Lizzie woke up feeling cold, water sloshing noisily around her as she sat up wide-eyed. Archie was howling at the door...or had that just been a dream? Clambering hastily out of the bath, she snatched up a fleecy towel and wrapped herself in it, just as Archie howled again. Glancing at the watch on the vanity to see how long she had slept, she was taken aback to realise that a couple of hours had passed and that it was now almost one in the morning. Depressing the lock, she opened the door in haste.
‘Oh, pet, I forgot about you! Have you been lonely?’ Lizzie asked, squatting down to the little dog’s level.
‘Want some supper?’ Cesare asked lazily from the bed on which he reclined.
Small bosom swelling at that insouciant tone, Lizzie was about to tell him in no short order what he could do with supper and then her tummy growled and she registered in surprise that she was actually very hungry. Of course, she hadn’t eaten very much at dinner...
Straightening, she looped her damp hair back behind her ear and focused on Cesare’s lean, darkly devastating face, clashing with the banked-down glitter of his stunning eyes. ‘You still want answers, don’t you?’
‘I’d be a liar if I said otherwise,’ he admitted, sprawling back with his hands linked behind his head, a position which only threw into prominence the muscular torso and flat ribbed stomach beneath his black T-shirt.
Lizzie breathed in slowly, belatedly registering the table of snacks by the bed and the candles that must have been relit while she slept. A surprising sense of calm after the storm enclosed her. The worst had already happened, hadn’t it? What did she have to fear now? Not marriage, not sex, she decided, her chin coming up. Cesare had...briefly...scared her but that wasn’t his fault. No, that fault could be laid at the door of her late mother’s misjudgement of men and a stepfather who had given Lizzie nightmares long after he had passed out of her life.
‘You know, when you got so angry, you scared me,’ she told him baldly. ‘My mother was married to a man who beat her up when he got angry.’
Cesare sprang off the bed, a frown pleating his ebony brows. ‘I would never hurt you.’
‘I think I know that already,’ Lizzie said quietly. ‘But running is still a reflex for me when men get angry. I can’t help it. The two years Mum was married to that man were terrifying for Chrissie and me.’
‘Did he hit you as well?’ Cesare growled in disgust, appalled that he could have, however unwittingly, frightened her.
‘He tried to a couple of times but he was drunk and clumsy and we were fast on our feet,’ Lizzie confided. ‘Let’s not talk about it. It’s in the past. But I should make one thing clear...’ She hesitated. ‘I’m only willing to talk about Andrew if you’re willing to talk about Serafina.’
‘And exactly who has been talking to you?’ Cesare demanded, a muscle pulling taut at the corner of his stern, handsome mouth.
‘Your grandmother mentioned her...and I’m curious too,’ Lizzie confessed while she walked into the dressing room in search of a nightdress. Shedding the towel behind the door, she slipped it on, catching a glimpse of herself in a tall mirror. What remained of her fake glamour had evaporated in the long bath she had taken. The moist atmosphere had added frizz to her formerly smooth tresses and she suppressed a sigh. Cesare was getting the real Lizzie Whitaker on this particular night.
Emerging from the dressing room with Archie at her heels, she tried not to visibly shrink from Cesare’s acute appraisal. The silk nightie was long and, to her, the very antithesis of sexy because it revealed neither leg nor cleavage. Her face coloured as she stilled for a split second, disturbingly aware of the intensity of that assessment from his smouldering dark golden eyes. A wave of heat shimmied over her, settling at the tips of her breasts and between her thighs in a tingling, throbbing awareness that mortified her. She knew he was thinking about sex. She also knew that he was making her think about sex. And she didn’t know how he did it. Hormonal awareness was like an invisible electric current lacing the atmosphere.
Cesare watched the candlelight throw Lizzie’s slender legs into view behind the thin silk and his mouth ran dry while the rest of him ran hot and heavy. Her pert breasts shimmying below the material in the most stimulating way, she curled up at the foot of the bed and reached for a plate of snacks. ‘So, who goes first?’
‘I will,’ Cesare surprised himself by saying. Although he had initially been disconcerted by her demand he was now more amused that she should want to travel that far back into his past. It simply irritated him, though, that his grandmother was willing to credit that a youthful love affair gone wrong could still have any influence over him.
