Читать книгу Modern Romance September Books 1-4 - Линн Грэхем, Julia James - Страница 19

DANTE PACED THE elegant waiting room like a caged tiger while Belle averted her attention from him. It didn’t help that he looked hauntingly beautiful, even in a blue shirt and jeans, smooth and sleek and sexy enough to attract the eye of every woman they came into contact with, from passers-by on the street to the receptionist who greeted them, to the nurse who dealt with them.

She was praying that the test would come back negative and that she would not be pregnant. When her life felt as though it was on the edge of falling apart, what else could she hope for? Certainly, she didn’t feel she had the right to want to be carrying Dante’s child when he so obviously didn’t want her to be.

Her period was only two days late, she reminded herself, but she knew the basic symptoms of pregnancy and her breasts were unusually tender and swollen. She linked her hands tightly together on her lap, wishing that Dante would quell his apprehension and sit down.

A week had passed since her father had visited her at the palazzo. Father and daughter had got on very well, but Alastair Stevenson had admitted his concern that she was living in an uncommitted relationship. His questions had made it impossible to avoid telling him the truth. He had also agreed that she was an adult and that it was really none of his business, but it had been obvious that his conviction that she was likely to be hurt had overcome his tact. He had said nothing to her, however, that Belle had not already said to herself.

Belle was painfully aware that when it came to Dante, she had been naïve, impulsive and far too keen to believe what she wanted to believe. Over the past seven days, however, she had coped simply by ignoring the situation. Dante had made his intentions clear and she had to handle that as best she could. It was ironic that he had been incredibly considerate and attentive since he had demolished the ground beneath her feet. Of course, he was probably practising the couple pretence for his guests, Eddie and Krystal, due to arrive that very evening for dinner. Belle was dreading their arrival because she would have to monitor her every word and action in their presence.

The nurse returned with a smile to show them back in to see the English-speaking doctor Dante had sought out to do the pregnancy test. Belle swallowed hard as she took her seat.

‘Congratulations,’ the middle-aged doctor told them with a beaming smile.

Belle dared not look in Dante’s direction and was disconcerted when he reached for the fingers she had raised to her lips and kept her hand in his. For the remainder of the appointment she felt as though she were trapped inside a bubble, detached from the real world. It was shock, she knew that because, even though she had had her suspicions, confirmation and being told the date that she could expect to give birth hit her with the force of a sledgehammer.

‘That was interesting,’ Dante commented, tucking her back into the powerful sports car he had driven her out in.

Belle blinked, baffled by that as a first comment.

‘At least we can still have sex,’ Dante added, plunging her deeper into confusion.

‘But I won’t be here for you to have sex with,’ Belle said waspishly. ‘I’ll be back in London.’

‘That’s not going to work,’ Dante intoned flatly.

Seriously? His first reaction to her accidental pregnancy was ‘We can still have sex’?

Dante shot a glance at Belle’s pale, stiff profile. She hadn’t even giggled, and she usually had a terrific sense of humour. But then she had shown all the animation of a zombie from the moment the doctor had congratulated them. She might as well have been told that she had only six weeks left to live. Maybe she really, really didn’t like children, he reflected, wishing he had raised that thorny subject instead of carefully avoiding potential obstacles throughout the week. Maybe she was simply appalled at the prospect of motherhood and the changes it would bring.

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.’

‘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.

Her legs wobbly, Belle got out of the helicopter and merely sought the nearest cover to conceal her weakness. She darted behind a concealing tree and was horribly sick. A supportive hand tugged her hair out of the way and stroked her back.

‘You turned green while we were in the air. I knew you were ill,’ Dante admitted. ‘But I thought it better not to mention it...’

Her head swimming, Belle leant back against his lean, powerful body for momentary support. ‘How’s the deal coming along?’ she whispered, desperate to take his mind off what she had just done.

‘Eddie wants to sell the whole lot to me, not only Cristiano’s piece. I’ve agreed,’ Dante said succinctly. ‘I’ll turn the majority of it into a nature reserve, but I’ll keep my brother’s woods private.’

‘It’s a lovely way to remember him,’ Belle murmured softly.

‘On the way back we’re being dropped off at the cabin. I want you to see it,’ Dante told her. ‘We can drive home from there, so you won’t have to fly again.’

And there he was once more, being considerate when she least expected it, Belle thought painfully, resting her clammy brow against his shirt front, fighting to muster the courage to detach herself from him when she so badly wanted to cling. She breathed in the rich familiar scent of cologne and husky male and the combination made her head swim with longing. Of course, Dante would be in a good mood with Eddie having agreed to sell the land to him. He had got what he wanted out of their arrangement even if he hadn’t got what he wanted when it came to Belle. There was no way Dante could want their unplanned child. He had always been honest with her but now he would feel forced to prevaricate, for he could hardly admit the truth.

And she hadn’t admitted her own truths either, had she? Belle scolded herself as she joined their guests to admire the fabulous landscape from the hilltop. She tried to pinpoint the exact moment when she had fallen headlong in love with Dante. It had begun in Paris, long before she had even seen that her heart was at risk; it had begun when he opened up and told her about his brother and his family. Slowly but surely, she had begun to see that, much like her, Dante had not received the love he’d needed as a child and, because of that, he shied away from any hint of that emotion, automatically distrusting it.

