CHAPTER FOUR
‘IT’S ALL OUT in the open now, which is much better,’ Isa told Belle comfortably. ‘Now we all know where we stand.’
Belle dashed a stray curl from her hot brow with a forearm, finished wiping the work surface and dried her hands. She had indulged in an orgy of cleaning since returning to the Lodge. She had needed a physical outlet to work off her excess energy. Her grandmother always reacted to stressful situations with calm and acceptance and when Belle had mentioned worst-case scenarios in the homeless field, Isa had quietly reminded her that it would be a few weeks before Bruno and Donetta returned home for the summer and that that was ample time in which to find somewhere to rent. Belle had had to swallow back the thorny question of how she would pay rent because she didn’t have the money and Isa didn’t either.
Tag began to bark noisily a split second before the doorbell went. Belle walked out to the hall with Tag bouncing excitably at her heels.
Cristo Ravelli stood on the step, six feet four inches tall at the very least and Belle had no heels on, so he towered over her, radiating raw energy and power. His lean, darkly beautiful face was hard and forbidding. ‘Miss Brophy?’
‘Belle,’ she corrected curtly.
Cristo looked his fill from the mane of colourful curls tumbling round her shoulders to the porcelain-pale delicate features that provided the perfect frame for grass-green eyes and a full pink mouth. Out of disguise and bare of the tacky make-up she was absolutely breathtaking.
Belle flushed and parted her lips to ask what he wanted and her grip on the door loosened, allowing Tag to take advantage and dart outside to spring an attack on the visitor.
Cristo got off the step fast as the little dog snarled and attacked his ankles. Belle squatted down, saying not very effectively, ‘No, Tag, no!’
Cristo received the impression that the dog was welcome to eat him alive if he chose to do so.
‘Grab Tag!’ an older woman snapped from the hall.
Belle gathered the frantic little dog into her arms. ‘I’m sorry. He’s suspicious of men.’
‘Come in, Mr Ravelli,’ Isa Kelly invited politely over her granddaughter’s crouching figure.
Belle’s head came up fast, green eyes stormy. ‘I wasn’t going to ask—’
‘Mr Ravelli is a guest,’ her grandmother decreed. ‘He will visit and you will talk like civilised people.’
Tag growled at Cristo from the security of Belle’s arms. ‘Your father kicked him...so did mine,’ she confided grudgingly. ‘That’s why he doesn’t like men. He’s too old now to change his ways.’
The older woman studied Cristo, hostility creeping into her voice, despite the civility of her words.
Cristo strolled into a hideous lounge with pink walls, hot-pink sofas and embellished with so many pink frills and ostentatious fake-flower arrangements that it was as if his worst nightmare had come to life. ‘I’ve never liked dogs,’ he confided.
A curly-haired toddler clamped both arms round his leg before he could sit down.
‘No, Franco,’ Belle scolded.
‘Or kids,’ Cristo added unapologetically.
Franco looked up at him. He had Gaetano’s eyes and Cristo found that sight so unnerving that he sat down with the kid still clamped awkwardly to one leg.
‘Man,’ Franco pronounced with an air of discovery and satisfaction.
‘He’s a wee bit starved of male attention,’ Belle breathed, setting down the dog to grab the toddler in his place and convey him struggling and loudly protesting into the kitchen with her.
‘Cristo drinks black coffee,’ her grandmother told her from the doorway.
Belle gritted her teeth but she knew that the older woman was talking sense; she did have to talk to Cristo and, having set out her expectations, at least he already knew her plans.
Cristo ignored the dog snarling at him from below the coffee table. It was little and grey around the muzzle and should have known better in his opinion than to embark on a battle it couldn’t possibly win. Cristo never wasted his time on lost causes or thankless challenges but Belle would, no doubt, have been pleased to learn that her threat had focused his powerful intellect as nothing else could have done.
The instant the tray of coffee and biscuits arrived, Cristo rose back upright, feeling suffocated amidst all that horrible pinkness. ‘I don’t want you to take the question of the children’s parentage into court.’
‘Tough,’ Belle said succinctly, not one whit perturbed by his statement because she could hardly have expected him to be supportive on that score. ‘My brothers and sisters have been ignored and passed over far too many times. I want them to have what they’re entitled to.’
‘A few years ago, Gaetano sold up most of his assets and he salted away the proceeds in overseas trusts, which no Irish court will be able to access,’ Cristo volunteered. ‘With the exception of the sale of the Mayhill estate there is very little cash for you to demand a share of on behalf of your siblings.’
‘I’m not looking for a fortune for them.’
‘I have a better idea,’ Cristo told her.
