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Belle breathed in deep and slow. Her eyes were prickling and stinging with the tears she was holding back. She blinked hard and angled her attention away from him into the trees. She couldn’t bear to marry him because she was pregnant, couldn’t bear to reach that position in his life and then watch as whatever physical attraction she held for him slowly waned until finally they had nothing left but their child to share. He deserved better than to have to marry a woman he didn’t love, and she deserved better than a man who didn’t love her.
‘You’ve until tomorrow evening to think over my proposal,’ Dante breathed tautly. ‘I have a funeral to attend in Brittany tomorrow. I’ll be leaving in the morning.’
‘The employee who died?’
‘Such a waste of a good man.’ Dante sighed. ‘There were other positions he could have gone for. He didn’t need to work at heights.’
And that was why she loved Dante. He genuinely cared about his employees. Even though that workforce ran into quadruple digits, he sincerely regretted the loss of one. He had a heart even though he didn’t acknowledge it. That was why she had to withstand his innate desire to do ‘the right thing’. He felt he had to marry her because she was pregnant and that was an outdated idea, and unnecessary. She would manage fine on her own. It would make her much unhappier to marry him and then lose him again.
* * *
Krystal and Eddie departed early the next morning and Dante left not long after them, a new distance in his attitude to her. He was annoyed with her for refusing to marry him, she conceded ruefully, because he had decided that that was the magical solution to the baby he saw as a problem. But a marriage wouldn’t solve the baby complication, it would only create more problems.
Belle went to visit Cristiano’s dogs that afternoon and arrived back at the palazzo to be informed that she had a visitor waiting for her.
Consternation gripped her when she walked into the elegant drawing room and saw Tracy comfortably ensconced in an armchair, flicking through a fashion magazine over a cup of tea.
‘Well, you’ve certainly landed on your feet here,’ her mother mocked as she cast down the magazine and stood up, a tall slim blonde in her fifties, who looked a good decade younger than her years.
CHAPTER TEN
‘RELAX,’ TRACY URGED as Belle parted her lips. ‘I was discreet. I didn’t identify myself as your mother, only as a friend. I’m quite sure you’ve glossed over your downmarket background with Dante. It’s never wise to remind a man that you come from a lower level of society than he does.’
Belle relocated her tongue. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
Tracy raised a brow, her green eyes hard. ‘It’s your own fault. You said you were too busy to see me. What did you expect me to do?’
‘Take the hint and leave me alone,’ Belle said ruefully. ‘As I did three years ago when you left me in London broke and dossing on someone’s couch.’
‘You’re still my daughter.’
‘The daughter you never wanted,’ Belle reminded her. ‘And yet you used me to con thousands and thousands of pounds out of my father, which you certainly never chose to share with Grandad and Gran, who were raising me for you.’
‘So, you’ve seen Alastair and listened to his lies?’ Tracy assumed angrily. ‘And you believe them?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid I do,’ Belle admitted tautly. ‘I’ve got nothing more to say to you and I can’t imagine what you’re doing here.’
‘You’re not that stupid,’ Tracy told her. ‘Naturally I’m here hoping that you will share a little of the pot of gold you’re living in.’
‘I haven’t got any money to share,’ Belle retorted sharply.
‘He must give you an allowance, at the very least...’
‘No, he’s terribly stingy,’ Belle told her without skipping a beat.
‘I wonder how stingy he would be if I threatened to approach the press and sell the whole sordid story of your background...and believe me, there are dirty details you know nothing about,’ Tracy told her with a sneer.
Belle had paled but she stood her ground. ‘I shouldn’t think Dante would give a damn,’ she countered. ‘I definitely don’t think he would let you blackmail either of us.’
Tracy swept up her clutch bag with a flourish. ‘If you change your mind, you have my number. We’ll see...won’t we?’
Belle didn’t breathe again until her mother drove off in the taxi she had had waiting for her outside. She felt quite sick and dizzy from the stress of Tracy’s visit and her shoulders hunched as she registered that her mother had asked her not one single question about her well-being or her relationship with Dante. Tracy simply saw her as a potentially profitable source she was keen to milk. Of course, that was all she had ever been to her mother, the cash cow she used to punish Alastair Stevenson for not marrying her. She blinked back tears of hurt and hated herself for that weakness because it was a long time since she’d had any illusions about Tracy.
