The Italian's One-Night Love-Child by Cathy Williams Page A

earth should her mother think that her dearly beloved and only recently engaged daughter might not want to share a bedroom with her sexy, dashing, adventurous fiancé who couldn’t wait to rip her to shreds?
    With that parting shot her parents, still chatting and laughing with each other, headed off, leaving a brutal silence behind them.
    ‘So…’ Cristiano moved so that he was standing in front of her ‘…where to begin…’
    ‘We can begin with the fact that I won’t be sharing my bedroom with you . You can have Shania’s room. Mum and Dad will never know if I get up early enough and smooth down the quilt.’
    ‘I can think of a better place to start.’ He walked towards the kitchen door and shut it. Then, making sure that she couldn’t bolt, he remained standing in front of the closed door, six foot two of lethal determination. ‘For instance, did you get pregnant on purpose?’
    Bethany was horrified at the outrageous insult. She clenched her hands into tight fists and glared at him.
    ‘That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard!’
    ‘Then you’ve led a very sheltered life,’ Cristiano said cuttingly. ‘From where I’m standing, I’m seeing someone who connived her way into my life…’
    ‘ Connived my way? You were the one who showed up on my doorstep, don’t you remember?’
    ‘Hardly your doorstep.’
    ‘Okay, the doorstep!’ She pushed her hair away from her face.
    ‘…And, having found my bed, decided that I was just too good a catch to let go and what better way to hold a man than to get pregnant by him?’
    Bethany laughed incredulously. ‘You think I planned this ? You really think that I wanted to abandon my degree, abandon my independence so that I could have a baby?’ Her eyes filled up, her mouth wobbled; she felt like someone on the edge of a nervous breakdown. She was hardly showing her pregnancy but for the past few months it had been on her mind every waking minute. She had been living on a day to day basis, not daring to think beyond the very near future. The dream of finding her feet away from the little town in which she had grown up was in ruins around her and she couldn’t face the thought of sitting down and really working out what happened next. It was as though Plan A, around which she had based her future, had devolved into some other plan and she no longer had the right tools to grapple with it. Where would she be in six months’ time? A year? Where would she be living? She couldn’t very well remain an indefinite lodger in her parents’ house with a young baby, still sleeping in the bedroom she had slept in as a child herself. But where would she go? And how would she be able to earn a sufficiently good living to support two?
    That he could stand there and coolly ask whether she had planned the pregnancy was just too much!
    ‘Do you really imagine that you’re that much of a dream catch?’ She propelled herself angrily away from the counter against which she had been leaning. ‘You’re arrogant , you’re cruel and you’re a massive snob !’ She poked one shaking finger at him. ‘Do you honestly think that I would throw away my future so that I could hitch my wagon to a guy who hates my guts and thinks I’m a cheap liar?’ She dashed an angry tear away from her face. ‘How sad and…and desperate do you think I am?’
    ‘Calm down. You’re beginning to get hysterical.’ Arrogant? Cruel? A snob? Shouldn’t she be the one on the back foot? To the best of his memory, he had been totally upfront with her, so how was it that she was now hurling accusations at him ?
    ‘It’s impossible talking to you.’ Bethany was further enraged by the fact that Cristiano was as cool as a cucumber. She felt that if she didn’t leave she would explode and the explosion would wake her parents, if not the entire town.
    ‘You’re not talking. You’re being hysterical.’
    ‘You make me feel hysterical!’ Her green eyes clashed with his and she felt dizzy