Rags To Riches Collection. Rebecca Winters

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СКАЧАТЬ Beth and caught her as she crumpled. No wonder she had fainted, he thought as he lifted her in his arms and strode into his bedroom. She weighed next to nothing. He glanced down at her and his mouth tightened as he studied her hollow cheeks and the prominent line of her collarbone. What was it with women and dieting? He had never found extreme thinness attractive, which made his reaction to Beth all the more surprising.

      She was not his type—so why had a flood of heat surged through him the instant he had swept her into his arms? And why did the brush of her silky brown hair against his bare chest evoke a throb of fierce, primitive lust in his groin? It did not help that her cotton nightgown was so thin he could see the outline of her body through it. The strap had slipped off her shoulder, exposing the upper slope of one small, pale breast, and the darker skin of her nipple was clearly visible through the material.

      Her eyelashes fluttered against her white cheeks and then slowly lifted. Huge green eyes focused on him and Cesario felt uncomfortable that he had been looking at her without her knowledge. He felt like a voyeur, and quickly lowered her onto the bed and swung away.

      ‘Sophie!’ Struggling against the blackness that was threatening to suck her back down, and the horrible sensation that she was going to be sick, Beth hung on to the one thing that mattered. Feeling disorientated, she let her eyes scan an unfamiliar room—a vast room, with dark wood-panelled walls and an enormous fireplace. The four-poster bed she was lying on was ornately carved and draped with swathes of rich burgundy silk.

      She remembered the strange, terrifying noises and Cesario’s warning of a possible landslide. If anything happened to Sophie.

      She swung her legs over the side of the bed and gasped when a firm hand gripped her shoulder.

      ‘Let me go. I want to go back to the nursery.’

      ‘I’ve just been to check on Sophie and she’s still fast asleep. Here—drink this.’

      A glass was thrust into Beth’s hand. With Cesario looming over her she had little option but to take a sip of the amber liquid and she choked as fiery heat burned the back of her throat.

      ‘What is it?’ she croaked when she could speak.

      ‘Brandy. You fainted,’ Cesario told her tersely. ‘Drink it. It might put some colour back in your face.’

      He was so forceful that she did not have the nerve to argue. She took another tiny sip, wrinkling nose in disgust. ‘I never drink spirits.’

      ‘Or eat food, from the look of you. I can only assume you are the type of woman who is obsessed with her looks and determined to diet until you resemble a skeleton.’

      His derisive comment did what the brandy had failed to do and caused angry colour to flare in her cheeks. ‘I told you—I’m naturally thin. I do eat.’ But admittedly not very well, Beth acknowledged silently, thinking of the days when looking after Sophie took up so much of her time that all she could be bothered to cook for herself was toast.

      ‘Then why did you pass out?’

      She sighed, wishing Cesario would let the matter drop. ‘I’m probably still a bit anaemic. I saw a doctor a couple of months ago because I kept feeling dizzy, and a blood test confirmed that my red blood cell count was low. He suggested that I take iron tablets and a vitamin supplement.’

      ‘And did you take them?’

      ‘I took the ones the doctor gave me, but I couldn’t afford to buy any more.’ She flushed when he gave her an impatient look. ‘Why are you so interested in the state of my health?’

      How could he explain that Beth’s fragile appearance aroused his protective instincts? Cesario did not understand why she triggered such deeply primitive urges inside him. Lust, yes, but also an inexplicable desire to take care of her.

      The usual women he met at parties and business functions were brittle socialites who were perfectly capable of looking out for themselves. And there was no reason to suppose that this woman was any different, he reminded himself.

      ‘Surely you must realise it is important to take care of your health for Sophie’s sake? You insist that you are devoted to her, but what would happen to her if you became seriously ill? If it is proved that she is my child how could you think I would allow you to take her back to England when you plainly cannot look after yourself properly, let alone a baby.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘But perhaps you were expecting me to hand over a big maintenance settlement so that you could pay for childcare and not have to be bothered with her yourself?’

      ‘I didn’t expect anything from someone who thinks it’s okay to have unprotected sex with a stranger,’ Beth retaliated. It was so out of character for her to lose her temper, but Cesario’s arrogance and his implication that she regarded Sophie as a means to getting her hands on his fortune goaded her beyond endurance. ‘If you want my opinion, I think you’re despicable,’ she told him, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘You must have known there was a risk Mel could fall pregnant. I suppose that’s why you had already disappeared from the hotel room when she woke up in the morning? You didn’t want to take responsibility for the possible outcome of your night of fun and so you didn’t stick around long enough to find out her name or give her details of how to contact you if she needed to.’

      Cesario’s jaw hardened at her accusations, but to his shame he could not refute them. ‘I’ve explained that I have no memory of that night.’

      ‘That doesn’t excuse what you did.’

      ‘Or didn’t do,’ he said tightly. ‘Until the results of a DNA test are known we only have your friend’s word that I was the man she slept with.’

      ‘Mel was absolutely certain when she saw your picture in the newspaper that you are Sophie’s father.’

      Beth felt intimidated by Cesario as he towered over her. She slid off the bed, but still had to tilt her head to look at him. She studied him covertly from beneath her lashes and felt a peculiar coiling sensation in the pit of her stomach as her eyes roamed over his naked chest. Seconds ago she had been furious with him, but now it was not anger that was making her heart beat uncomfortably fast.

      His body had the sculpted perfection of a work of art, with the powerful muscles of his chest and abdomen clearly delineated beneath his satiny golden skin. Beth had never touched a man’s unclothed torso before, and she was shocked by her urgent longing to skim her hands over Cesario’s rippling muscles and follow the path of dark hairs that disappeared beneath the waistband of his trousers.

      He was a callous womaniser, she reminded herself. Either he was lying when he said he did not remember the night he had spent with Mel, or he really had been so drunk that his mind was blank. Neither scenario earned respect. He was not the sort of man she could ever have imagined she would be attracted to, but it seemed that the mysterious alchemy of sexual desire paid no heed to the things she believed were important. Respect and admiration counted for nothing, she discovered, compared with the fierce yearning she felt for him to crush her against his bare chest and plunder her mouth with hungry passion.

      The silence in the room was so intense that Beth was conscious of each breath she took. Part of her brain registered that the crashing noise from outside had stopped. She should return to her room and try to sleep before Sophie woke for her next feed, but she seemed to be trapped by invisible bonds and she could not prevent her eyes from straying to Cesario’s face.

      Her heart gave a jolt when she discovered him staring at her СКАЧАТЬ