CHAPTER EIGHT
BELLE SAT ALONE at the breakfast table out on the terrace, which overlooked the glorious gardens and, beyond them, the beautiful panorama of the idyllic Umbrian landscape, and decided that nobody would ever credit how miserable and insecure she was. Here she was, all dressed up in gorgeous surroundings, married to an even more gorgeous man and already she had made a mess of things! Although, to be fair, expecting her to be willing to put on provocative lingerie for his benefit had scarcely been calculated to soothe her misgivings.
Do you ever do anything for the sheer hell of it? Cristo had asked. And the truthful answer would have been, no, never. So, how on earth had she managed to leap into marrying Cristo without fully considering what she was doing? She still couldn’t answer that question to her own satisfaction. Had her treacherous attraction to him destroyed every single one of her brain cells? Why hadn’t she listened to her grandmother’s warnings? After all, nobody knew better than Belle that relationships between men and women were often difficult and prone to unhappiness.
Her mother’s over-hasty marriage at a young age to Belle’s drunken father followed by Mary’s long affair with Gaetano Ravelli had taught Belle to be very cautious and sensible and to carefully reason out every move she made in advance with men, except when it came to the opportunity to marry Cristo when she had—inexplicably to her—jumped right in with both feet. And her current wary attitude to intimacy was creating friction with Cristo. Could she blame him for his outlook?
What, after all, had Cristo gained from their marriage? Her silence, no court case and five pretty needy children he had promised to adopt into the Ravelli family. Her tense mouth down-curved on the discouraging suspicion that he had sacrificed much more than she had and that few people would feel sorry for her having given up her freedom to work and instead live in the lap of luxury with her fancy designer wardrobe. That thought made her eyes sting fiercely with tears because she had very little interest in the luxury and the vast selection of new clothes that had been delivered in garment bags to her room before she even got out of bed. In fact, she had only donned one of the outfits, a silky top and skirt, because she hadn’t wanted Cristo to think that she was ungrateful for the gesture he had made.
But unfortunately, Cristo wasn’t even around to notice what she was wearing. That was the problem of separate bedrooms in a massive house and two people who didn’t know each other’s habits very well, Belle reflected wretchedly. Cristo had been absent at dinner the night before and now he was absent again. Was he avoiding her? Fed up with her immature outlook? It seemed pretty obvious to her that she was getting absolutely everything in their marriage wrong, and to achieve that at such an early stage suggested that she had cherished completely unreasonable expectations of what being married to Cristo would entail. He had assumed she was a gold-digger and, having brooded over that accusation, she wasn’t sure she could blame him for his cynicism. After all, he didn’t know her and possibly connecting on a physical level was the only way Cristo knew how to get to know a woman, so her coming over all prudish and standoffish because he had hurt her feelings wasn’t helping the situation...
And worst of all, Belle knew she couldn’t even phone her grandmother. Isa Kelly’s sensible advice would have been very welcome even though Belle could not have brought herself to mention the bedroom side of things to the older woman. Indeed even the sound of Isa’s voice and those of her siblings would have been a comfort. Belle was horribly homesick and missed the family dog, Tag, almost as much. But Belle knew that if she phoned home within days of the wedding her grandmother would be astute enough to suspect that things weren’t working out and it would be very, very selfish to lay yet another worry on her grandmother’s already overburdened shoulders.
Disgusted at her self-pitying mood and lack of activity, Belle suddenly pushed her chair back and stood up. Sitting here feeling sorry for herself and agonising over her possible mistakes wasn’t fixing anything, was it? It was time to go and find Cristo.
Questioned, Umberto smiled and indicated a door at the foot of a short corridor off the main hall. ‘Mr Cristo has been working round the clock in his office since news of the banking crisis broke...’
What banking crisis? Belle had not seen a television or a newspaper since the morning of her wedding. She had noticed that the nanny, Teresa, had a TV in her room but had drawn a blank when she looked for access to one for her own benefit. Perspiration breaking on her brow, she knocked on the door of Cristo’s office and then opened it.
