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‘Actually...’ Belle breathed, bristling with the urge to empty a glass of water over Krystal’s purring head.
Krystal was so smug now, convinced she had identified Belle’s fatal flaw and keen to drag it out into the open to humiliate her. A fierce desire to lay an even more basic claim to Dante assailed Belle. ‘I’m not drinking because Dante and I are expecting our first child...’
At that spontaneous announcement, Dante’s arrogant dark head whipped round in their direction fast, dark golden eyes glittering in the candlelight, his jawline clenching even as Eddie offered them his warmest good wishes. Indeed, Eddie, who was not entirely blind to his wife’s penchant for Dante, beamed at the news and relaxed back into his seat.
Krystal, on the other hand, went rigid, her blue eyes locking like knives to Belle, her shapely mouth compressing into a tight line. ‘My goodness, that’s quick,’ she commented. ‘From what I understand, you’ve only been together for a few weeks.’
‘Sometimes,’ Dante inserted with a glance at Belle’s heightened colour, ‘that’s all it takes.’
‘Yes, I knew Krystal was the woman for me the day I met her,’ Eddie chipped in cheerfully.
* * *
‘You should’ve kept the baby a secret,’ Dante censured when Belle emerged from the bathroom later that night.
Clad in the pyjamas she had stubbornly retained and continued to wear, Belle ignored the sexier garments provided as nightwear with her new wardrobe. Even for Dante, Belle refused to dress up like a mistress or behave like one. To her way of thinking, a mistress strove to attract and retain her lover’s interest in her body and used that same body to cement her hold on him. And she wasn’t prepared to do that.
‘You should have told me the baby was a secret,’ Belle replied with spirit, but, in her heart of hearts, she knew she had blurted out their secret because Krystal had made her jealous and she had wanted to strike back.
‘I wasn’t expecting you to make an announcement,’ Dante imparted.
‘A baby definitely makes us look like more of a couple,’ Belle argued, engaged in combing her wet hair to tease out a knot. ‘Krystal was surprised and furious.’
‘And now she’ll target you rather than me.’
‘Isn’t that better? The more attention she gives you, the less her husband likes it,’ Belle pointed out, having carefully watched the interplay round the dining table.
‘I’m not sure you can cope with her bitchiness,’ Dante breathed, snatching the comb out of her fingers with a curse word in Italian. ‘Stop that! Let me do it. The way you’re doing it, you won’t have any hair left by tomorrow!’
Belle stood still while he calmly teased out the copper tangle and tossed the comb down on the dresser again. ‘Thanks. I’ve met a lot of sharp-tongued women in my time, Dante. I’m not a pushover. I can handle anything she throws at me.’
‘Fortunately, we’ll be busy tomorrow flying out to see the land and you shouldn’t be exposed to her that much,’ Dante commented.
‘I’m tough. This is, after all, what you hired me to do,’ Belle reminded him tartly.
Dante grimaced. ‘I can do without that reminder now,’ he told her tautly, stepping back from her to walk over to a table and tear a sheet from the pad there. ‘I want to get what I owe you out of the way now. Write down your bank details and I’ll organise the payment straight away... OK?’
No, it wasn’t OK. Hugely taken aback, Belle stared down at the blank sheet. Her cheeks burned, her mouth quivered, and her eyes were full of pain and mortification. He was still determined to pay her, and she didn’t want it now, didn’t want that reminder of how they had met and what they had agreed to, because nothing had happened the way it was supposed to happen.
‘I don’t want the money any more, of course. I don’t,’ Belle confessed wretchedly, looking up. ‘It’s like you’re paying me for sex.’
‘I’ve never paid for sex, so why would you twist everything up and accuse me of that?’ Dante demanded angrily, colour flaring over his high cheekbones.
‘That’s what it feels like to me!’ Belle argued, refusing to be silenced.
‘I pay my debts and I owe you it,’ Dante framed harshly. ‘Let’s not make it an issue.’
He sent her a brooding appraisal as she sank down on the end of the bed, his dark eyes aglow with censure, his lean, darkly beautiful face grim with restraint. ‘We have enough to worry about without arguing about trivialities.’
Obviously, he meant the baby, she reflected painfully, the baby that he saw as a problem and she saw as a blessing. She supposed she would put the money away for the baby since he was determined to pay it and she printed out her bank details with a heavy heart. He strode out of the room and eventually she slid into bed, too tired to agonise any more and reluctant to greet Krystal over breakfast with the visible evidence of a troubled night. Her phone beeped and her head lifted again because she didn’t receive many texts, her friends in London having gradually fallen out of touch when she’d failed to return from France.
