but Beth sensed he was angry.
‘Nothing,’ she whispered. ‘It’s obviously all been a huge mistake.’
She could not bear the hard look in his eyes when only a few minutes ago—before he’d had the call from the clinic—he had looked at her as if. as if he cared for her a little. She swallowed. Stupid thought. Of course he didn’t care for her; he simply enjoyed having sex with her. But now there was no reason for her to remain at the castle. Their affair would end, she would take Sophie back to East London, and within a short time Cesario would no doubt forget that either of them existed.
‘I don’t believe Mel lied,’ she said fiercely. ‘She was my best friend and we were always honest with each other. I don’t understand why she was so sure you were the father of her baby.’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve always found it difficult to believe that I could have spent the night with a woman and have no memory at all of her. Now I know I didn’t sleep with Melanie Stewart. The results are indisputable. They show probability of my paternity to be nought percent—meaning it is one hundred percent certain that Sophie is not my child.’
The words settled like lead weights in Cesario’s chest. He did not have a daughter. The angelic little girl who was sleeping peacefully in the cot, blissfully unaware of the furore surrounding her, was not his.
He walked back across the room and stared down at Sophie. Beth was right; she had grown in the past two weeks. She was lying with her arms outstretched, the tiny fingers on one hand curled around the silk ribbon attached to her favourite teddy. Her pink cheeks were petal soft and her mass of dark hair still reminded him of Nicolo, even though he now knew that any resemblance between her and his son had been purely in his imagination.
Dio, he hadn’t expected to feel so gutted that she wasn’t his, he thought painfully. Sweet little Sophie, with her button-round eyes and gummy smile, was adorable. Only a person with a heart of stone could not love her—and he had discovered recently that his heart had the consistency of a marshmallow, he acknowledged derisively.
How vulnerable she was, this tiny child who would never know her real father or mother. She had a guardian, of course. He knew Beth loved Sophie. But Beth lived in a run-down tower block in a part of London where crime and drug dealing were rife. It was no place to bring up a child.
He could not allow them to go back there, Cesario thought adamantly. Sophie had slipped into his heart and helped ease the pain of losing his son. He wanted to protect her—and Beth too, he admitted. He hated the thought of her scraping a living and struggling to bring up her friend’s child on her own.
He would give her money, he brooded. He would set up a fund for Sophie and buy a house in England so that Beth could care for the baby in pleasant and safe surroundings. Although, knowing her stubborn pride, he would have his work cut out to persuade her to accept financial help from him, he thought ruefully.
There was no need for him to do more than offer his assistance. The child and her guardian were not his responsibility. So why did he hate the thought of Beth and Sophie leaving the castle? Why did he feel, Cesario thought savagely, that his heart had been torn from his chest and the happiness he’d felt these past few weeks was trickling away as fast as sand in an egg-timer?
AN HOUR later, Cesario found Beth in the master bedroom that they had shared since they had become lovers. She did not glance at him as he walked into the room, but continued to fold items of clothing and place them in her suitcase.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Packing, of course.’ Her tone suggested it was a perfectly reasonable activity. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to take a few of the things you bought me as I no longer have any of my own clothes. But I’ll reimburse you for them as soon as I find a job back in England.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t want you to pay for them.’ He frowned as the meaning of her words sank in. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’
She still avoided looking at him, and in frustration he spun her round and slid his hand beneath her chin to force her to meet his gaze. The shimmer of tears in her eyes made his insides clench. ‘You’re upset.’
‘Of course I’m upset that Sophie doesn’t have a father.’ She swallowed. ‘You would have been a wonderful daddy to her. But now she’ll grow up without a father, just as I did.’
Cesario’s enigmatic expression gave away nothing of his thoughts, but Beth could guess what was going on behind his cool grey stare and she hated the idea that he was judging her.
‘I know what you must be thinking,’ she cried wildly. ‘You think I brought Sophie to Sardinia to try and get money out of you. But I swear I only came because I believed Mel and I thought—if there was a chance that she was yours—Sophie deserved to know the identity of her father.’
‘I know that.’ His quiet statement stopped her in her tracks.
She stared at him uncertainly. ‘You don’t think I tried to con you because you’re wealthy?’
‘No.’ There was no doubt in his mind. ‘I’ve said before that I think you are utterly incapable of lying, cara.’
‘But…in the nursery you looked angry.’
‘I’m disappointed that Sophie isn’t mine,’ he admitted roughly. ‘I’m not good at showing my feelings—it’s not something I was ever encouraged to do.’ He sighed. ‘I think I understand the reason for the confusion. Did Mel actually show you the newspaper photo she said she’d recognised me from?’
Beth shook her head. ‘No. When I visited her in hospital she was excited that she had discovered who Sophie’s father was, but the cleaning staff had taken the paper away and I never saw it. But I believe Mel did see a photo,’ she insisted.
‘So do I—which is why I asked the PR department at Piras-Cossu to check the files for any articles about me or the bank that appeared in English newspapers in the first weeks of November last year. Sophie was born at the end of October, and you told me her mother died two weeks later, so Mel must have seen a photograph of the man she had slept with some time in those weeks.’ Cesario handed Beth a sheet of paper. ‘My PR people just faxed me this. Only one article about Piras-Cossu appeared in the English press during that time—and I’m sure this is what Mel saw.’
Beth stared at the copy of the newspaper page. Below the title High Street Bank Profits Soar was a photo of a group of men in suits who were clearly bank executives.
‘That’s you, in the centre of the picture.’ She frowned. ‘But—if you didn’t sleep with Mel why did she recognise you?’
‘I don’t think she did. I think she recognised someone else. Look at the list of names printed at the bottom of the photograph. They’ve been listed in the wrong order. The name beneath my picture is Richard Owen—who is actually the UK managing director of Piras-Cossu and is standing to the left of me.’
‘And the name Cesario Piras is printed beneath the photo of the man on the right of you,’ Beth said slowly. She snatched a breath, feeling as though she had been winded as she studied the image of a young, good-looking man standing beside Cesario. ‘Anyone who looked at the photo would assume that this man