Dark eyes flying up from his laptop screen, Cristo swung round in his chair. Belle’s appearance shocked him on two levels. Dio mio, he had a wife and he had forgotten about her, and then his next thought was that forgetting about her should have been impossible when she was such a beauty, standing in the doorway, a slender, wonderfully leggy figure taut with uncertainty in a peach-coloured top and skirt that toned in perfectly with her torrent of vibrant spiral curls. Wide grass-green eyes assailed his.
‘I wondered where you were,’ she said awkwardly, transfixed as she always was at first glimpse of his tousled dark head, perfect bronze profile and striking eyes. The fact he hadn’t shaved merely added a raw-edged masculinity to his charismatic appeal and she could feel her face warming up, her tummy flipping, her heart rate skipping upbeat: all standard reactions to Cristo. ‘Then Umberto mentioned a banking crisis of some kind. I’m afraid I haven’t seen a newspaper since I arrived and I didn’t know about it. Do you need any help?’
‘Help?’ Cristo queried, ebony brows rising in surprise. ‘How could you help?’
‘I have a first-class degree in business and economics and I worked as an intern for a year in a Dublin bank as part of the course,’ Belle confided hesitantly.
A line of colour flared across Cristo’s cheekbones as it crossed his mind that he should’ve known such elementary facts about the woman he had married, and rare discomfiture sliced through him. ‘I had no idea.’
Her eyes sparkling with genuine amusement, an involuntary grin slanted Belle’s wide and generous mouth. ‘So, you just assumed you were marrying an uneducated Irish peasant, did you?’
‘If you’re willing to help, I’d be grateful, bella mia,’ Cristo admitted, smoothly, gratefully ducking that issue entirely. ‘I’m trying to work with my London staff remotely and it’s complicated but this is supposed to be our honeymoon.’
‘I’ve got nothing else to do,’ Belle pointed out gently, convinced that a couple of their ilk scarcely qualified for the itinerary or the behaviour of a normal honeymoon couple.
Cristo immediately recognised yet another screaming indictment of his behaviour as a new husband and hurriedly sidestepped that awareness by offering Belle the laptop beside his own and springing upright to ask Umberto to go and find another chair. His conscience reacted as though someone had given it a good hard kick. Marriage, he was learning by slow and painful steps, would demand much more of him than he had imagined and would entail considering Belle’s needs as well as his own.
For the first time, he appreciated that he had had absolutely no right to judge his brother, Nik, for the mess he had made of his marriage to Betsy. After all, he only knew one side of that story and tiny, fragile Betsy weeping out her heartbreak on Cristo’s chest had definitely cornered the sympathy vote as far as appearances went. His lip curled as he skimmed a glance across Belle’s composed and lovely face and he almost smiled in relief. There was nothing helpless about Belle and at least she wasn’t crying hysterically, complaining, condemning...
* * *
‘Yes, she’s amazing,’ Cristo agreed in Italian with his chief finance officer in the London branch of his investment bank. ‘If I wasn’t married to her, I’d hire her!’
Cristo studied his wife with an involuntary sense of pride. Belle was curled up in a chair with a laptop, long incredible legs in shorts on display, auburn hair spiralling down round her shoulders, enhancing porcelain-pale freckled skin while her fingers flew over the keyboard. It was the pivotal moment when he realised that he had struck literal gold and had seriously underestimated her worth when he married her. For a woman of her beauty to have retained qualities of such natural likeability and unpretentiousness was extraordinary. She was also intelligent, resourceful and hardworking. Not once had she complained over the past three days about the very long hours they were putting in and she had kept pace with him every step of the way. He winced when he recalled the lingerie episode at the fashion show.
Belle stood up to stretch and set the laptop down. The banking crisis was over and she was almost disappointed by that reality since it had acted as a brilliantly positive antidote to the friction between them. They could work together now, talk to each other. He had stopped treating her like some sort of glorified sex doll expected to offer him entertainment and she had learned to her own satisfaction that Cristo was as smart as a whip while being as stubborn and impatient as she was.