‘I imagine that you always have a better idea,’ Belle quipped helplessly, leaning back against the kitchen door with defensively folded arms while she wondered how any man could look so fit and vital clad in a tailored business suit that belonged in a boardroom.
She was slim as a whip in her tight faded jeans and an off-the-shoulder black tee that revealed an entrancing glimpse of a narrow white shoulder bisected by a black strap that Cristo savoured, glorying in the fact that he was now free to appreciate her glowing beauty while he speculated as to whether or not she was that pale all over, her skin in vibrant contrast to her bright hair and eyes. The instant he developed an erection, he regretted that evocative thought.
‘I will make a settlement on your siblings in compensation for their not pursuing their rights through the courts,’ Cristo delivered, half turning away from her to look out of the window overlooking the drive.
‘We don’t want Ravelli charity,’ Belle traded, lifting her chin.
‘But it wouldn’t be charity. As you said, they’re my father’s children and I should make good on that for all our sakes. My family would find a court case embarrassing,’ Cristo admitted tight-mouthed.
Belle didn’t shift an inch. ‘Why should I care about that?’
‘Publicity is a double-edged sword,’ Cristo warned her. ‘The media loves sleaze. Your mother won’t emerge well from the story. At least three of the children were born while Gaetano was still married.’
At that blunt reminder, a veil of colour burned up below Belle’s fair complexion. ‘That can’t be helped and Mum can’t be hurt now. I have to consider the children’s future. I want them to have the right to use the Ravelli name.’
‘No court that I know of has the ability to bestow that right when no marriage took place between the parents,’ Cristo countered, exasperated by her pig-headedness. ‘You’re being unreasonable. If you keep this out of court and allow me to handle things discreetly, I will be generous. It’s the best offer you’re going to get.’
‘Forgive me for my lack of trust. As I learned today with regard to the ownership of this house, your father was a good teacher.’
‘I will not allow you to take this sordid mess into a public courtroom,’ Cristo spelt out harshly. ‘If you do that I will fight you every step of the way and I warn you—you don’t want me as an enemy.’
‘Fight me all you like...it’s still going to court,’ Belle replied thinly. ‘We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.’
‘What would it take for you to drop this idea?’ Cristo growled, almost shuddering at the threat of how much damage a media smear campaign could do to his brother. Zarif’s standing in Vashir was delicate, his having only recently ascended the throne. The last thing Zarif needed right now was a great big horrible scandal that would give all too many people the impression that he was from a sleazy family background and was far from being the right ruler for a very conservative country. Zarif, Cristo reminded himself grimly, had already taken the fall for revealing Nik’s biggest secret to Nik’s estranged wife, Betsy, when the first careless spilling of that secret was entirely Cristo’s fault.
‘I’d probably be asking for the impossible,’ Belle admitted ruefully, ‘but I want my siblings to have the lifestyle they would have enjoyed had Gaetano married my mother. It’s very unfair that they should have to pay the price for the fact that he didn’t marry her.’
‘You’re being irrational,’ Cristo condemned, impatiently, moving out of the room. ‘You can’t change the past.’
‘I don’t want to change the past. I simply want to right the wrongs that have been done to my siblings.’
‘Leave the past behind you and move on.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ Belle quipped. ‘Not so easy in practice. And I’m not irrational—’
In the hall, Cristo swung round, surprisingly light on his feet for so large and powerfully built a man. ‘You’re the most irrational woman I’ve ever met.’
Belle collided with his stunning dark eyes and for a timeless moment the world stopped turning and she stopped breathing.
‘And for some reason I find it incredibly sexy,’ Cristo purred the admission, his accent roughening his dark deep drawl as he flicked her tee shirt back up over her exposed shoulder with a long careless forefinger.
‘You can’t get round me. I’m not as na?ve as my mother was,’ Belle told him tartly.
‘Wake up and smell the roses, cara. You’re a child trying to play with the grown-ups,’ Cristo told her thickly, his intimate intonation vibrating down her taut spinal cord.
Suddenly, Belle was short of breath and she stared up at him, her eyes very wide and scornful. ‘A child? Is that the best you can do on the insult front?’
‘I wasn’t trying to insult you.’ Up that close his dark eyes had tiny gold flecks like stars. His hand curved to her shoulder and the scent of clean, warm male overlaid with a faint hint of cologne ignited a burst of heat low in Belle’s tummy. Just as suddenly she was locked into his eyes and it was as though her feet were encased in concrete and she literally couldn’t move. He lowered his handsome dark head and took her parted lips with a scorching urgency that sent something frighteningly wild and alive flying through her like an explosive charge. It was a fiery kiss and like no other she had experienced. The minute his tongue plunged into the tender interior of her mouth, it sent a wave of violent response crashing through her, and she was lost. Her hands roamed from his broad shoulders up into his luxuriant dark hair while she rejoiced in the taste of him, the unique sexual flavour of a dominant and surprisingly passionate male. His arms tightened round her, long fingers smoothing down her spine to pin her into uncompromising awareness of his erection. She gasped beneath the thrust of his tongue, mind flying free to picture a much more sexual joining and craving that completion with a strength that started an ache between her thighs.