With a sigh she scrambled up again and lifted her phone, frowning when she saw an unfamiliar number and then stiffening when she saw the message. It was Tracy, her mother, who had had her number for over three years and hadn’t once used it, nor had she ever replied to the occasional text Belle had sent.
Belle’s soft mouth tightened, and dismay filled her when she read Tracy’s message. Tracy was in Italy and wanted to meet up with her for a catch-up. Belle frowned, unable to imagine anything they would have to catch up on and wondering how the older woman had even found out that her daughter was in Italy as well. Her frown deepened. After what she had learned from her father, she wanted nothing more to do with her mother, but she shrank from meeting up with her just to tell her that. She texted back an apology and said she was just too busy before getting back into bed, troubled by unpleasant memories of her long-absent parent.
While she was trying to sleep Dante was standing in his office with knotted fists. Once again, he had screwed up with Belle because he hadn’t foreseen her reaction. Women were so sensitive, or, at least, Belle was, reading stuff into gestures that wouldn’t even have occurred to him. He had wanted her to have the money, so that she knew she did not need to feel trapped. He hadn’t wanted to give her that choice, but he had known he should. He didn’t think she would wish to rely on her father for financial help. That relationship was still too new and their past history regarding her mother’s greed too delicate. He wondered how on earth he had ended up with a woman who treated his wealth as though it were something toxic. She was way too keen to turn her back on everything he gave her, determined to ask for and accept nothing. It did not bode well for the future.
* * *
Belle woke up in the morning in an empty bed, a slight dent in the pillow next to hers the only evidence that Dante had joined her late and risen before her. Disturbed that he had kept his distance throughout the night, which would surely give him a new record for restraint, she wondered if the discovery that she was pregnant was already encouraging him to step back from her.
She went down to breakfast, garbed in the prettiest dress she could find in her wardrobe because Krystal was one of those ultrafeminine women who made every female in her radius feel overshadowed. She had expected to see Dante already at the table out on the shaded loggia overlooking the magnificent view of the valley below but the only face that greeted her was Krystal’s.
‘I think I threw the staff into a panic when I came down, but I’ve always been a very early riser,’ Krystal remarked in the friendliest tone Belle had yet heard from her.
The blonde watched as Belle was served with tea and reached for a croissant. ‘I gather you’re not suffering from morning sickness.’
‘Probably not far enough along yet for that and then maybe I won’t get it. The doctor told me that not everyone does,’ Belle responded lightly.
‘Are you hoping that Dante will ask you to marry him?’ Krystal asked baldly.
‘No, my mind doesn’t work that way. I?
??m very independent,’ Belle fielded smoothly.
‘That’s fortunate, with Dante being so anti-marriage. He’s a total commitment-phobe, which is why I moved on,’ Krystal declared with a little shudder of her slight shoulders, implying that her relationship with him had been of a longer duration than it had been. ‘Of course, with his history, what can you expect? His brother was badgered practically from birth to marry and produce an heir for the family, and now that he’s gone, Dante’s expected to take on the responsibility...and he’s always sworn that he will never marry or have a child.’
‘Yes,’ Belle agreed quietly as if nothing the blonde had told her was news to her. But she was faking it because she hadn’t made that connection between Dante’s background, his brother’s passing and Dante’s strong aversion to commitment or having a child. No, she hadn’t put it together for herself even though she had had almost all the facts. After his childhood, the very last thing he would want to do was fulfil his parents’ fondest wish and continue the family gene pool. Luckily for Belle, however, she had not once dreamt of Dante proposing marriage and had not even considered that unlikely event.
‘But couples don’t marry these days simply because there’s a child on the way,’ Belle pointed out, amused when Krystal’s eyes hardened at her lack of reaction.
Dante appeared then with Eddie. Apparently, Eddie had wanted a tour of the palazzo and the estate. A helicopter awaited their trip, and as Dante lifted her into the craft, Belle had cause to regret a choice of clothing that was impractical. Before very long, however, she had something more pressing to worry about. While Eddie was enthusing over the hundreds of unspoilt Tuscan acres he had bought up and urging the two women to properly appreciate the spectacular views, Belle was discovering that the motion of the helicopter made her feel queasy and she was finding it a struggle not to be sick.