Her clear gaze wandered over him while he sprawled back against the edge of the desk, long powerful thighs sheathed in denim splayed, a crisp lemon shirt open at his strong tanned throat. She looked at his wide, sensual lips and recalled the passionate intoxication of his kiss and momentarily felt dizzy. Her mouth ran dry, hunger stirring at the core of her as it had so often in recent days when her body reacted to the presence of his. She leant slightly forward, willing him to make a move to hold her, touch her, kiss her...anything!
‘Put on something fancy. I’m taking you out to dinner, bella mia,’ Cristo volunteered, glancing up to transfix her with spectacular dark golden eyes heavily fringed with lush black lashes.
Belle flushed to her hairline, mortified by her thoughts and drawn up short by the unexpected invitation. ‘Only if you want to.’
‘Dio mio! Of course I want to,’ Cristo countered with a frown.
‘You don’t need to thank me for helping out,’ Belle told him stubbornly.
Cristo expelled his breath in a slow hiss. ‘Is it so hard for you to accept that I might want to take my beautiful wife out and show her off?’
Belle laughed at the idea. ‘Not when you put it that way, you smoothie!’ she teased.
Cristo winced. ‘Don’t call me that...it makes me think of Gaetano.’
Belle wrinkled her nose in agreement. ‘You don’t remind me of him in any way.’
‘Grazie a Dio...thank God,’ Cristo retorted with visible relief.
Belle collided with Franco on the way into the office. Her little brother pushed past her to throw himself at Cristo with a shout of satisfaction. Although they had been incredibly busy in recent days, Cristo never turned Franco away and she appreciated that, glancing back as Cristo tickled Franco and engaged in the kind of rough, noisy, masculine play that the toddler adored. While she hovered, Cristo answered the buzz of his cell phone.
At supersonic speed she registered that something bad had happened and she moved back into the office because Cristo’s lean, strong face had clenched into rigid lines, his eyes darkening, his mouth compressing as he finished the call in clipped Italian. He released Franco and the little boy scampered off into the hall, already in search of fresh amusement.
Cristo settled dark eyes now flaming accusing gold on Belle and asked harshly, ‘Have you been talking to the press?’
Astonishment furrowed her brow. ‘No, of course not! What on earth are you talking about?’ she parried, instantly cast on the defensive.
‘A friend who’s a journalist in London just called me to warn me that the story of Gaetano, your mother and the kids will be appearing in print some time soon in a British tabloid!’ Cristo bit out furiously.
Belle paled at that news but rallied fast because her own conscience was clear. ‘Well, that’s very unfortunate.’
Cristo sprang upright, six feet plus inches of enraged, darkly powerful masculinity. ‘Unfortunate? Is that all you think this is?’
Infuriated by his attitude and wounded by the speed with which he had leapt to distrust, Belle squared her slight shoulders against the wall, her lovely face flushed and taut with strain. ‘Keep this in proportion, Cristo, and try to be reasonable.’
‘Reasonable?’ he growled as if he didn’t recognise the word. ‘I married you to keep that sleazy story out of the newspapers!’
And just then, Belle could have done without the reminder of that fact.
‘I always thought it was unlikely that you could prevent that story from ever coming out,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘My mum was with your father for almost twenty years and everyone for miles around, who enjoyed a bit of gossip, knew about their relationship and the children. All it would have taken was for one person to talk to the wrong person, who saw some chance of profit in the information and the secret would have emerged.’
Lean tanned hands clenching into fists by his side, Cristo jerked his arrogant dark head in grudging acknowledgement of that possibility, his innate intelligence warring with his equally natural aggressive instincts to persuade him that she was talking sense.
Belle prowled forward like a stalking tigress and flicked his shirtfront with an angry finger. ‘But how dare you even think that it might have been me who leaked the story to the press?’ she launched at him, green eyes bright with indignation. ‘I wouldn’t do that to my brothers and sisters. They’ve already paid a high enough price for the sins of their parents and the very last thing I would ever want to do is upset them more!’
