His Cinderella's One-Night Heir

* * *

‘It’s too much,’ she said uncomfortably.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Dante advised succinctly. ‘I’d like a word with you in private when you finish your shift.’

‘I’m tired. I’ll be going straight to bed,’ she told him swiftly. ‘Sorry!’

‘Don’t blow me off before you hear what I have to say,’ Dante urged. ‘It’s possible that I could have a job for you, a job that would eventually get you back to the UK.’

Belle tensed like a greyhound fired up at the starting line. Her eyes lifted from the table they had been carefully studying and surged up to his lean, darkly handsome features instead. There she clashed unwarily with stunning dark golden eyes and she took a very slight step back, gooseflesh tingling on her exposed skin. ‘A job? What kind of a job?’ she questioned.

A lazy grip on his beer bottle, Dante lounged back gracefully against the balustrade surrounding the decking. ‘Later,’ he murmured silkily. ‘That is...if you can contrive to stay awake that long.’

Belle reddened at the comeback. He was so sure of himself he set her teeth on edge. He dangled the bait and then waited for her to jump. Well, she wasn’t going to jump, was she? What sort of job could he possibly offer her? Aside from waitressing, her only work experience was in housekeeping and caring, and it was unlikely that he would seek to hire her for domestic work. Intelligence told her that a wealthy man would use an agency to fill such positions. On the other hand, she had no reason to suspect that he could be on the brink of offering her anything immoral. She was not irresistible, she was not the sort of bombshell that men moved mountains to impress or entrap, she acknowledged impatiently. No, the only sort of sleazy offers she got came from bored married men and randy young ones, thinking that a foreigner might offer a taste of something more exciting than a local. Though surely it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that Dante Lucarelli could have an elderly relative in need of care?

Then, even in that line, there were plenty of people with the paper qualifications for caring that Belle ironically lacked. Fate had forced her into a caring role after her widowed grandfather had become sick. She had had to drop out of school to look after him when he was diagnosed as terminally ill. But it would have been unthinkable for Belle to do any less when her grandparents had loved and cared for her since she was a baby.

Tracy, Belle’s mother and her grandparents’ only child, had been a fashion model in love with the high life, and when Belle’s father had refused to marry Tracy after she fell pregnant, Tracy had refused to become a single parent struggling to survive. At only a few weeks old, Belle had been dumped with her grandparents. On the only occasion when Tracy had chosen to take Belle home with her, it had proved a disaster for both mother and daughter. Tracy was a man’s woman and the man in her life always came first. That was why, in the end, Tracy had satisfied her maternal instincts by making regular payments to her parents in return for which they had raised Belle for her.

Between the ages of five and fifteen, Belle had not seen her mother once, merely following her parent’s jet-set progress round the world with the aid of a map and infrequent postcards. It had been a huge source of disappointment and hurt to Belle when she was fourteen to be invited to live with Tracy and then just as swiftly be thrown back out of her mother’s life again. Tracy’s lover had made a pass at Belle and Tracy had caught him in the act. Although she had forgiven the man involved, she had not forgiven her daughter for the sin of having attracted his attention. After that episode, Belle had not laid eyes on her mother again until her grandfather’s funeral, when Tracy had only come home for long enough to collect the proceeds of her parents’ estate.

‘For goodness’ sake, you’re old enough to be keeping yourself now!’ Tracy had complained bitterly when Belle had asked her for financial help. ‘Don’t be looking for any more handouts from me! Your father stopped paying his dues for you years ago and now, finally, it’s my turn to be free of you.’

Yet Belle had sacrificed three years of her life and the education she had badly wanted to nurse her grandfather. She had also conserved Tracy’s inheritance by ensuring that her grandfather, Ernest, did not have to sell his home to fund his own place in a care home. Ignoring those unwelcome realities, Tracy had sold everything that could be sold and had left Belle penniless and sleeping on a friend’s couch in London. Ironically, back then the advertised job in France with Mrs Devenish had looked like manna from heaven, Belle conceded ruefully.

