About the Authors

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married, to an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog who knocks everything over, a very small terrier who barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

LOUISE FULLER was once a tomboy who hated pink and always wanted to be the Prince—not the Princess! Now she enjoys creating heroines who aren’t pretty push-overs but strong, believable women. Before writing for Mills & Boon she studied literature and philosophy at university, and then worked as a reporter on her local newspaper. She lives in Tunbridge Wells with her impossibly handsome husband Patrick and their six children.

Also by Lynne Graham

His Queen by Desert Decree

The Greek’s Blackmailed Mistress

The Italian’s Inherited Mistress

Billionaires at the Altar miniseries

The Greek Claims His Shock Heir

The Italian Demands His Heirs

The Sheikh Crowns His Virgin

Vows for Billionaires miniseries

The Secret Valtinos Baby

Castiglione’s Pregnant Princess

Da Rocha’s Convenient Heir

Also by Louise Fuller

Vows Made in Secret

A Deal Sealed by Passion

Claiming His Wedding Night

Blackmailed Down the Aisle

Kidnapped for the Tycoon’s Baby

Surrender to the Ruthless Billionaire

Revenge at the Altar

Demanding His Secret Son

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

His Cinderella’s One-Night Heir & Consequences of a Hot Havana Night

Lynne Graham and Louise Fuller

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08821-3

HIS CINDERELLA’S ONE-NIGHT HEIR & CONSEQUENCES OF A HOT HAVANA NIGHT

His Cinderella’s One-Night Heir © 2019 Lynne Graham Consequences of a Hot Havana Night © 2019 Louise Fuller

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

His Cinderella’s One-Night Heir

Back Cover Text

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

Consequences of a Hot Havana Night

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

About the Publisher

His Cinderella’s One-Night Heir

Lynne Graham

From the Italian’s temporary temptation...

...to his pregnant Cinderella!

Billionaire Dante Lucarelli’s fake relationship with penniless waitress Belle Forrester was supposed to last only two weeks, to help clinch his latest business deal. But Dante underestimated the all-consuming power of the connection that is instantly forged between them. Now one astounding night of seduction in Paris will change the course of their convenient arrangement forever...

Fall in love with this enchanting pregnancy story!

CHAPTER ONE

DANTE LUCARELLI, BILLIONAIRE renewable energy entrepreneur, roared down the private road on the powerful motorbike, revelling in the wind against his skin, in the rare sense of freedom. For a very short space of time all his problems evaporated. And then that magical moment was over and he was recalling his duties as a guest and slowing down to enable his host, Steve, to overtake him.

‘You let me win!’ Steve growled, punching the taller male’s arm in retribution as they parked the bikes. ‘Where’s the fun in that?’

‘Didn’t want to show you up in front of the locals,’ Dante tossed back, his thick blue-black hair tousled, white teeth glinting in the sunlight against his lean bronzed features as he grinned down at his former schoolmate. ‘Anyway, it’s your bike... And so this is it? Your latest venture?’ he added, glancing through the overhanging pine trees at the restaurant surrounded by decking and overlooking the swimming lake. Sited above the sandy beach, it had a funky, carefree, Caribbean vibe. ‘Kind of small, isn’t it, for a guy who builds skyscrapers for a living?’

‘Knock it off,’ his friend urged, a burly blond man with the build of a rugby player. ‘It’s seasonal and does very well when the weather’s good.’

‘And employs a lot of those locals you like to take a paternal interest in,’ Dante mocked, knowing Steve’s sense of civic responsibility all too well. Steve Cranbrook was a kind man and one of the very few men Dante trusted.

They were in the south-east of France, a rural, far-from-touristic area where Steve had bought a chateau on a hill as a summer home for himself and his family. His all too numerous family, Dante reflected with a near shudder. Steve had four of the little blighters, two sets of twins under five, and they had been crawling over Dante and demanding attention ever since he had flown in earlier that day, which was why the break from the chateau was welcome. It wasn’t that Dante disliked children, just that he wasn’t used to them and weathering Steve’s sociable kids was like trying to stand in the path of a hurricane armed with innumerable arms, legs and chattering tongues.

‘It’s not like that,’ Steve protested. ‘I just invest when I see the chance and contribute if there’s a good cause. There aren’t many employment opportunities around here.’

Dante took a seat at a wooden table hewn out of a giant tree trunk. Shrewd dark-as-pitch eyes swept the colourful bunting fluttering in the breeze as he picked up on the rampant beat of the music coming from the speakers and noted the youthful gathering at the bar. ‘I bet this is the only party place in the neighbourhood,’ he commented.

‘Pretty much, but the food’s good too. We get a lot of family trade when the beach is busy. So, tell me, when are you meeting with Eddie Shriner?’

Dante’s lean, darkly handsome features tensed as the bite of his biggest problem sank its teeth into him afresh. ‘In two weeks’ time, and I still haven’t got a woman on board to keep Krystal at bay.’

‘I thought Liliana was stepping up as a favour,’ Steve incised in surprise.

‘No, that fell through. Liliana wanted an engagement ring as an inducement,’ Dante admitted with an exasperated frown of recollection. ‘Even though it would be a phoney engagement, I wasn’t taking the risk of travelling down that road even with her.’

‘An engagement ring?’ Steve queried in surprise. ‘Why on earth would she need a ring to pretend that she was your girlfriend again for Krystal’s benefit?’

Dante shrugged a lean shoulder. ‘She said it was a matter of pride, that she would lose face in front of Krystal if she didn’t have a ring, because why else would she have reconciled with me when we broke up years ago?’

‘Your love life...’ Steve groaned, raking a rueful hand through his floppy blond hair. ‘If you didn’t dump so many women and leave them bitter and angry, you wouldn’t be in this situation.’

Dante compressed his eloquent mouth in silent disagreement. He had no intention of ever marrying and producing children, and he had never lied to a woman on that score. He was upfront about his sex life and there was no room for love in it. Any woman who thought otherwise soon learned her mistake. He didn’t get attached to women—never had, never would—and Liliana was the only exception to that rule. She was an ex who had become a friend and he genuinely respected and liked her, but he had still not been able to love her or want a more serious relationship with her.

Even trusting Liliana had initially been a challenge because Dante had never had quite the same view of women since he had caught his deceitful mother in bed with one of his father’s closest friends. His snobbish mother, who stood in social judgement over others for their smallest mistakes and was quick to turn her back on them. He had soon realised that his parent regularly slept around. His indifference to Liliana had, however, told Dante all he needed to know about his own essentially cold heart. Without a doubt, he had inherited that ice gene from his unloving parents, he acknowledged grimly.

His sole experience of love had been his deep attachment to his older brother, Cristiano, and when Cristiano had died a year ago, it had shattered Dante and left him tormented with guilt. He often thought that had he been less selfish he might have saved his brother. Tragically, however, Cristiano had taken his own life because he had never been able to stand up for himself. Placed under intolerable pressure by their demanding parents and trying desperately hard to please as the eldest son and heir, Cristiano had crumbled and ultimately snapped under the strain.

And now the best that Dante could do in memory of his late brother was strive to buy back that little piece of woodland heaven where Cristiano had gone whenever life became too much for him. Sadly, in the wake of their firstborn’s death, their parents had immediately sold that piece of land for the highest price possible to Eddie Shriner, a resort developer currently married to Dante’s most embittered former lover. Even since marrying Eddie, Krystal had made several unashamed attempts to get Dante back into her bed. The woman was incorrigible and the last thing Dante needed was Krystal coming on to him while he was trying to make a business deal with her husband.

‘You should hire an escort to play your girlfriend. That sort of a woman, someone you pay,’ Steve disconcerted him by suggesting, his voice dropped to a discreet level across the table lest he be overheard.

‘Sounds dodgy and dangerous,’ Dante countered with a grimace, his attention stolen by the petite young woman standing by the bar with a tray.