‘I didn’t accuse you.’
‘You asked me if I had been talking to the press. What sort of a question was that to ask your wife? What reason would I have to expose all of us to that kind of unpleasant public attention?’ Belle demanded.
‘Revenge? Gaetano may be dead but you hate his guts and never got the chance to tell him so. In fact I suspect you distrust and dislike anyone called Ravelli!’ Cristo slammed back at her in condemnation.
‘I’ve changed.’ Yet Belle wanted so badly to slap him that her palm tingled. Only the knowledge that before she met him she had had that attitude burned her deep with shame, for one thing she had learned to appreciate since then was that Gaetano’s hedonistic lifestyle had damaged almost every life he touched, not least those of the children he had fathered without parenting. ‘Well, then I’d have a real problem with my identity, wouldn’t I?’ she fired back with ringing disdain. ‘Considering that now I’m a Ravelli too.’
‘Sì, and my wife, cara mia.’ Cristo found himself suddenly savouring that reality as he looked at her, aggression switching into another similarly testosterone-driven reaction, his attention surging from her beautiful defiant face down to her heaving breasts shimmying below the light tee she wore, arousal roaring through him like an engine revving up.
‘But not so happy to be your wife right now!’ Belle hissed a split second before Cristo cornered her by the wall, closing an ensnaring hand into her tumbling curls to tip up her mouth and then silencing any objection she might have made with the heat of his own.
Belle pushed against his chest but it was, at most, a half-hearted protest because, as fired up by emotion as she was, she couldn’t fight the overwhelming rush of sexual hunger that assailed her the instant Cristo touched her. His kisses were ravenous, both of his hands fisted in her hair, his lean, powerful body pinning her to the wall while his tongue teased and delved inside her mouth with ravishing force. A moan was wrenched from her lips as he squeezed the straining bud of one tender nipple through her clothing and the sensation ran like dynamite to the aching heart of her. She felt frantic, possessed, needy way beyond anything she had ever experienced before.
Belle wrenched at his shirt, struggling with the buttons and then finally yanking in frustration at the barrier between them, so that the buttons flew and the shirt parted and he drew back for an instant. She was shocked by what she had done, her colour high but, regardless, she succumbed to the overpowering desire to mould her palms to the hard planes of his hair-roughened chest and feel the wild heat and strength of his very masculine body.
‘I’ve never wanted any woman as much as I want you,’ Cristo bit out, taking a long stride away from her to slam the door shut, turn the lock and stalk back to her with clear devastating intent in his devouring gaze.
And Belle had never known what hunger felt like until she met him and, even though she was shaken by her own primitive urges, her passionate desire was stoked higher by the boldly visible erection he sported below his chinos. ‘Take off the shirt,’ she told him.
‘Getting bossy now?’ Cristo quipped as he dropped it on the floor.
‘Oh, you have no idea,’ she murmured, relishing the sight of his powerfully muscled chest and impressive abs, helpless anticipation lancing through her as she curled her fingers into his belt and hauled him back to her.
At that point, Cristo flung back his handsome dark head and laughed, lowering his head to kiss her again in the midst of lifting her silk top up and up and finally, somewhat clumsily for a man of his sophistication, off over her head. She was not wearing a bra and he shaped the firm full globes he had revealed with reverent hands, thumbs and fingers stroking over the swollen tips. ‘I love your curves,’ he confided with husky emphasis, skating his palms down admiringly over the sloping softness of her hips before his hand slid below the skirt and ran unerringly up the hot skin of her inner thigh. Lost in the grip of urgent need, she angled away from the wall towards him, wanting, inviting, and truly needing his touch.
Her eyes slid shut as he teased the swollen hot flesh already damp with desire at the heart of her and, with a little sound of impatience, he knelt down to dispose of her panties and lingered to appreciate that most tender part of her with his tongue and his sensually skilled mouth.
