CHAPTER SEVEN
CRISTO STRODE OUTSIDE to greet his brother, Nik. The two men stopped on the terrace to talk. Belle hovered, hearing an animated exchange between the men in a foreign language. It didn’t sound like Italian and she wondered if it could be Greek. When she heard the other man expostulate loudly several times she guessed that Cristo was telling him about her mother and the children and she winced uncomfortably, feeling agonisingly self-conscious.
Nik Christakis was a big man, even taller than her bridegroom, but he did bear a strong resemblance to Cristo. Nik frowned across the room at her and his frown only darkened more when he saw the young child standing by her side.
‘My wife, Belle, and our youngest little brother, Franco,’ Cristo imparted in calm explanation in response to his brother’s interrogative look. ‘My brother, Nik.’
‘Our?’ Nik queried straight away. ‘The child’s nothing to do with me. Five of them? You would have to be crazy to take that on, Cristo! Gaetano’s dead and buried. What does it matter what comes out about him now?’
‘It would matter to Zarif,’ Cristo countered squarely.
‘Like I care about that!’ Nik quipped darkly, digging into an inside pocket on his jacket to extract a document, which he extended to his brother. ‘Read it and weep. Learn what happens when you get married without a pre-nup.’
‘We didn’t have a pre-nup,’ Belle remarked awkwardly, uneasy with the tension flowing around them, and Nik’s reluctance to even acknowledge her, never mind make polite conversation.
Cristo raised his dark gaze slowly from the document to say, ‘I have to admit that I’m surprised.’
‘Are you? Are you still that na?ve? Obviously Betsy married me for my money and now she’s trying to steal half of everything I own!’ Nik declared with raw, unconcealed bitterness.
‘She didn’t marry you for your money,’ Cristo contradicted with quiet assurance. ‘She fell in love with you.’
‘Don’t be na?ve. I give you and your wife and her little bunch of Ravelli by-blows two years at most before she walks out and tries to take the shirt off your back!’ Nik vented with ringing derision.
Belle flushed and lifted her chin. ‘I wouldn’t do that. Look, I’ll leave you two to talk in private,’ she completed, anchoring Franco’s hand in her own.
As she left she heard Nik Christakis cursing, something that was instantly recognisable in many languages. She realised that she was very grateful not to be married to a man like that. Nik’s hard-featured face, cold eyes, not to mention the smouldering bitterness that escaped every time he mentioned his estranged wife, Betsy, chilled Belle to the marrow. Nik was clearly tough, obstinate, furiously hostile and, she suspected, the sort of man who would make an implacable enemy, a man who saw only the worst in anyone who crossed him.
Cristo, she reasoned, was more reasonable, more civilised...wasn’t he? She respected him for speaking up in defence of his sister-in-law. Furthermore the night before she had been surprised and reluctantly impressed when Cristo had suggested that complete honesty between them might well be the way to make their marriage work. That was a rational and mature attitude to take, she acknowledged thoughtfully. She liked and respected honesty, hated the lies and persuasive pretences that Gaetano had shamelessly employed to keep her mother content and make his own life smoother.
Two hours later, after Nik had finally departed and a second helicopter had flown in and deposited its colourful cargo, Cristo went off in search of Belle and found her sitting in the shade of a tree clutching a book. ‘You own a massive library of books,’ she complained as she heard his approach and lifted her head, auburn hair gleaming rich as silk in the shadowy light below the overhanging foliage, ‘but I could only find a couple written in English.’
Cristo swiped the hardback from between her fingers and studied the spine. It was a heavy-duty tome on the history of his mother’s family, written by one of his ancestors and translated by a more recent one. ‘I’ll order some English books for you. I’d suggest that you start learning Italian but it would hardly be worth your while.’
Her bone structure tightened, tension leaping through her as she absorbed that reminder that their relationship was of a strictly temporary nature. Images of his passionate lovemaking the night before swam up through her mind and killed every sensible thought stone dead, making concentration impossible while sending a wave of unwelcome heat travelling through her slender length. Her face hot, she studied the book fixedly as he returned it to her with an elegant gesture of one long-fingered hand. Last night those hands had touched her with breathtakingly erotic expertise and had extracted more pleasure from her weak body than she had known it was capable of experiencing. His complete poise in the aftermath of their passionate argument the night before, however, set her teeth firmly on edge. Evidently, as far as he was concerned, everything was done and dusted but Belle still felt as though her reactions, emotions and even her thoughts were whirling around in a maelstrom and out of her control.
