Читать книгу His Cinderella's One-Night Heir / Consequences Of A Hot Havana Night - Линн Грэхем, Louise Fuller - Страница 14

‘I’M PLANNING TO have a drink,’ Dante announced when they walked back into the hotel suite. ‘Do you want one?’

‘No, thanks.’ Belle wandered restively round the room. ‘I wonder how Charlie’s doing.’

‘He’s doing fine. I got a text and a photo earlier. He’s eaten and settled in for the night. I meant to mention it,’ Dante asserted, tugging out his phone.

Belle darted over to him and stared down at the photo of Charlie in what looked like a very comfortable dog run. He was snuggled up, nose to tail, in a well-padded dog bed. ‘He looks sad,’ she sighed. ‘Have you any photos of your brother’s dogs?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Why didn’t you try to find them a new home?’ Belle asked ruefully.

‘Cristiano left me a letter. He wanted me to keep them.’

‘Yes, but he probably assumed you’d keep them at home with you,’ Belle pointed out and then winced. ‘Sorry, forget I said that. It was totally tactless.’

‘But spot on,’ Dante fielded, pouring himself what he imagined would only be his first hard drink of the night. ‘Go to bed. I feel like drowning my sorrows.’

‘I can’t leave you down here alone when you’re feeling bad!’ Belle protested with a troubled look in her eyes.

‘Of course, you can,’ Dante asserted. ‘I’m not a child you have to worry about.’

She wondered if he had ever got to be a child secure in the love of his parents. They hadn’t sounded very loving towards him and his brother. It made her look back on all the years that she had felt sorry for herself because she had neither a father nor a mother who loved her. Yet all along she had had her grandparents loving and supporting her, making up in every way they could for her parents’ lack of interest.

‘From what you’ve said about him, I don’t think your brother would’ve wanted you feeling this way,’ she murmured uncertainly, fearful of intruding too much.

‘And what would you know about it?’ Dante derided.

‘Nothing,’ she agreed apologetically. ‘But if he was a kind person, he wouldn’t have wanted you beating yourself up about what can’t be changed.’

And that was perfectly true, Dante acknowledged grudgingly. Cristiano had always been an optimist who hated dwelling on the darker elements of life. He had made the best of situations, had even tried to make the best he could of the parents he had been born to, tolerating and forgiving their biting scorn and continual demands.

Dante strode forward. ‘Stop looking at me with those big sad eyes,’ he breathed hoarsely.

‘I’m not sad. I just wanted to make you feel better.’ Belle sighed.

‘Come to bed with me, then. That would be guaranteed to make me feel better, amante,’ Dante growled soft and low, the dark roughened vowel sounds in his voice snaking down her spine like a rough caress.

Belle clashed in consternation with glittering dark golden eyes that made the breath hitch in her tight throat. ‘No, that would be a bad idea.’

‘Not to my mind,’ Dante intoned, catching both her hands in his and tugging her closer. ‘You should’ve got away while you had the chance.’

Her face flamed because she knew that she hadn’t wanted to leave him alone. He tempted her as no one ever had and his confession about his brother had made him seem treacherously human and vulnerable, chipping away at her original dislike. It had taught her a lesson too, taught her not to make assumptions about people and assume that wealth cushioned them from the tragedies of life. Going straight to bed, steering clear of spending more time with Dante Lucarelli, would have been the sensible thing to do, but seeing him standing by the windows with a drink in his hand and looking so very alone had bothered her even though there was nothing she could do or say to change anything.

Belle lifted her chin and looked up at him. ‘I know you’ll let me go if I ask you to.’

‘And you won’t ask me because you don’t want me to let you go,’ Dante murmured in silken challenge as he trailed a reproving fingertip across a pink cheek, down to the incredibly inviting lush pink of her mouth. ‘Well, don’t say you weren’t warned...’

