He strode out of the front door, but paused on the steps and glanced back impatiently at Beth. ‘We need to leave.’ He skimmed his eyes over her and added in an amused voice, ‘I see you’ve dressed to audition for a role in The Sound of Music.’
Beth felt a spurt of temper which made her forget her worries about flying. She was well aware that her black skirt was too long and the grey tee shirt too drab. She did not need him to remind her that she was a non-starter in the fashion stakes. ‘I don’t own many clothes,’ she snapped, as she followed him across the courtyard to where the helicopter was waiting.
‘That is something else we will take care of while we are in Rome,’ he murmured obliquely.
There was no chance for her to ask him what he meant while the pilot helped her climb into the helicopter and instructed her to fasten her seat belt. She glanced around the luxurious cabin, at the cream leather seats and polished walnut fitments, including a small drinks bar, and ruefully compared it to the cramped economy seats on the budget airline plane she had flown on to Sardinia. Nothing emphasised Cesario’s billionaire status more acutely than this private helicopter. She did not belong in his rarefied world of the super-rich, she acknowledged heavily. But if Sophie was his child she would have no right to deny the little girl the privileged life Cesario could give her.
Her heart was in her mouth when the helicopter took off, and she closed her eyes so that she could not see the ground growing farther and farther away.
‘Try to relax,’ Cesario said softly, no hint of teasing in his deep voice. He curled his big hand over hers. ‘If you look to your right you can see Lake Cedrino, and over there that high peak is Monte Corrasi, one of the highest mountains in Sardinia.’
The view was breathtaking, Beth discovered, when she warily lifted her lashes. Cesario continued to point out various places of interest and her tension gradually eased—although she was not as relaxed as Sophie, who had fallen asleep in her baby seat.
Soon they were flying over the coast and across the sea towards mainland Italy. ‘We should be in Rome in twenty minutes,’ Cesario told her after a while. ‘We’ll go straight to my apartment. I’ve arranged for a representative from the clinic to meet us there, so that he can take mouth swabs for the DNA test.’
‘I don’t see why it was necessary for me and Sophie to come with you.’ Beth had been puzzling over his decision for most of the flight. ‘Couldn’t you have arranged for the person from the clinic to have flown to the castle?’
‘I could have done. But I have another reason for bringing you to Rome.’ At her enquiring look he continued, ‘I have tickets for the ballet. The Teatro dell’Opera di Roma orchestra and ballet company are putting on a production of Romeo and Juliet. Tonight is the opening night and I thought you might like to come with me.’
‘I’ve never been to the ballet—I’ve only ever watched it on TV.’ Beth quickly quashed her spurt of excitement. ‘But if you have already booked the tickets surely you must have planned to take someone else? You can’t disappoint your.’ she hesitated, wondering about the identity of the other person ‘.friend by taking me instead.’
Cesario shrugged. ‘My guest can no longer come, so her ticket is available. It would be a shame to waste it.’
‘I see.’ An inexplicable feeling of jealousy seared Beth’s insides as she guessed that Cesario had intended to take his mistress to the ballet. No doubt the woman was gorgeous and sophisticated, as suited Italy’s most eligible billionaire banker. ‘I’d better not come,’ she said stiffly. ‘It might make things awkward between you and your girlfriend.’
Cesario heard the disappointment in her voice and was tempted to shake her—or kiss her. Kissing her was definitely the preferable option, he acknowledged as his gaze lingered on her soft pink mouth.
‘I don’t have a current girlfriend. I bought the ticket for my PA, as a thank-you for the hard work she does for me, but something has come up and she is no longer free tonight.’
It was only a little white lie, Cesario assured himself. He was not going to admit that, after Beth had told him last night about how she had longed for ballet lessons when she was a child, he had phoned one of his contacts and told him to get hold of tickets for tonight’s performance, whatever the cost.
Cesario was searching for something in his briefcase, but Beth had the strangest feeling that he was avoiding looking at her. ‘Come with me tonight if you want to,’ he said casually. ‘I thought you said you liked ballet. But if you’re not interested.’
‘Oh, I am. I’d love to come.’ Another thought struck Beth. ‘But what about Sophie? I can’t leave her, and I’m sure babies aren’t welcome at the opera house.’
‘Don’t worry. Everything is arranged. Sophie will be well cared for while we are out.’
While they had been talking the helicopter had flown over the city, and now it began to descend towards a helipad on the roof of a high-rise building. Beth’s nervousness returned, and she was so intent on gripping her seat that she could barely hear Cesario’s assurance, or question why he had arranged a babysitter before he had known she was to accompany him to the theatre.
The helicopter landed on the roof of the Piras-Cossu Bank’s head offices in the business district of Rome. Beth had a fleeting impression of grey-carpeted corridors, plush offices and lots of tinted glass, before a lift swept them to the ground floor, where they crossed a marble foyer and stepped outside to climb into a waiting limousine.
Cesario’s apartment overlooked a piazza called the Campo de’ Fiori, which he explained meant field of flowers, where a busy market selling fruit, vegetables and flowers operated every morning. The outside of the apartment block was a beautiful historic building, but to Beth’s surprise inside the penthouse flat was modern and starkly minimalist, with white marble floors, white walls and furnishings.
‘Your city home is very different to the castle,’ she commented, privately thinking that the apartment seemed as sterile and unwelcoming as a clinic.
‘It’s not to my taste. My wife chose the décor. Raffaella disliked the castle and preferred to spend her time in Rome, but for me the flat is simply somewhere to stay when I need to be at the bank. I’ve never bothered to have it redecorated.’
Cesario had carried Sophie up from the car, but now he gave her to Beth before ushering her into the lounge. Two men were waiting there, and after speaking to them in Italian Cesario introduced the younger man as a representative from a paternity testing clinic, while the older, white-haired man, he explained, was a doctor.
‘Obtaining a DNA sample is done by taking a mouth swab and is absolutely painless,’ the clinic rep assured Beth. ‘I will take a sample from Signor Piras first, and then from the child.’
Sophie seemed quite unconcerned, and the test was performed in minutes. But Beth felt tense as the sample was taken which would prove whether or not Cesario was Sophie’s father. If he wasn’t, then she would take Mel’s baby daughter back to Hackney, to the cramped flat in the run-down tower block. She would manage, she told herself. Hopefully she’d find a better-paid job which would enable her to afford somewhere nicer for them to live. But it was unlikely she would ever see Cesario again.
The thought hurt more than it should. Why should she care? she wondered despairingly. He was all but a stranger—a wealthy playboy whose world was so different from hers that they might as well live on different planets. She stole a glance at him and felt an ache inside as she drank in his hard, handsome features, and the cruel scar running down his cheek that gave him the faintest air of vulnerability and proved he was made of flesh and blood, not carved from granite. He was the only man to have kissed her with fierce passion and awoken her desires, to have made her long for him to possess her body and take her to the heights of sexual fulfilment.
Her heart leapt when he turned his head and trapped her gaze, his expression speculative as he watched the streaks of colour wing along her cheekbones.
‘You