‘I mean—’ he turned to face her father but his hand remained firmly glued to her thigh, a gentle reminder that he was right here on the sofa next to her and was not going to let her out of his reach until he was good and ready ‘—when she described her house here, in Ireland, I almost got the impression that she was talking about a castle!’
‘Couldn’t be further from the truth, as you can see!’ John shook his head, smiling at his daughter. ‘But you’re right. I know she’s going to pull a face when I say this, but our Bethany was always top of the class in her English!’
‘I can well imagine.’
‘But now that circumsta…’
From the kitchen, Bethany heard her mother carolling them in for dinner and she breathed a small sigh of relief. Her father preceded them and it gave her a vital chance to move out of Cristiano’s reach as they both stood up.
‘Stop it!’ she hissed at him under her breath.
‘Stop…what?’
‘Stop touching me!’
‘Now why would you say that?’ Cristiano’s voice was as hard as nails. ‘You’re a conscienceless liar and I’m supposed to play the part of the lucky husband-to-be. Surely a bit of touching is only to be expected? And, correct me if I’m wrong, but nothing’s been mentioned of any so-called pregnancy. Funny, that, wouldn’t you say?’
‘What are you getting at?’
She was spared an answer to her question by her parents beaming at them as they entered the kitchen. Hand in hand. The loving and now united couple. Bethany reminded herself never to trust appearances. She felt pretty sure that the man standing next to her was thinking the very same thing.
‘Just fetched some chicken casserole I had in the freezer,’ Eileen confided as they all settled at the long pine table in the kitchen, the surface of which bore the hallmarks of homework past. ‘Tell me what you think, Cristiano…’ She looked at him expectantly and puffed up with delight when he went into profuse compliment mode while next to him Bethany tortured herself by wondering what he had meant when he had said that it was funny that her parents hadn’t mentioned a word about the pregnancy. Had he thought that she’d been lying? Made the whole thing up? What if he let slip some killer remark about never wanting kids? She racked her brain to remember if he’d ever mentioned anything of the sort. Never had she felt more need for something alcoholic, if only to survive her mother’s questions about where they had met, how they had met. No amount of attempts to drag the conversation onto neutral territory could derail the older woman from her curiosity. Bethany was only thankful that her father was no longer quizzing him on all those wonderful things he had done in darkest Africa.
What had seemed a good idea at the time, a way of saving her parents from the anguish and disappointment of their daughter turning up on their doorstep pregnant and single, had returned to bite her.
Almost worse was the reality that Cristiano was charming the socks off them. He drew on amusing anecdotes like a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat and it was only when they were clearing away the dishes that Bethany found a sudden spark of inspiration and, while she was loading the dishwasher with her mother, she managed to insert in a casual voice, ‘Now you understand what I meant when I told you that he was dashing!’
‘Oh, darling. I’m so happy for you. Of course, it’s such a shame that you’ve had to put your university course on hold, but he seems such a lovely guy. I don’t think he’d mind one bit if you resumed your studies in due course, do you?’
Bethany leaned against the kitchen counter, ears alert for the sound of any approaching feet from the dashing man in question, who had been taken to the sitting room with her father. ‘Well, I might have to…’
‘What do you mean?’ Eileen paused to look at her daughter with concern.
‘I mean…’ The sound of yet another lie, piling up on top of the multitude she had already told, raced towards her like a galloping horse that was out of control and Bethany sighed. ‘Nothing. I just meant that…it’s always good to have a degree up your sleeve.’
‘But don’t forget that you have other duties now, darling.’
Bethany grimaced. ‘Fat chance of me forgetting that.’ In truth she had gradually become accustomed to the thought of having a baby. What had been an enormous shock to start with had levelled off to a calm acceptance that her pregnancy wasn’t going to go away and she would have to deal with it. It was a blessing that she had had her parents to support her, for continuing with university had been out of the question and she had had no desire to remain in London as a single mother.
