The Italian's One-Night Love-Child by Cathy Williams Read Free Book Online

teasing him that had proved so addictive that he had cancelled his return to London and ended up whisking her off in his private jet to Barbados for two weeks. Amelia Doni, when he’d accidentally bumped into her over Christmas at his mother’s house, was a blonde in her forties who, she’d told him in mind-numbing detail, had been on an extended cruise because she was recovering from a broken heart. She was the epitome of the wealthy owner of a slice of Rome’s most prestigious apartment block and had bored him to death within two minutes. She had also stoked the fires of his simmering anger into a conflagration when he’d learned about her house-sitting arrangement with herdarkly beautiful Italian god-daughter and realised the woman he had met had been an imposter. Not only had he been summarily dumped, he had also been well and truly taken on a scenic route up a very winding garden path.
    It had taken him a mere week to track down the address of one Bethany Maguire, and a couple more had passed as he sat on the information, telling himself to let it go before finally realising that he wouldn’t rest until he had confronted the woman and given voice to his consuming rage.
    He had no idea what he hoped to gain by confronting her and it went absolutely and utterly against the grain of the person he was, a man who had always been able to keep his emotions in check with ease, a man who prided himself on his ferocious self-control. A man, it had to be said, who had never found himself in the position of being left high and dry by any woman or, for that matter, being told barefaced lies and gullibly eating them up.
    Without the engine running, it was beginning to get cold in the car and the January light was beginning to fade. Give it ten more minutes and the line of picturesque thatched houses that jostled for space along the broad road with colourfully painted cottages and shop fronts would fade into an indistinct grey blur. There was still time, he knew, to drive right back to the hotel, grab a meal and head back to London first thing in the morning. On the other hand, would that put paid to the bitter, toxic knot that sat in the pit of his stomach like a tumour?
    He stepped out of the car and began walking along the pavement, cursorily taking in the fairy tale village setting. Not to his taste. The place looked as though it had been designed by a kid who had been given a blank canvas and told to go mad. He almost expected to bump into a gingerbread house at any moment.
    The house at the end of the road was no exception. The trees were bare of leaves and the front garden lacked colour, but he imagined that in summer it would be filled with all the stereotypical stuff straight out of a children’s book. Apple trees out back, flowers running rampant everywhere, the prerequisite stone wall over which neighbours would chat while, presumably, hanging out their washing and whistling a merry tune. He scowled and banked down the rise of bile in his throat as he ignored the doorbell to bang heavily on the front door instead.
    Bethany, in the middle of foraging in the fridge for ingredients to make a meal for her parents which she had enthusiastically promised three hours earlier, cursed under her breath because she had left everything to the absolute last minute and couldn’t afford to take time out for a chat. Having spent the past two years in London, she had forgotten how life worked in the small village where she had lived all her life. People stopped by. They chatted. They drank interminable cups of tea. It had been worse in the first couple of months after she had arrived back but, even now, old neighbours would drop in and would be offended if she didn’t sit and chat over tea and biscuits.
    She wondered if she could pretend to be out, perhaps duck down under the kitchen table and wait until the coast was clear, but then dismissed the idea because half the village would know that her parents were at the village