AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Dante had spent the entire appointment worrying about Belle’s weird response to the news that they would be parents in a few months. He hadn’t had the time or space to be shocked on his own behalf. It had crossed his mind that his own parents would be triumphant at the continuation of their precious family line, but that was merely an irritant. Dante had swiftly moved on from regretting the vasectomy he had never had and the promises he had once made to himself in the heat of youthful rebellion and an understandable desire for revenge. He was twenty-eight years old, way past the stage of needing to spite his unpleasant parents to score empty points. After all, nothing could bring Cristiano back and nothing could change his parents into decent people.
How did he feel about the news they had received? he asked himself. Apprehensive about the challenges that lay ahead, he acknowledged, for nothing in his own childhood had taught him how a decent father should behave. But he could learn and, in the short term, there was a tiny spark of excitement growing inside him because Belle was carrying his baby. Not only did that increase his possessive attitude towards her, it was also sending images of what their child might look like crashing through his brain. Shock was doing that to him, he reasoned.
‘I think that we should leave this whole matter on a back burner until after our guests have departed on Sunday,’ Dante breathed tautly. ‘It’s an emotive subject and we don’t want to get into it now.’
Belle stared out fixedly at the beautiful Tuscan countryside as the opulent car crested another hill and swept down the other side, that swooping sensation making her tummy lurch with nausea. He didn’t even want to talk about the baby. Or was it simply that he didn’t want to risk her getting upset before Eddie and Krystal arrived? And why his use of that word emotive? Dear heaven, was he planning to ask her to consider a termination? She broke out in a cold sweat.
At least we can still have sex. Was there any mood in which Dante did not want to have sex? The past week was a blur for Belle of being intercepted in the midst of whatever activity she was engaged in and lured away to the nearest dark corner/bed/sofa/shower. Once even in the garden, where she had been playing with Charlie.
Saw you out here... Couldn’t resist, cara mia, Dante had groaned hungrily, his hands hard on her hips as he made her rise and fall over him until the world went white and she lost the power of speech.
Dante was insatiable and, admittedly, she couldn’t resist him either, but she had attempted to give him some space and take a sensible step back from that incessant intimacy. In fact, she had spent a lot of time curled up reading in ‘her’ room but had soon learned that it wasn’t her room at all because Dante was always striding in to demand to know what she was doing, even though it was obvious. He would tell her that she shouldn’t read depressing books, drag her off on a drive or out to lunch in Florence and once even to meet his ‘friend’ Liliana, for coffee. Liliana, who wasn’t a friend at all! Liliana, a gorgeous brunette barrister, had studied Belle with indignant, envious eyes and had barely spoken to her, saving all her attention for Dante, who had not even seemed to notice the tense atmosphere between the two women.
And then there were the gifts, unsought, unwelcome, even the tiny solid gold replica of Charlie on a chain. There was the cashmere shawl he had purchased one morning when he was convinced she was cold because she had shivered with awareness while he stroked her spine with an abstracted hand and she was too embarrassed to tell him the truth. There was the handbag she had paused to admire in a shop window before she had learned that, with Dante in tow, to look at anything for sale was synonymous with saying, ‘Buy it for me, please.’ He was generous, far too generous, a good trait for a man to have.
Sadly, however, none of that meant that he was ready to support her in having his child. If she had his child, she and that child would be in his life for years and years and he probably didn’t want that, but if she was to choose a termination, his life would return to normal and she would leave it again. That would be that, she conceded sickly. It would sever their connection for good and wasn’t that what Dante always wanted from a woman?
The freedom to walk away? Wasn’t that why he had hired her in the first place?
As a stranger, you’ll walk away afterwards without a problem. You won’t cling or believe that I have any further obligation towards you, nor will you assume that having helped me out makes you special to me in any way.
A baby was an obligation, a lifelong obligation, one he wouldn’t want, she reasoned unhappily, any more than her father had wanted it when he had been a younger man.
‘I’ve got something I have to say to you,’ Belle murmured tightly. ‘I won’t consider a termination.’
‘I wasn’t planning to ask you to consider that option,’ Dante retorted in crisp dismissal. ‘That’s not on the table.’
‘Oh...’ Drained by the removal of that pressure from her mind, Belle sagged, suddenly tired but able to think about the baby she was carrying without frightened conflicted responses getting in the way.
Her baby, her little family, she savoured without guilt. It didn’t matter that her child hadn’t been planned, not the way she had always hoped, it only mattered that her child would be healthy and that she would manage to be a more loving, caring mother than her own had been.
‘Where are you going?’ Dante enquired as she went upstairs once they had arrived back at the palazzo.
‘I feel like a nap,’ she admitted self-consciously. ‘I can’t afford to be falling asleep on your guests this evening.’
‘Our guests,’ Dante corrected.
‘Yes, I must try to stay in role,’ she conceded ruefully.
The happy live-in girlfriend, confident in her position in Dante’s life and newly in love, everything Belle wasn’t feeling just at that moment. She wondered how Dante was feeling and then remembered that that wasn’t to be discussed until the weekend was over.
Dante got stuck into work, refusing to dwell further on what they had learned. It had happened. He would deal with it. That was how Dante dealt with challenges. He didn’t emote, he didn’t rage and he didn’t whinge. He would process the development and decide on the best way forward.
* * *
Eddie Shriner was a heavily built man in his forties with brown hair and keen grey eyes. Krystal was a tiny blue-eyed blonde with voluptuous curves shown off by a fitted skirt and a low-necked top. She had the low, husky voice of a seductress. Even Belle had to admit that the blonde was a classic beauty but the knowledge that Dante had bedded the other woman made her uncomfortable.
Krystal, however, wasn’t the least bit uncomfortable to find herself in the company of her husband and a former lover. Krystal’s calculating blue eyes locked onto Dante like a heat-seeking missile the instant she walked through the door and she virtually blanked Belle when she was introduced to her, choosing not to comment on the fact that both women were English born and bred.
Dinner was challenging with Krystal’s non-stop attempts to grab Dante’s attention with flirtatious comments, which repeatedly interrupted the men’s conversation. Krystal liked, possibly even expected, to be the centre of male attention, Belle registered, and seemed to have little time for other women. Krystal pretty much ignored Belle’s presence at the table and resisted her efforts to engage her in conversation.
When a member of staff moved to fill Belle’s wine glass, Belle covered it and asked for water instead.
Krystal stared and lifted a questioning brow. ‘You don’t drink?’
‘No,’ Belle confirmed, because even before she had realised she could be pregnant, she had not been much of a drinker. Alcohol gave her an out-of-control sensation that she didn’t enjoy.
‘Ah...a problem drinker,’ Krystal assumed snidely. ‘That must make socialising difficult for you.’