Her hair was as multicoloured as a Halloween bonfire, a vivid curling mass of untidy copper, red and glinting gold anchored by a clasp to the back of her head. She had the porcelain pale skin of a true redhead and the legs and breasts of a goddess, Dante decided, following the slim shapely length of those fantastic legs down into the scuffed cowboy boots she wore teamed with a floaty short floral skirt and a fitted top, above which the swell of her lush breasts foamed like a desert mirage. Quirky fashion sense though, decidedly not his style.

‘That’s Belle. Er...ground control to Dante?’ Steve joked when Dante failed to even look his way.

With difficulty, Dante dredged his attention back from those ripe, enthralling curves and the classic shape of the oval face above the display, and glanced wryly back at his companion.

‘That’s Belle,’ Steve repeated with amusement glinting in his frank brown eyes.

‘What’s a looker like that doing waitressing in a place like this?’ Dante demanded as he shifted restlessly on his bench seat, reacting to the all-male punch of pure lust pulsing at his groin.

‘Possibly waiting for an opportunity like you to come knocking,’ Steve mocked. ‘Look, she’s trying to save up enough money to get back to the UK and set herself up there again. You could step in like a good guy and fly her over to London with you.’

‘Is this why you brought me here? Since when do I do anything for nothing?’ Dante demanded, lifting his sunglasses to get a better look at that glorious oval face, only to discover on that closer inspection that it was unexpectedly dotted with freckles. He was almost relieved that there was a flaw in all that perfection. He wondered what colour her eyes were. Big eyes, too big?

‘Of course not. It just occurred to me this minute that you could both do each other a favour. Why not hire Belle? She’s in a jam... Oh, and there’s a dog in the story too. You like dogs, no? Well, by all accounts she’s a very nice girl, probably not your type at all. They’ve been running a book behind the bar all summer betting on which guy will make waves with her.’

‘Charming,’ Dante breathed, his nostrils flaring with disgust as he looked away. ‘I don’t do nice girls.’

‘But this isn’t one you would plan to do,’ Steve pointed out very drily. ‘You need a fake girlfriend, not a lover, and she needs the money. I offered her a loan but she wouldn’t take it. She’s got pride and she’s honest. She told me she couldn’t take the money because she didn’t know how she would ever pay it back.’

‘And she’s a waitress. End of story,’ Dante responded sardonically. ‘I don’t mess around with waitresses.’

‘You’re a snob and I never knew it,’ Steve remarked in wonderment. ‘Of course, I knew about the blue blood, the family palazzo, the title and all the rest of those trappings you claim to despise.’

‘What would a waitress do if she was plunged into my world?’ Dante enquired with biting derision.

‘What you were paying her to do, which is more than you can say for most of the entitled women we both know,’ Steve pointed out levelly. ‘It would be a simple hire-and-fire situation but I’m not sure she would go for it. I hear she can be a bit of a hothead.’

Dante said nothing because he collided with the eyes of the woman coming to serve them. Yes, the eyes were big and they were a sparkling, unusually dark blue that verged on violet, very noticeable against that ivory freckled skin of hers.

While Belle was on her break she had watched the two men walk in from the car park. Everyone knew Steve, the British owner of the restaurant, a friendly and unassuming man in spite of his wealth and success as an award-winning architect with a string of international offices. Steve was also an unashamed family man with four beautiful kids and an even more beautiful Spanish wife, but his guest was as physically different from him as night was from day.

He was very tall, lean and powerful in build and he moved with the lithe precision of a man very much at home with his own body. His luxuriant wind-tousled black hair, falling almost long enough to touch his broad shoulders, blew back in the breeze, accentuating his hard, sculpted features. Even in jeans and an open-necked shirt, he was as sleekly magnificent as a black panther, physically beautiful in a wild, natural way and probably equally dangerous.

Several women peered out from the bar to admire his progress. Belle went back inside to do her job, silently listening as the bartender, a keen user of social media and a business student, identified the stranger as Dante Lucarelli. Evidently, he was some mega-rich Italian, a tycoon in the field of renewable energy. She walked over to serve Steve and his guest and as the Italian glanced up at her from beneath long black curling lashes that were wickedly wasted on a member of the male sex, she collided with vibrant dark golden eyes. For a terrifying split second, she froze as if a detonator had gone off inside her and her whole body burned as if he had set her on fire.

Flushed and filled with discomfiture, she took their drink orders and hastened back to the bar to fill them. She shouldn’t have looked at him, shouldn’t have looked anywhere near him, she scolded herself fiercely. He was extraordinarily good-looking and he knew it. Of course he did. Nobody saw a face like that in a mirror every day and failed to notice its lack of flaws and, even if he didn’t look in mirrors much, every woman under sixty was studying him with appreciation and he could hardly be unaware of the amount of attention he attracted.

Belle’s face was red and she hated that she couldn’t stop that rush of self-conscious colour that turned her the colour of an overripe tomato. It embarrassed her as much at the age of twenty-two as it had when she had been at school and the butt of unkind jokes. Diminutive in height, red-haired, freckled, as well as overly endowed in the chest category, she had been very, very low on the cool scale of popularity at school.

Dante was hugely amused by the top-to-toe blush that had enveloped Belle. When had he last seen a woman blush? He could not remember, but then he didn’t make the mistake of associating blushing with either shyness or innocence. He was much more inclined to link it to sexual attraction and awareness. He was accustomed to women looking at him and wanting him. After all, it had been happening since he was sixteen, when he had lost his virginity to one of his mother’s friends, his rebellion after being confronted by his mother’s extramarital fling. At the age of twenty-eight, he took it for granted that ninety-nine out of a hundred women would say yes to sharing his bed if he asked. And rarely did he even have to ask. Sex was frequently offered to Dante on a plate and without the smallest encouragement.

Belle delivered the drinks without once looking in Dante’s direction and that overheated feeling in her body began mercifully to fade, allowing her to breathe again. It was normal to notice an attractive man, she soothed herself, and it wasn’t her fault that she blushed fire-engine red. Just an unfortunate fact of life and she needed to learn to deal with it, as she had learned to deal with so many other unfortunate facts.

Predictably, her mind strayed back to the bad luck that seemed to thread through almost every wrong decision she made. She had been born to a woman who didn’t want her, and a father who wanted nothing to do with her and told her so without embarrassment. Her grandmother, Sadie, had told her that that lack of interest was her parents’ problem and not something that Belle should take personally. Her grandparents had loved her, she recalled with a prickling sensation behind her eyes, but her gran and grandad were both gone now and thinking about their loss only made Belle feel sad because it reminded her all over again that she was alone in the world with nobody and nothing to fall back on when things went wrong. And in France, things had gone very, very wrong for Belle.

Dante studied Belle as she moved round the bar, striving to imagine her dressed in haute couture, and that was a challenge when for some juvenile reason his brain only wanted to picture her naked. Clearly, a new wardrobe would make her infinitely more presentable but, of course, she would have to stop biting her nails. Such a disgusting habit, he reflected with distaste.

‘What’s she doing in France?’ he asked Steve carelessly, angling his chin in Belle’s direction.

‘I only know local gossip. Word is she came out here about three years ago as a housekeeper/ companion for an elderly English widow living in the village. The widow’s family hired her in London and left her to sink or swim as the old lady drifted into dementia. Eventually the local doctor got a little help for her but Belle was basically left to struggle.’

Dante slanted up an ebony brow. ‘She sounds like an idiot. Why didn’t she just walk out and go home when the job got too much for her?’

Steve frowned. ‘She was attached to the old lady by then and didn’t want to let her down or abandon her.’

‘How did she end up working here, in the bar?’

‘The widow had a heart attack and died and as soon as the funeral was over, her family sold her house and left Belle homeless and without sufficient money to get home on. They also threw out the old lady’s dog...Charlie,’ Steve murmured as a small raggedy mutt badly in need of grooming nudged up against his leg for attention before moving on to eagerly greet another regular customer, who was more likely to offer him food.

Dante paid no heed to the dog, his attention resting on his friend. ‘And then?’