Belle had needed somewhere to live, and London had been too expensive. In addition, the very idea of working abroad had seemed to promise adventure, something that Belle’s life had sorely lacked. She had leapt in with both feet, believing that all she would have to do was cook, clean and shop and provide occasional companionship to a lonely elderly woman. She had assumed that she would have free time in which to explore and had never dreamt that she would end up trapped and working round the clock in a dull rural village without even a café.

As Belle helped to collect the last glasses, she glanced down at the beach, where she could see Dante Lucarelli poised below the pine trees. Was he waiting for her? Of course she was going to ask him about the job! She was not in a position to ignore even the vaguest chance of getting back home again because the restaurant would be closing for the season in another few weeks and then where would she be? She wasn’t a French citizen and couldn’t sign up for welfare or anything like that. At least in London, if she had no other choice, she could fall back on the benefits system.

Saying goodnight to the other wait staff and with Charlie faithfully following her, Belle trudged down to the beach. Dante was a dark silhouette below the trees and then he stepped into the moonlight, which made his black hair gleam blue and lit up his lean, strong features, highlighting his high cheekbones, classic nose and hard jawline. He needed a shave. A shadow of dark stubble accentuated his wide sensual mouth. With his eyes glittering colourlessly over her as he awaited her arrival in silence, Belle could feel herself getting hot again, as if her body was burning up inside her skin. Suddenly she was grateful for the darkness, knowing she was tomato red again.

‘Belle?’ Dante queried. ‘What’s it short for?’

‘Tinkerbelle,’ Belle admitted with extreme reluctance. ‘Unfortunately, my mother thought that was a cute name for a baby girl but my grandparents called me Belle. Belle Forrester.’

‘Tinkerbelle? That’s out of a kid’s movie, isn’t it?’ Dante breathed in surprise, studying her where she stood as stiff and still as though she were on the edge of dangerous quicksand. She had released her hair from the clasp and it foamed across her shoulders in an untamed curling mane.

‘Peter Pan. Tinker Bell was the fairy, but Belle is a movie name too,’ Belle told him with compressed lips.

‘I guess if you’d had wings you’d have flown yourself back home,’ Dante remarked very drily.

‘So...er...the job?’ Belle prompted tautly.

‘The job would be a little unusual but completely above board,’ he assured her and then, as though suddenly recollecting his manners, he moved closer to extend a lean hand. ‘My name is Dante Lucarelli.’

‘Yes.’ Belle barely touched the tips of his fingers. ‘The bartender identified you before you’d been seated for five minutes. He’s a business student.’

‘Tell me about yourself,’ he urged.

‘There’s not a lot relevant to tell,’ Belle retorted uncomfortably, wishing he would just get to the point instead of keeping her in ignorance. ‘I’m twenty-two. I left school at sixteen with a bundle of GCSEs and I haven’t had any educational input since then. I’d like to change that when I get back to London. These days you need training and qualifications to make a decent life.’

‘If you know that why did you skip that opportunity until now?’

‘I never had the opportunity,’ Belle countered wryly, settling down on the concrete bench beneath the trees. ‘My grandmother died and then my grandfather fell ill and needed looking after. After they were both gone, I took a job here, which was basically housekeeping but which turned into full-time caring as well.’

Dante lounged back against a tree trunk, all lithe, lean power and thrumming masculinity. He was as relaxed as she was tense. ‘Is caring for older people what you want to do going forward?’

Belle stiffened. ‘No, definitely not. I think professional caring’s a job you need a vocation for and I don’t have that.’

‘Fair enough,’ Dante murmured, increasingly surprised by her cool, unapologetic self-containment, because at the very least he had expected bubbly encouragement and flirtation from her. In his experience women came on to him whether they thought they had a chance with him or not, but Belle wasn’t making the smallest effort in that direction. ‘You may not have a vocation for the job I’m about to offer you either, but it would eventually get you back to the UK and I would pay you handsomely to do it.’

Belle twisted round to get a better view of him, wishing he would step out of the shadows so that she could see him better. ‘Tell me about it...’

‘I need a woman prepared to pretend that she’s my live-in girlfriend. Faking the part would be all that was required from you,’ Dante assured her with calm emphasis. ‘The job would only last for a couple of weeks and then you would be free to pursue your own plans with the cash I give you. It would be a win-win proposition for both of us.’