‘Were you looking for me?’ she asked curiously.
‘Yes, cara. It’s time for you to enjoy your wedding present.’
‘Wedding present?’ Belle parroted as she rose slowly to her feet in discomfiture. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Wedding presents go with the territory of getting married,’ Cristo fielded smoothly, a lean hand settling to the base of her spine to steer her back in the direction of the villa.
‘But not between us, not in our sort of marriage,’ she parried with spirit.
‘I promised to treat you as my wife and that is what I am trying to do.’
‘So...’ Belle murmured tightly in the echoing hall. ‘This present...?’
‘It’s waiting for you in the ballroom,’ Cristo informed her, nodding to Umberto to open the double doors.
Belle crossed the hall slowly, peering into the vast room to focus in astonishment on the catwalk now dissecting it. ‘My goodness, what the heck—?’ she began in confusion.
‘Every woman wants a new wardrobe. I arranged to have a selection flown in along with the models to show the clothing off. All you have to do is choose what you want to wear.’
Every woman wants a new wardrobe? Most social climbing, gold-digging women would certainly fall into that category, Belle reflected with a helpless little moue of distaste that he should have assumed that she was that sort of a woman. But he hadn’t given her a choice. This was what Cristo thought she wanted and, it seemed, he was happy to deliver on that score and it would be needlessly confrontational for her to deny him the opportunity. One step into the ballroom she was introduced to Olivia, who whisked a tape measure over her with startling speed and efficiency and announced that any garments she selected would be delivered sized to fit by lunchtime the next day.
Funky music kicked off in the background as Olivia took one of three comfortable seats awaiting them while urging Belle to define what Olivia described as ‘her personal style’. Belle had to hinge her jaw closed at the question because she had no idea how to answer it. In any case Olivia had already embarked on a commentary on the first outfit while a brunette model wearing something floaty, purple and weirdly shaped like a lampshade strolled down the catwalk towards them. As a very tall blonde with a shock of almost-white chopped hair appeared in swimwear Olivia endeavoured to determine Belle’s fashion preferences. But Belle had never had the budget to develop a taste for luxury. As a student, she had worn jeans in winter and shorts in summer with only the occasional cheap skirt or dress purchased for nights out. Money had always been in short supply in her life, clothing generally purchased from her part-time earnings as a bartender, and she had only ever shopped in chain stores.
‘Don’t you like any of it?’ Cristo prompted, shooting his bride a questioning glance from his brooding dark eyes when she remained awkwardly silent.
As she connected with his stunning eyes her heart flipped inside her chest and turned a somersault. ‘It’s a bit overwhelming...all this,’ she admitted breathlessly.
‘Then I’ll choose for you.’
And what Cristo chose was highly informative and Belle almost burst out laughing, for without fail every short skirt, backless gown and low neckline received Cristo’s unqualified and enthusiastic vote of approval. On that score he was very predictable, very male and reassuringly human. Amused by the very basic male he was revealing beneath the sophisticated fa?ade, Belle began to regain her confidence and started to quietly voice opinions, shying away from the more spectacular garments in favour of the plainer ones, insisting that she couldn’t possibly wear shocking pink with her hair.
‘I like pink,’ Cristo argued without hesitation. Though as Olivia took up the conversation he suddenly remembered his feelings of horror at the many shades of pink spun throughout the small home back in Ireland. But his wife in pink...that was a different matter.
‘There are only certain shades of pink which you should avoid,’ Olivia, ever the highly accomplished saleswoman, assured her.
At that point the blonde appeared in a ravishing set of ruffled turquoise lingerie and Cristo sprang upright and actually approached the catwalk. ‘I want that,’ he spelt out without an ounce of discomfiture in his bearing.
Belle’s cheeks flamed while she noted the manner in which the very leggy blonde was posing for Cristo like a stripper, loving the attention as her breasts jiggled in the bra with her little dance movements, and she spun round to display her almost bare bottom taut in panties that were little more than a thong. Cristo seemed mesmerised by the spectacle, his dark golden eyes veiled, his sinfully seductive bronzed features taut as if he was struggling to conceal his thoughts.
He was attracted to the blonde, Belle decided with a sinking sick sensation in the pit of her stomach, and he couldn’t hide the fact.
‘Thank you, Sofia,’ the saleswoman said loudly as she stood up and the music stopped mid-note, leaving a sudden uncomfortable silence in its wake. Olivia said her goodbyes and took her leave through the rear door of the ballroom.
