Читать книгу Modern Romance September Books 1-4 - Линн Грэхем, Julia James - Страница 18

FRESHENING UP AND doing a little deep breathing to put the dizziness to flight helped to return Belle to normal.

It had been shock that made her feel ill like that, the sheer shock value of seeing her father after so many years, she reasoned ruefully as she walked back through the entrance hall to thread her passage through the knots of chattering people. And then she stopped dead, in disbelief, seeing the man she had hoped to avoid standing directly ahead of her. Dropping her head, she sidestepped in haste and then froze as a hand fell on her arm.

‘Belle?’ that almost forgotten deep voice prompted.

Her eyes flashed up into eyes identical to her own and she froze like a woman in front of a steep drop, fearing a fall. ‘Er...Mr Stevenson?’ she said stiffly.

‘Do you know how many years I’ve been trying to track you down?’ the older man asked in a pained undertone. ‘How long I’ve been searching for you? And with the first words out of your mouth, you crucify me with guilt. And I deserve it. Yes, I fully deserve it, but I am here to ask you for a few minutes of your time. Will you give me that much?’

Belle was stunned that Alastair Stevenson had approached her, stunned by his claim to have searched for her and even more stunned by the emotional charge he was emanating, for the man she remembered had been cold and bitter and hostile.

‘Please...’ he added with emphasis as the silence between them stretched and stretched.

Dante was restless because Belle had been away longer than he had expected and there was something wrong. He knew in his gut that there was something wrong. Was she ill? Or had something upset her? Steve and Sancha reappeared and Steve bent down and said, ‘When did Belle get friendly with Alastair Stevenson?’

That vaguely familiar name rang into Dante’s inner computer chip of contacts and spat out a designation: high-flying hedge-fund manager, well known in the UK. ‘Alastair Stevenson? What are you talking about?’

And Steve angled his head in the direction of the dance floor and Dante was dumbfounded to see Belle with the older man. Neither could be said to be actually dancing. They were swaying opposite each other, heads leaning forward as they tried to talk over the noise of the music, and even as Dante watched the couple with frank incredulity Alastair Stevenson reached for Belle’s hand, said something in her ear and walked her off the floor.

Dante swore long and low and inventively in Italian.

‘I mean, obviously she knows him well,’ Steve pointed out helpfully. ‘I’ve never seen him hand in hand with any woman other than his wife. Maybe he’s her godfather or some relative or something.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Dante had difficulty vocalising the words in English, but he was trying to get a grip on the rage licking at him and stay in control. ‘She would’ve mentioned someone like that.’

‘They’re going outside,’ Steve told him helpfully.

‘They’re... What?’ Dante exclaimed, leaping upright, just in time to catch a glimpse of Belle vanishing through the French windows standing open onto the terrace to allow a flow of cooler night air.

‘Does she smoke?’

‘No, she bites her nails.’ And if he had to make a choice Dante knew he would still pick the nails for a bad habit because it was an oddly endearing and revealing weakness. Every time her fingers drifted towards her mouth, he knew she was nervous or afraid.

Why would she go off to be alone with a married man? It didn’t make sense. She wasn’t that kind of woman, was she? At least he had thought she wasn’t that kind of woman...the type to spot an opportunity and pounce on a rich man for the sake of it. Strictly speaking, she was only obligated to him for another week, he reminded himself grudgingly. He had no official claim beyond that date. Virginity at twenty-two did not indicate sainthood or fidelity or anything else, did it? He was being naïve, he, who was never naïve about women and the evils they were capable of.

* * *

Belle and Alastair took a table on the well-lit terrace and he signalled the waiter to order drinks.

‘Just water for me, thanks,’ she said awkwardly. ‘So, this private investigation agency you hired to find me traced me through the newspaper photos that were published, but that was only yesterday.’

‘And I dropped everything and ran, lest you vanish again. Wrangled a ticket for tonight, praying that Lucarelli would be bringing you with him because I didn’t fancy trying to visit you at his place.’ Alastair grimaced. ‘I need more privacy than that to tell you what I have to tell you but I don’t want to offend you by being too honest about your mother and the dreadful relationship we’ve had since your birth.’

‘I haven’t seen Tracy since my grandfather was buried and you couldn’t offend me where she’s concerned.’

‘When Tracy fell pregnant I was young and naïve. I didn’t get a legal agreement drawn up with her because I didn’t want anyone to know about our fling. Instead I left myself open to paying every damn bill she sent me, and her financial demands were heavy. When I indicated that I wanted to rearrange the child support through a lawyer, she threatened to visit my wife, Emily, whom I met and married the year after I broke up with your mother. And I didn’t want Emily to find out about you. I didn’t want anyone to know about your existence because I felt like such a fool for letting Tracy take advantage of me,’ he admitted heavily.

