Behind the Castello Doors (20 page)

‘What I’m suggesting is that I become Sophie’s joint guardian and that the two of you live here at the castle. I am a father without a child, and Sophie is a child without a father,’ he said deeply. ‘I want to be a part of her life.’

Beth stared at him, shaken by the strength of emotion in his voice. ‘What about me? You can’t mean you want me to stay here? But I will never leave Sophie. I intend to be a mother to her like I promised Mel.’

‘Why shouldn’t you stay here?’

Cesario strolled back over to the bed where Beth was still sitting. He no longer seemed tense, but beneath his indolent stance she sensed his formidable strength and a determined purpose that worried her almost as much as the glitter in his grey eyes. Her heart suddenly began to beat uncomfortably fast and she jumped up from the bed. She felt an urge to run from the room, from him, but before she could take a step he snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her against him.

‘Why not stay?’ he said again, his gaze locked with hers as if he could see into her soul. His voice dropped to a husky growl. ‘The passion we share is beyond anything I have ever experienced before. We both felt an overwhelming awareness of each other on the night you arrived at the castle and even though we both fought it ultimately we could not deny our mutual desire.’

He lifted a hand and smoothed her hair back from her face. ‘We have become friends as well as lovers these past weeks, haven’t we,
cara
?’ he murmured. ‘We both love Sophie. Let me take care of both of you and help you to give her the happy childhood that we were both denied.’

A hundred questions hurtled around Beth’s mind. How long did he want her and Sophie to stay at the Castello del Falco? Was he really offering the baby a home in Sardinia? What would his role in Sophie’s life actually be—a father figure, a benevolent uncle? She gnawed on her lip, tormented by uncertainty. What role would he expect
her
to play in his life? They were lovers now, but what would happen in the future when he tired of her as he surely would?

She sensed he was waiting for her to answer, but she was finding it hard to think straight when she was desperately conscious of his big, muscular body pressed so close to hers that she could feel the hard ridge of his arousal nudging between her thighs.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ she whispered.

Cesario cupped her face in his hands. She had such a beautiful face. Even when he closed his eyes her features were imprinted on his mind: her slanting green eyes, the sweep of her long eyelashes, the gentle curve of her smile. He felt a rush of tenderness that seriously undermined his determination to cling to the belief that the reason he wanted Beth to stay with him was because they had great sex.

‘Do what your heart tells you,’ he found himself saying. He—who always followed his head and never listened to his heart. He slanted his lips over hers and kissed her, slowly and sweetly, making him ache inside. She opened her mouth beneath his and he groaned and crushed her to him, sliding his hand to her nape and gently tugging her head back so that he could plunder her lips with heated passion. He was aware that his heart was telling him something, but he was afraid to listen. He told himself that it was just desire he felt for her—just a sexual
hunger that had ensnared him and seemed unlikely to fade any time soon.

He hooked his fingers beneath the straps of her top and dragged them down until her breasts spilled into his hands. Tenderly, almost reverently, he caressed the small rounded globes, and then he lifted her up so that he could take first one taut nipple and then its twin into his mouth, suckling her until she gasped his name.

Beth gave up trying to fight her need for Cesario to make love to her. This was where she wanted to be, in his arms, with his hands feverishly stripping them both of their clothes. He tumbled her down onto the bed and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him down onto her and loving the feel of his naked skin on hers, the roughness of his chest hairs against the softness of her breasts.

He slid his hand between her legs and found her already wet and eager for him. Her soft smile shattered any hope he had of a slow, leisurely loving, and he slanted his mouth over hers at the same moment as he eased the swollen length of his arousal into the welcoming heat of her femininity.

He took her fast and hard, and yet with such tender consideration that Beth felt tears sting her eyes as she reached that magical place and her body convulsed in the throes of an exquisite climax. Cesario came almost simultaneously, unable to control the wildfire pleasure that he always experienced with Beth.

Afterwards they lay together in a tangle of limbs while their breathing gradually returned to normal. He propped himself up on one elbow and smiled at the sight of her flushed cheeks and softly swollen mouth.

‘So you’ll stay.’

It was a statement rather than a question, as if there had never been any doubt. But as Beth watched him stand up from the bed and stroll into the
en-suite
bathroom the reality of the situation caused a host of doubts to gather like black clouds in her mind. They hadn’t discussed the practicalities of her and Sophie living at the castle, but the more she thought about it the more pitfalls she could see.

‘I’ll need to find a job,’ she said when he walked back into the bedroom five minutes later, rubbing his wet hair on a towel. ‘I’m grateful for your offer to help support Sophie financially, but I’m responsible for her myself and I can’t allow you to keep me for.’ She hesitated. ‘Well, for however long I’m here.’ she finished uncertainly.

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, Harry,’ 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.