’t want to hear her confess her feelings for him, and maybe he would tell her he did not want a mistress who was in love with him, but that was a risk she would have to take—because she wasn’t ashamed of loving him and she was no longer prepared to hide her feelings.

  Teodoro could not hide his surprise when he opened the front door and saw Beth. ‘The master is at the stables,’ he told her as she handed him the baby carrier in which Sophie was fast asleep. ‘You should hurry to find him,’ he called after her as she ran down the castle steps. ‘He is due to leave for England this evening.’

  The way to the stables was familiar to her now, but when she arrived Cesario wasn’t there. Heart thumping, she continued up the mountain path—but stopped dead when a figure hove into view.

  He was astride his great black horse, a dark silhouette against the setting sun. But as he approached his features became visible; his face was as hard as if it had been carved from granite, the scar running down his cheek half hidden by his long dark hair. From the proud set of his shoulders and the arrogant angle of his head he might have been a king from ancient times, powerful, inscrutable and as uncompromising as the mountains behind him.

  He halted on the path a little way ahead of Beth, and even from a distance she could see the fierce tension that gripped him.

  ‘You came back.’

  The words sounded as though they had been torn from his soul. For a few moments he regarded her silently, before he dismounted and strode towards her.

  Beth watched him—the master of the Castello del Falco, the only man she would ever love. She had planned to remain calm and discuss their relationship sensibly. But as Cesario came closer and she saw the haunted expression in his eyes her composure cracked, and with an agonised cry she flew along the path and into his arms.

  ‘Dio, if you ever leave me again.’ Cesario’s voice broke as he crushed her against his great chest and threaded his fingers in her hair.

  His eyes blazed with an expression she was afraid to define. How had she ever thought them cold? she wondered. But then all her thoughts were obliterated when he claimed her mouth with savage possession and kissed her endlessly, passionately, and yet with such exquisite tenderness that tears slid down her face.

  ‘Tesoro …’ He tasted salt on her lips and his hands shook as he brushed away the trails of moisture from her cheeks. ‘Why did you leave? I was about to fly to England tonight to find you.’

  His words brought Beth crashing back to reality and she pulled away from him. It was time to be honest. But her voice faltered when she spoke.

  ‘I got to the airport before I realised I couldn’t run away,’ she admitted.

  ‘Why did you feel you needed to run from me?’ Cesario demanded in a driven tone. ‘You told me I made you happy, and we both know you are incapable of lying, carissima. Are you really interested in the job as a nanny, or is there another reason you want to go back? Tell me, is there some man in England you care about?’ He voiced the jealous thought that burned like acid in his gut. ‘If so, then why did you choose me to be your first lover?’

  Beth’s heart ached at the raw emotion in his voice. She stared at his scarred, beloved face and could not deny her feelings to herself or to him.

  ‘There is no one else. And there never will be—because I love you,’ she told him fiercely, ‘with all my heart. For the first time in my life I have felt special. I was always the care home kid—unimportant, unloved. But since I came to the Castello del Falco you’ve treated me with kindness and respect and trust. You made me feel beautiful and. and proud of who I am.’ Her voice shook. ‘For all those things, and more, I will love you for ever.’

  Whatever else she might have said was lost beneath the pressure of Cesario’s mouth on hers as he held her so close that she could feel the thunderous beat of his heart echoing in time with her own. He kissed her until she sank weakly against him, parting her lips beneath
his and kissing him back with beguiling sweetness, so that Cesario did not know if it was her tears he could taste or his own.

  ‘Ti amo, Beth. I love you with my heart and soul and everything I am,’ he said roughly, his voice shaking with the force of emotions storming through him.

  He felt as if a dam had held back his feelings for so many years, but now the dam had burst open, allowing the healing power of his love for the woman in his arms to sweep away all the pain that had gone before.

  ‘You really love me?’ she whispered, and the half-wondering, half-fearful expression in her eyes made his heart clench.

  He knew what it was like to grow up without being loved, and he vowed that he would tell Beth every day how much she meant to him.

  ‘Will you stay with me, carissima?’ He paused for a heartbeat and then, to her startled surprise, dropped down onto one knee. ‘Will you marry me, Beth Granger? I love you, and you love me, and we both love a little girl who needs us to be her parents.’

  He felt in his shirt pocket for the little square box he had been carrying next to his heart, and heard her startled gasp when he opened the lid and took out the teardrop emerald surrounded by diamonds that glittered in the golden rays of the sunset.

  ‘With this ring, I promise to love you and cherish you for eternity,’ he said softly as he slid the engagement ring onto her finger. ‘I will repeat that vow in the chapel on the day you become my wife.’ He looked into her eyes, his own blazing with his love for her. ‘Will you, Beth?’

  The faint note of uncertainty in his voice brought a lump to Beth’s throat. Beneath the strong and powerful man she glimpsed the vulnerable boy who had been taught that love was a weakness. She knew how hard he found it to reveal his emotions, but she would make sure he knew every day that he was loved.

  ‘I will,’ she assured him.

  And there was no need to say anything more as Cesario swept her up and carried her back to the castle, pausing on the steps to kiss his soon-to-be bride—much to the satisfaction of Teodoro, who hurried to inform the rest of the staff to prepare for a wedding.