Belle was rarely deprived of speech, but the shock of the nature of his job offer was sufficient to glue her tongue to the roof of her mouth because such an exotic possibility wouldn’t have crossed her mind in her wildest dreams. ‘But...er...you don’t even know me,’ she protested weakly when she could find her voice again.

‘Why would I need to know you? Steve vouches for your trustworthiness. It’s a job, a role if you want to call it that. It’s casual and temporary but also financially rewarding,’ he completed smoothly.

‘But pretending to be someone’s girlfriend would mean knowing stuff about each other, that sort of thing,’ Belle protested in a rush. ‘And we’re complete strangers.’

‘I’m sure a simple question and answer session would cover the basics you would need to know,’ Dante fielded without hesitation. ‘Think about this from my point of view.’

Belle’s eyes widened. ‘I don’t know you well enough to do that.’

‘Then let me do it for you,’ Dante responded silkily. ‘I’m offering you the job purely because you’re a stranger and I will be paying you to provide what I require. As a stranger, you’ll walk away afterwards without a problem. You won’t cling or believe that I have any further obligation towards you, nor will you assume that having helped me out makes you special to me in any way.’

Belle stared back at him, stunned by that revealing little speech. ‘Do women often cling to you?’

Dante tensed, glittering dark eyes locking to the pale troubled oval of her face. ‘It’s been a problem in the past. If there’s a stage-five clinger out there, I’ve met her!’

‘I’m not the clingy type,’ Belle whispered abstractedly, marvelling at the impact of those compelling dark eyes of his even in low light. ‘But you still haven’t explained why you need a fake live-in girlfriend.’

‘And I won’t share any more of my private business unless you first express an interest in accepting the job,’ Dante incised impatiently. ‘Sleep on the idea. I’ll see you tomorrow morning at eleven and you can give me an answer then. But be warned...I am a demanding employer with high standards. If you take the job, you’ll have to meet all my requirements. That will mean wearing the clothes I buy for you, breaking the nail-biting habit...and ditching the dog. I’m not keen on dogs.’

Belle’s shamefully bitten nails curled into her palms. He had noticed. She always prayed that people didn’t notice her bad habit but it seemed horribly typical of Dante Lucarelli that he had noticed her stubby nails, and she was mortified. Almost at the same time she reached for Charlie for reassurance and lifted him up onto her lap, sand from his paws and coat flying in all directions. ‘I can’t possibly ditch Charlie.’

‘He can go into kennels for the duration of our arrangement.’

‘No, he needs love and attention, and taken away from everything familiar, he would be frightened!’ Belle reasoned fiercely, hugging Charlie to her as if he were a worn soft toy.

‘He’s not a child,’ Dante reasoned in exasperation.

‘He’s the only family I’ve got, and he’s had a rough ride so far in life,’ Belle argued in growing dismay. ‘I won’t part with Charlie!’

‘Sleep on it,’ Dante advised again. ‘Now, let me walk you back to the campervan.’

‘That’s not necessary,’ Belle told him, springing upright and setting the dog down. ‘It’s only a hundred yards away.’

‘I decide what’s necessary, not you,’ Dante shot back at her, suspecting that she could be more trouble than she was worth because she was emotional, far too emotional. Cristiano had been full of emotion and very much prone to attachments as well and look where that caring, sharing nonsense had got his brother! Cristiano had left behind two heartbroken, seriously clingy and demanding chihuahuas and Dante kept them in exclusive boarding kennels in the very lap of luxury. He visited his brother’s pets religiously once a month. It wasn’t quite the same as taking the dogs home with him, but it was the best he felt able to offer dogs who had never been treated as dogs and who probably didn’t even know that they were dogs. Tito and Carina expected to share beds, sleep on laps and be hand-fed from plates.

Belle breathed in deeply. ‘Do you think maybe you’re having to hire a girlfriend because you’re so rude, heartless and authoritarian?’

‘I can’t remember when a woman last insulted me,’ Dante confided in receipt of that refreshing question and gloriously untouched by the condemnation. A lifetime of criticism from his parents had ensured that he had developed a very tough hide.

‘You must meet an awful lot of uncritical women.’