‘The guy who rents this place offered Belle an old campervan to live in. It’s parked in the overflow car park behind the trees and she and the dog moved in. Then he gave her a job here.’

‘So, she’s pretty much one of life’s losers,’ Dante surmised without surprise. ‘I’m more into winners.’

‘But losers are undoubtedly easier and less demanding to negotiate with,’ Steve remarked with cynical acceptance. ‘And when have you ever been shy about profiting from other people’s misfortunes?’

Dante grinned. ‘Being ruthless is in my genes.’

‘Except when it came to your brother. I lost count of the times you dragged Cristiano out of trouble,’ Steve murmured, unimpressed. ‘And you say you’re not sentimental and yet look at the lengths you’re willing to go to, simply to buy that woodland back.’

Dante’s high cheekbones and strong jawline clenched hard. ‘That’s different.’

‘It must be, particularly as I seem to remember that the first time you stayed in Cristiano’s log cabin, you hated it like hell.’

‘I don’t enjoy roughing it, but Cristiano was always a back-to-nature freak,’ Dante recalled abstractedly, his attention locking back on Belle as a couple of young guys flirted with her while she delivered their drinks. She wasn’t blushing for their benefit, she was brisk and professional, he noted with helpless satisfaction. He signalled her with a graceful brown hand to order another set of drinks.

‘Not for me,’ Steve demurred with regret. ‘Sancha will have dinner on and she hates it when I’m late for meals.’

‘It’s only nine,’ Dante pointed out incredulously.

‘Well, to be honest, my wife doesn’t really like me out of her sight for too long,’ Steve admitted with quiet pride.

Dante winced at the very idea of his freedom to do as he liked being curtailed in such a fashion.

‘Listen, don’t knock being married until you’ve tried it!’ Steve protested in his own defence.

‘I am never ever going to try it,’ Dante assured him with a grim look of amusement. ‘But I am in the market for a girlfriend I can employ and I may be late back tonight.’

Dante returned to watching Belle, his attention drawn involuntarily to the bountiful swell of her breasts as she bent down to lift drinks off the tray, not to mention the enticing curve of her bottom thrust out and the skirt rising to expose the backs of her slender bare thighs. He shifted in his seat again, his even white teeth gritting with irritation. He wasn’t a horny teenager. Why was he reacting like one? She brought him his drink and he tossed a note down, telling her to keep the change.

‘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.’

Belle studied him, aghast. ‘You’ve left your brother’s dogs in kennels for over a year?’ she gasped in horror. ‘Why haven’t you brought them home with you?’

‘I’m not a dog-oriented person,’ Dante reminded her impatiently. ‘Look, I can’t even believe we’re having this stupid conversation about animals. If you must bring the dog, bring it, but it will be sent ahead of us to Italy. It’s not coming to Paris with us!’

Belle decided to quit while she was ahead. The arrangement wasn’t perfect, but she could see that he thought he was being very generous with that concession and she didn’t want to be so demanding that she talked herself out of the job.

‘You still haven’t said what you’re prepared to pay me,’ Belle remarked uncomfortably.

‘What did you earn working last year?’ Dante shot back at her, annoyed that he was going to have to live with a dog under his feet, no matter how briefly. She was an odd little creature, he decided, and far too attached to the dog, but such human quirks and his apparent acceptance of them could well make her seem more convincing in the role he was giving her.

Taken aback by that blunt demand, Belle blinked and told him before she could think better of such honesty.

‘Seriously...that’s all?’ Dante checked in apparent disbelief.

Belle reddened. ‘That’s all but it was a live-in position and those always pay less.’

‘Multiply that sum by fifty and that’s what you’ll walk away with in a few weeks’ time,’ Dante assured her without skipping a beat.

‘By fifty? You can’t pay me that much and buy me clothes into the bargain!’ Belle objected in amazement. ‘That’s an outrageous sum.’

‘Deal with it. It’s not an outrageous sum to me,’ Dante declared. ‘And if you make a genuine effort to meet the demands of the role, I’ll give you a bonus as well.’

Belle was almost white with shock at the thought of so much money coming her way. Even frantic on-the-spot calculations screamed that that much cash would turn her life around and give her options for the first time ever. She would be able to come up with the deposit to rent a flat in London and organise some sort of educational course to make herself more employable. In fact, the sky would be the limit with a financial nest egg that decent behind her. She was ashamed of the truth, that his offer had made her mentally tear up her pros and cons list because a risk that would improve her life so radically seemed well worth taking. It was not as though she had anything to lose aside from Charlie.

‘It’ll be like winning the lottery,’ she whispered helplessly.

‘No, I’m the lottery you have apparently won,’ Dante contradicted. ‘Start getting into that role. What I’m willing to pay you will merely be pocket change when compared to the life you would lead living with me.’

‘The pocket change wins though,’ Belle told him. ‘I think living with you will be a real challenge.’

Dante ignored that comment, rising above the temptation to inform her that having any woman living below his roof and invading his cherished privacy would be a punishment for him. ‘I’ll have travelling arrangements made for the dog and I’ll pick you up tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ she echoed, blinking in surprise. ‘That soon?’

‘We haven’t got time to waste and you can’t have much to pack. Give me your phone number,’ Dante instructed. ‘I’ll text you to let you know when we’re leaving.’

As Dante cleared the steps down into the car park in a couple of strides to head back to his motorbike, Belle was left in a total daze. She went back to setting tables because she couldn’t quite accept that she was leaving the restaurant and that her life could change so suddenly. On the score of packing, Dante had hit the nail on the head because she had very few possessions and an even smaller collection of clothing, she conceded. Though she would give Charlie a bath and a good brush to ensure that he looked his smartest and that he wasn’t mistaken for some unloved and neglected stray. She would also have to thoroughly clean the campervan and pass the key back to her boss.

When Dante arrived to collect Belle the following morning she was in floods of tears over parting with the dog and the pet transporters his PA had organised were hovering beside their van, reluctant to step in and hurry matters along. Fortunately, Dante had no such inhibitions.

‘Say goodbye to the dog, Belle,’ Dante told her. ‘It’s only for a few days.’

‘He’s scared,’ Belle whispered shakily. ‘He’s never been in a cage before.’

‘Put him in the cage. How are you planning to get him into the UK?’ Dante enquired. ‘Presumably at some point of the journey he will have to tolerate a cage. This will be good practice for him.’

Charlie went into the cage and cowered at the back of it like a dog expecting to be beaten. Stifling a sob, Belle handed over the paperwork Charlie had arrived in France with two years earlier. ‘He looks so pathetic,’ she muttered wretchedly.

‘Yes, he’s feeling very sorry for himself,’ Dante agreed, thinking that Charlie should be onstage because he certainly knew how to work an audience. ‘But you’ll be reunited very soon. Pull yourself together.’

Belatedly, Belle registered that Dante looked very different. No longer casually clad in jeans, he sported an exquisitely tailored dark grey business suit that showcased his tall broad, narrow-hipped physique to perfection. Staring for a moment longer than she was comfortable with, she hurriedly twisted her head away. ‘I am perfectly together. I was just upset,’ she proclaimed defensively.

‘Crying in public is not acceptable unless you’re attending a funeral or a wedding. Saying goodbye momentarily to a dog is not a good enough excuse,’ Dante informed her as her single bag was dropped in the capacious boot of the car and the driver yanked open the passenger door for them.

‘S-sorry,’ Belle said in a wobbly voice, turning her tear-stained face away from him as she climbed into the opulent car.

The car ferried them at speed to Toulouse-Blagnac Airport, where they were rushed through the VIP channel at speed to board Dante’s private jet. Eyes wide from her first glimpse of the opulent oyster-coloured leather seating and the sumptuous interior, Belle accepted the pile of high-fashion magazines the stewardess brought to her and tried not to stare while the same woman flirted madly with Dante with loads of hair flicking, smiles and a provocative wriggle in her too-tight pencil skirt that would’ve caught the attention of a dead man. Dante, however, remained remarkably untouched by the display and flipped open a laptop to work. Belle wondered if women always vied for his attention so blatantly and then asked herself why she was even interested.

