When she shook her head, he said softly, ‘Did I tell you how beautiful you look tonight?’
‘Several times.’ She smiled, but her voice shook slightly and she caught her breath as he reached out and idly wound a lock of her long hair around his finger. The gleam in his gaze sent a tremor through her, and she closed her eyes for a moment while she sought to fight her fierce awareness of him.
‘I came to return the necklace, but the clasp seems to be stuck.’
‘Turn around and lift up your hair.’
She did as he bade, standing rigidly as his fingers brushed lightly against her neck. His warm breath whispered across her skin, and she trembled when he bent his head and pressed his lips to the sensitive place behind her ear. The silence was so intense that she was sure he must hear the frantic thud of her heart. She sensed he was waiting for a sign from her, that if she turned her head a fraction towards him his restraint would shatter and he would seize her in his arms and plunder her mouth with a primitive hunger that could only have one outcome.
Dear heaven, the temptation to give in to the molten desire flooding through her veins was so strong. Her heart missed a beat when he slid the strap of her dress a little way down her arm and trailed his lips over her shoulder. She knew he could see the swollen peaks of her nipples jutting against the clingy silk of her dress, and she imagined him peeling the material away and cupping her breasts in his hands.
She bit her lip. Was this how he had tempted Mel into his bed—with the practised ease of a skilled seducer? What would happen if she gave in to the desperate clamour of her desire? And afterwards? Would he treat her with the same callous disregard with which he had treated Mel?
She recalled Allegra Ricci’s warning. ‘As ruthless as his barbarian ancestors…Poor Raffaella…Banished her from his castle and refused to allow her to see their son…’
He released the clasp and caught the necklace as it slipped from around her throat. She lowered her hands so that her hair tumbled down her back and quickly stepped away from him.
Her eyes fell on a photograph on his desk, and with a shaking hand she picked it up.
‘Your son?’ The resemblance to Cesario was obvious, even though the little boy in the picture was just a toddler. With a mass of unruly black curls, striking grey eyes fringed by long lashes and a happy grin, the child was enchanting.
‘Yes.’ Cesario’s voice was suddenly terse. He drained the brandy in his glass and glanced briefly at the photo. ‘That’s Nicolo.’
A second photo was of Nicolo and a dark haired woman. Beth stared at her, certain from the expression of fierce adoration in the woman’s eyes as she looked at the child that she was Raffaella. ‘Your wife was very beautiful.’
‘Yes, I suppose she was.’ His indifference was chilling.
Beth swallowed, compelled to try to unlock the secrets of his past. ‘You told me that you didn’t love her. If that was so, why did you marry her?’
He turned his head and fixed her with a narrow stare. As the seconds ticked by she was sure she had overstepped an invisible boundary, that she had been too intrusive and he would refuse to answer. He reached for the bottle of brandy, refilled his glass and downed half its contents in one swallow.
‘It was a business arrangement—a merger between our two families, Piras and Cossu, which resulted in the formation of the largest and most successful private bank in Italy. I was brought up to believe that power is everything,’ he said harshly, when he saw her shocked expression. ‘Marriage to Raffaella Cossu was an opportunity that I knew would give me a level of power even my father would find impressive.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘In my arrogance I did not understand that everything comes at a price. I was taught by my father that emotions are a weakness and love is a failing—something that afflicts lesser men but never a Piras.’
Cesario took another swig of his drink and felt the burn of fiery heat at the back of his throat. He knew from experience that temporary oblivion from the demons which haunted him could be found in a bottle of spirits. There had been times since Nicolo’s death when the only way he’d been able to cope with his grief had been to seek solace in alcohol. He had never revealed his pain. Not even to his closest friends. Old habits die hard, he thought grimly. The lessons from his childhood were deeply ingrained.
But tonight, for the first time since he was a small boy, he could not control his emotions. Something was building inside him: a need, almost a desperation to voice his feelings and release the pain that scourged his soul. It was Beth, he thought savagely. She had cast a spell on him with her slanting green eyes and made him feel things he did not want to feel. But her inherent gentleness was something he had never experienced before. He had witnessed her compassion, and he sensed that if he told her about Nicolo she would not judge him.
‘Was Raffaella in love with you?’ she asked softly, intuitively.
It was time to be honest and face up to the mistakes of his past. ‘Perhaps,’ he acknowledged heavily, ‘in the early days of our marriage. But at the time I did not know it. She never spoke of her feelings, and it suited me to assume she was content with the relationship we had, based on friendship and respect. Love was an alien emotion to me—something I had been taught to deride. I did not know that I was capable of feeling it until I held my newborn son for the first time and finally understood that there is no greater power than love.’
He drained his glass and moved to the window to stare out at the crescent moon, suspended like a silver sickle against the black sky. ‘I would have died for Nicolo,’ he said roughly. ‘He was my purpose in life, my reason for being, and nothing else mattered—not power or wealth, not the bank. I loved my boy beyond reason. What I failed to understand was that Raffaella loved Nicolo just as deeply.’
‘Allegra Ricci said that you sent Raffaella away and refused to allow her to see Nicolo.’
‘That’s not true. Raffaella had an affair and wanted to leave me for her lover. I can’t blame her. I couldn’t give her the marriage she wanted or deserved,’ Cesario admitted grimly. ‘But I couldn’t let her take our son. The idea of living apart from him, of being sidelined in his life while another man took on the role of father to him, tore me apart. I was willing to share custody. I had been separated from my own mother at a young age, and I considered it vital that Nicolo spent an equal amount of time with his mother as with me. However, I felt it was better for his main home to be the Castello del Falco. Raffaella didn’t agree, and was desperate for him to live with her. Our relationship disintegrated and the rows grew more acrimonious.’
Cesario’s voice rasped in his throat. ‘After a particularly bad confrontation Raffaella snatched Nicolo and fled with him. It had been raining, and she probably drove too fast.’ He delivered the words in a tightly controlled monotone. ‘I heard the crash—it’s a sound that still haunts my dreams. I guessed what had happened. As I ran, I prayed I was wrong. But my worst fears became a nightmare when I saw that the car had skidded off the road and ploughed down the side of the mountain.’
He heard Beth draw a sharp breath, but now that he had opened the floodgates the words kept on coming in an unstoppable tide. ‘I managed to climb down, hanging onto rocks, tree roots. The car had flipped over and landed on its roof. I saw instantly that Raffaella was dead, but Nicolo…I prayed he was still alive.’
‘Dear God,’ Beth whispered. She wanted to walk over to Cesario and take his hand, offer him what comfort she could. But something told her he needed to relive his agonising memories, that this was perhaps the first time since the accident that he had talked about what had happened that day.
‘I had to smash the window with my bare hands to get him out. I didn’t even feel the broken glass slice open my face.’ He ran his hand over his scar and his voice dropped to a harsh whisper, as if his throat had been scraped raw with sandpaper. ‘I was like a madman. I was frantic to save my boy, to hold him in my arms and see his smile, to hear him call me Papà. But he had gone.’ His voice shook. ‘My son was dead.’
Tears