‘Very rich men rarely meet with anything else,’ Dante imparted with cynical conviction, pausing beside the small rusting campervan below the trees to marvel that anyone could actually be living in the battered vehicle full-time. ‘I’ll meet you in the bar tomorrow at eleven.’

CHAPTER TWO

IN THE CONFINEMENT of her bunk bed, Belle lay awake well into the early hours, pondering her choices, which only got fewer the more she thought about them. As always, she made lists. A long list of important questions that she should have asked but which Dante might not have answered. A list of pros and cons, again full of blanks, owing to her lack of facts on his situation.

‘What do you think?’ she asked Charlie ruefully as he cuddled up to her. ‘We don’t like or trust people who dislike dogs, do we? Do you think that’s being too judgemental? Unfair? I mean, Steve’s a lovely person and he’s friends with Dante, which says something in his favour.’

Armed with her lists and clad in denim shorts and a light floral top, she walked up to the bar in the morning sunshine. The restaurant was being cleaned and it was time to prepare the tables for lunch. Hips twitching to the beat of the music playing, Belle set out place mats and glasses while she wondered if Dante was even capable of understanding how she felt about her dog.

Charlie hadn’t started out as hers, but necessity had made him hers and they had been together since shortly after her arrival in France. She didn’t have any family. She couldn’t count the father she had only met once in her life or Tracy, who hadn’t stayed in touch once her own parents were both gone. Charlie, silly and scruffy as he was, had become Belle’s family. He wasn’t the brightest of dogs, but he was always cheerful and loving and a wonderful comfort when the world seemed dark and she felt alone.

* * *

Dante, fresh from a late breakfast of kids and toddler tantrums, was in the mood to be charmed and the first thing he saw as he mounted the steps was Belle’s bottom swaying in rhythmic time to the music. She had a gorgeous derrière, curvy and firm, and when she was dancing it was a work of art in the making, exactly what the average male wanted to see and take advantage of. Even so, he didn’t intend to take advantage, Dante reminded himself doggedly, because as her potential employer, he would naturally be immune to her appeal. Sex didn’t come into his dealings with employees. No matter how tempted he was, he would never ever make that mistake, he assured himself squarely.

‘Sit down with me,’ he told Belle as he strode past her.

‘I can’t. This is work time,’ she pointed out, her gaze locking on him as though magnetised. ‘I should’ve told you that last night.’

‘I arranged it with your boss. You’ve got an hour off to be with me,’ Dante informed her smoothly.

‘But this is one of the busiest times of the day!’ she exclaimed.

‘I’m paying for your time off the clock,’ Dante told her without hesitation.

Her face burned, hot as hellfire as she settled down at the table he had chosen. Money talked, she knew that, had long accepted it as an unpleasant fact of life. When people paid, they got to break the rules and call the shots. It turned normal into abnormal and deprived her of personal choice. She sat down opposite but her chin came up in challenge. ‘I thought you’d come in earlier than this.’

‘I slept in,’ Dante declared without embarrassment. ‘I travelled all day yesterday to get here.’

Belle was tempted to remark that he had undoubtedly travelled in luxury and could have no idea of the exhausting rigours of cheaper modes of travel, but she swallowed back the cheeky comment, accepting that she wasn’t in a strong enough position to make it. She knew how to keep her lips sealed when she had to, knew all about serving in respectful silence regardless of how rude or provocative people were. That was one advantage of lowly labour, she acknowledged ruefully: it taught humility.

‘I assume that you’re considering taking the job?’ Dante lifted his level black brows in question as Belle’s colleague delivered coffee to the table.

‘Yes,’ Belle confirmed, throwing sugar into the espresso because there was no milk available, and stirring it in haste. ‘But you have to explain it first.’

Dante dragged in a deep breath and his T-shirt stretched taut as the strong muscles beneath the fine cotton flexed. Determined not to stare at his muscular chest, Belle looked at his face instead for the first time since they had sat down. Dazzling dark golden eyes gripped hers and her tummy lurched as if she had been plunged downward on a fairground ride. ‘In two weeks’ time I have a married couple coming to stay at my home for the weekend—Eddie and Krystal Shriner. I have a very important business deal that I hope to make with Eddie. The fly in the ointment is Krystal, whom I was fleetingly involved with four years ago. She’s been trying to get back with me ever since,’ he admitted stonily. ‘And I don’t want her flirting with me in front of her husband because that would destroy any hope I have of making a deal with him. He’s a possessive man.’