The sheer intensity of what she was feeling totally spooked Belle. With a startled sound of rejection, she pushed him back from her. ‘No, we’re not doing this!’ she told him furiously.
Dark eyes veiled, Cristo stepped back and drew in a long, deep, steadying breath. Maledizione! He was too aroused to be comfortable with the sensation or the woman who had got him into that condition. ‘I seem to recall that I was trying to persuade you not to take private family business into a court of law,’ he murmured flatly.
Belle shot him a disconcerted glance, unable to credit that he could act as frozen as ever in the wake of that passionate kiss. Passion, it seemed, didn’t control Cristo Ravelli. All in the space of a moment she resented his assurance, was insulted by his cool indifference and furious that she hadn’t fought him off. But, my goodness, he could kiss. That mortifying thought crept through her mind no matter how hard she tried to kill it dead.
Belle had done a lot of kissing and not much else as a student, very much hoping to experience a volcanic reaction that would signal that all-important spark of true, overwhelming physical attraction. Now fate was having the last laugh by finally serving up that long-awaited, miraculously special kiss and it was happening with the wrong man. She had no doubt that Cristo Ravelli was wrong in every way for her. He was stuffy and cold and unfeeling and she was a warm, emotional and impulsive individual.
‘I’m sorry. I’m going to do what’s best for my siblings and take this matter to court to get it sorted out,’ Belle told him curtly.
‘You can’t,’ Cristo countered with chilling bite. ‘It will damage other people. You and your siblings are not the only individuals likely to be affected by this.’
‘I don’t care about anyone else,’ Belle admitted truthfully. ‘I want my brothers and sisters to be able to hold their heads high and know who they are without shame.’
‘You want the impossible,’ Cristo derided, turning on his heel.
‘No, I want justice.’
Justice! Cristo reflected contemptuously, a deep sense of frustration ruling him, for Cristo never backed down and never failed to find solutions to problems. Damage limitation was his speciality. How could it be justice that Zarif’s throne would be rocked by the extent of Gaetano’s infidelity and the revelation of his secret family in Ireland? Like father, like son, Zarif’s critics would sneer. Mary Brophy had made her choices when she chose to get involved with a married man and have his children. Her daughter, Belle, had too much pride and her resentment of the Ravelli family, or, more specifically, his father, had persuaded her that she could somehow rewrite history. But washing the family dirty linen in public was not going to make those children feel that they could raise their heads high. No, it was much more likely to shame them by depicting their parents in ways they would never forget. No child of Gaetano’s had ever been proud of him or his name. Gaetano had been a cruelly selfish and uninterested parent.
Ironically, Cristo had always believed growing up that he would be a better man than his father and now he wondered what had happened to that dream and at what point cynicism had killed that honourable goal stone dead. He knew that he had not once considered the plight of Mary Brophy’s children from any viewpoint other than his own. He was a pragmatic man and he knew he was selfish. But even he recognised that Belle Brophy was too young and her grandmother too old to take on full responsibility for Gaetano’s children. Cristo was suddenly very conscious that those kids, right down to the little one with his father’s eyes, were his flesh and blood too, even though he didn’t want to recognise that unwelcome fact.
And then the answer to the problem came to him in a sudden shocking moment of truth. He recoiled from the prospect at first, but as he filtered through the list of challenges he currently faced and that solution ticked every box he began to mull it over as a genuine possibility. It was not as though he were ever likely to fall in love again. Indeed it was a wonder it had happened even once to a male as detached from emotion as he was, he reasoned grimly. Gaetano and Mary’s affair could be decently buried and the children’s antecedents concealed from the media. As for Belle, in the role he envisaged, which was frankly Belle reclining wearing only a winsome smile on his bed in London, well, she would be perfect there, he reflected with the very first flicker of enthusiasm for the challenge of sacrificing his freedom for the greater good.
