by Lynne Graham
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….
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 wou
ld 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.