He was a breathtakingly handsome guy, rich and sophisticated, as alien to her as snow in the summer heat. Her hormones went all out of kilter around him and she felt uncomfortable in her own body as it betrayed her in ways she hadn’t expected. It had never occurred to her before that she could be attracted to someone she didn’t like, that a mere flashing glance from tigerish dark golden eyes could make her breasts swell and her nipples tighten and a hot dull ache blossom at the junction of her thighs. That weakness was a revelation because it was new to her, but it wasn’t something that particularly worried her.

She was convinced that she would never give way to that kind of temptation because she was painfully aware that sex meant very little unless it was accompanied by genuine feelings. None of her mother’s many affairs had lasted or cured Tracy’s essential dissatisfaction with her life. And Belle wanted much more for herself than a fleeting sexual thrill or a luxurious lifestyle. She wanted love, a man who would make her feel whole and safe, and when she finally found him, she would have a family with him, recreating the family she had both lost and never really had, she thought fondly. He wouldn’t be a commitment-phobe like Dante, who saw women as clingy and probably didn’t like children much more than he liked dogs. He would be an ordinary guy, willing to settle down when he met someone who made him happy.

‘Have you ever been to Paris before?’ Dante asked, watching Belle peer out of the limo windows like a child on a school trip, afraid of missing out on a single sight.

‘No.’

‘And yet you’ve been in France for...how long?’

‘Almost three years.’

‘Why didn’t you travel around?’

‘I couldn’t leave Mrs Devenish or Charlie to look after themselves and, to be honest, I never really had enough money to go off exploring.’

‘Then why did you lumber yourself with a dog into the bargain?’ Dante enquired drily.

‘He wasn’t mine initially. Mrs Devenish’s niece brought Charlie out here as a gift for her. Unfortunately, she wasn’t well enough to look after a puppy, but she did enjoy seeing him round the house,’ Belle confided ruefully. ‘She was a lovely old lady but her relatives didn’t want to accept that she was ill. They liked coming out here in the summer for their holidays and they insisted that I was exaggerating her condition. It took the doctor to convince them otherwise and by that stage, as it turned out, she only had a few more weeks to live.’

‘You need to learn how to stand up for yourself more effectively,’ Dante censured.

Belle shrugged. ‘Only if you can afford to take the consequences and I had neither another job to go to nor anywhere else to live.’

‘You shouldn’t have put yourself in that position.’

‘Haven’t I just done the same thing again with you?’

Dante frowned at her in bemusement. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well, I don’t have an employment contract or any safeguards with you either...and you’ve now got Charlie to hold over me,’ she pointed out, lifting her chin.

‘You can’t think I’m likely to hold Charlie hostage? Or ditch you in Paris without money?’ Dante breathed in a raw undertone, insulted beyond belief by her suspicions.

‘Isn’t that what I’m saying?’ Belle murmured gently. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers. I’ve had to take the risk of trusting you.’

Dante released his breath in a pent-up hiss of displeasure and said nothing, his lean dark face grim. He didn’t enjoy being taxed with the truth.

Belle stepped out of the limousine onto one of the most exclusive streets in Paris and stared wide-eyed at the even more exclusive hotel that Dante was striding towards. Her strained face flushed, and she smoothed down her floral skirt and studied her scuffed boots with embarrassment. She followed him into the foyer, careful to stay behind him and out of sight, almost skidding on the highly polished floor tiles and horribly conscious of the plush silence and the dulled murmur of well-bred voices. She looked up above the atrium entrance to the serried ranks of colonnaded floors above. Never had she been so aware of her shabby appearance and at any moment, if she wasn’t careful enough and drew the wrong person’s attention, she expected a hand to fall on her shoulder and someone to ask her what she was doing there, because she felt like an intruder.

‘You’ve got very quiet,’ Dante remarked as she shot into the lift on his heels and immersed herself in a corner. ‘You have a busy schedule this afternoon.’

Belle looked up at him in bewilderment. ‘Doing what?’

‘Visiting the spa for beauty treatments. Don’t ask me what’s included,’ Dante advised. ‘I told my PA you needed a makeover, especially in the defective nail department. I’m afraid that perfect grooming goes with the territory.’

‘I’m afraid you’re stuck with my defective nails,’ Belle countered snidely. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do with them.’

‘Belle...if I was willing to pay the surcharge,’ Dante murmured silkily, ‘they’d cut off your hands and give you new ones!’

Belle paled and linked her hands together tightly, wanting to nibble nervously but afraid of the reaction she might ignite if she succumbed to temptation. The lift doors whirred silently back and a man in a white jacket began to bow and scrape.

‘Our butler. Anything you want or need, you ask him,’ Dante informed her, walking out into the vast space awaiting them.

Dumbstruck, Belle wandered across the floor and straight out onto the balcony to lean against the elaborate wrought-iron balustrade and stare in awe at the superlative view of the slender silhouette of the Eiffel Tower, the glass roofs of the Grand Palais and the bell tower of Notre Dame Cathedral.

‘Madam...?’

She swivelled to register that the butler held a silver tray and was offering her a glass of champagne. She swallowed hard, only just resisting an urge to pinch herself to see if she was dreaming and grasped the champagne. Her glass in her hand, she was ushered back inside and up the swirling staircase to her bedroom, which was the last word in over-the-top glamour, from its brocaded walls to its soft and inviting velvet seating and subtle eau-de-Nil colouring. Far above her, ornate lace mouldings decorated the ceiling. She hastened into the bathroom and was disappointed to discover that it contained only a shower, although it was a vast wet-room affair that could have coped with a party and took up a good half of the room.

When she came downstairs again, lunch was being served and a young woman in a very stylish suit was using a tablet at Dante’s elbow. ‘Belle...this is my executive PA, Caterina. She will be scheduling your appointments here because I have meetings to attend.’

Belle sat down opposite Dante to have lunch. Not having eaten since breakfast, she was starving. Dante and his PA talked in Italian while she ate, and she watched Dante’s eyes shimmer pure gold in the sunlight before his ridiculously long black lashes skimmed down to shade them. Her mouth ran dry, her throat tightening, sudden nerves assailing her. Her fingers lifted to her mouth and at the exact same moment, Dante flashed a warning look at her. ‘Try it and I’ll plunge your hands into bowls of ice water!’ he threatened impatiently.

Her colour rising, Belle dropped her hand back to her lap. ‘Stop threatening me!’ she snapped back at him.

‘You have to learn sometime,’ Dante told her while Caterina watched the byplay in seeming fascination. ‘I’ll take you out to dine somewhere tonight...’ He turned back to his PA. ‘Make sure she’s camera-ready.’

‘Why would I need to be camera-ready?’ Belle demanded.

‘Because I expect that we will be papped at some stage of the evening.’

‘Papped?’

‘The paparazzi,’ Caterina explained. ‘Dante’s social life is always hot news in Italy.’

Caterina escorted her downstairs to the spa facilities. Belle endured one treatment after another, finally relaxing into the procedures when the less pleasant experiences were behind her. She flexed her fake nails, now long and shaped and a pale, barely noticeable pink. She reckoned not a single hair now existed anywhere on her body aside from her brows and her head. The facial and the massage that followed were soothing and the treatments concluded with an appointment with a hair stylist, who lamented at length over the sun damage to her bountiful tresses and then quietly and efficiently transformed her unmanageable mane into a sleek fall as smooth and straight as silk.

Back in her bedroom she was greeted by three women with mobile racks of clothing and cases of other items. Her size established, she didn’t get away with being shy. She donned elaborate silky lingerie while the most senior woman muttered about a good foundation for clothing being very important to an elegant appearance. Then she had to model outfit after outfit while the women argued amongst themselves about which colours and designs best suited her. She had never seen such beautiful, expensive material before or garments put together with so exceptional a finish and fit. But considering that Dante only required her to play his girlfriend for one weekend, she couldn’t credit the sheer size and diversity of the wardrobe that he evidently deemed necessary. She recalled that she would have to live her role in his home for a few days beforehand but still rolled her eyes at his extravagance. Only when she saw her unfamiliar reflection in a mirror did she stop rolling her eyes and stop worrying about what he had chosen to spend.

