The Cost of Her Innocence

Dante was standing two feet away, his dark eyes holding hers, his deep voice sounding concerned, but she did not trust him. From the first moment she had seen Dante in court she had felt an instant affinity with him and had believed it was hope, but now she was beginning to believe it could be something much more dangerous to her in the long run.

‘What arrangements?’ Dante demanded, his sensuous lips thinned into an uncompromising hardness and his voice no longer gentle.

Slowly Beth stood up. Dante was not and never could be her friend. He had his own agenda and had actually said that one of his reasons for marrying Ellen had been to get an heir. Beth being pregnant had solved that problem for him.

‘Obviously seeing my doctor is first on the agenda. He will book me into the local hospital, which has an excellent reputation.’ She stepped towards him. ‘Now we have got that settled you can leave. See yourself out.’ She paused, waiting for him to move.

Without a word Dante stood aside to let her past. Beth could have her space but it would be a few minutes—certainly not weeks. He was absolutely determined she would marry him, and he knew he did not have time to waste. He was proud of the Cannavaro name and over two hundred years of family history. There was no way a child of his was being born illegitimate.

CHAPTER SEVEN

BETH WALKED PAST DANTE and headed for the kitchen. She was suddenly ravenous. She checked the fridge and withdrew a carton of eggs, two slices of ham, a chunk of cheese and the makings of a salad from the vegetable box. She placed them on the kitchen bench along with some herbs, and then took out the omelette pan and placed it on the hob.

‘Can I help?’

She had not heard Dante walk in, and glanced over her shoulder to find him right behind her. ‘No. You have done more than enough already,’ she said dryly. ‘And I thought I told you to leave?’

‘I have not eaten since I left London this morning. I suppose I could stop at the local pub for lunch. Bill seems a hospitable guy, and he obviously likes you. He told me where to find you. He’d probably appreciate being the first to know you are pregnant.’

‘No. I don’t want anyone to know—not until the pregnancy is confirmed by a doctor.’ Beth was clinging to straws, she knew. ‘Take a seat.’ She nodded her head towards the

kitchen table. ‘I suppose I can feed you before you go. Cheese and ham omelette with salad is all I’ve got.’ She was babbling again, but Dante was too big and too close, and he made her very generously sized kitchen feel like a rabbit hutch.

‘Thanks.’

To her relief he moved to pull out a chair and sit down at the table.

Beth placed the salad bowl on the table, along with condiments and cutlery. Then she broke six eggs into a bowl, and in a matter of minutes had heated the oil in the pan and cooked the omelettes. Placing one on each plate, she crossed to the table and put them down, pulling out a chair to sit opposite Dante.

‘Enjoy,’ she said automatically and, picking up a knife and fork, cut into the fluffy omelette and ate in silence.

‘That was delicious,’ Dante said, and she looked up to see he had cleaned his plate. ‘You really can cook.’ A genuine smile indented the lines around his mouth, and there was a gleam of surprise in the dark eyes that met hers.

‘Don’t sound so surprised! My mother taught me and she was a brilliant cook.’ Beth’s eyes softened as she remembered. ‘Mum made the most gorgeous cakes—probably the reason I was a bit plump as a child.’ With food in her stomach and the shock of her situation fading a little, she smiled wryly. ‘But after she died the weight began to fall off.’

Dante’s breath caught at her gentle smile. ‘I am sorry you lost your parents so young, Beth,’ he said compassionately. ‘I didn’t realise your parents had died only a year before your trial. I understand how grief can make people behave irrationally....’

‘Oh, please stop. I don’t need false sympathy from you,’ Beth mocked, her shoulders tensing, her green eyes blazing at him. ‘And don’t insult my intelligence. I was innocent and I was stitched up by Bewick and his friend—and you made sure of it. Tell me, how many more innocent people have you sent to jail? Have you any idea?’

Dante prided himself on his integrity and his honour and was deeply insulted, but he was not about to argue with Beth when she was carrying his child. Instead he stated the facts. ‘None. You were found guilty by the jury, not me. As a lawyer, I did what I was hired to do—make the case to the best of my ability on the evidence presented by the police and witnesses, not just you. There was nothing personal about it and any other decent lawyer would have got the same result on the evidence. It was also my last criminal case. International commercial litigation is my specialty.’

Beth’s eyes widened incredulously on his darkly brooding face. ‘I was your last criminal case? That really makes me feel a whole lot better,’ she said in a voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘You said it without a trace of irony and you sound so plausible—but then that is your forte.’

‘You will think what you want.’ For an instant an expression she did not recognise flashed in the depths of his dark eyes and was gone. ‘In my experience women usually do.’

Beth shoved back her chair and stood up. ‘You are such a chauvinist,’ she said, and picked the plates up from the table.

‘Well, I don’t wash dishes,’ he quipped.

She almost smiled as she carried them to the sink, put in the plug and turned on the tap. Idly, she swirled the water around with her hand, then turned off the tap and added some liquid soap, mulling over in her head what Dante had told her.

Maybe he had a point when he said it was nothing personal. He probably spent most of his life in a courtroom and must have had hundreds if not thousands of cases. He could not possibly remember all the people involved.

Beth grimaced. He had not remembered her at the barbecue and probably never would have done if not for Tony’s joke about marrying her, which had made Dante suspect she was after his brother and his money. She, on the other hand, had recognised Dante the first time she’d seen him again in the street as the man who had haunted her dreams for years. So what did that say about her?

Strangely, it put things into perspective for Beth. The day she had left prison Helen had told her not to look back, never to let bitterness affect her new life... But at her trial Beth had fixated on Dante and blamed him personally for the result. She had hated him for years. Now she realised that, given the evidence against her, she would have got the same result with another lawyer. Not that it made any difference. Dante was still the supremely confident, arrogant man he had always been.

She rinsed off the plates and the pan and stood them on the drainer, then turned around at the sound of his voice. He had his cell phone to his ear and was talking in rapid-fire Italian, his other hand gesturing wildly. He looked and sounded so animated and so very foreign to her, and she felt an odd twinge in her heart.