Bethany could only imagine. ‘Like what?’
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t experienced the same sort of thing. A certain lifestyle to which you conform, more or less, from an early age.’
Bethany thought of her own riotous Irish upbringing, the house always full of friends and family, boyfriends in and out, their two dogs and three cats and the general happy chaos that had made up her formative years. Conforming to anything from an early age was an alien concept.
‘I’m more of a non-conformist,’ she said truthfully. ‘I mean, I’m not a wild child or anything like that, but I was never told that I had to be a certain way or do certain things.’
‘Perhaps things work a little differently in your part of the world,’ Cristiano murmured. ‘Here, in Italy, I have always known what my future held in store for me.’ They had drifted outside into a balmy summer evening.
‘That must have been tough.’
‘Tough? Why?’ He was fascinated by the thought of any woman who could apply the adjective tough to any aspect of his life. Even the richest of women he had dated in the past had been impressed to death by the breadth of his power and privilege. ‘Since when is it tough to have the world at your disposal?’
‘No one has the world at their disposal!’ Bethany laughed, as they began walking slowly towards his car, which he had parked, he had explained, in the only free space at the very end of the long road.
‘You’d be surprised.’
Underneath the lazy, sexy timbre of his voice, she could detect the ruthless patina of a man accustomed to getting exactly what he wanted and she shivered. ‘You just think you have the world at your disposal because everyone around you is primed to agree with everything you say,’ she felt compelled to point out. ‘I think it must be one of the downfalls of having too much money…’
‘Too much money? I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that expression cross a woman’s lips.’ He was privately amused that someone of presumably substantial private means could wax lyrical about the pitfalls of wealth but it was refreshing, for once, to find himself in the company of a woman who seemed to have a social conscience.
Bethany decided that if he was a learning curve for her, then why shouldn’t she be a learning curve for him? What did she have to lose? She guessed instinctively that he wasn’t a man who had much experience when it came to having his opinions questioned. The way he had asked her out to dinner, refused to concede that she might turn him down, indicated someone whose belief in the whole world being at his disposal was absolute.
‘What type of women do you mix with?’ Bethany asked, fascinated beyond belief by the wildly exotic creature looking lazily at her. His eyes were as dark as molasses, fringed by the most ridiculously long lashes imaginable, and the way his dark hair curled against the collar of his shirt, a little too long to be entirely conventional but not so long that he looked unkempt, brought her out in goosebumps.
Cristiano laughed and reached out to curl one finger into a strand of her copper hair. ‘Always brunettes,’ he murmured, ‘although I’m beginning to wonder why. Is this the real colour of your hair?’
‘Of course it is!’ Excitement leapt inside her at his casual touch and her green eyes widened. ‘Not everyone gets their hair colour from a bottle!’
‘But quite a few do.’ Her hair felt like silk between his fingers.
‘So, in other words, you only go out with brunettes who dye their hair?’
‘They tend to have other characteristics aside from the dyed hair.’ He had an insane desire to yank her towards him and do what came naturally. Very unlike him. He reluctantly released the strands of hair and stood back just in case primitive instinct got the better of him. ‘Long legs. Exquisite faces. Right background.’
‘Right background?’
Cristiano shrugged. ‘It’s important,’ he admitted. ‘Life can be stressful enough without the added hassle of wondering whether the woman sharing your bed is more interested in your bank balance than in your company.’
Bethany’s stomach gave a nervous flutter but she was reassured by the fact that she knew she definitely wasn’t after his money. ‘Maybe you’re a little insecure.’
‘A little insecure?’ Cristiano looked at her with rampant incredulity. ‘No. Insecurity has never been a problem for me,’ he told her with satisfaction. ‘And please tell me that you aren’t going to spend the evening trying to analyse me.’