‘Cristo!’ Belle gasped.
‘For the last three nights while you went to your bed and I went to mine, I’ve been dreaming about doing this,’ Cristo confessed with carnal boldness, the low growl of his roughened intonation vibrating down her spine.
He tasted her and savoured her as though she were the finest wine and intoxicating waves of sensation engulfed Belle until she was trembling and only the wall and his arm at her hips were keeping her upright against that seductive onslaught. Only when she literally couldn’t take any more of the taunting, delirious pleasure that he wouldn’t allow to progress to its natural conclusion did he sweep her up in his arms and sit her down on the edge of the desk. Once she was in position, he stepped between her spread thighs and crushed her reddened mouth below his again with a primal insistence that consumed her like an adrenalin shot injected straight into her veins.
‘I didn’t see us doing this...here,’ Belle muttered shakily.
‘I don’t know how I kept my hands off you the last few days, bellezza mia,’ Cristo confided hoarsely, nuzzling his cheek down the extended length of her throat with a deeply expressive masculine groan of agreement. ‘I didn’t want to rock the boat.’
‘Rock it!’ Belle urged him on breathlessly as he began to push inside her, her inner walls initially protesting the unflinching demand of his entrance and then slowly stretching around him with a delicious sensation of fullness that made her moan in elated response.
His hands firm on her hips, Cristo tipped her back and then he drove home to the hilt with a power and immediacy that was even more thrilling for her highly aroused body. He pulled back and then slammed home again, jolting her with an excitement that ran like a river of fire through every erogenous zone she possessed. Her heart was racing, her entire body straining and pleading for the ultimate climax while he increased the speed of his strokes, driving faster, deeper while the frenzy of her need and exhilaration combined into a wild roller-coaster ride of ever-increasing pleasure. Her body clenched and she convulsed, crying out and quivering as the pleasure burst like shooting fireworks inside her, sending surge after surge of breathtaking ecstasy travelling through her trembling body.
Cristo wasn’t quite sure he could stay upright as his own climax engulfed him and he held her close, groaning out loud as he spilled his seed inside her, and the very newness of that sensation sent him back on full alert. ‘Che diavolo!’ he exclaimed in consternation, immediately imagining the worst possible scenario. ‘I didn’t use a condom!’
Taken aback by the sudden admission, Belle blinked uncertainly as he wrapped both arms round her and steadied them both. ‘Oh...’ she framed against his chest, his heart thundering against her cheek, the musky male scent of his skin wonderfully familiar and extraordinarily soothing to her now.
‘I’ve never ever not used one before,’ Cristo assured her in a driven undertone. ‘You got me so worked up.’
‘It’s all right,’ she mumbled, hiding a smile of satisfaction at the awareness that she could be responsible for exciting him to the extent that he failed to exercise his usual self-discipline. ‘I started taking the pill before the wedding, so there shouldn’t be any consequences.’
Cristo pictured Franco purely in terms of a consequence and was quite astounded to recognise the tiniest pang of disappointment when she reassured him that there was no risk of such a development. He shook his handsome dark head as if to clear it of such an insane thought, seriously rattled by it and where it might have come from. He had no desire for a child, had never had a desire for one and yet there was something about Franco...
‘You’re incredible, bellezza mia,’ he husked, blanking out those unsettling weird reflections in favour of kissing her brow, the tip of her nose and finally her luscious mouth. ‘You have a passion and an ability to excite me that most men can only dream about finding with one woman.’
Slowly, carefully he lowered her back down to the floor before helpfully lifting her top to slide over her head and back over her torso. Dazed, she leant back against the desk again, cheeks as hot as coals, eyes screened by her lashes as she absorbed that last statement with pleasure but also because she was shockingly disconcerted by the wildness they had shared and the sheer screaming intimacy of the experience.
