SHE had thought she would never cry again. Had actually been convinced that she couldn't. But there was no mistaking the heated dampness of tears on her cheeks now as she sat in the darkness.

‘Spectacular, isn't it?'

Beth turned sharply at the sound of that voice, her emotions a mixture of the usual surprise she felt at hearing an English accent—she had heard so few of them since her arrival in Verona the day before—and resentment that the man had chosen to talk to her at all; did she look so typically English, and approachable, possibly lonely?

She had seen many, quite surprisingly she had thought, blonde-haired Italian women, but perhaps none of them with the ash-blonde of her own hair, and probably none of them had skin so fair in complexion as her own; she hadn't been in Italy long enough yet to acquire a tan. And as for looking lonely? Well, she was so clearly here on her own, sitting on the end of a row of seats as she was, the couple seated beside her obviously German as they talked softly together.

Nevertheless, Beth deeply resented this man's intrusion into an occasion of such rare beauty as she was experiencing, frowning darkly as she looked at the man sitting directly behind her in the amphitheatre known as the Arena.

In a country populated by dark-haired Latin-looking men, this one none the less managed to stand out as being different. Italian men, at least the ones Beth had so far observed on this holiday, were possessed of a self-assurance that bordered on arrogance, and somehow seemed to be inborn in them. This man carried his self-assurance more quietly, less consciously, and it was all the more powerful because of that.

Dark hair was kept styled short and brushed back from a roughly hewn face of such hard beauty that it was only the grey eyes that drew the gaze reluctantly away from that fascinating hardness; light, enigmatic grey eyes that held a wealth of intelligence and knowledge in their depths. Unlike other all-too-familiar grey eyes that held only cruelty …

Even sitting down this man looked big—another fact that made him stand out from Italian men—the short-sleeved shirt he wore stretched smoothly across the width of a powerful chest, the skin on his arms darkly tanned and covered in fine dark hair.

A man to be wary of, Beth realised with a familiar inward shudder.

‘Would you care for a drink?’ he enquired determinedly as she was forced to stand up in order to let the German couple leave their seats.

All around them people were milling about in this unique open-air theatre, all of them, like Beth herself, here to see the performance of the spectacular opera Aida.

‘Go to Italy,’ her mother had instructed. ‘Forget all the misery and pain and live through the experience of a lifetime. Forget them all,’ she had advised with determined persuasion.

And the ‘experience’ of Aida had made her cry for the first time in months.

How could it not have achieved what nothing else could have done?

The thousands of people seated around this theatre were all being privileged with a performance of the opera that, to Beth's mind, could never be excelled.

Her mother, an ardent fan of opera herself, had known exactly what she was doing when she had arranged to start Beth's holiday with this amazing spectacle.

The voices weren't the best Beth had ever heard, the open-air stage meaning the performers couldn't perhaps project as well as they would have liked to do, but for the sheer impact of the occasion Beth was sure it couldn't be bettered.

And the truth was that she felt badly in need of the drink this man was offering, the air being hot and heavy within the Arena, and Beth not yet acclimatised to the heat of a late July climate in Italy. But she had no intention of accepting this man's offer, no matter how thirsty she might feel!

‘Champagne,’ he decided firmly at her lack of response, having also stood up now, as tall as Beth had anticipated, towering over the people around them, turning to move through the crowd in the direction of the bar with absolutely no difficulty at all, these people seeming to recognise, as Beth had instantly, a superior being.

As soon as he had been swallowed up by the crowd, Beth turned with deliberation in the opposite direction and walked away. She didn't particularly like champagne, and in this climate it would do nothing to quench the raging thirst she had known since her arrival, but that was completely irrelevant in the face of her determination to have as little to do with that arrogant man as she possibly could!

She gave an indulgent smile as the female voice came over the Tannoy to announce that the interval time would be twenty-five minutes; the opera performances in Italy, especially events of this magnitude, were also social occasions, and Beth had been pre-warned that she could expect to be here tonight for between three and four hours. But if what she had been privileged to see so far was an example of what was still to come then she didn't mind if she were here ten hours!

If only that man would leave her alone. But the possibility of that happening, she knew, with them both being English, and his seat being so close behind her own, was extremely remote.

What was a man like that doing on his own in somewhere like Verona in the first place?

Even in the brief few minutes Beth had seen him she had realised he was a man of wealth and power; it had all been there in his confident self-assurance. Beth had learnt over the last few years that only the very rich and powerful could afford that sort of quiet arrogance. And the very rich and powerful very rarely chose to be alone anywhere, she had found, could afford to buy company if none was readily available.

And yet this man appeared to be alone. In fact, she felt sure he was.

And she had just wasted half the allotted interval time thinking about a man she had no interest in ever seeing again!

She delayed her return to her seat for as long as she dared after the final gong had sounded announcing the beginning of the second act, lingering over the cool orange juice she had purchased for herself.

On her return a long glass, of what Beth knew without a doubt to be champagne, stood on the cushion she had purchased the use of, to cover the otherwise metal seat, during the operatic performance.

Her mouth firmed as she stood looking down at the intrusive glass, having no choice but to pick

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Romance of a Lifetime Carole Mortimer

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

Romance of a Lifetime

Carole Mortimer