But there was no denying that she was horrified at the idea of Tracy approaching the tabloid press with some cooked-up and no doubt sleazy story to sell about her. That would embarrass Dante, and Belle couldn’t bear the concept of that because Tracy was her cross to bear, not his. In fact, the only way she could protect Dante from her mother was by leaving him because, if she was no longer living with him, nobody would be the slightest bit interested in buying a story about her ordinary self. Dante, after all, was her sole claim to fame.
Perhaps Tracy had done her a favour by jolting her out of her comfortable groove in Dante’s opulent home. Belle knew that she didn’t belong under Dante’s roof. Now her job was done. Eddie had agreed to sell Cristiano’s land back and Dante was paying her for her two weeks in his life, paying her handsomely too. That would provide her with a nest egg for their baby.
She needed to leave Dante. Of course, she would get in touch again in a few months, by which time things would have settled down and he would have accepted that marriage hadn’t been a very good idea. What was the point in her staying? If she went, he would have his freedom back. Staying, she decided wretchedly, would be clingy, considering that he had never once asked her to stay on and had already paid her for pretending to be his girlfriend.
Furthermore, if she stepped away now, she would hopefully begin to get over him. If she stayed, however, she would probably surrender and end up marrying him while falling deeper and deeper in love with him. Being only briefly his wife and becoming accustomed to the joy of having a proper place in his life and then having to leave that security would ultimately hurt her much more. A short-term shock of severance would be easier for her to bear than getting involved in a marriage destined to die when Dante’s interest faded.
But getting back to the UK with Charlie in tow quickly was impossible, for there were all sorts of regulations to be met. Travelling back to France, on the other hand, would be relatively easy and cheap. She would travel by train and return to the campervan until she got Charlie’s travel documents sorted out. She didn’t have much to pack because none of the new clothes would fit in a few months and, obviously, she wasn’t taking the jewellery with her. But maybe she should take it to sell at a later date for the baby? Dante would pay child support, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t abandon them, she told herself urgently. He would be relieved, though, when his most pressing problem moved out from under his roof.
Tears tripping her, Belle packed a small case, gulping and swallowing back the thickness in her throat and the increasingly terrifying image of having to live without Dante. He’d only been in her life for two short weeks and he had turned it upside down. He had walked into her heart and taken up residence there and she couldn’t imagine her life without him, which probably meant that she was one of those stage-five clingers he had mentioned and despised.
She had managed for years on her own a
nd she would manage again. Two weeks were two weeks and hopefully she could return to the level-headed, practical being she had been before he’d got a hold of her. That belief taking charge, she opened up the laptop Dante had given her for her use to research train schedules.
* * *
Dante returned to be informed that Belle had left earlier that evening with Charlie and a suitcase.
It took him a moment or two to process that information. She couldn’t have walked out on him, he told himself, because no woman walked out on Dante. He had always been the one to do the ditching and the walking away. Now it seemed it was his turn to see the other side of the fence. There was a note in the bedroom, the jewellery he had bought her stacked neatly beside it, so the breezy, ‘Thanks for the money, I’ll be in touch’ note didn’t really have the effect she might have hoped.
Belle had refused to entertain even the thought of marrying him. He had known from early on in their relationship that she didn’t have a mercenary bone in her tiny curvy body So, it wasn’t a question of her having gratefully taken the money and run. He didn’t credit that. Yes, she had been upset by the marriage proposal, but not enough to leave him over it. If he had been in the mood to laugh, he would have savoured the reality that asking Belle to become his wife had upset her rather than pleased her. He, who had long known himself to be one of the biggest prizes on the marriage market and the target of every designing single woman, had been shot down in flames. But, sadly, he wasn’t in the mood to laugh there in that empty bedroom without Belle.
He hadn’t got halfway to the funeral he had attended before he had realised where he had gone wrong with the proposal. He hadn’t said a tenth of what he should’ve said. He had struck out because he had put his pride first. He hadn’t told her he loved her. He had been too proud to put that out upfront. He swore under his breath and attempted to picture his life without Belle. So bleak was the picture he summoned up, he paled. She had even taken the dog with her!