He leant down and captured her mouth with his, driving her lips apart with the power of his hungry kiss, and she shivered as heat darted through her chilled body, warming every inch of her. She wanted more, she knew she wanted more, knowing that if nothing else when she made no objection to being scooped off her feet and carried over to an armchair where he draped her across his lap without once freeing her mouth again. A quivering intensity of response gripped her as his tongue stroked between her lips to explore.

‘The taste of you is sublime,’ Dante husked against her throat, his breath see-sawing in and out of his chest. ‘But it is also dangerously addictive.’

Belle was amazingly aware of his hand on her thigh, his fingers smoothing below the hem of her dress and moving higher, and she had never wanted anything quite as much as she craved his touch because, even with every muscle in her body taut with denial, a subversive ache between her legs betrayed her with every plundering delve of his tongue. As he skimmed the taut stretch of her panties aside, her fingers speared into his black hair. She didn’t know what she was doing, and she didn’t care at that moment. Indeed, her only recognisable fear was that he would stop.

And then he touched her, a mere roll of a fingertip against the taut little bud below her mound and her body went haywire, her hips rising in a languorous roll, sweet and frighteningly strong sensation piercing her in a stormy wave. He sat her up and she uttered a little sound of complaint at that moment of disconnection as he unzipped her dress and pulled it down, the unclipped her bra with wicked dexterity so that her unbound breasts tumbled taut and full into his hands.

With a hungry groan, Dante caught a straining pink nipple in his mouth, bending her back over his arm to ravage the bounty he had uncovered. He was fiercely aroused and dimly amused at himself for playing around like a teenager instead of moving single-mindedly from A to Z to extract his own satisfaction as fast as possible. But there was, he was discovering, a shocking satisfaction to be found in her inexperienced responses, in the little gasping sounds she made low in her throat and the increasingly frantic grip of her fingers in his hair. He teased the damp flesh at the heart of her, tracing her body in a caress that almost sent her up in flames in his arms, and then gently exploring to learn that she was even tighter than he had expected.

Belle arched and panted into his mouth, helpless in his arms, her hips rocking instinctively as the pressure in her pelvis built higher and tightened like a band of steel inside her. She was reaching for that perfect moment, blind, deaf, utterly mindless when with one skilful flick of a finger he sent her flying into the sun. She shuddered and cried out, aftershocks of reaction convulsing her as he curved her up to him to taste her mouth one last time. And for timeless moments she lay there in his arms, ostensibly relaxed by the release of all tension but with her brain already leaping back to life to leave her deeply shaken by what she had allowed to happen.

In an instant she was off his lap, gazing down at him, connecting with brilliant dark, glittering eyes.

‘The third time you’re in my arms, I will be taking you to bed,’ Dante murmured slumberously. ‘Just putting that warning out there...’

‘You know that’s not what I want,’ Belle began awkwardly, her face burning because she was painfully aware that her behaviour with him was hard to defend.

‘You may be a contrary woman, but you want me,’ Dante incised with complete assurance.

And he was right, shamelessly, mortifyingly right to the extent that Belle didn’t bother staying around to argue with that statement. Her head as high as she could still hold it, she went up to her bedroom and shut the door, a sudden empty hollow feeling assailing her because Dante was still downstairs and every wanton cell in her body wanted him with her. She was learning that nothing was as black and white as she had believed it to be. Desire didn’t simply switch off because she didn’t want to feel it and desire was a much more significant temptation than she had realised. When Dante kissed her, when Dante held her close, she turned weak and dizzy with longing. Yet longing for and downright craving a man who would want nothing more from her than the fleeting pleasure her body could offer him could only lead to her unhappiness.

Even so, for the first time she was questioning that she had to love and care for a man before she would have sex with him. Obviously, Dante had no deep feelings for her, and the sense of being close to him that his honesty about his brother’s death had awakened in her was dangerously misleading. Was that what had happened to her? Had her sympathy bled over into some strange desire to comfort him that had somehow turned into a sexual invitation? She hadn’t meant that to happen and was annoyed that she had failed to call a halt.

