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

to find out. Look, there was no harm in anything we did.’
    ‘Do you really think I give a damn about some dippy girl with an addiction?’
    ‘No, but I’m just trying to tell you that…well…’
    ‘Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? When I showed up at the apartment, why didn’t you tell me immediately who you were…?’
    Her subterfuge rose in his head like a mist of red rage ashe remembered how conclusively he had been taken in by her, like a gullible teenager falling for the prom queen who told him that he was the centre of her world while fooling around with a hundred other guys.
    ‘You caught me at a bad time…’ Bethany whispered miserably. ‘I was…I was…’
    ‘Let me help you here. Playing at being the lady of the manor? In borrowed garb? Faking it?’
    ‘Don’t!’
    ‘Don’t what ? Oh, yes, I forgot you had a problem with the truth.’
    ‘I…Okay, I had been out in the sun, I had come back to the apartment and had a really long bath and I thought it might be fun to try on one of the dresses in the wardrobe. I’ve never owned anything expensive. I was tempted. Haven’t you ever been tempted to do something you know you shouldn’t?’
    ‘Strangely enough, I have some notion of the difference between right and wrong!’
    ‘It didn’t seem wrong at the time!’
    ‘No? So tell me… when did it start seeming wrong ? Or didn’t it?’
    ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone to come by,’ Bethany muttered. ‘And then you invited yourself in…’
    ‘Don’t even think of trying to palm off the blame for your deception onto me!’
    ‘I wasn’t!’ Bethany backtracked hurriedly. A glance at the kitchen clock told her that although, over the past few months, time had seemed to go by at a numbingly slow pace, it was now speeding past.
    ‘Going somewhere?’ Cristiano drawled, not missing a thing. ‘Hot new date with some hapless guy who thinks you’re someone you’re not?’
    Bethany clasped her dampened hands together and ignoredthe thickly sarcastic interruption. ‘I was just trying to explain…you came in and I couldn’t very well start babbling about trying on someone else’s clothes. I wasn’t even supposed to be in the apartment in the first place! I didn’t want to land my friend Amy in trouble and I don’t know Catrina, but I gathered that finding out she was in rehab would have blown her relationship with her godmother out of the sky…’
    ‘So, because you’re such a thoughtful and considerate human being, you thought it wise to keep mum…’
    ‘I never expected that things would end up where they did,’ Bethany said in a burst of defensiveness. Another five minutes had been gobbled up since she had last looked at the clock. And he’d only taken a couple of sips of the coffee which he had made a point of demanding!
    ‘You mean… in bed …?’
    ‘Yes!’
    ‘By which time, it naturally didn’t occur to you that I might have been entitled to learn the real identity of the woman I was sharing my bed with…’
    ‘I wasn’t putting on an act when I was with you.’
    ‘Run that by me again?’
    ‘I’m really sorry…You were entitled to know everything, but I was scared that…that…’
    ‘That you might lose out on a real taste of the high life?’
    ‘No! I’m not like that!’
    ‘Forgive me if I’m struggling to think otherwise.’
    ‘I was a…a virgin!’ Bethany whispered shakily.
    ‘Meaning…? What, exactly?’ It angered him that all his logical thought processes were veering away from the stark black and white attack and shame route he had envisaged. She was a scheming, lying bitch but she was still managing to get under his skin with her wobbly voice and her shakinghands. ‘Is your virginity supposed to be a blanket excuse for the fact that you lied to me for two weeks? Maybe the simple truth is that trading in your virginity for fun and frolics with a wealthy man seemed like a pretty good exchange.’
    ‘You don’t know me at all if you can say