‘Where are we going to eat?’ Bethany changed the subject and when he named a restaurant which was as famous for its inflated prices as it was for the quality of its fare she gazed down at her jeans with dismay. Lesson one in how the super-rich operate. With a complete disregard for social convention. Cristiano clearly couldn’t care less whether she was dressed for an expensive night out or not. He, himself, was casually attired in a pair of dark trousers and a white shirt which would have looked average on any other man on the planet but which looked ridiculously sexy on him.
‘I’d rather not go there in a pair of jeans, flat shoes and a wrap,’ Bethany told him tersely. She also suspected that walking into a place like that on the arm of a man like him would make her the cynosure of all eyes and she had never enjoyed basking in the limelight, particularly now, when the limelight would have a very dubious tinge. And what if he introduced her to someone? The rarefied world of the rich and famous was notoriously small. In Rome, it was probably the size of a tennis ball. She would be revealed for the imposter she was in seconds flat.
‘You look…charming.’
‘Not charming enough to go to that particular restaurant.’ Bethany was feverishly cursing herself, yet again, for having succumbed to his invitation to dinner.
‘Don’t worry. I know the owner. Believe me when I tell you that he won’t mind if I bring along a woman dressed in a bin bag.’
‘Because you can get away with something doesn’t give you the right to go ahead and do it,’ Bethany said, making sense to herself though not to him if his expression of bemusement was anything to go by.
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s important to have respect for other people,’ she told him, repeating the oft held mantra with which she and her sisters had grown up.
Cristiano was looking at her as though she was slowly mutating into a being from another planet and Bethany blushed uncomfortably. She was well aware that she was probably in the process of contravening yet another unspoken dictum of the unbelievably rich, namely that she shouldn’t be blushing like a kid.
‘A socialite with principles,’ he murmured with a slashing smile that made her breath catch in her throat and put paid to all her niggling qualms about what she was doing. ‘I like it. It’s rare in my world to meet a woman who’s prepared to be vocal about her beliefs…’ In truth, the women he went out with generally didn’t give a hoot about what happened outside their own orbits. They were rich, had led, for the most part, pampered lives and their birthright was to accept the adulation of males and the subservience of everyone else.
Not that they would ever have dreamt of setting one foot into Chez Nico unless they were dressed to kill. In actual fact, he doubted whether very many would have dreamt of going anywhere unless dressed to kill because appearance was all.
‘I’m not a socialite,’ Bethany said uncomfortably.
‘No? You just own a monstrously big apartment in the centre of Rome which you use as a holiday pad. You do fundraisers. You’re under thirty. Hate to tell you this, but that pretty much qualifies you as a socialite.’
‘I told you, things don’t work quite that way in…um…where I come from.’
‘And where’s that?’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t have heard of it,’ Bethany told him truthfully. ‘It’s a little place in Ireland…um…in the middle of nowhere…’
‘A little place with a large ancestral manor house, by any chance?’
‘Yes, there’s a large ancestral manor house…’Years ago, she could remember her mother doing a cleanin
g stint there to get some extra cash for Christmas. It was a great grey mansion with turrets and a forbidding, desolate appearance.
‘So you must be half Italian…Which half?’
Bethany gave a self-conscious laugh. ‘Are you always so interested in dinner companions you ask out on the spur of the moment?’
‘No. But, then again, I don’t usually have to drag information out of my dinner companions. It’s a fact that most women love nothing more than talking about themselves.’
‘You mean they try to impress you.’
‘Do you want the truth or shall I treat you to a phoney spectacle of false modesty?’
‘You have a very big ego, don’t you?’
‘I prefer to call it a keen sense of reality.’ Cristiano was enjoying this banter. He had had to work to get her to this place, on a date with him and, having got her here, was discovering her to be skittish and unpredictable company. It made a change from the doe-eyed beauties who were always eager to oblige his every whim. ‘Don’t you feel the need to impress me?’ he murmured, his words cloaked in a languorous, sexy intimacy that sent shivers racing up and down her spine.
‘Why should I?’ A frisson of danger rippled through her. This was no simple, exciting night out with a stranger. She felt as though he was walking round her soul, opening doors she hadn’t known existed.