* * *
Belle suffered a restless night of sleep. She relived the kiss again and again and got hot and bothered while tossing and turning in guilty discomfiture. Cristo was a Ravelli just like Gaetano and the very last man alive she should enjoy kissing. In the morning, she made breakfast for the children on automatic pilot because her brain felt fuzzy and slow. There had been too much agonising over whether or not going to court was the right thing to do for the children, she decided irritably. She did not have a choice. There had never been a choice and there was no way on earth that she planned to trust in any promises made by Cristo Ravelli, who would undoubtedly be every bit as slippery in such delicate negotiations as his late father had proved to be. Exasperated by the constant parade of anxious thoughts weighing her down, Belle saw the twins off to school and then told her grandmother that she was taking Franco down to the beach.
* * *
When he reached the beach, Cristo had the pleasure of seeing Belle looking relaxed for the first time. Her wild mane of curls was blowing back from her face in the breeze that plastered her jeans and her blue tee to her lithe, shapely body. She was engaged in throwing a stone into the sea while the leg-clinging toddler bounced up and down in excitement and the dog circled them both barking noisily. Espying Cristo first, the Jack Russell raced across the sand to attack.
‘No!’ Cristo thundered as he strode across the sand.
Tag cringed and rolled over and stuck his four little legs up in the air, beady eyes telegraphing terror.
‘You didn’t need to shout at him,’ Belle criticised, rushing over to crouch down and pet the little animal. ‘Look how frightened he is! He’s very sensitive.’
‘I’m a little sensitive to being bitten,’ Cristo murmured drily.
‘Man!’ the toddler exclaimed and immediately went for Cristo’s left leg. Cristo froze, wondering if he could do it—actually take on the whole bunch of them and survive with his dignity and sanity intact. He wasn’t a family man, he hadn’t a clue how a normal family functioned and didn’t really want to find out.
Belle was looking up at him, her lovely face flushed and self-conscious, clear green eyes wide above her dainty freckled nose, and her vibrant beauty in that instant scoured his mind clean of all such thoughts. She made him think about sex, lots and lots and lots of sex, and on one level that unnerved him and on another it turned him so hard it literally hurt.
Belle stood up. Tag, the terrified dog, was clasped to her bosom, and now giving Cristo a rather smug look. ‘Did Isa tell you where I was?’
‘I could be down here for a walk.’
Belle raised a fine auburn brow, scanning his lean, powerful body with assessing eyes. It amazed her that a man who spent so much time in a business suit could be so well built but there he was: broad of shoulder and chest, lean of hip and long of leg with not even the hint of jowls or a paunch. Clearly, he kept fit. And although she had long thought business suits were boring Cristo’s dark, perfectly tailored designer suit screamed class and sophistication and was cut close to his powerful thighs and lean hips, directing her attention to areas she didn’t normally appraise on men. Her colour heightening, she tore her attention from the prominent bulge at his crotch and dropped it down to his highly polished shoes, which were caked with sand, and she wondered why he couldn’t just admit that he had come looking for her.
‘You didn’t come down here for a walk dressed like that.’
‘Sand brushes off,’ he fielded carelessly as she settled the dog down on the beach and he scampered off.
In silence, Belle studied Cristo’s lean, extravagantly handsome features, heat blossoming in her pelvis and butterflies flying free in her tummy. She felt as clumsy and ill at ease as a schoolgirl in the presence of her idol. But then was it any wonder that she was embarrassed? She had looked at his body and positively delighted in the strikingly strong muscular definition inherent in his build. She could not recall ever doing that to a man before. But the need to look at Cristo felt as necessary as the need to breathe. In reaction to that humiliating truth she flushed to the roots of her hair, mortified by her failure to control her reaction to his looks and dark, charismatic appeal.
Cristo reached down to detach the toddler’s painful grip from his leg. Starved of male attention, he recalled, thinking that he could certainly understand that. Neither in childhood nor adulthood had Gaetano ever touched him or, indeed, enquired after his well-being. ‘We have to talk,’ he said succinctly.
‘There’s nothing more to talk about. We said it all last night,’ Belle tossed over a slim shoulder as she started down the beach again and extended her hand. ‘Franco, come here!’
‘No!’ the toddler said stubbornly and, deprived of Cristo’s leg, grasped a handful of his trousers instead, making it difficult for Cristo to walk.
Cristo expelled his breath in a slow measured hiss. ‘I placed the Mayhill estate on the market this morning,’ he fired at her rudely turned back.
Belle came to a dead halt, her narrow spine suddenly rigid as panic leapt inside her at the prospect of losing the roof over their heads. There was certainly no room for them all to squeeze into Isa’s one-bedroom apartment in the village. She stared out to sea but the soothing sound of the surf washing the sand smooth failed to work its usual magic. She turned her bright head, green eyes glittering. ‘Couldn’t that have waited for a few weeks?’