Bemusement about her exact motivation and discomfiture over her own conduct kept Belle lying awake for a long time. She accepted that she was discovering stuff about herself with Dante that she would have sooner not known. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stamp out her attraction to him, nor could she remain level-headed enough to stay in control in his arms. All she could do now, she reasoned ruefully, was be on her guard and endeavour not to offer Dante any more conflicting signals.

Dante had a cold shower and wondered why he hadn’t simply swept Belle straight off to his bed. He was considerably more disturbed by the inexplicable truth that even foreplay with Belle was more exciting than anything he had ever had with another woman. She turned him on, hard and fast, and then she melted with delicious response whenever he touched her. Instead of being furious with her for walking away without giving him the satisfaction he needed, he was already thinking with anticipation about the next time she succumbed to the same hunger that was currently tormenting him. And then maybe he would walk away to teach her a lesson.

Picturing that scenario, Dante grinned with helpless amusement, knowing that the last thing he would do was walk away. He wouldn’t have the self-discipline to walk away because he had let her get under his skin, let her light him up for the first time ever with a fiery need to possess one particular woman. And why was that? Or what was it about her that had penetrated his defences?

What, for instance, had made him talk so very honestly about losing Cristiano? It was true that she would need that background to understand his family set-up and why the land deal was so very important to him. But he had shared details he didn’t need to share, drawn out by her warmth and those big compassionate eyes that seemed to offer understanding. In all likelihood it was all an act on her part, he told himself sagely, and she was striving to impress him, possibly hoping to stay in his life for longer than two short weeks.

The following morning, Belle was in a surprisingly good mood. She had behaved foolishly the night before, but she knew that she couldn’t turn back time and magically eradicate her mistake. All she could do was avoid getting too close to Dante and start trying to treat him more like her employer. Furthermore, the sun was shining, and she would hopefully be reunited with Charlie soon. More clothing had arrived for her to try and it was a definite treat to skim through the different items and pick a brand-new outfit to wear. She chose a light skirt and top combination, but she frowned at her hair, which was displaying defiant waves again after only one short evening of behaving like her fantasy straight hair. Her true self was fighting to come out again, she thought ruefully, and Dante would just have to accept that she couldn’t look perfectly groomed all the time.

‘A jeweller is visiting after breakfast,’ Dante informed her as she came down the stairs, trying to evade his gaze without being too obvious about it while her colour rose like a banner to advertise her self-consciousness. ‘And then we’re heading out to shop for furniture and some other items. Tomorrow, we’ll fly home to Italy.’

‘Why would we need to shop for furniture?’ Belle asked as she settled down at the breakfast table with him.

‘You’re moving in with me. Presumably a woman moving in with a man would have items she wanted to bring with her. You have nothing, so we will have to buy some stuff. I want us to look like an authentic couple, to my staff and everyone else in my life,’ Dante admitted calmly. ‘That we are only pretending has to remain our secret.’

‘Charlie’s authentic,’ Belle pointed out helplessly. ‘I am moving in my dog.’

Dante lounged back in his chair to study her. In silk that accentuated the swell of her breasts and somehow enhanced the satiny softness of her pale skin, she looked incredibly sensual and very touchable. He watched as she tucked a stray strand of bright hair behind one small ear and nibbled at her lower lip and reminded himself that seducing her would be cruel, because he was never going to offer her the serious relationship she wanted. He breathed in deep, recognising the erotic pulse gaining strength at his groin, and he shifted position in outright denial of her libidinous effect on him. ‘Charlie’s not enough on his own. We need to buy you some artworks and some presentable pieces of furniture.’

Her smooth brow furrowed. ‘Art? Why would I need artworks?’

‘Part of your new image. You’re an art lover like me,’ Dante told her.

‘Yes, I do like some art,’ Belle conceded thoughtfully. ‘But not on the sort of level you would admire. I agreed to do this, Dante, but I didn’t agree to pretend to be someone I’m not.’