A couple of hours later and groomed to within an inch of her life, those tumultuous emotions and sensations carefully tamped down, Belle scrutinised her reflection with a sharply critical gaze. It was a beautiful dress and her youngest sister would have told her that she looked like a princess in it because Lucia, in common with their late mother, adored feminine frills. Pale pink and full length, the gown was bare at the shoulder and moulded to her figure at breast and hip. Did she look just a little too busty? She hitched the bodice and then almost laughed, pretty much convinced when she thought about it that Cristo would enjoy the view.
Betsy rang Cristo as he emerged from the shower in his own room next door. He listened as he always did but he felt strangely detached from his sister-in-law and her problems. It occurred to him that he had never lusted after Nik’s wife the way he did after his own and he marvelled at that reality, wondering if some internal censor button had somehow prevented it or whether indeed she didn’t appeal to him quite that much on that more basic level, which struck him as an extraordinary possibility.
He was still listening to Betsy recount the latest hostile moves his brother had made in the divorce battle when Belle came downstairs and his mind went totally blank because Belle looked fantastic and he couldn’t think of anything else. He ended the call with an apologetic mutter.
‘Who were you talking to?’ Belle asked, her attention locked to the unusually distracted expression on his lean dark features.
‘Betsy.’
‘Nik’s wife?’
Cristo struggled not to sound defensive. ‘We’re friends.’
‘That must be awkward,’ Belle remarked. ‘Were you friends before they got married?’
Cristo tensed, a muscle pulling taut at the corner of his shapely mouth. ‘No. It happened because of the way they broke up.’
Like a bloodhound on the trail, Belle was in no mood to settle for less than she wanted to know. ‘And why did they break up?’
‘For very private reasons. But something I let slip when I should have kept quiet and minded my own business contributed to it.’ Cristo framed that admission of guilt in a harsh undertone. ‘I’m sorry I can’t tell you more but I caused a lot of trouble by once carelessly revealing a secret which Nik had shared with me and...I definitely have lived to regret it.’
Belle wanted to drag the whole truth out of him there and then because all her suspicious antennae were now waking up to full alert. Exactly what did his ‘friendship’ with Betsy Ravelli entail?
Outside the limousine awaited them. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked to fill the strained silence, which confirmed for her that there had to be a very good reason why Cristo was quite so wary and uncomfortable when it came to discussing his brother’s estranged wife. Was she being fanciful in being so suspicious? Was his reaction simply the result of his guilty conviction that he might have contributed to the breakdown of the couple’s marriage? But if that was true, why did he carry a photo of Betsy in his wallet? That lent an all too personal dimension to the relationship that could only make Belle feel troubled.
‘We’re going to Assisi. There’s a very special restaurant there,’ Cristo imparted, relieved she had dropped the touchy subject of Nik’s marriage breakdown.
‘Assisi...as in the birthplace of St Francis?’
Cristo gave her a droll look. ‘There is only one.’
‘To be actually going there just feels so weird. It was my mother’s lifelong dream to visit Assisi. She was a great believer in the power of St Francis,’ Belle explained, a certain amount of embarrassment at that unsophisticated admission mingling with the very real sadness that claimed her when something touched on her many memories of the older woman.
‘And Gaetano never brought Mary to Italy?’ Cristo prompted in surprise.
‘Are you kidding? He never took Mum anywhere,’ Belle countered between compressed lips of grim recollection. ‘Their relationship only existed behind closed doors.’
‘And your mother didn’t object to that?’
‘No and what’s more she still thought the sun rose and fell on him. Gaetano didn’t take her money, knock her around or get drunk, so in her opinion he was perfection. She wasn’t very bright or well educated,’ Belle proffered in a guilty undertone because she felt disloyal making that statement about the parent she had loved. ‘But she was a very loving, loyal and kind person.’
‘She must also have been very tolerant and forgiving. That’s probably why their affair lasted so long,’ Cristo commented with a wry twist of his mouth.
Belle’s throat thickened with tears and she swallowed with difficulty. ‘Sometimes I miss her so much it hurts,’ she admitted quietly.
