‘You mean back home before the stroke of midnight when you revert to being a pumpkin?’
Bethany went bright red. She honestly couldn’t say what had propelled her to accept the dinner invitation, but there was a trail of treacherous excitement curling inside her, starting at the tips of her toes, going right through her body to her dazed green eyes, which were locked onto his face with nervous fascination. Not even his quip about the pumpkin and midnight could wrench her from her foolhardy fascination and she was still feeling shell-shocked after he had gone.
It was only when she caught sight of herself in the floor to ceiling mirror in the bedroom that reality assaulted her with merciless clarity and she dialled Amy on her mobile phone.
She had to contain an impatient moan of pure frustration as Amy’s excitable voice greeted her on the other end of the line with an enthusiastic rundown of her latest conquest and the fabulous Florentine sights, which they had yet to see because the bed was proving too alluring.
Bethany waited until she had run out of steam and then said hesitantly, ‘Little problem on this end.’ The floaty dress was still in evidence, witness to her moment of madness.
‘Oh, God! Tell me the apartment hasn’t burnt down!’
‘Still in one piece. But there’s been a visitor…and here’s the thing…’ The dress, which had seemed so temptingly beautiful, now stared balefully back at her from the mirror as she proceeded to tell her friend what had recently transpired. She kept getting muddled up because, in her head, all she could see was the stranger’s lean, dark, outrageously sexy face looking at her in a way that was both intrusive and scarily exciting and nothing at all like the way other boys back home had ever looked at her.
‘So you’re going out with him for dinner…Oh, God, let me think…okay, okay…might be for the best…’
‘Because…?’
Half an hour later, Bethany removed the offending dress, laid it on the bed because it would have to be dry-cleaned in the morning, and thought that there was a lot of truth about webs and lies and getting entangled. Catrina, the original house-sitter and cherished godchild of the hapless Amelia Doni, who was on a cruise a thousand miles away from Rome, was in London. In rehab. Very hush-hush, and all hell would break loose should loaded and doting godmother find out. So the task of house-sitting had fallen to Amy, with a code red level of secrecy but, Amy being Amy, Love had reared its head and her house-sitting mission had fallen quickly by the wayside. Thankfully, Bethany had been there,
ever reliable and immune to being led astray. The sort of girl who enjoyed reading Italian books at night and thought that three glasses of wine qualified as a binge-drinking fest.
Now, as she stared down at the dress on the bed, Bethany wondered what had happened to Little Miss Reliability. The most daring thing she had done in ages had been to try that wretched dress on because yes, she really
did
enjoy curling up with a good book most nights and sometimes she even fulfilled that dreariest of clichés by curling up with a good book
and
a mug of hot chocolate.
But now she had accepted a dinner invitation from a guy who was sinfully sexy
and
ultra-sophisticated. Moreover, it was just going to be a one-night affair, and if,
for once
, she acted out of character, if she behaved like the kind of person who might conceivably have a holiday apartment dripping with designer clothes, the kind of woman who thought nothing of hanging around in a dress that cost a small fortune, then why not? She would be helping Amy out because no one, but
no one,
could get a
whiff
of Catrina drying out in a clinic in the UK and the
last thing
anyone needed was for some connected Italian guy to start asking questions.
Bethany felt a kick of excitement stir inside her. Of course, whatever she wore that night she would have dry-cleaned. She wasn’t
that irresponsible
. She was just going to have a couple of hours of fun…no harm there…
‘S
O
…
TELL
me about yourself…’
It was an inevitable question but it still made Bethany’s nerves jangle because after the initial crazy euphoria of wondering what it would be like to step into someone else’s shoes for a night had come the shattering reality that she was, in actual fact, going to spend a few hours in the company of a sex god under false pretences. Between Cristiano’s departure from the apartment and the sound of his voice four hours later on the intercom when he arrived to collect her, she had had ample time to concede that a man like him—sleek, sophisticated, extraordinarily handsome—would never have looked at a girl like her under normal circumstances. In fact, they would never even have
met
under normal circumstances.
Bethany, who had managed to fall back on most of her own clothes because leaving the house in someone else’s wardrobe seemed a bit rich, all things considered, wondered how best to answer his question.
She finally settled on a vague, nonsensical answer along the lines of being a
free spirit.
‘What does that mean?’ Cristiano looked across at her. She intrigued him and he had found himself looking forward
to their dinner more than he had looked forward to any date with a woman in a long time. Nor had she disappointed. When the elevator doors had pinged open and she had walked across the marbled foyer towards him, he had literally been stopped in his tracks. She might have had all the money she wanted at her disposal, but she had foregone the diamonds and pearls, the little black dress that screamed
designer
and the killer stilettos, and instead had dressed down in a pair of jeans and some flat tan loafers with a pale blue wrap over her shoulders. Cristiano liked it. It took a confident woman to go for comfort and it took a sexy one to pull it off.
‘What does that
mean
?’ Bethany’s natural warmth came out in her smile. Now that she was talking and not just gawping like a star-struck teenager, she could begin to relax a little and to enjoy the stolen moment in time. ‘You sound like someone who’s spent a lifetime living in a bubble.’
‘Living in a bubble…’ Cristiano looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I suppose I
did
grow up in a bubble of sorts. Coming from a privileged background can have that effect. You’re naturally supposed to do certain things…’
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 cleaning 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.