Belle’s brows pleated. ‘Why would her threatening to visit your wife worry you so much?’

‘Emily’s suffered from depression all her life and she’s fragile. Back then her biggest dream was to have a child, but she suffered several miscarriages and then we had a stillborn son,’ Alastair revealed sadly. ‘I should’ve told her about you before our marriage because afterwards I couldn’t face telling her that I already had a child.’

Belle nodded slowly. ‘I can appreciate you wanting to protect your wife.’

‘But Emily knows about you now. Tracy can’t hold that threat over me any longer and once I’d told Emily, I was free to look for you. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find you. I had to bribe your mother even for the information of where and when she had last seen you,’ he told her in disgust. ‘By then I had had enquiries made and I had discovered that she had been lying to me and conning me with fake bills practically from the minute you were born. Until recently I didn’t even realise that it was your grandparents who had brought you up and that you’d attended a state school with absolutely no frills and left at sixteen.’

Belle was frowning. ‘Fake bills?’

‘Salaries for nannies, tuition fees for exclusive boarding schools, riding lessons, ballet lessons, private medical treatment, holidays. Everything your mother could think up she billed me for with false documents and yet you received none of those benefits. But I was the idiot who paid and paid and paid even in the early days when I was less affluent and it was a struggle to pay,’ Alastair revealed. ‘I learned to hate Tracy while she bled me for every penny she could and that was the background to my first meeting with you. I took my bitterness out on you and it was wrong and cruel and unjust. You were only a kid hoping to meet your father.’

‘I got over it.’ Belle sighed, lifting her hand to squeeze his arm in consolation because she was seeing a complete picture now and it changed everything she had thought she knew about her birth father. Tracy had blackmailed him and lied to him, all to scam money out of him for her own selfish use. ‘Tracy is a bit of a money monster.’

‘A bit? She left you high and dry after your grandfather died and took off with her ill-gotten gains! Not a surprise,’ her father pronounced cynically. ‘But let’s see if we can leave all that and her behind us where it belongs. I very much regret the way I treated you when I first met you. Can we move on from that? I would like to get to know you, and Emily feels the same way. All these years on, am I too late? Or is a relationship still a possibility?’

A wash of stinging tears burned the backs of Belle’s eyes as her father reached uncertainly for her hand and squeezed it with a hopeful look on his face.

‘I think we could try it, see how it goes,’ Belle muttered chokily, tears shining in her eyes even as she gave him a huge smile of forgiveness. ‘I know I would like that very much.’

* * *

‘You chose to bring home a slut,’ Princess Sofia whispered in a gloating tone in her son’s ear as she brushed past him out to the terrace, where Belle could be seen, apparently so rapt by Alastair Stevenson’s attention and their entwined hands that she was blind to Dante’s presence only ten feet away.

Dante wanted to launch himself at the older man and beat him to a pulp with his fists. Steve was at his elbow, urging him to stay calm, seek an explanation rather than dealing out hasty words of anger and retribution. Steve was the voice of reason, but Dante was firing on pure animal instinct. Alastair Stevenson was touching Belle, and Dante was realising that he could not tolerate that. Being forced to witness that act of desecration was like having someone claw the flesh from his bones. And even worse, Belle was smiling at Stevenson, all soft and bright and trusting as she had never once smiled at Dante!

Breaking free of Steve’s restraining hold, Dante strode forward, sufficient enraged heat in his condemnatory dark golden eyes to stoke a bonfire. ‘What the hell’s going on here?’

Alastair frowned and then abruptly rammed back his chair to stand up. ‘Sorry, I’ve been rude keeping Belle all to myself, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to speak to my daughter again. Alastair Stevenson,’ he said, stretching out a polite hand.

Anxiously having risen, her hand releasing her father’s, Belle had clashed in consternation with Dante’s flashing furious gaze and her entire skin surface had broken out in goosebumps.

‘Belle just...disappeared.’ Dante formed the words through clenched teeth while that entirely baffling word daughter, bounced back and forth through his brain, cutting through the violence coursing through his bloodstream to unleash a wave of angry, confused disbelief. ‘I was concerned. Dante Lucarelli.’ After a perceptible hesitation he shook her father’s hand.

‘I was hoping that I could call and spend some time with Belle tomorrow morning before I head back to the airport,’ Alastair continued pleasantly.