There she was garbed in a very slightly sparkly blue dress that might have been specially designed for her, shoestring straps adorning her shoulders, a superbly designed backless bra restraining her exuberant breasts, the hemline swirling well above her knees, her feet shod in perilously high sandals. She looked taller, slimmer, less overwhelmingly busty and she breathed a little easier, grabbing up the clutch that toned with the shoes to go down the stairs.

‘Very classy...’ Dante pronounced approvingly, watching her descent from below, and yet there was the strangest kernel of disappointment at the heart of his reaction. He realised in surprise that on some level he had liked the untamed curls, the youthful eccentric clothes, and that truth shook him. Indisputably, Belle looked more gorgeous than the first time he had seen her but somehow, inexplicably, she had been hotter and sexier in her own natural style.

‘You’re getting what you paid for,’ Belle fielded with an awkward shrug.

His dark deep-set eyes flared with golden highlights. ‘Don’t dwell on that aspect. It’s not important.’

Dante studied her long shapely legs and imagined lifting the skirt and running his hands up those slim, smooth thighs. A very faint shudder ran through him as he stamped down hard on that lusty image and attempted to quell the heat at his groin while reminding himself that he wasn’t going to go there, wasn’t going to yield to that kind of dangerous impulse. Of course, he would have to touch her. In the roles they were playing, a certain amount of physical contact was unavoidable, but he would ensure that it was only enough to give a superficial if convincing impression.

In the lift, the lustrous glow of Dante’s stunning eyes sent tiny little tremors travelling up through Belle’s legs. She felt weak, dizzy, and the lift felt claustrophobic. At the very heart of her she could feel a pulse pounding out her tension like a drum while her breasts ached beneath her clothing. Attraction, just stupid body chemistry, she told herself dismissively as she climbed into the back of the glossy limousine awaiting them.

The silence hummed as she gazed back at him, every nerve ending in her body tight with tension. His eyes were brilliant gold, striking, utterly compelling and she swallowed hard. Dante succumbed to a ‘what the hell?’ prompt, because he had never been into self-denial. How the blazes could they hope to pretend to be lovers if he had yet to even touch her? he asked himself. That was nonsense. That decision forged, he reached out a hand and she clasped it, allowing him to propel her across the seat into his arms. She went without even having to think about it, her heart pounding so fast she felt light-headed.

His big hands framing her face, he kissed her with so much hunger she was blown away by the experience. Her heart raced even faster, her body tense and throbbing on the edge of an anticipation she had never felt before. Her tense fingers clenched into the collar of his jacket. He crushed her lips with a groan and his tongue stole between them, delving deep for a skilful exploration that acted like a wake-up call for every fibre of her being. Nobody had ever made her feel what he was making her feel and it was wildly unexpected and unbelievably exciting, and the experience engulfed her like an avalanche. She was in over her head before she knew it.

‘Bad timing, amante,’ Dante growled, his hips arching up slightly as she braced a steadying hand on a lean masculine thigh, dangerously close to the tented fabric doing a very poor job of concealing his excitement. For the first time in his life he wanted a woman to be bold and he waited for a split second; however, frustratingly, she made no move. ‘I can tell the driver to drive us around...’

That suggestion spooked Belle. She moistened her swollen lower lip, her attention locked to his reddened mouth, her entire being, it seemed, caught up in the need for him to touch her again and satisfy the surge of need that had come out of nowhere to make her tremble and perspire. ‘Er...’

‘Madonna mia... Ti voglio... I want you,’ Dante framed raggedly, claiming her ripe lips with his again at the same time as he pressed her hand to the part of him that most craved her attention.

Her fingers spread across the fabric, hesitantly tracing the long thick length of him through the fine fabric of his trousers, and that suddenly she was into frighteningly unfamiliar territory because she never ever played the tease, never encouraged where she had no plans to deliver, but just then she was dealing with a level of temptation new to her. No man had ever got her to the point where she wanted more than a kiss or even to the point where she truly wanted him. In a matter of minutes, Dante had accomplished both feats and shocked her witless because in his arms she was learning that even logical thought was more of a challenge than she could manage.

Her startled eyes flew up to his smouldering appraisal and she burned inside and out, her temperature climbing in direct response to the predatory hunger she saw in him and that on some level she actually craved. ‘I thought we were going to eat,’ she reminded him shakily, striving with a sense of cowardice to escape a situation that she knew she had helped to create because she hadn’t said no and she hadn’t pushed him away.

‘I can feed you back at the hotel,’ Dante husked, catching her hand in his as she backed away from him to prevent her retreat.

‘Sex isn’t part of our arrangement...is it?’ Belle demanded in sudden dismay.

‘Of course not,’ Dante assured her silkily, smoothing her small fingers in his to keep her close. ‘But what we choose to do outside those boundaries is our business alone.’

‘Er, well...yes, but I don’t think we should be getting too friendly,’ Belle mumbled in an awkward rush, trailing her hand free of his.

‘There has to be a certain degree of familiarity visible between us or nobody is ever going to believe that we’re lovers,’ Dante countered with reluctant amusement.

Belle hadn’t thought of that aspect of their pretend relationship and she wanted to kick herself for not thinking of it sooner because she had literally walked blind into a brick wall.

‘You seem very...nervous,’ Dante selected, scrutinising her troubled face with a growing frown. ‘I may want you but I promise that I’m not going to try to force you into anything you don’t want.’

Belle flushed and straightened her spine, embarrassed that she had made him feel that he had to give her that reassurance. ‘I know. But to be honest, er...I’m a bit out of my depth with you.’

‘How?’ Dante shifted lithely back into his corner, teeth gritting at the biting ache of unfulfillment nagging at him.

‘I haven’t got a lot of experience,’ Belle admitted stiffly. ‘I probably should’ve said no sooner.’

‘How much is “not a lot”?’ Dante prompted drily.

Belle sucked in a steadying breath. ‘I’d rather not go into that.’

‘You needn’t be shy, nor should you feel that you have to lie for my benefit,’ Dante murmured loftily. ‘I see women as equals. I prefer experienced partners.’

‘Well, then, I wouldn’t suit you at all!’ Belle confided in a tone of stark relief. ‘I haven’t had a, er, partner yet.’

That statement disconcerted Dante so much that for a split second he simply frowned down at her with astonished dark golden eyes. ‘You can’t be a virgin!’

As he spoke the door beside him was abruptly opened by the driver and both of them were taken by surprise, neither of them having noticed that the car had stopped, and Belle was miraculously rescued from the need to respond to his incredulous statement. In his wake, she slid along the back seat, struggling to keep the skirt of her dress from lifting as she alighted. In what had to be her worst nightmare, just as she was attempting to keep her underwear choices a secret known only to her, the flashbulbs of cameras went off, blinding and disorientating her as she fought to climb out gracefully in her high heels. Mercifully, Dante saved her from a clumsy exit by reaching down to grab her hand with his and he practically pulled her up and out of the limo, giving her the chance to find her feet and discreetly smooth down her rucked frock.

In the crowded entrance foyer, so impervious to the presence of the photographers that he hadn’t even spared them a glance, Dante stared broodingly down at her and said again, proving that his mind was still on the conversation she had gratefully abandoned, ‘You can’t be...’

And Belle’s second-worst nightmare came true with those words. She felt the awful burn of that hot familiar tide of colour sweeping up her body in a mortifying tide.

‘And a blushing one,’ Dante pronounced in even greater disbelief. ‘You’re supposed to be as much of an urban legend as unicorns.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘WE’RE NOT GOING to discuss this any more,’ Belle told Dante heatedly as they were ushered through a crowded room of staring diners to a well-lit velvet-lined booth in the corner.