Belle’s grandparents had loved her, but as she’d grown up she had felt increasingly guilty that her mother’s lack of interest had meant that her grandparents were forced to raise a child in their retirement years. Dante had only known his sibling’s love and, without being shown love, it was hard to trust enough to feel love. Yet for Belle, the more she had learned about Dante, the more she had loved him. It had been a slippery slope she’d raced naïvely down at dangerous speed, intimacy making her feel deceptively close to him when she wasn’t because he didn’t return her feelings.

* * *

Krystal and Eddie flew on to Florence for lunch while Dante and Belle were deposited in a forest glade overlooking a small tranquil lake. A two-storey wooden structure met Belle’s curious gaze. ‘It’s very modern,’ she commented.

‘When Cristiano first had it built it didn’t have electric or heating. He liked to come here to unwind after a demanding week at the bank. I talked him round and my company installed the windmill and the turbine in the stream and the solar panels.’ As Belle gazed around the tall woodland trees and savoured the tranquillity, she said, ‘Wasn’t it rude of us to leave Eddie and Krystal behind?’

‘No. Krystal said she’d seen enough countryside to last her a lifetime and Eddie wants to take her shopping to put her in a better mood,’ Dante retorted, unlocking the cabin door. ‘It’s not very large...’

Belle wandered into the cosy interior, surprised to see a picnic basket and a chilled bottle of wine awaiting them on the table near the stone hearth. ‘Who are these for? Where did they come from?’

‘The staff brought over food for our lunch. You have to eat,’ Dante reminded her. ‘Inside or outside?’

‘Outside,’ she said, glancing round the cabin, recognising that there was little to see but the walls and the furniture because it had been stripped of any personal possessions. ‘Anywhere there’s shade.’

Dante spread the rug. Belle removed her shoes and sank down cross-legged to investigate the contents of the basket and lift out plates. Breaking open a soft drink, she murmured, ‘It’s a beautiful place. Did you come here a lot to see Cristiano?’

‘Often,’ Dante said gruffly, poised between her and the sun, a lean, powerful figure with a shock of black hair and the golden eyes of a tiger. ‘He used to sleep outside on the roof during the summer and he made a point of not using the electric I had installed for him. He preferred lanterns. He was at peace here...at his best.’

‘The dogs must’ve loved it too,’ Belle mused, wondering why he had yet to sit down and why his lean, darkly handsome features were so tense.

‘We have to have a serious discussion,’ Dante informed her tautly.

‘I thought we were waiting until Eddie and Krystal were gone.’

‘Last night I realised it couldn’t wait any longer,’ Dante incised. ‘We have a child to plan for now.’

‘I’ll deal with the baby stuff,’ Belle parried firmly, nudging the filled plate she had prepared for him in his direction. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

‘Not really.’

An uneasy little silence fell.

‘It’s my child too.’ Dante, it seemed, was still set on making his point. ‘Naturally I want to be fully involved.’

Belle frowned. ‘Do you?’ she asked, her incredulity unhidden.

Dante crouched down lithely on a level with her, black denim stretching taut across his muscular thighs, and a current of hunger rippled through Belle, which she tried to suppress. ‘A child doesn’t have to be planned to be wanted,’ he murmured with assurance. ‘I want to marry you, Belle...’

‘No, you don’t,’ Belle told him with complete confidence, even as her heart squeezed tight with stress and heartfelt regret that that should be the case. ‘I know the gossip columnists went mad over you moving me into the palazzo with you only because you’re famous for being a commitment-phobe. A man with that outlook is unlikely to welcome a child into his carefree life, because there is no bigger or more lasting responsibility than a child. Please don’t tell me polite untruths to impress me.’

His stunning eyes shimmered, his wide, sensual mouth compressing. ‘I’m not trying to impress you. Everything changed when you came into my life—’

‘Yes, I screwed it up,’ Belle broke in sharply, steeling herself against his arguments. As she saw it, she was protecting them both from the possibility of making a terrible mistake. Marrying a man who only wanted to marry her because he thought he had to and who didn’t love her would be a disaster. ‘I fell pregnant. You feel responsible.’

A raw glitter lit his eyes. ‘I do not.’

‘You feel so responsible you’re willing to go against your own nature and offer a solution you have never wanted,’ Belle condemned tightly, anxiety and pain licking cruelly at her because she considered a proposal made out of pity and the conviction that she couldn’t cope alone truly humiliating. ‘But I am perfectly capable of returning to the UK and making my own life and bringing up my child.’

‘Of course, you are, but that’s not what’s best for either of us. I want to be with you. I want to be with my child,’ Dante bit out impatiently, angry that the dialogue was going even worse than he had expected. He hadn’t expected enthusiasm, nor had he expected the level of resistance she was giving him.

‘You should know me well enough to know that I would never try to keep you away from our child and that I will happily agree any reasonable access arrangements,’ Belle protested.

‘That’s not enough.’ Dante vaulted back upright, poured himself a glass of chilled wine and leant back against the cabin to study her. ‘I won’t give up on this, you know. I’m very stubborn when you challenge me.’

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.