‘Of course. You would be most welcome,’ Dante responded, smoothly concealing the tempestuous emotions still rattling around inside him, the uppermost being a fierce annoyance with Belle for knowing everything about him while carefully squirrelling away her own secrets.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ Alastair told Belle with a warm smile.

Dante closed his hand round Belle’s free one as she finally moved away from the older man. When her fingers flexed in his taut grip, he held on fast. Steve had melted tactfully away but his mother, to whom such diplomacy was unknown, still hovered.

‘Well, aren’t you a surprising little thing?’ Princess Sofia commented with a cold gleam of what might have been approval in her sharp appraisal, because Belle had been upgraded in her estimation with the unveiling of her hedge-fund father.

‘Sì...very surprising,’ Dante growled in Belle’s ear, his breath fanning the sensitive skin of her neck and making her flush.

‘I wasn’t expecting him to be here. I was shocked to see him,’ Belle framed.

‘Not half as shocked as I was to see you holding hands with him,’ Dante bit out in a harsh undertone. ‘You’ve been keeping secrets from me.’

‘Why would you have been interested?’ Belle said defensively.

‘Because knowing about a father is a little more important than knowing your favourite colour or your star sign,’ Dante retorted, a whip edge to that tone of dulcet derision.

Annoyance was beginning to spark inside Belle. It had been a tough evening and her emotions were all over the place. She wasn’t prepared to be censured for spending twenty minutes with her father in a public place. ‘But it’s none of your business,’ she heard herself say.

And it really wasn’t his business, she reasoned resentfully, for Dante was merely the man who had hired her to play a masquerade for a weekend, not her husband, not her boyfriend, not anything really. She needed to keep that truth in mind and stop endowing him with an importance he neither deserved nor wanted.

Dante breathed in deep and slow to master his temper. He could never recall being forced to work through so many different emotions in so short a space of time. There had been the concern and then the rage, the amazement and incredulity at her behaviour, followed by the anger that she could have omitted to tell him something so crucial about herself, and then a sick kind of relief he had yet to get his head around.

Some guests were already beginning to leave, and Dante seized on that excuse with alacrity, returning to their table only to say goodnight to Steve and Sancha. Stony silence fell in the limousine and Belle bridled. ‘I don’t know why you’re so angry.’

‘Don’t you indeed?’ Dante scoffed.

‘It makes me want to thump you!’ Belle told him truthfully.

‘It made me want to thump your father. You’re lucky that he identified himself before I got the chance,’ Dante countered between gritted teeth.

Belle studied him in astonishment. ‘And why on earth would you have wanted to do that?’

Dante sent her a look of raw disbelief. ‘You were holding his hand.’

‘So?’ Belle prodded with a toss of her head and raised brows of enquiry. ‘What’s that to you?’

And that was when Dante lost control for the first time ever with a woman. ‘Because no other man should be touching what’s mine!’ he virtually snarled back at her.

‘But I’m not yours. I’m the woman you hired to pretend to be yours.’

‘Well, you weren’t doing a very good job of it tonight, were you?’ Dante raked back at her, startling her.

‘I’m sorry if you feel that my behaviour embarrassed you,’ Belle fibbed, because she was so annoyed with him that she wasn’t one bit sorry and a band of tension was tightening round her temples, warning of the headache to come.

Dante looked heavenward in search of the cool and calm he needed, but instead the limo drew up outside the palazzo and Belle leapt out, smoother and even faster than Charlie in pursuit of a biscuit. Dante stalked up the front steps of his home, barely pausing in his haste to follow Belle upstairs and finally find the privacy he craved with her. Somewhere there were no listening ears, no snide remarks from his vindictive mother, somewhere he could talk to Belle and where hopefully she would return to being the Belle he was accustomed to dealing with.

‘Did you tell Alastair about our arrangement?’ Dante demanded.

Belle whirled round, her shoes already kicked off to soothe her sore toes and increasing the height differential between her and Dante, who was towering over her like a solid column of granite. ‘No, of course I didn’t!’ she snapped back in wonderment that he could even ask. ‘You can’t seriously think I would tell my father that sort of thing...what would he think of me?’

‘I don’t care what he thinks of you.’

‘Well, I do.’

‘There is nothing sleazy about our arrangement!’ Dante declared in outrage.

‘I’m not sure he would agree if he knew the facts, so I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with him believing that we’re a real couple!’ Belle fielded tartly.

‘We might as well be. We’re arguing like a real couple and I’m hoping the angry make-up sex is just round the corner,’ Dante confided, watching her rounded bottom wriggle enticingly as she strove to reach the zip at the back of her neck. ‘Here, allow me...’

