What did this unknown woman who kept her face hidden beneath the hood of her coat mean?
‘Explain yourself,’ he ordered. ‘I do not have a child.’ The words scraped a raw wound inside him.
‘Sophie is your baby. She was conceived on this night a year ago.’
With an impatient oath Cesario shot out an arm and wrenched Beth Granger’s hood back from her face, sending a button flying in the process.
He did not recognise her.
He had slept with a few women since he had been widowed, but she was not one of them. Anger seared him. He was aware that his wealth meant that he could be targeted by unscrupulous women hoping to make easy money by claiming that he had fathered them a child. But this was ridiculous; he had never laid eyes on Beth Granger before. Perhaps she had hoped to convince the lawyers that it had been an immaculate conception? he thought sardonically.
He subjected her to a slow, deliberate appraisal, taking in her tangled mousy hair and the drab, shapeless coat that looked as though she had borrowed it from a street beggar.
‘I think not, Ms Granger,’ he drawled mockingly. ‘Undoubtedly I would remember if you had ever shared my bed.’
Heat scalded Beth’s cheeks. Cesario Piras’s meaning was humiliatingly clear. She was far too unattractive ever to have caught his eye. No doubt he was only interested in gorgeous women like Mel had been. Blonde, beautiful Mel had had men lusting after her since high school, and it was not surprising that she had attracted the attention of a billionaire banker.
Compared to her best friend, Beth had always felt like an ugly duckling—and never more so than at this moment, when she was bedraggled and exhausted, wearing a coat she had bought from a charity shop which was several sizes too big. Recalling the scornful glances of the party guests when she had walked into the ballroom, she had a sudden flashback to when she was sixteen and had attended the school prom in a dress that the manager of the care home had lent her. Mrs Clarke had said she looked lovely, but of course she hadn’t. She had looked what she was: a girl with no parents and no money, in a dress that didn’t belong to her.
Sophie would never suffer that kind of humiliation, Beth vowed fiercely. Not if she could help it. She loved the baby with all her heart, but she knew from bitter experience the importance of money. She wanted Sophie to have all the things she had never had: nice clothes, a good education, the confidence that came with feeling that you were somebody rather than a nobody.
Carefully cradling the baby in one arm, she delved into the pocket of her coat and withdrew a photograph.
‘Sophie is not my child.’
She lifted her chin to meet Cesario’s hard stare and held out the photo to him. ‘This is her mother—Melanie Stewart. Mel attended a party in London exactly a year ago. It was a big event, to celebrate something to do with Piras-Cossu taking over an English bank. I don’t know the details. But Mel met you at the party and later you invited her up to your hotel room. It was a one-night stand. She never even knew your name. But she fell pregnant that night with your baby.’
‘What utter nonsense,’ Cesario snapped witheringly. ‘I don’t appreciate having my time wasted, Ms Granger.’
Her story was so unbelievable it was almost laughable, but he was not amused. He plucked the photograph from Beth’s fingers and glanced down at the image of a voluptuous blonde. The picture meant nothing to him. He did not remember the woman. But then he did not remember much at all about the party at the exclusive Heskeath Hotel in Mayfair a year ago, his conscience taunted him.
It had been his duty to attend the reception, organised by the managing director of the new UK subsidiary of the Piras-Cossu Bank. But that night, just as tonight, Cesario’s thoughts had been with his son. For a couple of hours he’d forced himself to make polite small-talk, but he’d spent the latter part of the evening at the bar, drowning his emotions in neat bourbon.
There might have been a woman. He frowned as fractured memories forced their way into his mind. He vaguely remembered a blonde at the bar. He recalled buying her a drink, and he had a hazy memory of dancing with her.
Shock ricocheted through him. Could there be any truth in Beth Granger’s story? Could he have slept with this Melanie Stewart and have no memory of it? He’d been so drunk that it would have been a miracle if he had managed to perform, let alone father a child, he thought derisively. A miracle—but he could not discount the possibility.
Conflicting emotions surged through him: disbelief, followed by self-disgust that he might have had sex with the woman in the photograph and yet retain no knowledge of her or what had taken place between them. He could not profess that he lived like a monk. He’d had one-night stands occasionally, but they had been a mutual exchange of sexual pleasure—not a drunken fumble he had no memory of and which, if this woman Beth Granger could be believed, had resulted in a child—his child.
His eyes were drawn to the baby. A girl—named Sophie. Inferno! Was she his daughter? He felt a pain in his gut, an ache of longing for the child he had lost. Beth Granger could be lying, he reminded himself. For a start, he did not understand why she had brought the baby to Sardinia. Where was the child’s mother?
A tiny cry broke from the baby as she began to wake.
‘She’s due a feed,’ Beth explained, looking at him anxiously. ‘I need to make up her formula.’
The sound of the child’s cry pierced Cesario’s soul. He remembered the first cry his son had given as he had entered the world, and he closed his eyes for a few seconds, praying that when he opened them again he would find that he had imagined the woman and the baby.
She was still there, her attention focused on the child that she was now rocking in her arms. The baby could not be his. His mind refused to accept such an astounding idea. But he realised that he could not send Beth Granger away without listening to what she had to say.
Cesario withdrew his phone from his jacket and pressed a number on the keypad. Almost instantly there was a knock on the door and the butler entered the room.
‘Escort Ms Granger to the library and ensure that she has everything she requires,’ he instructed Teodoro. ‘I will join her shortly.’
The butler dipped his head in acknowledgement. ‘Please follow me, Signorina Granger.’
Feeling horribly self-conscious, Beth walked back through the great hall after the butler and expelled a sigh of relief when he closed the doors behind them and she was no longer the subject of dozens of curious glances. Her legs felt shaky. She gave a rueful grimace as she acknowledged that her encounter with the master of the Castello del Falco had left her feeling as limp as a wrung-out rag.
He was so intimidating. And so ruggedly handsome, a little voice in her head whispered. Even with that shocking scar. She wondered what had happened to him. How had he come by such a terrible injury? But, recalling his steel-hard gaze, she knew she would never have the courage to ask.
The taxi driver had carried Sophie’s pushchair and nappy bag into the castle and left them on the porch, she explained to Teodoro when he ushered her into the library. While he went to fetch them she laid the now wide-awake Sophie on the rug, and was rewarded with a winsome smile that melted her heart.
‘You are too cute,’ she told the baby girl softly. At the sound of her voice Sophie chuckled and kicked her legs.