‘I told your dad not to mention anything about the baby,’ Eileen rattled on, as happy as a bunny in a field of carrots. ‘I thought you might like to break it to Cristiano yourself and I wasn’t sure if you had said anything…’
‘Thanks, Mum.’
‘You don’t seem as thrilled at Cristiano’s arrival as I might have expected, Beth,’ her mother said anxiously. ‘I know you thought that he might be stuck out there for months on end with his building project…’
‘But here I am!’
From behind them, and latching on to that last pensive observation, came the all too familiar voice of Cristiano. He strolled across to Bethany and casually slung his arm over her shoulder, pulling her towards him. Reluctantly, Bethany extended her hand around his waist. Through his shirt, she could feel the rock hardness of his body and a convulsive shiver made her feel temporarily giddy.
‘And, as I mentioned to John in the sitting room, the bearer of glad tidings, my darling.’
‘What’s that?’ Bethany looked up at him, horribly aware that both her parents were watching them with eagle eyes. She could almost hear her mother’s breathless, expectant silence.
‘No more projects…’
Bethany’s jumble of thoughts lagged behind her mother’s and it was only when her mother clapped her hands that it dawned on her exactly what he was saying.
‘Yippee!’ She tried to insert some enthusiasm into her voice as she watched the last glimmers of any excuse for his disappearance from her life take wing and fly through the window.
‘That’s right,’ Cristiano expanded, just so that she was in no doubt as to what he was saying. ‘My priorities are here now. Aren’t they, sweetheart? Right here with you and…our baby.’
Suddenly the world was full of rainbows and angels. At least, as far as her parents were concerned. Her mother could barely contain her excitement and while the babble of voices resounded around her Bethany felt nothing but a dull awareness of a situation that was now no longer in her control. Had she thought that she might persuade him to disappear out of her life? He didn’t love her. He never had. Yet he had found himself landed with the prospect of fatherhood in a little under four months, welded against his will to a woman he now loathed, a woman he considered an inveterate liar and heaven only knew what else. When had it ever been her dream to find herself expecting a baby by a man she loved who felt nothing but scorn towards her? Since when was that any woman’s dream?
‘I wasn’t sure if Beth had mentioned it to you…’
‘We were shocked when she broke the news to us…’
‘But now that we’ve met you, we couldn’t hope for a better son-in-law…’
‘Dad!’
‘Of course, we wouldn’t dream of rushing you into anything,’ Eileen hastened to add. ‘You just have to excuse us because we’re a little old-fashioned when it comes to things like that…’
‘So, as it happens, is my own mother.’ Had he really thought that she had been lying about the pregnancy? She had lied about pretty much everything else but, in that one area, she had been telling the truth. Her father had tactfully asked him whether he knew or whether he had already disappeared to Africa by the time Bethany had found out, and at that split moment in time Cristiano had kissed sweet goodbye to his freedom. Two weeks of fun in the sun and he would be paying the price for the rest of his life. What choice did he have? It was a mess but it was a mess
from which he could not walk away. He tried to imagine how his mother and his grandfather would react and for a fleeting few seconds he could understand why she had fabricated this particular lie. His mother would have been devastated if he had shown up with a child in tow and no mother in sight.
‘You’ll have to tell us all about her…about your family…I’m afraid Bethany has been a bit economical on information…’
Your daughter, it was on the tip of his tongue to tell them, has been economical on a number of things.
‘But right now—’ John put his arm around his wife with affection ‘—Eileen and I are going to hit the sack.’
‘And we may be old-fashioned—’ Eileen gave Cristiano a warm smile ‘—but we’re not so old-fashioned that we expect you two love birds to sleep in different rooms…’
‘But Mum!’ Bethany’s voice bordered on a screech. ‘You’ve never let Shania or Melanie bring their boyfriends home and share a bedroom!’
‘Slightly different situation here, don’t you think, pet?’