‘Well, wasn’t that educational?’ Belle remarked freezingly when Cristo finally wandered back to her side.
His winged ebony brows drew together in bewilderment. ‘How so?’
Her generous mouth compressed. ‘You fancied the blonde,’ she told him bluntly.
Cristo frowned.
‘Oh, don’t bother denying it. I saw you,’ Belle told him thinly. ‘You couldn’t take your eyes off her!’
Cristo moved steadily closer in a slow stalking movement that was quite ridiculously sensual. Belle looked up at him, fearless in her condemnation, and collided with smouldering golden eyes so intense in focus that she was rocked back on her heels. All the oxygen in the atmosphere seemed to have dried up and she parted her lips to snatch in air.
‘I have only one point to make. It wasn’t her I was seeing...it was you,’ he spelt out hoarsely, his brilliant eyes pinned to her with mesmerising force. ‘It was you I was picturing in that get-up.’
Disbelief assailed Belle and she flicked him a scornful upward glance of dismissal. ‘Like I’m going to believe that with a half-naked beauty cavorting in front of you!’ she derided.
‘Believe...’ Cristo urged in a roughened undertone that vibrated with assurance in the stillness. ‘When I’ve got a real woman like you, why would I want one with fewer curves than a coat hanger?’
Her mouth fell wide at that less than flattering description of the beautiful model. ‘Not your type?’
‘You’re my type,’ Cristo confided huskily. ‘The erotic image of you bountifully filling those little blue scraps of nothing turns me on fast and hard.’
A real woman? Belle almost laughed out loud at that label. After all, the rigorous dieting she had tried in her teen years had failed to hone an inch off the solid bone structure that gave her defiantly curvaceous hips and voluptuous breasts. Back then she would have given her right arm to be one of the more fashionable ‘skinny-minnies’ at school. But she was not fool enough as an adult to instantly dismiss the idea that some men actually preferred curves to more slender proportions. It simply hadn’t entered her head before that Cristo might be one of those men.
He brushed a straying curl from her cheek and tucked it behind her ear with a casual intimacy that unnerved her. It said that he had the right to touch her, a right she had already denied him. An alarm bell shrieked in her brain, warning her to back off and enforce her boundaries yet again. But he was close, so temptingly close that she could smell the evocative scent of cologne and masculine musk that he emanated. He smelt so unbelievably good to her that her senses swam and she felt light-headed. Her knees wobbled beneath her while warmth snaked down from the breasts straining below her camisole to the very core of her, leaving her feeling hot and achy and dissatisfied. Even staying still in that condition was a challenge.
He touched her face, a long tanned forefinger gently tracing the line of her jaw to the cupid’s bow above her upper lip while a thumb stroked the soft fullness of her lower lip. Belle trembled, scarcely able to breathe for the rush of excitement that had come out of nowhere at her. Her body raced up the scale in reaction, temperature rising, heart pounding, pulse hammering. Her lashes lowered to a languorous half-mast as she gazed up at him in helpless silence, for she had no words to describe what he was doing to her. He was so beautiful, so devastatingly beautiful that she hadn’t even blamed the models for concentrating their attention on him while they displayed their wares. Not only was he the buyer, but also a male so handsome that he made women stare while they struggled to comprehend what it was about those lean, darkly dazzling features that exercised such sinful power and magnetism over their sex. Belle didn’t know; she only knew that the minute she stopped looking at him, she needed to look again. It was a compulsion she couldn’t fight.
‘You can put on that blue set just for me,’ Cristo murmured hungrily, stunning dark eyes flaring wicked gold at that prospect.
‘In your dreams,’ Belle warned him without hesitation, thinking he would wait a very long time if he hoped to see her tricked out in provocative underwear for his benefit. Playing the temptress wasn’t her style and in her opinion he didn’t need the encouragement. That conviction in mind, she walked into the drawing room, where at least their conversation would be unheard by the staff.
‘Don’t tell me that you don’t have the same dream,’ Cristo chided, shifting in front of her to clamp his lean hands possessively to her hips.
Belle was about to hit him, push him away, stamp on his foot, loudly lodge a protest to physical contact of any kind. She really was going to do at least one of those things and then his mouth plunged down hungrily on hers and her hands spread against the hard, warm contours of his chest and slowly fisted into the fabric of his shirt as she fought herself and fought the craving he induced.