After he had unzipped her, Belle snaked crossly out of the dress and draped it over a chair, mortified to be posing in flimsy lingerie in front of him now that that aspect of their relationship was over. ‘There is no prospect of make-up sex,’ she told him curtly.

Dante stalked forward, all silken predatory grace. His lean, darkly handsome features were taut, his high cheekbones slightly flushed. He stared down at her, stunning dark golden eyes like smouldering honey in the lamplight. ‘Even though I want you more at this minute than I have ever wanted a woman in my life?’

Involuntarily, Belle faltered. ‘Ever? Seriously?’

‘Seriously,’ Dante intoned, framing her hectically flushed face with both hands. ‘And I wanted to peel your father limb from limb because I was jealous and that was another first for me.’

And once he had explained that, all the turmoil inside her stopped churning and the oddest sense of peace enclosed her. ‘Jealous?’ she echoed in surprise and tickled pink by the idea. ‘I didn’t realise.’

‘You must’ve been the only person in our radius that didn’t realise. I almost made a complete idiot of myself assaulting your father,’ Dante pointed out grittily. ‘You were smiling at him.’

‘Was I?’ she muttered blankly, quivering as the heat of his big powerful body brushed against her lightly clad frame and his hands slid down from her face to her hips to tug her against him, the fabric tented at his groin, telegraphing his arousal as he ground against her with a low roughened moan that was compellingly sexy.

‘Where were you last night?’ she asked abruptly. ‘Were you with a woman?’

‘I got drunk and spent the night in a hotel. No woman. I wanted you but I couldn’t have you,’ he reminded her darkly.

What remained of her tension drained away.

‘Later you’re going to explain why you didn’t tell me about your father.’

‘Later?’

‘Right now, we have much more pressing stuff on our agenda,’ Dante husked as her bra drifted down to the floor and his hands swept up her ribcage to cup her full breasts, his thumbs teasing at the taut rosy buds that crowned them.

‘But we aren’t supposed to...’

‘No rules any more, no boundaries.’ Dante claimed her anxiously parted lips in fervent persuasion and a little moan escaped low in Belle’s throat as she shivered helplessly against him. ‘I can’t tell you where this is going, but I can tell you that we’re not going to stop before we’ve fully explored it because that would be crazy,’ he reasoned thickly.

And in the back of her mind she knew he had a point because she had stopped them dead, believing that that was the right thing to do to protect herself. But possibly that decision of hers had come too late in the day to be of any real use and the chemistry and the feelings he ignited were still racing through her like wildfire to wreak havoc with her control. And how could she be anything but secretly flattered when Dante confessed that he had been jealous? Surely that suggested that she meant more to him than a casual lover?

He backed her down on the bed, parting her from her panties simultaneously, backing away a step to strip with an impatience and a burning brilliance in his possessive gaze that could only thrill her. She lay back watching him, wanting him so powerfully that she felt light-headed and almost drunk even though she hadn’t had a single sip of alcohol. But then that was what Dante did to her, winding her up so tight with longing that she could barely function. The throbbing ache of need between her thighs was unbearable.

He came down to her, naked and bronzed and hot against her cooler skin, swiftly discovering that she was in such a state of anticipation before he even began to touch her that foreplay was unnecessary. He took the invitation and plunged into her hard and fast and deep. Her whole spine arched as the pleasure rolled over her in a wild, wanton surge. She couldn’t fight the hunger and she no longer wanted to. The lusty ferocity of his strong body over and in hers electrified her with breathless excitement. Her heart hammered, the mesmerising rise of pleasure expanding relentlessly as the pace picked up. She soared to new heights, her body clenching tight before the rippling aftershocks of convulsive delight seized her.

Dante slumped down. ‘Was I too rough?’ he groaned, running his mouth lightly across her peacefully closed lips.

‘No, I liked it.’

‘Was I fantastic?’ he murmured raggedly.

‘Nope, sorry, you’re never going to get that word out of me,’ she told him roundly.

‘But I did make you scream,’ Dante responded with an unholy grin of satisfaction.

Belle had been too far gone to know what she was doing, so she let him have his moment of glory. Dante leapt out of bed and lifted the house phone, speaking briefly before scooping her up to take her into the shower with him.

‘Time to tell me about your father and why you gave me the impression that he wasn’t part of your life,’ he chided.

‘Because he never has been and I only met him once before tonight,’ Belle admitted.

‘Once?’