‘Well, yes,’ Bethany huffed, ‘but that’s no reason…I mean, I wouldn’t want to disrespect…’
‘Thank goodness we got rid of that single bed of yours a few years ago! Remember how upset you were at losing the headboard?’ This to Cristiano. ‘She had collected a range of stickers on it from when she was just knee high to a grasshopper! Can you believe it? Detached all of them and stuck them in a scrapbook!’
Bethany felt herself go crimson. Did her mother imagine that that somehow made her sound sweet? Couldn’t she see that the flip side of sweet was fruit loop, which was what Cristiano was already thinking? No, she thought unhappily, why on earth should her mother think that her dearly beloved and only recently engaged daughter might not want to share a bedroom with her sexy, dashing, adventurous fiancé who couldn’t wait to rip her to shreds?
With that parting shot her parents, still chatting and laughing with each other, headed off, leaving a brutal silence behind them.
‘So…’ Cristiano moved so that he was standing in front of her ‘…where to begin…’
‘We can begin with the fact that I won’t be sharing my bedroom with you. You can have Shania’s room. Mum and Dad will never know if I get up early enough and smooth down the quilt.’
‘I can think of a better place to start.’ He walked towards the kitchen door and shut it. Then, making sure that she couldn’t bolt, he remained standing in front of the closed door, six foot two of lethal determination. ‘For instance, did you get pregnant on purpose?’
Bethany was horrified at the outrageous insult. She clenched her hands into tight fists and glared at him.
‘That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard!’
‘Then you’ve led a very sheltered life,’ Cristiano said cuttingly. ‘From where I’m standing, I’m seeing someone who connived her way into my life…’
‘Connived my way? You were the one who showed up on my doorstep, don’t you remember?’
‘Hardly your doorstep.’
‘Okay, the doorstep!’ She pushed her hair away from her face.
‘…And, having found my bed, decided that I was just too good a catch to let go and what better way to hold a man than to get pregnant by him?’
Bethany laughed incredulously. ‘You think I planned this? You really think that I wanted to abandon my degree, abandon my independence so that I could have a baby?’ Her eyes filled up, her mouth wobbled; she felt like someone on the edge of a nervous breakdown. She was hardly showing her pregnancy but for the past few months it had been on her mind every waking minute. She had been living on a day to day basis, not daring to think beyond the very near future. The dream of finding her feet away from the little town in which she had grown up was in ruins around her and she couldn’t face the thought of sitting down and really working out what happened next. It was as though Plan A, around which she had based her future, had devolved into some other plan and she no longer had the right tools to grapple with it. Where would she be in six months’ time? A year? Where would she be living? She couldn’t very well remain an indefinite lodger in her parents’ house with a young baby, still sleeping in the bedroom she had slept in as a child herself. But where would she go? And how would she be able to earn a sufficiently good living to support two?
That he could stand there and coolly ask whether she had planned the pregnancy was just too much!
‘Do you really imagine that you’re that much of a dream catch?’ She propelled herself angrily away from the counter against which she had been leaning. ‘You’re arrogant, you’re cruel and you’re a massive snob!’ She poked one shaking finger at him. ‘Do you honestly think that I would throw away my future so that I could hitch my wagon to a guy who hates my guts and thinks I’m a cheap liar?’ She dashed an angry tear away from her face. ‘How sad and…and desperate do you think I am?’
‘Calm down. You’re beginning to get hysterical.’ Arrogant? Cruel? A snob? Shouldn’t she be the one on the back foot? To the best of his memory, he had been totally upfront with her, so how was it that she was now hurling accusations at him?
‘It’s impossible talking to you.’ Bethany was further enraged by the fact that Cristiano was as cool as a cucumber. She felt that if she didn’t leave she would explode and the explosion would wake her parents, if not the entire town.
‘You’re not talking. You’re being hysterical.’
‘You make me feel hysterical!’ Her green eyes clashed with his and she felt dizzy and off balance. How was it possible for him to do this to her? To shake her to the very core and make her feel giddy when all she wanted to feel was repulsion?