Involuntarily, Belle’s interest was caught. ‘Is Krystal the stage-five clinger you mentioned last night?’

Dante nodded grim confirmation. ‘Another woman living in my home with me would be a safeguard and the only possible precaution I can take. Your presence would infuriate her, but I will seem a much less attractive option if I appear to have already found a woman to settle down with. Krystal won’t risk losing Eddie until she has a viable replacement in her sights.’

Belle grimaced at such calculation and settled back less tensely into her seat. ‘Am I allowed to ask how long you were with this woman when you were involved with her?’ she asked curiously.

His black brows pleated and his shapely mouth compressed into a flat hard line. ‘One weekend...’

‘One weekend?’ Belle gasped in disbelief. ‘And you’ve had all this trouble with her after that?’

‘I didn’t say she was normal,’ Dante fielded drily.

‘And they’re going to be staying with you in London?’

‘No, not in London,’ Dante cut in. ‘They’ll be staying in my home in Italy.’

Belle was nonplussed. ‘But I thought you were offering to take me back to London.’

‘After the job’s done my private jet will take you anywhere you want in the world, but we won’t be travelling to London over the next couple of weeks,’ Dante warned her. ‘If you accept the job, I’ll be taking you to Paris for new clothes. You can’t possibly pass yourself off as my girlfriend with your current wardrobe. We will then fly to Italy, where you will familiarise yourself with my home and lifestyle. As soon as Eddie and Krystal have departed, the job will be over and you will be free to leave.’

Belle cringed at the prospect of Dante buying her clothes because that reminded her too much of her mother’s financially lucrative and rather sordid relationships with men. Tracy was pretty much a professional mistress whose lovers paid for her expensive clothes, jewellery and cruises. Belle had been ashamed when she’d finally worked out the truth of how her mother afforded to live so well without ever apparently having to work and she was no longer surprised that her birth father had spoken with such derision about her mother, referring to her simply as ‘the gold-digger’. Evidently even when she had been much younger Tracy had been busier bedding wealthy men than she had been modelling for a living. Belle was merely grateful that her grandparents had never grasped the truth about their daughter.

‘So,’ Belle said a little desperately as she trailed herself back out of those unpleasant memories and thoughts. ‘The job as such would only last for a couple of weeks?’

‘Sì... Yes,’ Dante translated for her when she looked at him blankly.

Digging hurriedly into her pocket, Belle extracted the lists she’d drawn up the night before. ‘I have some other questions for you, if that’s all right.’

‘I suppose it has to be,’ Dante conceded, watching her tiny tongue slide out to moisten her full lower lip with a fascination the exercise should not have commanded. Instantly he was imagining that tongue working a spell on his all too ready body and he gritted his teeth hard, furious with his failing self-discipline. He was spoilt when it came to women, he acknowledged, because it was rare for him to meet a woman he wanted that he couldn’t have. But she would be working for him. He would be paying her. Adding sex to that arrangement would make it dubious in the extreme.

Belle painstakingly read her first question. ‘“Why do you not have a female friend willing to do this for you?”’

‘I did. She changed her mind and decided it was a matter of pride that she have an engagement ring on her finger before facing Krystal. I wasn’t prepared to take the pretence that far,’ Dante admitted flatly.

‘My goodness, you’re so much in demand with the women in your life, you must feel positively hunted!’ Belle trilled back as sweet as sugar.

Dante played safe by taking the comment at face value and shrugged a broad shoulder in dismissal. ‘Next question?’

‘Charlie’s a big deal.’

Dante frowned. ‘Charlie? Who’s Charlie?’

Belle bridled. ‘My dog. You met him last night.’

‘He’s a dog, not a person. I didn’t meet him,’ Dante told her drily. ‘The kennels I mentioned are not far from my home and I can assure you that they offer the very best of care because they’ve been looking after my late brother’s two dogs for me for over a year.’