Cristo took his time crossing the sand to join her, her little brother clinging to whatever part of Cristo he could reach and finally stretching up to grip the corner of his suit jacket with sandy fingers. ‘No. I want the property sold as soon as possible. I want Gaetano’s life here to remain a secret.’
‘And what about us? Where are we supposed to go?’ Belle demanded heatedly, her temper rising. ‘It takes time to relocate.’
‘You’ll have at least a month to find somewhere else,’ Cristo fielded without perceptible sympathy while he watched the breeze push the soft, clinging cotton of her top against her breasts, defining the full rounded swells and her pointed nipples. The heavy pulse at his groin went crazy and he clenched his teeth together, willing back his arousal.
‘That’s not very long. Bruno and Donetta will be home from school for the summer soon. Five children take up a lot of space... They’re your brothers and sisters too, so you should care about what happens to them!’ Belle launched back at him in furious condemnation.
‘Which is why I’m here to suggest that we get married and make a home for them together,’ Cristo countered with harsh emphasis as he wondered for possibly the very first time in his life whether he really did know what he was doing.
‘Married?’ Belle repeated aghast, wondering if she’d missed a line or two in the conversation. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘You said that you wanted your siblings to enjoy the Ravelli name and lifestyle. I can only make that happen by marrying you and adopting them.’
Frowning in confusion, Belle fell back a step, in too much shock to immediately respond. ‘Is this a joke?’ she asked when she had finally found her voice again.
‘Why would I joke about something so serious?’
Belle shrugged. ‘How would I know? You thought it was acceptable to suggest to their mother that she give them up to be adopted,’ she reminded him helplessly.
‘I’m not joking,’ Cristo replied levelly, a stray shard of sunlight breaking through the clouds to slant across his lean, strong face.
All over again, Belle studied him in wonder because he had the smouldering dark beauty of a fallen angel. His brilliant dark eyes were nothing short of stunning below the thick screen of his lashes and suddenly she felt as breathless as though someone were standing on her lungs.
‘I’m a practical man and I’m suggesting a practical marriage which would fulfil all our needs,’ Cristo continued smoothly. ‘You’re aware that I don’t want a court case. I also want to prevent the squalid story of Gaetano and his housekeeper leaking into the public domain. You would have to agree not to discuss the children’s parentage with anyone but nobody need tell any lies either. As far as anyone need know, the children are simply your orphaned brothers and sisters.’
Belle breathed in deep and slow but it still didn’t clear her head. ‘I can’t believe you’re suggesting this.’
‘You didn’t give me a choice, did you? The threat of a court case piled on the pressure. Are you prepared to settle this out of court?’ Cristo studied her enquiringly.
Belle didn’t hesitate. ‘No.’
Cristo raised a sleek ebony brow. ‘Then what’s your answer?’
‘It’s not that simple,’ Belle protested.
‘Isn’t it? I’m offering you everything you said you wanted.’
Her lashes flickered above her strained eyes. She felt cornered and trapped. ‘Well, yes, but...marriage? I could hardly be expecting that development!’
Annoyance lanced through Cristo. It was his very first proposal of marriage and he had never before even considered proposing to a woman. Without a shade of vanity he knew he was rich, good-looking and very eligible and yet she was hesitating and he was grimly amused by his irritation.
‘Look, I’ll think it over until tonight,’ Belle muttered uncomfortably.
‘Di niente...no problem,’ Cristo fielded, his wide, sensual mouth compressed. ‘By the way...I mean a real marriage.’
‘Real...?’ Belle spluttered to a halt, the tip of her tongue stealing out to wet her dry lower lip. His intent dark gaze flashed pure naked gold to that tiny movement. Heated colour swept her face as she grasped his meaning in growing disbelief. ‘You’d expect me to sleep with you?’
‘Of course,’ Cristo murmured with an indolent assurance that suggested that that idea was entirely normal and acceptable. ‘I have no plans to emulate my father and entertain mistresses while I’m married. And I don’t want a wife who plays around behind my back either. That kind of lifestyle would not provide a stable home for the children.’
Belle got his point, she really did, but she flushed scarlet at the thought of sharing a bed with him, suddenly very conscious of her own lack of sexual experience. Growing up, she’d had to combat the expectations of the local boys who saw her mother as free and easy in that department and she had had to prove over and over again that she was different. Saying no had been a matter of pride and self-preservation, but as she got older that conditioning along with other needs and insecurities had influenced her and trusting a man enough to drop her guard and make love had proved to be even more of a challenge for Belle.
Cristo settled a business card into her limp hand and she stared down at it blankly.
‘My private cell number. Let me know by seven this evening, bellezza mia,’ he instructed with unblemished cool. ‘That way I can make an immediate start on the arrangements.’