The Italian's One-Night Love-Child by Cathy Williams Page A

any other woman now loathed her and still she was helplessly feeding off his beauty like a brainless leech.
    ‘Why did I bother?’ Cristiano drawled in a voice that sent shivers running up and down her spine. ‘Good question. I didn’t. You might have done a midnight flit but, hell, I’m man enough to cope with a bit of dented pride…’ It felt good to let her know straight off the bat that she had left no lasting impact on him whatsoever. Okay, so the image of her had been annoyingly intrusive, had made him lose concentration in the occasional meeting, but he would have stuck it out and he was sure he would have forgotten about her in a couple of months. And if he had felt no inclination to look at another woman since her, then that made sense. In fact, it pointed to a certain amount of wisdom because only a fool would have jumped back into the water so soon after having beenattacked by a shark. ‘Easy come, easy go,’ he additionally pointed out. ‘But now, here’s the thing…There’s a difference between a woman walking out and a woman who’s played me for a fool.’
    Bethany greeted this with silence because she had said sorry enough to make her realise that apologies weren’t denting his implacable anger.
    Another thought crept into her fevered mind and took root. What if he had come for more than just an explanation? What if he had come to recover all the money he had spent on her? Yes, there were the meals and then the wardrobe. She had taken over her own clothes, claiming to have shoved things into a suitcase at the very last minute because the trip to Barbados had been so unexpected. This had left her in the awkward position of arriving at his spectacular beach house without a swimsuit to her name and when he had offered to go on a shopping trip with her she had guiltily agreed and only half-heartedly offered to pay.
    Sex with all expenses paid. His words reverberated in her head like acid and made her feel cheaper than a common tart. Of course she had bagged up all the clothes the minute she had returned to London and given the lot to charity, but she doubted he would believe that and how could she protest her innocence in that small, insignificant matter when she was so palpably guilty of a much larger fraud? Regret attacked her on all fronts.
    Then there was the small matter of those flights. First class. She had no idea how much that ran to but she knew it wouldn’t be hundreds.
    She paled at the thought of how much she would owe him. God, she hadn’t even got a job yet. In two weeks’ time she would be starting work at the local school, covering for someone on maternity leave, but that would be nowhere nearthe kind of money she would need. The cash register in her head pinged with such force that she buried her face in her hands and emitted a soft moan of pure despair.
    ‘Yes, I know,’ Cristiano said without a trace of sympathy. ‘Our sins usually do end up catching up with us.’
    ‘I don’t understand how you knew where I lived…’
    ‘Because you made sure to keep it a secret? I happened to meet the real Amelia Doni at my mother’s house. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that she was a forty-something blonde with an axe to grind about the male sex.’
    ‘What did you tell her?’ Bethany immediately thought of Amy and her hapless friend who was now on the road to recovery. She looked at him, wide-eyed and nervous.
    ‘Nothing. Of course. I explain myself to no one. I did manage to find out, however, who should have been house-sitting and it was just a matter of time before I got my people to link the connections and find out the person at the end of the chain.’
    ‘Your people?’
    ‘You’d be surprised at how efficient they can be at finding me the answers I need. Like bloodhounds.’
    ‘Amy asked me to house-sit,’ Bethany told him immediately. ‘Catrina had asked her because she was over in London…’
    ‘In rehab. Yes, I know.’
    ‘She didn’t want her godmother