Behind the Castello Doors (7 page)

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 Sophie’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.

If only she had pulled on her dressing gown before she had rushed out of the nursery. Her breasts felt heavy, and
to her horror she saw that her nipples had hardened and were jutting against the almost sheer fabric of her nightdress. Mortified by her body’s betrayal, and confused by the reaction to him that she seemed powerless to control, she stared rigidly at the carpet, sure that he would make a mocking comment.

He exhaled heavily, as if, like hers, his breath had been trapped in his lungs. A hand cupped her chin and forced her head up, and a tremor ran through Beth when she saw the hard glitter in his steel-grey eyes.

‘I would not have forgotten if
you
had shared my bed,’ he said harshly.

She flushed, recalling that he had made the same statement when she had first spoken to him in the castle’s great hall. The disparaging look he had given her then had revealed what he thought of her.

‘I’m quite aware that I am plain,’ she told him, her voice stiff with hurt pride.

He gave a rough laugh, as if he was surprised by her words. ‘You cannot believe that.’ Almost as if he could not help himself, he traced the delicate line of her jaw with his fingertips, his touch as light as if she were made of fragile porcelain.
‘Sei bella,’
he said huskily. ‘I find you very lovely, Beth Granger.’

His face was so close to hers that she could feel his warm breath whisper across her lips. Time, her heartbeat—both seemed to be suspended. Was he going to kiss her? Did she want him to?

Dear heaven, he was a sorcerer and she was falling under his spell, Beth thought wildly. Was this how he had seduced Mel? Had he murmured sweet lies in his gravelly, sexy accent and mesmerised her with the sultry gleam in his eyes that promised untold delights?

Luckily the sound of her name restored her sanity. Boring, insipid Beth Granger was certainly
not
beautiful, she thought dully. If she was, she might have been fostered as a child instead of spending all her teenage years in care. She bit her lip as memories surfaced of having her photograph taken at the children’s home. Photos of the kids in care had been kept with their files and shown to prospective foster families, but it had seemed that only the pretty girls got picked.

Mel had been fostered a few times, but none of her foster parents had been able to cope with her challenging behaviour and after a few months she’d been sent back to the care home. Like an unwanted Christmas present, she’d joked. But at least Mel had been given the chance to be part of a family, Beth thought. It had been a salutary lesson to realise that she was being judged by her appearance—and found wanting.

She had reached adulthood firmly believing that she was unattractive. It was just another of life’s disappointments, she’d told herself. Her best attribute was her common sense. But she was ashamed to admit that for a few breathless moments she had been fooled by the look of desire in Cesario’s eyes. A handsome playboy like him was not going to be interested in an unremarkable office cleaner like her, her prosaic mind pointed out.

But maybe he did not care what she looked like. Maybe he just wanted sex with any woman he believed was available—like he had with Mel. Feeling sick at the idea that he might think she was an easy lay, she jerked away from him and folded her arms across her chest to hide her body’s shameful response to his potent masculinity.

‘There is no chance of me ever sharing your bed, so you won’t have to worry about your memory lapses,’ she informed
him, with an icy dignity that was somewhat spoiled by the tremor in her voice. ‘I think you should concentrate on trying to remember the night you spent with Mel—the night I believe your daughter was conceived.’

His eyes gleamed dangerously. She sensed she had angered him, and steeled herself for his caustic retaliation, but the simmering silence was broken by the sound of a baby’s cries.

Her brow wrinkled. ‘How can I hear Sophie when she is in the nursery?’

‘I switched on the baby monitor.’ Cesario nodded towards the device plugged into a wall socket. ‘I always used it when Nicolo was … here.’ He had been about to say
alive,
but the stark reminder that his son was no longer alive caused a shaft of pain inside him. ‘I knew you were tired and I thought if you were deeply asleep you might not hear Sophie if she stirred.’

‘I always hear her, so you needn’t worry.’

Beth stared at Cesario and caught her lower lip with her teeth. She did not know what to make of him. His concern for Sophie was unexpected, and did not fit in with the man she had supposed him to be. A few hours ago he had been unaware that he might have fathered a daughter. But, far from rejecting Sophie, he had made it clear that if she was his child he would take responsibility for her.

But what about
her
? Beth wondered fearfully. What place would she have in Sophie’s life if Cesario decided he wanted the baby to live here at his castle? She wished now that she had not come to Sardinia—wished that she had kept Sophie’s existence a secret. But it was too late for regrets. A DNA test would determine the truth, and if necessary she would fight for her right to be Sophie’s mother—as Mel had wanted.

Another wail from the baby monitor jerked Beth into action. ‘I must go to her,’ she muttered, and hurried from Cesario’s room, thankful to escape his brooding gaze.

What in hell’s name was the matter with him? Cesario asked himself furiously as he stood staring through the doorway long minutes after Beth had fled from him, a fragile wraith in her wispy nightgown that did little to conceal her slender figure. Why had he come on to her like that? No wonder she had looked at him with such wariness in her wide green eyes.

But it had not been fear that had made her tremble for those few moments when he had stood so close to her that he had been aware of the erratic thud of her heart. There had been a fierce, inexplicable connection between them, and he knew she had felt it just as he had. He swore savagely. He had not desired a woman for months. So why was his body burning up for a pale, elfin woman whose reasons for seeking him out were highly suspect?

First thing in the morning he would arrange for the DNA test to be done and determine if the baby that Beth had brought to the castle was his, he decided as he strode into his
en-suite
bathroom and set the shower setting to cold in the hope of cooling his heated flesh. He did not share Beth’s conviction that he had slept with her friend—it seemed unlikely that he had retained no memory of having sex with Melanie Stewart, however drunk he had been.