His Cinderella's One-Night Heir, page 12
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.
CHAPTER NINE
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.