‘Don’t kid yourself. When you said we had to know stuff about each other, that is definitely something a man would need to know,’ Dante fielded grimly.

‘Not in our situation, it’s not,’ Belle argued. ‘We’re only faking it.’

‘What would you know about faking it?’ Dante enquired witheringly.

‘Stop it!’ Belle hissed between clenched teeth in a sharp aside before she took a seat. ‘If you don’t stop embarrassing me, I’ll look like a tomato all evening!’

‘You could’ve told me the truth upfront!’ Dante replied, still pointed in tone as he spread open the wine list, signalled the hovering maître d’ and ordered wines in fluent French.

Belle pressed the cool backs of her hands to her cheeks in an effort to ratchet down her inner heat source. ‘Why should I have told you?’

‘I feel short-changed and like I’m about to throw a baby into a snake pit!’ Dante groaned in frustration, wondering if he had chosen the wrong woman entirely for the role. ‘You are manifestly unsuited to pretending to be my sexy lover. How on earth are you going to pull that off?’

‘You don’t have to have sex to be sexy,’ Belle whispered vehemently across the table. ‘Not five minutes ago you were all over me!’

‘If I’d been all over you, we’d still have been in the limo and I wouldn’t be in need of a cold shower,’ Dante parried drily. ‘I kissed you. Let’s not get lost in virginal exaggeration.’

‘Just lose that word from your vocabulary!’ Belle tossed, taking refuge behind her menu and making hasty selections, desperate to change the subject. ‘It embarrasses me. I wish I’d lied now.’

Dante ordered the food and lounged back in his chair, narrowed sardonic dark eyes welding to her still-flushed face. ‘So, tell me why... Religious scruples?’

‘My grandparents didn’t encourage me to go out and about when I was younger because we lived in a rough area and they were worried about my safety. Then I was restricted by having to stay home as a carer. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but lack of opportunity is certainly part of it,’ Belle acknowledged, gratefully sipping the water poured for her, soothing her tight vocal cords. ‘And that’s all I’ve got to say on the subject.’

‘I’m still not satisfied,’ Dante admitted, tasting the wine and indicating that it could be poured.

‘It’s absolutely none of your business,’ she told him quietly when they were alone again.

‘You made it my business when you made me want you,’ Dante contradicted ruefully. ‘Now it seems clear that you’re one of those women who decides to stay as pure as the driven snow until she marries.’

‘I didn’t say that I was saving myself for marriage,’ Belle pointed out. ‘And I’m not. But I only want intimacy if it comes with a serious relationship.’

‘I won’t offer you a serious relationship.’

‘Of course not,’ Belle conceded. ‘Anyway, I’m working for you, so there won’t be anything of that nature to worry about.’

Dante reminded himself that he too had believed at the outset of their agreement that there was no room for sex in it. But from the minute he had touched her, something had indisputably changed for him. He had acknowledged that he wanted her, and all his reservations had vanished at the same moment, which he supposed made him a fairly typical male, driven by his libido. He didn’t want her to be out of reach, he didn’t want to hear that she would only share a bed with a man if she was in a serious relationship and he was still wondering how she would stand up to Krystal, who oozed sex appeal.

‘I’m just waiting to meet the right person,’ Belle extended quietly, hoping to defuse the tension with that admission.

‘And what is that right person going to be like?’ Dante asked with helpless curiosity.

‘Someone who matches me. Look, I don’t want to talk about this any more. It’s too private and personal,’ Belle told him abruptly. ‘Subject closed.’

Frustration gusted through Dante. ‘I suppose you mean someone crazy about dogs.’

‘That wouldn’t be the most important thing, no,’ she countered uncomfortably. ‘I accept that I’ll have to compromise, and that one person can’t possibly meet all my expectations.’

‘I suppose you have a list drawn up for that too,’ Dante guessed. ‘A shopping list of requirements.’

‘I’m not shopping.’ Belle lifted her chin.

Silence fell. The first course arrived and they ate. By the arrival of the next, Belle had relaxed again, refusing to think about what Dante thought of her because it wasn’t important. Like a shooting star, he would only be in her life for a very short space of time and it would be foolish to start worrying about his opinion of her because ultimately it didn’t matter, she told herself firmly. No doubt she sounded old-fashioned and naïve to him, but she knew what she wanted and needed and she wasn’t about to apologise for it.

‘You haven’t told me a thing about yourself yet,’ she reminded him quietly.

‘Background...’ Dante shifted a shoulder in a dismissive shrug. ‘I’m twenty-eight. My family made their fortune in banking. My father married my mother because she is the daughter of a prince and he was born a prince. They set a very high value on their titles even though the Italian Republic no longer recognises those titles. They had two children because they wanted a son to inherit the title—the heir and the spare. I was the spare,’ Dante explained tightly, his sensual mouth twisting at the designation. ‘There was a lot of pressure on my brother, Cristiano, to be exactly what my parents wanted him to be. So he went into the bank because they demanded it of him even though it wasn’t what he wanted to do with his life.’

‘And what about you?’ Belle whispered. ‘What did they want from you?’

‘They barely took notice of my existence. I was simply insurance in case anything ever happened to my older brother,’ Dante admitted. ‘And tragically, the worst happened. Cristiano messed up an investment fund at the bank. Instead of coming to me for advice and help, and feeling unable to face our parents’ criticism, he took an overdose...and then he was gone.’

Belle had paled. His pain at that admission had tightened every muscle in his lean, darkly handsome face and his strain was painfully evident. ‘I’m so sorry, Dante.’

‘Do you know what my parents said to me at his funeral?’ Dante breathed in a raw undertone. ‘That he was never meant to be the elder son, that he was utterly unsuited to the responsibility and that I would be much stronger in the role. They didn’t grieve for him because as far as they were concerned he was a social embarrassment and a screw-up.’

‘That’s awful,’ Belle murmured urgently, reaching for his hand, which had clenched into a fist on the tabletop, and smoothing her fingers gently over his. ‘They can’t possibly have meant it!’

‘Oh, they meant it all right,’ Dante contradicted with hard conviction as he pushed his plate away with his free hand. ‘I wasn’t surprised but I’ll never get over the guilt because I could’ve saved him.’

‘How?’ she exclaimed in surprise at the claim.

‘I could have stepped in and taken over at the bank. I was better qualified. I could have made the socially acceptable marriage and provided the next generation. Instead I did what I wanted to do and left him to sink or swim. The best advice I had to offer was for him to walk away but he didn’t have the heart to do that because he was desperate, always desperate, for our parents’ approval,’ he completed gruffly.

‘That’s not your fault. He did what he had to do, and you did what you had to do. Whatever happened, one of you was going to be unhappy, and as your older brother he chose to take the hit,’ she reasoned ruefully.

‘Let’s move on to something less contentious,’ Dante murmured, taken aback that he had told her so much and disconcerted by the shimmer of sympathetic tears in her big violet eyes. She was the touchy-feely type just as Cristiano had been and being that way inclined, being vulnerable, was like sticking your head up above the parapet to invite a punch in the face.

‘Yes, tell me about where you went to school...and I suppose you went to university,’ Belle said, unsurprised by his nod of confirmation. ‘We’ll just stick to easy facts, the sort of stuff I should know about you.’

The rest of the meal went surprisingly well and by the time they were climbing back into the limo, Belle felt calm enough to ignore the single lingering paparazzo with a camera, who stole another shot of them together.

‘Your favourite colour?’ she pressed Dante again.

‘I don’t have one.’

‘Everyone has one.’

‘Blue... You dressed in blue,’ Dante said teasingly, highly amused by her interest in trivia like his birthdate, his favourite foods and sports, none of which he considered remotely important or likely to be of use to her. ‘Blue brings out your eyes. I’m going to have to buy you some jewellery. Don’t men who live with women buy them jewellery as gifts?’

Belle wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh, don’t spend any more, for goodness’ sake! I’ll only be leaving it behind me. I couldn’t possibly accept jewellery as part of the deal...unless you could buy fakes,’ she suggested, looking at him with sudden hope. ‘There are very good fakes around now.’