In that split second between her thinking and acting, his tongue snaked into her mouth to taste her and she was lost while he nipped and teased at her lips and delved deep. The hot, throbbing sensation between her legs rose in intensity until she was rocking her hips against his, wanting more, needing more with an urgency that unnerved her. She could feel the long, hard ridge of his arousal against her belly and their clothes were an obstruction she couldn’t bear, overwhelming physical hunger surging through her quivering body with a force she couldn’t withstand.
Cristo lifted his handsome head, eyes hot and bright with sexual heat, black hair tousled by the fingers she had dug into the luxuriant strands, an edge of colour accentuating his hard cheekbones. ‘Shall we take this upstairs?’ he murmured thickly.
No was on Belle’s lips but yes was in her heart because her body was drenched with treacherous longing for his. She took in a slow steadying breath and struggled to clear her head, fighting the wanting clawing at her with all her strength.
‘I want you...you want me, cara,’ Cristo said drily. ‘What’s the problem? Are you still suspicious about that model? Do you really think I’d be that crass?’
‘No,’ Belle conceded reluctantly, for she would have used that as an excuse had she been able to do so. Unfortunately, her brain was in free fall. He had spoken the truth: the attraction between them was explosive. Furthermore, had he not been strongly attracted to her in the first place, he probably wouldn’t have offered her marriage. Even so the bond that was being created between them solely on a physical level was too superficial for her to accept and she wanted more.
Cristo elevated a sleek black brow. ‘Then? Are you still judging me as if I’m my late father?’ he demanded impatiently. ‘Or is it something in your own past which makes you so suspicious of men?’
Belle stiffened. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—’
‘I think you do. You watched Gaetano run rings round your mother and hated him for it,’ Cristo contended. ‘But I’m not him.’
Belle bridled and gritted her teeth. ‘I know that and I didn’t say you were.’
‘Why else would you accuse me of coming on to that model right in front of you?’ Cristo slung back, tension etched along the hard line of his cheekbones and the angle of his strong jawline. ‘What sort of a man would behave like that?’
‘I overreacted. I’m sorry.’ Belle turned her vibrant head away, guilt and mortification piercing her. There was a certain amount of truth to his condemnation. She did distrust men but not all men. During her years at university she had been hurt by boyfriends who were offended by her refusal to get straight into bed with them before she even got to know them. The same boys had deceived her with other girls and let her down but no more so than any of her friends, who had suffered similar wake-up calls from young men who wanted nothing more lasting from a woman than physical release.
‘If you want this marriage to work, this isn’t the way to go about it,’ Cristo delivered in a measured undertone.
‘You said honesty was the best policy,’ Belle reminded him, walking away a few steps and then turning back to face him, her lovely face flushed and tense. ‘Then I’ll be honest. For this to work for me, I want something more than just sex with you. I want us to get to know each other. You can’t build a relationship purely on sex.’
‘I’ve never known anything else,’ Cristo growled.
‘Do you have any female friends?’
When he nodded with a faint frown, Belle smiled. ‘Well, then, you have known something else.’
‘Why didn’t you make these demands before you married me?’ Cristo derided.
‘I didn’t think it through until now,’ Belle confided truthfully. ‘I was desperate to make the children secure and marrying you was the price. I didn’t think beyond that. I didn’t think about how I would feel...’
Marrying you was the price. Not a statement he had expected to hear from Belle, not one he was even sure he could believe, Cristo mused grimly, dark eyes shielded by his lush lashes. She wanted more. Why did women always want more than was on offer? Were they programmed to want more at birth? All this and five children too, he reflected heavily—had he really thought about what he was doing either?
The forbidding look tensing his lean, dark features stirred Belle’s conscience. ‘I realise this is coming out of nowhere at you and you have a right to be irritated.’
‘That’s not quite the word I would’ve chosen,’ Cristo countered curtly.
Belle steeled herself to be more honest than she really wanted to be. ‘I did have thoughts I shouldn’t have had when I agreed to marry you,’ she admitted gruffly, her pale skin suddenly blossoming with mortified colour. ‘But none of those thoughts related to personal enrichment or social advancement.’ Feeling more uncomfortable than ever, she hesitated. ‘Although I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I had thoughts of getting revenge for what Gaetano put my family through over the years, I certainly had an inappropriate sense of satisfaction when you offered to marry me and I quite deliberately wore my mother’s wedding dress to get married in. I’m ashamed of those feelings now. After all, it was very unfair that you should have to pay in any way for your father’s mistakes. But then we’re both doing that now,’ she completed ruefully.
