having dinner with an old man!’ Bethany groaned in mock despair while he refilled her glass with some more wine and grinned in open appreciation of her teasing.
‘You’d be surprised at what this old man is still capable of doing,’ Cristiano intoned softly, the smile still playing on his lips as he savoured her flushed face with indolent thoroughness.
‘Such as…?’ Bethany questioned breathlessly. Her skin prickled and she felt quite unlike herself, as if she had stepped into another life, one where the normal rules of behaviour didn’t apply. Which, she admitted to herself, she had. Kind of.
‘Oh, running a business empire that has branches in most major cities in the world. Takes a lot of stamina to do that. Then there are my sporting interests. The usual gym routine, not to mention skiing, polo and very vigorous games of squash once a week.’
‘Yes, that is impressive for a geriatric…’ she said nonchal-antly—at least she was aiming for nonchalance; inside, she was anything but as she experienced a sexual longing she had never felt before with any man. Nor had she ever indulged in sexual banter before. In fact, she had never indulged in sexual anything—at least nothing beyond kissing and the occasional groping. She had never seen the point of tossing her virginity out of the window for no better reason than because everyone else her age had done it. The temptation to do so now, with this man, curled inside her and made her feel as if she was no longer in complete possession of her own body.
‘Then there’s the sex…’ His eyes never left hers. ‘I’ve never had any complaints…’
‘Aargh…’ Colour flamed into her cheeks and she nervously grabbed her glass of wine and downed the contents. ‘We were talking about the fact that you’re a snob…’ she reminded him shakily and he lowered his eyes, obliging her with a tactical retreat.
‘And I was protesting my innocence of any such thing. A less snobbish person it would be hard to find!’ he declared.
Bethany’s nervous system settled a little now that she wasn’t skewered by the naked hunger in his fabulous eyes, which he had made no attempt to conceal.
‘Okay. So do you ever go anywhere inexpensive to eat?’
‘You mean like one of those disgusting fast food places where people eat reconstituted meat drowning in sauce? No.’
‘Cinema?’
Cristiano frowned. ‘Not recently,’ he admitted, surprised to find that it had been literally years since he had been inside one. Surely the last time couldn’t have been at university?
‘But you do go to the theatre? The opera?’
‘Okay.’ He held both hands up in surrender. ‘I’m a crashing snob.’ Their food had been brought to them and he hadn’t even noticed. Nor had she. In fact, although the big bowl of pasta smelled amazing, the food still seemed like an unwelcome intrusion into a conversation that was unexpectedly energising.
‘But, on a serious note—’ he tucked in to the spaghetti, which was nothing like the dainty little portions served in expensive restaurants, usually as an accompaniment to the main dish, but a massively generous helping liberally covered in the finest seafood sauce he had tasted in a long time ‘—are you telling me that it isn’t easy for you to be a feisty left wing radical when you have the comfort of money to support your ideals?’
‘What do you mean?’ For a second there, Bethany had almost forgotten the charade she was meant to be playing. She was reminded of it soon enough when he began to expound.
‘Well, it’s easy to relish the role of the free spirit, not tied to the shallow world of the rich and privileged, when you must know, at the back of your mind, that you could move between the two any time you wanted to. Yes, you come to pizzerias like this but, if you get a little bored, then it’s well within your means to jump into a taxi and head for the nearest Michelin starred restaurant. And let’s not forget the little matter of your apartment. Money can buy you the luxury of pretending to be one of the normal little people without any of the reality that goes with it.’
Bethany opened her mouth to contradict him and closed it just as fast. She could understand the irony of his observation and was powerless to refute it given the circumstances, so she made do with saying lamely, ‘I’m not a left wing radical. Believe me.’
‘And I’m not a snob. Believe me.’ He gave her one of those toe-curling smiles that made her tummy flip over. ‘Good food.’ He raised his fork in appreciative acknowledgement. ‘I might very well come back here again.’
‘Are you sure the type of women you date would be up for this sort of place?’ She found that she didn’t care for the thought of him returning to her favourite haunt in the company of another woman. One of the leggy, glamorous brunettes with the dyed hair which he had previously mentioned. In fact, one of those women to whom he was much more suited, if only he knew it.
‘Maybe not,’ Cristiano conceded. ‘Which makes you so unique.’
‘Hardly. You should see this place some evenings. There’s a queue a mile long to get inside. If I’m unique, then so are the hundreds of people who flock here every day of the year.’
‘You know what I’m talking about.’
She did. ‘You say that you’re not a snob,’ she heard herself say, ‘but would you be sitting here opposite me if I weren’t unique?’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Let’s just say that I was…um…the genuine article. A pretty average girl from a working class background, just like all the girls in here…would you still be sitting where you are?’
It seemed a strange hypothesis but Cristiano was willing to go along for the ride because he had, quite frankly, never met anyone like her before. She was amazingly untouched by her wealth and if her conversation was unpredictable then it was just something else about her that he found so impossibly alluring.
Also, no one had ever raised the issue with him before and he frowned, giving her question thought.
‘Probably not, if I’m to be honest.’
‘Because…?’
‘Because, like I said, a wealthy man can’t be too careful. I would never allow myself to get tied up with a woman who wasn’t financially independent in her own right. Marry in haste and repent at leisure and if you don’t fancy doing the repentance bit, then you might just find yourself dragged through the courts and parting with a sizeable chunk of cash you’ve spent years working hard to attain. But hell, why waste valuable time talking about a situation that’s not relevant?’
‘I can’t agree more,’ Bethany agreed fervently because she had stepped into a princess’s shoes and she wasn’t going to spoil this one glittering night getting embroiled in an argument that was never going to go anywhere. She was Cinderella at the ball and why start beckoning to the pumpkin to come fetch her when it wasn’t yet midnight?
He was entitled to his own opinions and he was entitled to protect his wealth however he saw fit, even if he was cutting himself off from so many experiences.
‘So…’ he kept his eyes on her while he beckoned to a waiter for the bill ‘…are we finished with the