An ebony brow lifted enquiringly. ‘Meaning?’

‘The relationship may be fake but, while I’m in it, I’m going to be me,’ Belle informed him stiffly. ‘I’m not going to fake being something I’m not, so I don’t want fancy artworks or furniture. I’m an ordinary working woman and I wouldn’t know where to begin acting as if I was someone much fancier and richer.’

‘That’s quite a speech and I appreciate the sentiments you express but I don’t see what difference it makes in our circumstances.’

‘Well, then, you’re not listening,’ Belle interrupted more sharply. ‘I’m me and I’m staying me because that way I’m less likely to make mistakes. I’ve been a housekeeper, a carer and a waitress, and I won’t pretend otherwise.’

‘And if you’re not part of my world, how am I supposed to have met the real you?’ Dante asked very drily.

‘Make it a funny story. I served you in a bar one night? You met me when you visited someone I was looking after or working for... You picked me up when I was hitchhiking? Use your imagination. Maybe you’re moving in with me because I’m different from the other women you’ve had in your life. Don’t try to make me hide the real me, as if that is something to be ashamed of,’ Belle urged ruefully.

‘You’re very stubborn.’

‘And so are you.’

‘Consequently, no artworks?’ Dante checked with a censorious shake of his arrogant dark head. ‘But there has to be some furniture, so that you can turn some room in my house into your room... Isn’t that what women do when they move in with a man?’

Belle shrugged. ‘How would I know? And it’s an awful lot of fuss and expense to go to simply to put on an act for one weekend,’ she reasoned, searching his lean bronzed features with curiosity sparkling in her dark blue eyes. ‘Presumably you think getting this business deal is worth any amount of trouble.’

‘Pretty much,’ Dante agreed.

‘Well, then, if it’s just one room I could choose a comfortable chair, a small table, bookshelves...oh, and books,’ she added reflectively, her eyes warming at the prospect. ‘But brand-new furniture won’t look very convincing—’

‘We’ll buy antiques,’ Dante incised in a tone of finality.

‘But you’re not going to expect me to pretend to be something I’m not?’ Belle pressed, seeking reassurance.

‘No,’ Dante conceded, marvelling that he was giving way on that point for in truth he had planned to set her up with an entire false identity, which would have protected his privacy and her anonymity. ‘You appreciate that the media will take a much stronger interest in me hooking up with a waitress?’

‘I’ll be out of your life again before anyone has even identified me,’ Belle parried confidently, lifting her head, vibrant waves of copper-red hair shifting across her shoulders and glinting fierily in the light.

‘It goes against the grain to admit it, but I liked your hair better before the beauty consultants in the spa got their hands on you. Curly hair suits you,’ Dante framed, already questioning what he was saying and frowning at that unplanned dive into personal comment as he sprang lithely upright to greet the older man with a large leather case and his accompanying security guard being shown into the room. ‘Monsieur Duchamp, you are very welcome.’

Belle tugged her fingers down from the hair she had involuntarily been touching. He liked her hair better when it was au naturel. Well, what did you know? She was astonished but decidedly flattered.

An hour later, she was sporting a designer watch and bracelet, sapphire-and-diamond earrings and a sapphire-and-diamond pendant, the absolute basics without which Dante had insisted she could not perform her role.

The limousine dropped them on the Carré Rive Gauche, which was full of antiques dealers and the kind of esoteric shops haunted by interior designers. Belle found herself much more interested in what was on offer there than she had expected to be because the sheer quirkiness of some of the items intrigued her.

‘You’re seeing stuff that interests you,’ Dante noted.

‘I like finding out the history behind them... I like that seat,’ she said, pointing at an elaborately upholstered and very comfortable-looking low-slung armchair.