‘You don’t look pregnant.’
‘What?’
‘Shouldn’t you be bigger?’
Bethany was thoroughly disconcerted by this abrupt change of topic. ‘Some people don’t show until quite late on and I’m one of those. Why are you changing the subject?’
‘Because you shouldn’t be getting so overwrought in your…condition.’
‘How do you expect me to feel when you stand there like a block of ice sneering at me and accusing me of plotting all of this?’ Deep breaths, she thought. Hysteria was no way to deal with the situation. ‘If I had been lunatic enough to get pregnant to trap you, then don’t you think that I might just have contacted you the minute I found out?’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘For the same reason that…I took off. I wasn’t the rich, worldly-wise woman you thought I was. I was a nobody, the sort of person you wouldn’t have looked at twice in the normal course of things.’
‘Don’t run yourself down,’ Cristiano censured, frowning.
‘I’m not running myself down, Cristiano. I’m telling it like it is. You told me yourself that you would never date any woman who didn’t come from a similar background to you because you would never be sure that she wasn’t after you for your money.’
‘I never said that!’ The conversation seemed to have run away from him and he couldn’t figure out where or when he had relinquished control.
‘Yes, you did!’
‘Okay. Maybe I did, although I’m not convinced.’
‘So when I discovered that I was pregnant, I knew that I couldn’t contact you. How would you have felt if I’d shown up on your doorstep, one Bethany Macguire, pregnant and average, with nowhere to go and barely a dime to her name? Don’t tell me that you would have fallen over yourself with joy and rapture!’
‘That’s hardly the point.’
‘Then what is?’
‘I deserved to know. When it comes to a child, it’s not about how I would feel or how you would feel, it’s about the child. Had you any intention at all of ever contacting me to tell me that I had fathered a child?’
Bethany looked away, reddening. Put like that, she sounded like a selfish cow, but at the time the thought of telephoning him, explaining herself, explaining that she was going to have a baby, had left her mind almost as quickly as
it had entered it.
‘I would have. In due course. Most probably.’
Cristiano stamped on his immediate response to that. There was little point in pursuing that line of attack, but in his mind he envisaged a scenario in which his child grew up without him around, became the stepson or stepdaughter of some other man who would have entered her life at some point in time. The thought outraged him. Just thinking of her in the arms of someone else outraged him. He put that thought out of his head and resolved to approach the situation from a practical direction.
He also found himself reluctantly believing her reasons for lying to him in the first place. Which, naturally, didn’t excuse her opportunistic manipulation of the truth, but he would overlook that because there were now far bigger things in the mix and that was a reality he couldn’t afford to forget.
‘I’m surprised you didn’t kill me off,’ he mused and Bethany looked up at him, again sidetracked by his change of tone. From icy-cold and enraged, his voice was now low and husky and mildly amused. It made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and something inside her uncurled, making her feel vulnerable and exposed.
‘I’m not that horrible,’ she stuttered breathlessly. ‘Besides, it’s just as well that I didn’t, considering you’ve appeared here. Explaining the sudden appearance of an absent fiancé is enough of a nightmare. Explaining one who had come back to life would have been impossible.’ With some of her anger defused, she was belatedly aware of just how close she was to him. Practically touching and it was beginning to get to her. She took a couple of steps back and told him that she was going to bed.
‘Where are your clothes, anyway?’ she asked. Her parents wouldn’t have noticed his lack of a suitcase and she only had now.
‘A certain large hotel a few miles away, as it happens.’
‘Oh, right. The converted manor.’ She would have suggested that he drive right back there but what was the point? Her parents would think it bizarre for the newly reunited couple to spend their first night apart, especially when they had shown such remarkable twenty-first century liberalism in allowing them to share the same bedroom. ‘So you have no clothes with you. Well, what are you going to sleep in, just out of interest.’
The Italian's One-Night Love-Child Page 8