The Italian's One-Night Love-Child

‘We could walk…’ she said. ‘Rome is full of so many exciting, wonderful sights. And then we could go somewhere simple and cheerful to eat. A pizzeria. I happen to know an excellent one not a million miles away from the Colosseum.’

‘Sure. Why not? I haven’t eaten in that part of the city since I was a teenager. In fact, I think I know the place you’re talking about. Red and white striped awning outside? Dark interior? Empty wine bottles on the tables with candles, sixties style? Overweight proprietor with a handlebar moustache?’

‘He must have lost weight over the years—’ Bethany laughed ‘—but the moustache is still there. You used to go there? With your friends?’

‘Before real life took over,’ Cristiano said wryly.

‘What do you mean by real life?’

‘University and then stepping into my father’s shoes. Pizzerias don’t have much of a role to play in the life of an empire-builder.’ He grinned, enjoying her forthright manner. It was refreshing to meet a woman so upfront. Those games women played could get a little tiresome after a while.

‘So now you only go to fancy restaurants.’

‘Where pizza is never on the menu.’

‘Poor Cristiano.’ Bethany laughed and their eyes tangled. She felt a rush of blood to her head because she could sense the sexual invitation in his slumberous, amused dark gaze.

‘I know—’ he sighed piteously, his eyes never leaving her face for a second ‘—condemned to a life without pizzas. No wonder you feel sorry for me. Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll do the pizza but I’ll pass on the scenic walking. Enrico is paid far too much, as I keep telling him. What’s the point of paying someone for doing nothing?’

‘Who’s Enrico?’

‘My mother’s driver, of course. Don’t tell me you don’t have one in London.’

‘Several,’ Bethany said, thinking of the numerous bus drivers who serviced the buses between her flat and the university.

‘Good. Then that’s settled.’

Bethany felt like a princess as she slid into the back seat of the sleek black Mercedes. A princess whose clothes didn’t quite match the luxurious leather and gleaming walnut of the car, but what the heck? She had to restrain herself from running her hands along the seat. Presumably she would be accustomed to these levels of mega-luxury.

Seen from this angle, through the windows of a car that drew glances and had people swivelling around to try and glimpse who was inside, the city felt like her possession. No wonder that sense of ownership sat on this man’s shoulders like an invisible mantle! Fifteen minutes in his car and she was already beginning to feel like royalty!

Even when they were installed at a table at the back of the buzzing, lively pizzeria, she was still hyper-sensitive to the reality that women were still sneaking sidelong glances at them, trying to figure out who the sexy guy was and his much drabber companion. Cristiano appeared to notice none of it.

He was busily delivering his verdict on the lack of changes to the pizzeria since he had last been there, which was nearly two decades ago, and she contented herself with arguing with everything he said, finally concluding that he was a snob for daring to inform her that the least the proprietor could have done was change the dated gingham tablecloths which loudly proclaimed a stubborn refusal to move with the times.

‘Me? A snob?’ He had been pleasantly invigorated by her arguing, because women didn’t argue with him, and was now vastly amused at her one word summary of his character. She was laughing when she said it, her crystal clear green eyes throwing out all sorts of invitations that had him aching for her.

‘Yes, you!’ A bottle of wine had been brought for them and she had already finished one glass. ‘Loads of people flock to this place because the food is simple and hearty and very, very good…’

‘And would be improved by a shake up in the decor…’

‘You like white linen and fawning waiters, but that doesn’t mean that everyone shares your taste…’

‘But most would, given half the chance.’

‘I happen to prefer the rustic ambience…’

‘How rustic? I’m sure I recognise a couple of those wine bottles stuffed with candles from when I was last here a hundred years ago.’

‘I’m 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 soul-searching conversations? Can we move on to something a little lighter? Or, failing that, why don’t we just move on…?’

‘To what? I don’t know any clubs in Rome.’ And probably wouldn’t have the cash to fund a visit even if I did.

‘I was thinking of somewhere a little…cosier. My place is less than ten minutes away.’

His scrutiny was hot and hungry and left her in no doubt that the outcome of the evening would finish in bed. A one-night stand. Her sisters would be shocked. Her parents would be mortified. Her friends would think that she had been taken over by an alien being who looked like her, spoke like her, but lived life in a different lane. Everything she took for granted about herself would be shattered and yet the pull to surrender to this new being was almost irresistible.

He made her feel sexy. Was making her feel sexy now, the way he was staring at her as if she were the only woman on the face of the planet. Her nipples nudged the white lace of her bra.

‘Of course, I can just get Enrico to deliver you back to your apartment,’ Cristiano told her, because he wasn’t into forcing himself upon a reluctant woman, even if all the signals had been in place from the moment he’d picked her up from her apartment.

‘Would you be very angry?’

‘I would be in need of a very cold shower.’

Bethany had an image of him showering, his big, muscular body naked under the fine spray, his beautiful face raised, eyes closed, to the running water. It was an effort to keep her breathing even just thinking about it.

‘Don’t you want to get an early night?’ she ventured tentatively and Cristiano laughed.

‘I don’t do early nights. I need very little sleep, as it happens.’

And that, in turn, made her think of them making love over and over, languishing on some great king-sized bed which probably had sheets of the finest, coolest Egyptian cotton and not the bargain basement stuff she was accustomed to. From calmly standing on the sidelines, she seemed to have morphed into a sexual creature in the space of a few hours. She had never had to fight off urges when it came to the opposite sex so it had been easy to put her celibacy down to her high-minded principles.

‘Well…there’s just one small thing…’

Cristiano could smell polite rejection in the making and, while he acknowledged that it would hardly be the end of the world, he was still surprised to find that his disappointment was much sharper than he had expected. But, then again, the evening had been much more pleasurable than he had anticipated. Usually, female conversation was a dullish background noise to which he paid lip service but essentially little in-depth attention. Tonight, he had found himself taking the time to really talk to her, to enjoy the unexpected pleasure of having a sparring partner who could make him laugh and pepper him with questions which had made him think.

‘I’m all ears.’ He settled the bill, brushing aside her offer to go Dutch, and sat back in the chair, giving her his full, undivided attention. The evening seemed to have been full of firsts, starting with the bizarre way he had invited her to dinner. Being turned down would also be a first.

‘I…I’m not the most…um…you know…experienced person in the world…’

Cristiano sat forward, bewildered by this deviation from what he had been expecting. ‘I don’t get you.’

‘What don’t you get?’ Bethany bristled defensively.

‘I don’t get what you’re trying to tell me.’

‘That’s because you’re not listening hard enough.’ Embarrassment gave a sharp edge to her voice and she sighed. ‘Okay. I know you have a certain idea of the person you think I am…’ expensive apartment in Rome, country house in Ireland, a string of drivers who presumably do nothing else but wait around in fancy cars for me to snap my fingers ‘…but I’m not like all those other women you dated.’ She took a deep breath and for a few seconds contemplated telling him the whole truth. The mix-up with the clothes, the silly little white lie…Would he laugh? Forgive her? No. The answer came before she could voice what was in her head. He would be horrified. He didn’t go near girls like her, girls who didn’t inhabit the same privileged background that he did. And she didn’t want this moment with him to pass her by. She wasn’t sure why she felt so strongly about it, but she did and she wasn’t going to mess up her one snatched night with this guy. He had managed to crawl under her skin and she wanted him there.

‘Here’s the thing,’ she said, spelling it out in black and white. ‘I’m a virgin.’

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