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

hadn’t been lying. There was no man hovering on the scene, as he had mistakenly suspected. At least not at this moment in time. He just couldn’t figure out why all the drama when she could just have told him that her parents would be heading back. Would that have been his cue to leave? He wasn’t sure. Having been reeled in by an expert liar, he might have been curious to meet her parents. As it stood, he could not have been in the company of two more normal people. Both appeared to be in their late fifties, possibly a bit older.
    ‘I’m…’
    ‘We know who you are, son, and I’m just glad we’ve finally met you. Aren’t we, Eileen? She’s glad too,’ John Maguire said, smiling with his hand outstretched, ‘and will tell you so herself just as soon as she stops gaping like a goldfish. Mind you…’ he shook Cristiano’s hand warmly and winked at his daughter, who was standing to one side, her face ablaze with hot colour ‘…perhaps we should relish seeing her lost for words. As Beth probably told you, it’s a rare sight.’
    Not, Bethany thought with an agonising sense of doom, as rare a sight as it was to witness Cristiano lost for words, which he clearly was and she couldn’t blame him. Nor could she begin to imagine what was going through his head, although he seemed to gather his wits with insufferable speed, returning her father’s handshake before moving on to, of all things, raise her mother’s hand to his lips in a purelyItalian gesture of chivalry, which had her mother blushing like a teenager.
    ‘Oh, my,’ she said, glancing over to Bethany. ‘You said that he was dashing, darling, but you didn’t let on just how much of the gentleman he was !’
    ‘Dashing?’ Cristiano slanted a look across at her that might have seemed innocent enough to her gullible parents but was loaded with questions of a highly uncomfortable nature as far as Bethany was concerned.
    ‘I’m afraid I didn’t quite get round to making that meal…’ Bethany changed the subject to a general chorus of Never mind and We understand perfectly from her parents.
    ‘You should have called us, darling!’ Eileen was smoothing down her grey skirt, moving forward to warmly take both of Cristiano’s hands in hers. ‘We would have hurried back! No. That wouldn’t have been such a good idea, would it, John?’ She glanced at her husband as though he had been the one to make the silly suggestion and he raised both his shoulders with an air of indulgent resignation. ‘I guess you two young things had so much to catch up on! Now, Bethany, you stay here with Cristiano… such a lovely name…no, better still, why don’t you take Cristiano into the sitting room…John, darling, will you get the fire going…? And…’
    ‘Good idea, Mum!’ No. There was no way that she could bear to face Cristiano.
    ‘And don’t you worry about the food, Beth…’ John turned to the other man and grinned. ‘I’ve told this young lady a thousand times that…’
    ‘Dad! Please. I’m sure Cristiano doesn’t want to hear all sorts of boring stuff…’
    ‘Boring stuff? If there’s one thing I’ve discovered about your daughter, John, it’s that the word boring can never be applied to her. Can it, Bethany?’ His voice was silky smoothand was it her imagination but did it also sound as menacing as the slash of a knife ripping through paper? Or maybe, she thought with a sick feeling in her stomach, flesh. Hers.
    ‘We’ll just take ourselves off to the sitting room now and why don’t you and Mum…er…go and change…and then we can…’
    ‘Get to know one another!’ Her father was beaming and Bethany smiled back weakly.
    ‘And I’ll just rustle up something for us all to eat. It’ll have to be simple fare, mind…’ She looked at Cristiano, who scored another few Brownie points by immediately offering to take them all out to dinner. Snow, he was told, was on the way. Best stay put.
    ‘In that case, I couldn’t want for