‘Because I feel the weirdest desire to impress you.’ He also had the weirdest desire to find out more about her. Weird because getting to know her had not been remotely on the agenda when he had asked her out to dinner. He had seen her, had been curiously attracted to her, had thought nothing of entertaining himself with a one-night stand. It wasn’t usually his scene but, then again, he would have been a complete hypocrite if he had tried to dredge up a bunch of reasons why he should not indulge in a night of passion with a woman he would probably never see again. It wasn’t as though his goal in life, thus far, was to recruit a love interest for a permanent place in his life.
‘Why don’t you tell me what it would take…?’
His voice was like a caress, as was the lazy, amused, speculative expression in his eyes, although she noticed that he was keeping his distance, half leaning against the door, his long legs eating into the free space between them. She had not started the evening in the anticipation that it would end up in bed and had he tried to invade her space she would have pulled back at a rate of knots, but there was something wildly erotic about his self-restraint. It was a sobering thought to know that he would probably be repelled had he known her modest background. He might consider himself a man of the world, and he undoubtedly was a man of the world, a sleek, highly groomed, fantastically sophisticated animal who was the master of all he surveyed. Except there was quite a bit that he didn’t survey, wasn’t there?
‘We could walk…’ she said. ‘Rome is full of so many exciting, wonderful sights. And then we could go somewhere simple and cheerful to eat. A pizzeria. I happen to know an excellent one not a million miles away from the Colosseum.’
‘Sure. Why not? I haven’t eaten in that part of the city since I was a teenager. In fact, I think I know the place you’re talking about. Red and white striped awning outside? Dark interior? Empty wine bottles on the tables with candles, sixties style? Overweight proprietor with a handlebar moustache?’
‘He must have lost weight over the years—’ Bethany laughed ‘—but the moustache is still there. You used to go there? With your friends?’
‘Before real life took over,’ Cristiano said wryly.
‘What do you mean by real life?’
‘University and then stepping into my father’s shoes. Pizzerias don’t have much of a role to play in the life of an empire-builder.’ He grinned, enjoying her forthright manner. It was refreshing to meet a woman so upfront. Those games women played could get a little tiresome after a while.
‘So now you only go to fancy restaurants.’
‘Where pizza is never on the menu.’
‘Poor Cristiano.’ Bethany laughed and their eyes tangled. She felt a rush of blood to her head because she could sense the sexual invitation in his slumberous, amused dark gaze.
‘I know—’ he sighed piteously, his eyes never leaving her face for a second ‘—condemned to a life without pizzas. No wonder you feel sorry for me. Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll do the pizza but I’ll pass on the scenic walking. Enrico is paid far too much, as I keep telling him. What’s the point of paying someone for doing nothing?’
‘Who’s Enrico?’
‘My mother’s driver, of course. Don’t tell me you don’t have one in London.’
‘Several,’ Bethany said, thinking of the numerous bus drivers who serviced the buses between her flat and the university.
‘Good. Then that’s settled.’
Bethany felt like a princess as she slid into the back seat of the sleek black Mercedes. A princess whose clothes didn’t quite match the luxurious leather and gleaming walnut of the car, but what the heck? She had to restrain herself from running her hands along the seat. Presumably she would be accustomed to these levels of mega-luxury.
Seen from this angle, through the windows of a car that drew glances and had people swivelling around to try and glimpse who was inside, the city felt like her possession. No wonder that sense of ownership sat on this man’s shoulders like an invisible mantle! Fifteen minutes in his car and she was already beginning to feel like royalty!
Even when they were installed at a table at the back of the buzzing, lively pizzeria, she was still hyper-sensitive to the reality that women were still sneaking sidelong glances at them, trying to figure out who the sexy guy was and his much drabber companion. Cristiano appeared to notice none of it.