‘Tracy was always very cagey about giving me any details about him. His name was on my birth certificate though. She told my grandparents that he was a deadbeat dad. She visited us when I was thirteen and she was in a real rage about Alastair refusing to pay for something and accidentally dropped a few details about where he worked,’ Belle divulged. ‘I faked being sick at school so that I could get out and I caught the train into London to track him down. I was curious...’ Her voice died away, her face shuttering.

‘Of course you were. And?’

‘I’ll explain his side of the story, which I only got tonight, because I don’t want you thinking too badly of him,’ Belle continued and, while she washed her hair, she told him about her mother’s greedy con tricks and threats and her father’s marriage.

‘I get that he would be hostile after she put him through all that,’ Dante conceded grimly. ‘But how did he treat you when you first met him?’

‘He seemed to think that I was there looking for money from him, which I couldn’t understand because I didn’t know then that the money Tracy gave my grandparents came from him and, of course, she was only giving them a tiny part of it. He said he didn’t want a daughter, that I was a...a mistake who had cost him a fortune and that he had no interest in having a relationship with me,’ Belle told him shakily as Dante urged her back to the bedroom where the late supper he had ordered for them already awaited them.

‘You were a thirteen-year-old,’ Dante remarked curtly. ‘That was inexcusable.’

‘I was devastated.’ Belle shook her head in troubled recollection, her eyes hollow. ‘I’d worked out by then that my mother had no natural affection for me, but for my father to be even colder and reject me completely was even worse.’

‘I’m beginning to wish I had punched him hard,’ Dante confessed grittily. ‘I don’t care how rough a time he had dealing with your mother. You were still his daughter and once he had first-hand knowledge of what a horror your mother was, he should’ve been checking up on your welfare, not putting his wife first, not keeping you a dirty secret, not blaming you for your mother’s greed.’

‘What does it matter? It’s all water under the bridge now,’ Belle reasoned ruefully. ‘I’m willing to give him a chance. I don’t have any other family, Dante...’

‘And if you can give me a second chance,’ Dante contended reluctantly, ‘I can scarcely argue about you giving him one as well. At least he’s finally got around to telling his wife about you.’

‘Yes, that was a relief,’ Belle agreed sleepily, setting down her empty cup and snuggling into him.

She was a snuggler. That was not Dante’s style.

He let her sleep before peeling her out of her towelling robe and setting her back below the sheets on her own side of the bed. Ten minutes later she was back snuggling against him and he heaved a sigh, finally and grudgingly acknowledging that he had begun to slide superfast into a relationship of the kind he had always avoided and that he still didn’t know how that had happened.

On the other hand, he had Belle back in his bed and wasn’t that enough? It was the best sex he had ever had, and clearly, it had brought out a possessive, jealous streak in him that he also hadn’t known he had. She wouldn’t want him to tell her that, but it was the truth, he reflected as he took stock. He liked her, which was more than he could say for most of his former lovers. She made him laugh. He was even learning to tolerate Charlie, currently stretched out and dead to the world below the bed.

But he didn’t do love and he was never going to do love and yet love, he sensed, was what she would want from him. Did she even grasp that love wasn’t something he could pull out of a hat and flourish like a white rabbit? He didn’t have that capacity any more. That ability had died in him. He had loved his parents when he was very young. He had loved nannies who’d departed without even saying goodbye. And with the single exception of his brother, Cristiano, he had taught himself not to become emotionally invested in anything or anybody because loving always, always led to betrayal or bitter disillusionment.

* * *

The following morning, Belle awaited her father’s arrival, full of nervous tension.

‘So, what do I say to him if he asks about us?’ she pressed Dante uncertainly over the breakfast table. ‘I mean, he’s almost certain to ask. How do I describe us? What do I tell him?’

Black hair gleaming in the sunshine, Dante gave one of his fatalistic shrugs, a flawless fluid movement. ‘There isn’t a label, a definitive word. Whirlwind romance? Casual? That you’ll be back in London and easily able to see more of him soon enough?’ he suggested lazily.

Belle dropped her attention to the pristine tablecloth, her complexion slowly turning the same shade of white. Her stomach lurched with nausea. In a handful of words, he had crushed her expectations and she felt as though he had removed an entire layer of skin from her shrinking body. Casual? Even after he had said that they would be exploring where their relationship took them? Evidently, it wasn’t going to take them very far.

He saw her returning to London, exiting his home and his life much faster than she had naïvely envisaged. He saw no sort of a future for them. She had seriously misinterpreted his words the night before, had read into them so much more than he intended. Her heart sank.