‘I’m not putting you in fakes!’ Dante told her, studying her with incredulous dark golden eyes. ‘Madre di Dio... You haven’t got the sense you were born with, have you?’

Her brow furrowed. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Because a woman wanting to feather her nest would never ever suggest that I buy her fake diamonds. She would want and expect the real thing, even if it was just to sell it at a later date,’ he pointed out drily.

‘But I’m not out to feather my own nest,’ Belle argued, her colour heightening. ‘I’ll be more than content to be paid at the end of this. Anything more than giving me the means to go home and get my life started again would be excessive.’

‘Allow me to decide what is excessive.’ Dante surveyed her with mounting hunger, his attention lingering on the smooth satiny skin below her throat while he imagined putting his mouth there before toying at his leisure with the sultry curve to her lower lip. He marvelled at how misleading that pouty pink sultriness was.

She was a sensual, sexy woman in denial of her nature and she was saving herself up for some no doubt imaginary and perfect hero, who would disappoint her. The idea of Belle being disappointed galled Dante and he asked himself why when he deemed disappointment to be one of life’s certainties. Like his current desire for her, he ruminated sardonically. He imagined that once he had her, he would no longer want her. And wasn’t that exactly why he should leave her alone and untouched? He frowned because that little moral question reminded him very much of his brother, who had always been kinder and less ruthless than Dante. When had he ever had anything in common with Cristiano apart from the blood in their veins?

CHAPTER FOUR

‘I’M PLANNING TO have a drink,’ Dante announced when they walked back into the hotel suite. ‘Do you want one?’

‘No, thanks.’ Belle wandered restively round the room. ‘I wonder how Charlie’s doing.’

‘He’s doing fine. I got a text and a photo earlier. He’s eaten and settled in for the night. I meant to mention it,’ Dante asserted, tugging out his phone.

Belle darted over to him and stared down at the photo of Charlie in what looked like a very comfortable dog run. He was snuggled up, nose to tail, in a well-padded dog bed. ‘He looks sad,’ she sighed. ‘Have you any photos of your brother’s dogs?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Why didn’t you try to find them a new home?’ Belle asked ruefully.

‘Cristiano left me a letter. He wanted me to keep them.’

‘Yes, but he probably assumed you’d keep them at home with you,’ Belle pointed out and then winced. ‘Sorry, forget I said that. It was totally tactless.’

‘But spot on,’ Dante fielded, pouring himself what he imagined would only be his first hard drink of the night. ‘Go to bed. I feel like drowning my sorrows.’

‘I can’t leave you down here alone when you’re feeling bad!’ Belle protested with a troubled look in her eyes.

‘Of course, you can,’ Dante asserted. ‘I’m not a child you have to worry about.’

She wondered if he had ever got to be a child secure in the love of his parents. They hadn’t sounded very loving towards him and his brother. It made her look back on all the years that she had felt sorry for herself because she had neither a father nor a mother who loved her. Yet all along she had had her grandparents loving and supporting her, making up in every way they could for her parents’ lack of interest.

‘From what you’ve said about him, I don’t think your brother would’ve wanted you feeling this way,’ she murmured uncertainly, fearful of intruding too much.

‘And what would you know about it?’ Dante derided.

‘Nothing,’ she agreed apologetically. ‘But if he was a kind person, he wouldn’t have wanted you beating yourself up about what can’t be changed.’

And that was perfectly true, Dante acknowledged grudgingly. Cristiano had always been an optimist who hated dwelling on the darker elements of life. He had made the best of situations, had even tried to make the best he could of the parents he had been born to, tolerating and forgiving their biting scorn and continual demands.

Dante strode forward. ‘Stop looking at me with those big sad eyes,’ he breathed hoarsely.

‘I’m not sad. I just wanted to make you feel better.’ Belle sighed.

‘Come to bed with me, then. That would be guaranteed to make me feel better, amante,’ Dante growled soft and low, the dark roughened vowel sounds in his voice snaking down her spine like a rough caress.

Belle clashed in consternation with glittering dark golden eyes that made the breath hitch in her tight throat. ‘No, that would be a bad idea.’

‘Not to my mind,’ Dante intoned, catching both her hands in his and tugging her closer. ‘You should’ve got away while you had the chance.’

Her face flamed because she knew that she hadn’t wanted to leave him alone. He tempted her as no one ever had and his confession about his brother had made him seem treacherously human and vulnerable, chipping away at her original dislike. It had taught her a lesson too, taught her not to make assumptions about people and assume that wealth cushioned them from the tragedies of life. Going straight to bed, steering clear of spending more time with Dante Lucarelli, would have been the sensible thing to do, but seeing him standing by the windows with a drink in his hand and looking so very alone had bothered her even though there was nothing she could do or say to change anything.

Belle lifted her chin and looked up at him. ‘I know you’ll let me go if I ask you to.’

‘And you won’t ask me because you don’t want me to let you go,’ Dante murmured in silken challenge as he trailed a reproving fingertip across a pink cheek, down to the incredibly inviting lush pink of her mouth. ‘Well, don’t say you weren’t warned...’

He leant down and captured her mouth with his, driving her lips apart with the power of his hungry kiss, and she shivered as heat darted through her chilled body, warming every inch of her. She wanted more, she knew she wanted more, knowing that if nothing else when she made no objection to being scooped off her feet and carried over to an armchair where he draped her across his lap without once freeing her mouth again. A quivering intensity of response gripped her as his tongue stroked between her lips to explore.

‘The taste of you is sublime,’ Dante husked against her throat, his breath see-sawing in and out of his chest. ‘But it is also dangerously addictive.’

Belle was amazingly aware of his hand on her thigh, his fingers smoothing below the hem of her dress and moving higher, and she had never wanted anything quite as much as she craved his touch because, even with every muscle in her body taut with denial, a subversive ache between her legs betrayed her with every plundering delve of his tongue. As he skimmed the taut stretch of her panties aside, her fingers speared into his black hair. She didn’t know what she was doing, and she didn’t care at that moment. Indeed, her only recognisable fear was that he would stop.

And then he touched her, a mere roll of a fingertip against the taut little bud below her mound and her body went haywire, her hips rising in a languorous roll, sweet and frighteningly strong sensation piercing her in a stormy wave. He sat her up and she uttered a little sound of complaint at that moment of disconnection as he unzipped her dress and pulled it down, the unclipped her bra with wicked dexterity so that her unbound breasts tumbled taut and full into his hands.

With a hungry groan, Dante caught a straining pink nipple in his mouth, bending her back over his arm to ravage the bounty he had uncovered. He was fiercely aroused and dimly amused at himself for playing around like a teenager instead of moving single-mindedly from A to Z to extract his own satisfaction as fast as possible. But there was, he was discovering, a shocking satisfaction to be found in her inexperienced responses, in the little gasping sounds she made low in her throat and the increasingly frantic grip of her fingers in his hair. He teased the damp flesh at the heart of her, tracing her body in a caress that almost sent her up in flames in his arms, and then gently exploring to learn that she was even tighter than he had expected.

Belle arched and panted into his mouth, helpless in his arms, her hips rocking instinctively as the pressure in her pelvis built higher and tightened like a band of steel inside her. She was reaching for that perfect moment, blind, deaf, utterly mindless when with one skilful flick of a finger he sent her flying into the sun. She shuddered and cried out, aftershocks of reaction convulsing her as he curved her up to him to taste her mouth one last time. And for timeless moments she lay there in his arms, ostensibly relaxed by the release of all tension but with her brain already leaping back to life to leave her deeply shaken by what she had allowed to happen.

In an instant she was off his lap, gazing down at him, connecting with brilliant dark, glittering eyes.

‘The third time you’re in my arms, I will be taking you to bed,’ Dante murmured slumberously. ‘Just putting that warning out there...’

‘You know that’s not what I want,’ Belle began awkwardly, her face burning because she was painfully aware that her behaviour with him was hard to defend.