‘Serafina...it’s a beautiful name,’ Lizzie remarked thoughtfully.
‘She is very beautiful,’ Cesare admitted, quietly contemplative as he sprawled back indolently against the headboard of the bed. ‘We were students together. I was doing business, she was doing business law. It was first love, all very intense stuff.’
Lizzie watched him grimace at that admission. ‘My first love was a poster of a boy-band member on the wall,’ she confided in some embarrassment.
‘A poster would’ve been a safer option for me. I fell hard and fast and I wanted to marry Serafina. She said we were too young and she was right,’ he conceded wryly. ‘She was always ambitious and I assumed that I’d have to start at the bottom of the business ladder. But then I made a stock-market killing and took over my first company and my prospects improved. Serafina started work at an upmarket legal practice with some very rich...and influential clients...’
‘And at that point, you were still together?’ Lizzie prompted when the silence dragged, his delivery becoming noticeably less smooth.
‘Very much so. We were living together. Second week in her new job, Serafina met Matteo Ruffini and he invited her out to dinner with a view to offering her the opportunity to work on his substantial account.’ His beautiful mouth took on a sardonic slant. ‘Suddenly she became unavailable to me, working late in the evening, too busy to join me for lunch.’
His tension was unhidden. Lizzie registered that Serafina had hurt him and hurt him deep because he still couldn’t talk about the woman with indifference. ‘She was seeing Matteo?’
‘Sì...and the moment Prince Matteo proposed, I was history. He had everything she had ever wanted. Social position, a title and immense wealth. The only flaw in his perfection was that she was twenty-five and he was seventy-five.’
‘Good grief! That’s a huge age gap!’ Lizzie exclaimed. ‘Did she tell you she’d fallen in love with him?’
‘No. Possibly that would have been easier to accept, if not believe. No, she told me that he was just too good a catch to turn down and that if she contrived to give him a son and heir, she’d be rich and blessed for the rest of her life,’ Cesare breathed with derision. ‘I realised I’d never really known her. It crushed my faith in women.’
‘Of course it did,’ Lizzie agreed, the nails of one hand biting into her palm while odd disconnected emotions flailed her, particularly when she found herself thinking aggressive thoughts about the woman who had broken Cesare’s heart. She had read him so wrong when they first met. He had been prepared to leap into the commitment and responsibility of marriage at a very young age. Clearly, he had genuinely loved Serafina and yet she had betrayed him in the worst possible way when she chose a life of rich privilege over love.
‘Andrew?’ Cesare pressed in turn.
‘He was my best friend growing up. We had so much in common we should’ve been a perfect match and we stayed great friends although he never actually asked me out until I was in my twenties. I was already in love with him...at least I thought it was love,’ she said ruefully. ‘Everybody assumed we would be great together and when he asked me to marry him, Dad was ecstatic. I said yes but I wanted us to just date for a while.’ Her face paling, she studied her tightly clasped hands. ‘It was in private that Andrew and I didn’t work out.’
‘Obviously you didn’t sleep with him,’ Cesare murmured softly, watching the fragile bones of her face tighten, the vulnerable curve of her mouth tense, feeling his own chest tighten in response.
‘No, I just didn’t want to sleep with him,’ she admitted in an awkward rush. ‘I froze every time he got close and he said I was frigid but I didn’t find him attractive that way. I thought I had a real problem with being touched. That’s why I wouldn’t date anyone after him and why I never blamed him for turning to Esther.’
‘You don’t have any kind of a problem,’ Cesare asserted with quiet confidence. ‘You were inexperienced; maybe he was as well—’
‘No,’ Lizzie broke in, running back through her memories while remembered feelings of inadequacy and regret engulfed her.
Yet even before she had fallen asleep in the bath she had realised that her enjoyment of Cesare’s attentions had shed a comforting light on the past, which had always troubled her. Her only real problem with Andrew had been that he had always felt like the brother she had never had. She could see things as they had been now, not as she might have wished them to be: sadly, there had been zero sexual attraction on her side. She had sincerely cared for Andrew but he had always felt more like a good friend than a potential lover. When she compared how she had reacted from the first moment with Cesare, she could clearly see the difference and finally understand that what had happened with Andrew was not her fault.