The proprietor, quick to recognise Dante for the rich buyer that he was, hastened over to talk about the chair and demonstrated the weird way part of the arms swivelled back at a touch. Their exchange of French was too fast for her to follow and Belle stared up at Dante in surprise as he began to laugh. Poised there with his dark eyes gleaming with intense amusement, his lean, darkly handsome features relaxed, he was so breathtakingly beautiful and male that she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

‘What’s so funny?’ Belle whispered.

‘I’ll tell you later. We’re taking the chair... Come on, keep looking,’ Dante urged, one long-fingered hand pressing against her taut spine as he walked her along with him. ‘You have a whole room to fill and none of the rooms in my home are small.’

A fat sofa, an Indian carved bookcase, a small inlaid table, a beautiful mirror and an eccentric art deco drinks cabinet followed in quick succession.

‘And as an ordinary girl, how am I supposed to have acquired all these valuable items?’ Belle enquired with reluctant amusement.

‘They are all gifts from me,’ Dante teased with a smile. ‘I’ve also ordered a selection of English classics and contemporary novels for you from a bookseller.’

In the limo on the way back to the hotel, he told her that he was taking her out for dinner again and then on to a club. Belle was lazily contemplating the options in her new wardrobe when Dante appeared in the doorway.

‘Rain check, I’m afraid,’ he murmured quietly. ‘There’s been a fatal accident on one of my wind farms in Brittany and I have to visit the site. I don’t know when I’ll get back but it could be the early hours. We’ll still be flying to Italy in the morning.’

‘Fatal?’ she queried in dismay.

Dante nodded. ‘A construction engineer fell in one of the turbine towers,’ he told her grimly.

‘That’s dreadful. Will you be seeing his family?’

‘Yes,’ Dante replied gravely. ‘And checking out whether or not safety procedures were correctly followed. There’ll have to be an enquiry.’

Belle dined in solitary state at the grand dining table, went for a shower and changed into her pyjamas. Before she returned downstairs, she succumbed to curiosity and entered Dante’s bedroom. It was scrupulously tidy with no sign of his hasty departure, but she wasn’t there to snoop, she was there to check out whether her suspicions were correct. And they were. There was a bath in the palatial suite but it was in the bathroom off the master bedroom. It was the bath of her dreams as well, a huge oval tub with a fantastic view of Paris.

Belle had always loved baths, but she hadn’t lived anywhere with a bath for several years. Everyone was putting in showers now. Mrs Devenish’s family had had her original bath taken out and replaced with a shower in which she could safely sit. Belle had missed treating herself to the luxury of a bath and she wondered if she dared make use of Dante’s while he was out but that idea, tempting as it was, struck her as too cheeky and she went back downstairs and watched television instead.

Around ten, the image of that bath overcame her reluctance and, with a sigh of acceptance, she scrambled up, switched off the television and went to take advantage of it. The bathroom was packed with bath preparations in designer pots and she made liberal use of one of them before pinning her hair up in a clasp and climbing in to lower herself slowly into the deliciously scented warm water. Resting her head back on the padded pillow, she sighed, deciding that she was in heaven as she relaxed, truly relaxed for the first time in months.

She realised that she had dozed off only after a noise startled her into wakefulness again. Water sloshing noisily around her, she jerked up into sitting position, needing a moment even to appreciate where she was. Registering that she was still in Dante’s bathroom, she froze for a split second until she heard quick steps on the wooden stairs and then, swiftly depressing the plug to empty out the water, she launched herself upright in sheer panic. She almost fell as she raced across the slippery tiles to snatch up a big grey towel, winding it round her as fast as she could. She was cursing herself for invading his bathroom, which she had planned to leave immaculate so that no one would even know that she had used it. All hope of that remaining a secret was now gone with water very noisily draining out of the bath and an array of wet footprints and splashes marking the high-shine floor tiles.