He was busily delivering his verdict on the lack of changes to the pizzeria since he had last been there, which was nearly two decades ago, and she contented herself with arguing with everything he said, finally concluding that he was a snob for daring to inform her that the least the proprietor could have done was change the dated gingham tablecloths which loudly proclaimed a stubborn refusal to move with the times.
‘Me? A snob?’ He had been pleasantly invigorated by her arguing, because women didn’t argue with him, and was now vastly amused at her one word summary of his character. She was laughing when she said it, her crystal clear green eyes throwing out all sorts of invitations that had him aching for her.
‘Yes, you!’ A bottle of wine had been brought for them and she had already finished one glass. ‘Loads of people flock to this place because the food is simple and hearty and very, very good…’
‘And would be improved by a shake up in the decor…’
‘You like white linen and fawning waiters, but that doesn’t mean that everyone shares your taste…’
‘But most would, given half the chance.’
‘I happen to prefer the rustic ambience…’
‘How rustic? I’m sure I recognise a couple of those wine bottles stuffed with candles from when I was last here a hundred years ago.’
‘I’m having dinner with an old man!’ Bethany groaned in mock despair while he refilled her glass with some more wine and grinned in open appreciation of her teasing.
‘You’d be surprised at what this old man is still capable of doing,’ Cristiano intoned softly, the smile still playing on his lips as he savoured her flushed face with indolent thoroughness.
‘Such as…?’ Bethany questioned breathlessly. Her skin prickled and she felt quite unlike herself, as if she had stepped into another life, one where the normal rules of behaviour didn’t apply. Which, she admitted to herself, she had. Kind of.
‘Oh, running a business empire that has branches in most major cities in the world. Takes a lot of stamina to do that. Then there are my sporting interests. The usual gym routine, not to mention skiing, polo and very vigorous games of squash once a week.’
‘Yes, that is impressive for a geriatric…’ she said nonchal-antly—at least she was aiming for nonchalance;
inside, she was anything but as she experienced a sexual longing she had never felt before with any man. Nor had she ever indulged in sexual banter before. In fact, she had never indulged in sexual anything—at least nothing beyond kissing and the occasional groping. She had never seen the point of tossing her virginity out of the window for no better reason than because everyone else her age had done it. The temptation to do so now, with this man, curled inside her and made her feel as if she was no longer in complete possession of her own body.
‘Then there’s the sex…’ His eyes never left hers. ‘I’ve never had any complaints…’
‘Aargh…’ Colour flamed into her cheeks and she nervously grabbed her glass of wine and downed the contents. ‘We were talking about the fact that you’re a snob…’ she reminded him shakily and he lowered his eyes, obliging her with a tactical retreat.
‘And I was protesting my innocence of any such thing. A less snobbish person it would be hard to find!’ he declared.
Bethany’s nervous system settled a little now that she wasn’t skewered by the naked hunger in his fabulous eyes, which he had made no attempt to conceal.
‘Okay. So do you ever go anywhere inexpensive to eat?’
‘You mean like one of those disgusting fast food places where people eat reconstituted meat drowning in sauce? No.’
‘Cinema?’
Cristiano frowned. ‘Not recently,’ he admitted, surprised to find that it had been literally years since he had been inside one. Surely the last time couldn’t have been at university?
‘But you do go to the theatre? The opera?’
‘Okay.’ He held both hands up in surrender. ‘I’m a crashing snob.’ Their food had been brought to them and he hadn’t even noticed. Nor had she. In fact, although the big bowl of pasta smelled amazing, the food still seemed like an unwelcome intrusion into a conversation that was unexpectedly energising.
‘But, on a serious note—’ he tucked in to the spaghetti, which was nothing like the dainty little portions served in expensive restaurants, usually as an accompaniment to the main dish, but a massively generous helping liberally covered in the finest seafood sauce he had tasted in a long time ‘—are you telling me that it isn’t easy for you to be a feisty left wing radical when you have the comfort of money to support your ideals?’
The Italian's One-Night Love-Child Page 3