Cristo was violently disconcerted by her complete honesty. He hadn’t expected that, hadn’t been prepared for her to admit any reactions that might reflect badly on her motivation in marrying him. Getting a rich and powerful Ravelli to the altar had briefly thrilled her but she had owned up to it and that impressed a male who was rarely impressed by the women he met.
‘La via dell’inferno è lastricata di buone intenzione...the road to hell is paved with good intentions,’ Cristo translated sibilantly. ‘Do you ever do anything for the sheer hell of it?’
‘No.’ Belle stiffened as she made that admission. ‘And it doesn’t have to be hell,’ she pointed out uncomfortably. ‘We can make the best of the situation. You said you wanted to treat me like a proper wife, wanted to show me respect...’
The reminder hung there like a dark cloud between them, with Cristo finally registering that his partiality for that lingerie set had evidently caused offence. Last night he had become her first lover and she had been amazing, he recalled, arousal slivering through him at even the memory. He was expecting too much too soon and he gritted his perfect white teeth together. ‘I’ll try harder,’ he told her in a driven undertone.
‘I’ll try too,’ Belle responded with a tentative smile.
But it was too late because Cristo had already turned away and could not have seen her smile, which had combined both regret at her inability to be the purely sexual object he so clearly wanted her to be and her hope for a better understanding between them in the future. Spirits low, she went upstairs to find her little brother and give Teresa a break. Franco’s warm affection and trusting acceptance that he would be loved back were wonderfully soothing to her troubled state of mind. She played hide and seek with the little boy and the upper floor rang with laughter and thudding feet.
Umberto paused in Cristo’s office doorway to say warmly, ‘It is a joy to hear a child playing here again.’
‘There’s another four of them—a boy and a girl of eight and a pair of teenagers,’ Cristo confided, for he had known the kindly manservant since he was a child.
‘Your late father’s children?’ Umberto prompted.
Cristo’s brows drew together. ‘How did you know?’
‘I heard rumours over the years. My cousin flew Mr Gaetano’s helicopter right up until his retirement,’ the older man reminded him gently.
‘Let’s hope the rumours stay buried,’ Cristo commented wryly.
‘No one in my family will gossip,’ the older man assured him with pride. ‘But Mr Gaetano had other staff who may not be so discreet.’
A current of uneasiness assailed Cristo, who had ensured that his father’s surviving employees were paid off with adequate remuneration for their years of service. Was it possible he had got married for no good reason? And inexplicably, at that point, he thought of Franco, who demonstrated such a desperate need for male attention. Franco definitely needed a father figure, Cristo reflected, his stern mouth softening as the toddler’s gales of laughter echoed down from above.
‘No...no...no, Franco!’ Belle gasped in dismay when she found her little brother picking in delight through the collection of items lying on the dressing table in Cristo’s bedroom. ‘Don’t touch those.’
Jingling the car keys still in his hand, Franco dropped the wallet he had been investigating and it fell to the floor. Belle knelt down to gather up the banknotes that Franco had crumpled, smoothing them out before returning them to the wallet along with credit cards, a couple of business cards and...a tiny photograph. Belle lifted the photo and stared down at it in surprise, recognising Nik Christakis’s estranged wife, Betsy. She was a little blonde sprite of a beauty with delicate features and big blue eyes. Her brow furrowed. Had the photo fallen out of the wallet or had it just been lying there forgotten on the floor? The rug beneath her knees, however, bore the ruffled evidence of recent vacuuming. So, assuming the photo had been inside Cristo’s wallet, why was her husband carrying round a photo of his brother’s wife?
And was she even going to ask him why? Belle came out in a cold sweat at the very prospect of so embarrassing a conversation. After her misjudgement of his behaviour with the model, he would never believe that she had accidentally seen the photograph. He would think she had been snooping in his wallet and he would naturally assume that she was one of those madly jealous, distrustful women, who would always be scheming to check his cell-phone messages and his pockets for evidence of infidelity. Cringing at that likelihood, Belle slotted the photo back into his wallet and returned it circumspectly to the dressing table. No, she wasn’t about to ask him any more awkward questions.
Matters were tense enough between them. And yet so many important things hinged on the success of their marriage, she thought wretchedly. If she and Cristo couldn’t make a go of it, what would happen to her siblings? She had made promises, not least those in the chapel, which she had to, at least, try to keep. Unless she was prepared to let Cristo go free, she had to make more of an effort.
But please, no, she prayed, let not the only avenue to success demand the sporting of saucy underwear....