Dante was not in a good mood on his return. Dealing with the man’s broken-hearted family had been distressing, and learning that the guy had suffered from vertigo but had concealed it because he had been desperate for a good job had been even less pleasant. And then he saw his bedroom door was lying open and emerging from the en-suite bathroom was a very red-faced Belle, wrapped in a towel and clutching a bundle of clothing to her breasts. She looked so guilty and so embarrassed, it was comical.

‘What on earth are you doing in here?’ Dante intoned in wonderment, trying very hard not to laugh.

Belle hopped off one bare foot onto the other. ‘Your room has a bath... Mine doesn’t. I didn’t think you’d mind if you weren’t here...but I didn’t get around to cleaning up, I’m afraid, because I wanted to be out of here before you caught me.’

‘And look how well that turned out,’ Dante commented.

‘I’ll come straight back and clean up once I’ve got dressed,’ she told him apologetically, her face on fire. ‘I swear I wasn’t snooping or anything. That’s probably what you think but I didn’t touch or look at anything in here. I just missed having baths and I was tempted.’

As Dante was tempted, appraising her curvy little body in the towel, noting how the tight hold she had on the clothing merely accentuated the magnificent swell of her breasts over the towel. Pale, lightly speckled flesh that he had already touched and tasted, and which had only ignited his hunger for more of the experience. Her hair was piled up in a glorious curly mass, innumerable little tendrils escaping to accentuate the flushed oval of her face, dominated by huge violet eyes and that glorious mouth. It was every fantasy Dante had ever had of her rolled into one and he went instantly hard. She was also the distraction he badly needed after the evening he had endured.

‘You look amazing,’ he told her gruffly because she did, all bright and flushed and embarrassed in her bare feet but somehow, for all her diminutive size, extraordinarily vibrant, full of life and sass.

‘I hardly think so... You’re a guy, it’s probably just the bath towel,’ she deflected tautly, because she was painfully aware that she wanted him to mean what he had said.

‘No, it’s you...all you,’ Dante husked, logic kicking in to demolish his reservations and neatly shift him to where he wanted to be. As they had both acknowledged, it wasn’t a normal job that he had given her, and it would also be an extremely temporary one. ‘Forget the rules about what you should and shouldn’t do, ditch the lists and the expectations. Just be with me because you want to be.’

Belle was rigid with tension and then a little quiver ran through her, her breathing quickening. She hadn’t expected him to be that bold, hadn’t been prepared for him to strip everything back to the basics.

‘Live a little.’ Dante leant back against the door to close it before crossing the room to gently pull the bundle of clothing out of her too-tight hold and drop it to the floor.

‘But I’m working for you,’ she began urgently as she clutched at the precarious towel to ensure that it didn’t fall.

‘Any court in Europe would deny that our private arrangement has anything in common with a normal job, which is why we shouldn’t feel bound by stupid rules,’ he argued impatiently. ‘Those rules don’t apply to our situation and we don’t need to consider them.’

Live a little, he had said, and he could not know how deeply those words affected her because Belle was unhappily conscious that she had barely lived at all during her twenty-two years on earth. She had missed out on the supposedly fun-filled years of teenaged experimentation and had felt old before her time dealing with major responsibilities like terminal illness, household bills on a small budget and bereavement. With elderly grandparents, she had always had to be sensible and there had been an awful lot of rules to follow. Rules she was still faithfully following, she acknowledged ruefully.

‘I know I’m not that guy on your shopping list whom you would choose,’ Dante murmured. ‘But right now, I’m the one that you want...’

And the mad cacophony of warning voices in her head telling her to back away, go to her own bed and sensibly turn her back on the risk he presented, suddenly went silent. Yes, he was the one she wanted, the only one she had ever wanted, and all of a sudden holding out for that one perfect match of a guy who might never come along seemed spineless and sad. Dante had smashed through her defences because the bottom line was undisputable... I’m the one that you want.

‘That’s true,’ she framed shakily.

‘And it is equally true that I want you,’ Dante breathed, bending down to lift her up and settle her down on the bed. ‘Let’s not make it more complicated than that.’