Cristo tensed when he noticed the glimmer of moisture on her cheeks. He breathed in slow and deep, unfroze his big powerful body with difficulty and pushed himself to close a hand over her tightly clenched fingers where they rested on her lap. ‘I can’t even say that I can imagine how you feel because it would be a lie,’ he conceded ruefully. ‘I’m not particularly close to my mother and I had no relationship with Gaetano to mourn when he died. You’re fortunate to be a part of such a close family.’
In silence, Belle nestled her fingers beneath the warmth of his and marvelled at that unexpectedly thoughtful gesture of comfort and the sentiment from his corner.
They dined at a table set for two on a massive terrace surrounded by amazing views of the picturesque hillside town. The streets they had driven through had been a geranium-hung blaze of flowering colour and she had caught glimpses of medieval back lanes and piazzas adorned with ancient fountains.
‘Where are all the other customers?’ Belle asked, surveying the empty tables around them.
‘Tonight, we’re the only customers and one of Italy’s most famous chefs is cooking solely for us, bella mia.’
‘And you arranged it that way?’ Belle prompted in amazement.
‘This is the very first time I’ve taken you anywhere,’ Cristo pointed out bluntly. ‘And we’ve been married a week, which basically tells me that I owe you a decent night out. I also owe you for all the work you put in for me without complaint.’
‘I like working. I like feeling useful,’ Belle confessed truthfully, green eyes sparkling, generous mouth warming into an unrestrained smile because simply sitting there in her beautiful dress with her even more beautiful husband opposite made her feel ridiculously spoilt and contented.
Hungry desire flaming through him afresh and coalescing in an ache of raw need so eager to stir at his groin, Cristo studied his wife, marvelling at the explosive effect she had on his libido. Although he didn’t consider himself to be either an emotional or sentimental man, he found her natural warmth and liveliness amazingly attractive.
The waiter brought the menu and the chef came out to greet them and offer recommendations. By then dusk was falling and the candles were lit. Belle cradled her wine and sipped, rejoicing in the fact that she could at last relax in Cristo’s company.
‘You still haven’t explained why Bruno and Donetta were sent to boarding school,’ Cristo drawled lazily.
Her fingers tightened round the glass in her hand. ‘Bruno was never an athletic boy and he finally admitted to Gaetano that he was only interested in art. Your father asked him if he was gay...he was only thirteen at the time,’ she completed in a tone of disgust.
Cristo swore under his breath.
‘Then Gaetano decided to make that a running joke and whenever he saw Bruno after that he called him “gay boy”. Eventually someone else overheard and talked and Bruno started getting bullied at school but he didn’t tell us what was happening,’ Belle explained heavily, having to pause to breathe in deep before she could continue to tell the distressing truth. ‘Bruno tried to kill himself but, very fortunately for us and him, we found him in time and he recovered.’
Cristo was honestly appalled by the confession while he recalled that skinny-wristed boy with the anxious eyes who had cornered him on the day of the wedding. ‘I was remarkably lucky, it seems, to escape Gaetano’s concept of how to be a good father.’
‘Well, after that Donetta finally picked up the courage to tell us what had been going on at school and that’s why they both went into boarding,’ Belle advanced. ‘Bruno’s experience with Gaetano is the main reason why I hated your father. And my brother, by the way, is not gay.’
‘It wouldn’t have made any difference to me if he was,’ Cristo remarked as the first course was deferentially laid before them. ‘The poor kid.’
‘He’s a very talented artist and the change of environment was exactly what he needed, even if it does mean he and Donetta are separated from the family.’
‘When they move to London, they won’t be separated any longer,’ Cristo reminded her. ‘They can attend a day school or even board and come home at weekends—whichever they would prefer... It’s up to them.’
‘I know. I wanted us all to be together again,’ she confided ruefully. ‘But you might find it a little crowded with all of us around.’
Cristo dealt her a wicked look teeming with all the passion that simmered so close to the surface of his apparently controlled exterior. ‘I think I will enjoy being crowded by you.’