girl,’ she whispered. ‘At least I had my mother until I was twelve. Sophie will never know either of her parents, and I am the only person she has to take care of her.’
‘That’s not true.’
Cesario jerked to his feet and walked over to the window, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets and his shoulders rigid with tension. ‘You could stay here—you and Sophie. And I could…’
To Beth’s frustration he did not finish the sentence. She stared at his back, wishing he would turn around so that she could see his face and maybe understand what he meant.
‘What could you do?’ she said at last, when the silence between them had stretched her nerves to snapping point. ‘I don’t understand. Sophie is not your child—so I’ll take her back to England and make a life for us.’
‘What kind of life can you give her, struggling to get by as a single mother and trying to juggle holding down a job with bringing up a child?’ Cesario demanded. He swung round. ‘I care for Sophie.’ It was so alien to him to express his feelings, but when Beth had said she planned to return to England it had struck him forcibly that he did not want to lose her or the baby girl who had filled the hole in his heart left by the loss of his son.
‘I could pay—’
‘No!’ Beth cut him off instantly.
‘For Sophie to have ballet lessons, holidays—all the things you wished for when you were a child and that you won’t be able to afford to give her on your own.’ He ignored her interruption. ‘Is your pride more important than Sophie’s welfare, Beth?’
‘No, but…’ She shook her head, trying to marshal her thoughts. ‘You don’t have to support me and Sophie. We are nothing to you.’
‘You know that’s not true. I have grown to love Sophie.’
Cesario felt like a blind man, trying to feel his way along a path he’d never travelled before. It was hard for him to expose his feelings, but at least talking about Sophie was easier than facing up to how he felt about Beth. He didn’t know how he felt; he just knew that he had found something with her that he’d never had with any other woman—and he wasn’t ready for their relationship to end.
‘What I’m suggesting is that I become Sophie’s joint guardian and that the two of you live here at the castle. I am a father without a child, and Sophie is a child without a father,’ he said deeply. ‘I want to be a part of her life.’
Beth stared at him, shaken by the strength of emotion in his voice. ‘What about me? You can’t mean you want me to stay here? But I will never leave Sophie. I intend to be a mother to her like I promised Mel.’
‘Why shouldn’t you stay here?’
Cesario strolled back over to the bed where Beth was still sitting. He no longer seemed tense, but beneath his indolent stance she sensed his formidable strength and a determined purpose that worried her almost as much as the glitter in his grey eyes. Her heart suddenly began to beat uncomfortably fast and she jumped up from the bed. She felt an urge to run from the room, from him, but before she could take a step he snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her against him.
‘Why not stay?’ he said again, his gaze locked with hers as if he could see into her soul. His voice dropped to a husky growl. ‘The passion we share is beyond anything I have ever experienced before. We both felt an overwhelming awareness of each other on the night you arrived at the castle and even though we both fought it ultimately we could not deny our mutual desire.’
He lifted a hand and smoothed her hair back from her face. ‘We have become friends as well as lovers these past weeks, haven’t we, cara?’ he murmured. ‘We both love Sophie. Let me take care of both of you and help you to give her the happy childhood that we were both denied.’
A hundred questions hurtled around Beth’s mind. How long did he want her and Sophie to stay at the Castello del Falco? Was he really offering the baby a home in Sardinia? What would his role in Sophie’s life actually be—a father figure, a benevolent uncle? She gnawed on her lip, tormented by uncertainty. What role would he expect her to play in his life? They were lovers now, but what would happen in the future when he tired of her as he surely would?
She sensed he was waiting for her to answer, but she was finding it hard to think straight when she was desperately conscious of his big, muscular body pressed so close to hers that she could feel the hard ridge of his arousal nudging between her thighs.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she whispered.
Cesario cupped her face in his hands. She had such a beautiful face. Even when he closed his eyes her features were imprinted on his mind: her slanting green eyes, the sweep of her long eyelashes, the gentle curve of her smile. He felt a rush of tenderness that seriously undermined his determination to cling to the belief that the reason he wanted Beth to stay with him was because they had great sex.
‘Do what your heart tells you,’ he found himself saying. He—who always followed his head and never listened to his heart. He slanted his lips over hers and kissed her, slowly and sweetly, making him ache inside. She opened her mouth beneath his and he groaned and crushed her to him, sliding his hand to her nape and gently tugging her head back so that he could plunder her lips with heated passion. He was aware that his heart was telling him something, but he was afraid to listen. He told himself that it was just desire he felt for her—just a sexual hunger that had ensnared him and seemed unlikely to fade any time soon.
He hooked his fingers beneath the straps of her top and dragged them down until her breasts spilled into his hands. Tenderly, almost reverently, he caressed the small rounded globes, and then he lifted her up so that he could take first one taut nipple and then its twin into his mouth, suckling her until she gasped his name.
Beth gave up trying to fight her need for Cesario to make love to her. This was where she wanted to be, in his arms, with his hands feverishly stripping them both of their clothes. He tumbled her down onto the bed and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him down onto her and loving the feel of his naked skin on hers, the roughness of his chest hairs against the softness of her breasts.
He slid his hand between her legs and found her already wet and eager for him. Her soft smile shattered any hope he had of a slow, leisurely loving, and he slanted his mouth over hers at the same moment as he eased the swollen length of his arousal into the welcoming heat of her femininity.
He took her fast and hard, and yet with such tender consideration that Beth felt tears sting her eyes as she reached that magical place and her body convulsed in the throes of an exquisite climax. Cesario came almost simultaneously, unable to control the wildfire pleasure that he always experienced with Beth.
Afterwards they lay together in a tangle of limbs while their breathing gradually returned to normal. He propped himself up on one elbow and smiled at the sight of her flushed cheeks and softly swollen mouth.
‘So you’ll stay.’
It was a statement rather than a question, as if there had never been any doubt. But as Beth watched him stand up from the bed and stroll into the en-suite bathroom the reality of the situation caused a host of doubts to gather like black clouds in her mind. They hadn’t discussed the practicalities of her and Sophie living at the castle, but the more she thought about it the more pitfalls she could see.
‘I’ll need to find a job,’ she said when he walked back into the bedroom five minutes later, rubbing his wet hair on a towel. ‘I’m grateful for your offer to help support Sophie financially, but I’m responsible for her myself and I can’t allow you to keep me for.’ She hesitated. ‘Well, for however long I’m here.’ she finished uncertainly.
The idea of living on hand-outs from Cesario was abhorrent to her pride. She had grown up in the children’s home, hating the feeling that she was reliant on charity, and since she’d left school she had always worked to support herself. She would have to take a crash course in Italian, she fretted,