‘You may be a contrary woman, but you want me,’ Dante incised with complete assurance.

And he was right, shamelessly, mortifyingly right to the extent that Belle didn’t bother staying around to argue with that statement. Her head as high as she could still hold it, she went up to her bedroom and shut the door, a sudden empty hollow feeling assailing her because Dante was still downstairs and every wanton cell in her body wanted him with her. She was learning that nothing was as black and white as she had believed it to be. Desire didn’t simply switch off because she didn’t want to feel it and desire was a much more significant temptation than she had realised. When Dante kissed her, when Dante held her close, she turned weak and dizzy with longing. Yet longing for and downright craving a man who would want nothing more from her than the fleeting pleasure her body could offer him could only lead to her unhappiness.

Even so, for the first time she was questioning that she had to love and care for a man before she would have sex with him. Obviously, Dante had no deep feelings for her, and the sense of being close to him that his honesty about his brother’s death had awakened in her was dangerously misleading. Was that what had happened to her? Had her sympathy bled over into some strange desire to comfort him that had somehow turned into a sexual invitation? She hadn’t meant that to happen and was annoyed that she had failed to call a halt.

Bemusement about her exact motivation and discomfiture over her own conduct kept Belle lying awake for a long time. She accepted that she was discovering stuff about herself with Dante that she would have sooner not known. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stamp out her attraction to him, nor could she remain level-headed enough to stay in control in his arms. All she could do now, she reasoned ruefully, was be on her guard and endeavour not to offer Dante any more conflicting signals.

Dante had a cold shower and wondered why he hadn’t simply swept Belle straight off to his bed. He was considerably more disturbed by the inexplicable truth that even foreplay with Belle was more exciting than anything he had ever had with another woman. She turned him on, hard and fast, and then she melted with delicious response whenever he touched her. Instead of being furious with her for walking away without giving him the satisfaction he needed, he was already thinking with anticipation about the next time she succumbed to the same hunger that was currently tormenting him. And then maybe he would walk away to teach her a lesson.

Picturing that scenario, Dante grinned with helpless amusement, knowing that the last thing he would do was walk away. He wouldn’t have the self-discipline to walk away because he had let her get under his skin, let her light him up for the first time ever with a fiery need to possess one particular woman. And why was that? Or what was it about her that had penetrated his defences?

What, for instance, had made him talk so very honestly about losing Cristiano? It was true that she would need that background to understand his family set-up and why the land deal was so very important to him. But he had shared details he didn’t need to share, drawn out by her warmth and those big compassionate eyes that seemed to offer understanding. In all likelihood it was all an act on her part, he told himself sagely, and she was striving to impress him, possibly hoping to stay in his life for longer than two short weeks.

The following morning, Belle was in a surprisingly good mood. She had behaved foolishly the night before, but she knew that she couldn’t turn back time and magically eradicate her mistake. All she could do was avoid getting too close to Dante and start trying to treat him more like her employer. Furthermore, the sun was shining, and she would hopefully be reunited with Charlie soon. More clothing had arrived for her to try and it was a definite treat to skim through the different items and pick a brand-new outfit to wear. She chose a light skirt and top combination, but she frowned at her hair, which was displaying defiant waves again after only one short evening of behaving like her fantasy straight hair. Her true self was fighting to come out again, she thought ruefully, and Dante would just have to accept that she couldn’t look perfectly groomed all the time.

‘A jeweller is visiting after breakfast,’ Dante informed her as she came down the stairs, trying to evade his gaze without being too obvious about it while her colour rose like a banner to advertise her self-consciousness. ‘And then we’re heading out to shop for furniture and some other items. Tomorrow, we’ll fly home to Italy.’

‘Why would we need to shop for furniture?’ Belle asked as she settled down at the breakfast table with him.

‘You’re moving in with me. Presumably a woman moving in with a man would have items she wanted to bring with her. You have nothing, so we will have to buy some stuff. I want us to look like an authentic couple, to my staff and everyone else in my life,’ Dante admitted calmly. ‘That we are only pretending has to remain our secret.’

‘Charlie’s authentic,’ Belle pointed out helplessly. ‘I am moving in my dog.’

Dante lounged back in his chair to study her. In silk that accentuated the swell of her breasts and somehow enhanced the satiny softness of her pale skin, she looked incredibly sensual and very touchable. He watched as she tucked a stray strand of bright hair behind one small ear and nibbled at her lower lip and reminded himself that seducing her would be cruel, because he was never going to offer her the serious relationship she wanted. He breathed in deep, recognising the erotic pulse gaining strength at his groin, and he shifted position in outright denial of her libidinous effect on him. ‘Charlie’s not enough on his own. We need to buy you some artworks and some presentable pieces of furniture.’

Her smooth brow furrowed. ‘Art? Why would I need artworks?’

‘Part of your new image. You’re an art lover like me,’ Dante told her.

‘Yes, I do like some art,’ Belle conceded thoughtfully. ‘But not on the sort of level you would admire. I agreed to do this, Dante, but I didn’t agree to pretend to be someone I’m not.’

An ebony brow lifted enquiringly. ‘Meaning?’

‘The relationship may be fake but, while I’m in it, I’m going to be me,’ Belle informed him stiffly. ‘I’m not going to fake being something I’m not, so I don’t want fancy artworks or furniture. I’m an ordinary working woman and I wouldn’t know where to begin acting as if I was someone much fancier and richer.’

‘That’s quite a speech and I appreciate the sentiments you express but I don’t see what difference it makes in our circumstances.’

‘Well, then, you’re not listening,’ Belle interrupted more sharply. ‘I’m me and I’m staying me because that way I’m less likely to make mistakes. I’ve been a housekeeper, a carer and a waitress, and I won’t pretend otherwise.’

‘And if you’re not part of my world, how am I supposed to have met the real you?’ Dante asked very drily.

‘Make it a funny story. I served you in a bar one night? You met me when you visited someone I was looking after or working for... You picked me up when I was hitchhiking? Use your imagination. Maybe you’re moving in with me because I’m different from the other women you’ve had in your life. Don’t try to make me hide the real me, as if that is something to be ashamed of,’ Belle urged ruefully.

‘You’re very stubborn.’

‘And so are you.’

‘Consequently, no artworks?’ Dante checked with a censorious shake of his arrogant dark head. ‘But there has to be some furniture, so that you can turn some room in my house into your room... Isn’t that what women do when they move in with a man?’

Belle shrugged. ‘How would I know? And it’s an awful lot of fuss and expense to go to simply to put on an act for one weekend,’ she reasoned, searching his lean bronzed features with curiosity sparkling in her dark blue eyes. ‘Presumably you think getting this business deal is worth any amount of trouble.’

‘Pretty much,’ Dante agreed.

‘Well, then, if it’s just one room I could choose a comfortable chair, a small table, bookshelves...oh, and books,’ she added reflectively, her eyes warming at the prospect. ‘But brand-new furniture won’t look very convincing—’

‘We’ll buy antiques,’ Dante incised in a tone of finality.

‘But you’re not going to expect me to pretend to be something I’m not?’ Belle pressed, seeking reassurance.

‘No,’ Dante conceded, marvelling that he was giving way on that point for in truth he had planned to set her up with an entire false identity, which would have protected his privacy and her anonymity. ‘You appreciate that the media will take a much stronger interest in me hooking up with a waitress?’

‘I’ll be out of your life again before anyone has even identified me,’ Belle parried confidently, lifting her head, vibrant waves of copper-red hair shifting across her shoulders and glinting fierily in the light.

‘It goes against the grain to admit it, but I liked your hair better before the beauty consultants in the spa got their hands on you. Curly hair suits you,’ Dante framed, already questioning what he was saying and frowning at that unplanned dive into personal comment as he sprang lithely upright to greet the older man with a large leather case and his accompanying security guard being shown into the room. ‘Monsieur Duchamp, you are very welcome.’

Belle tugged her fingers down from the hair she had involuntarily been touching. He liked her hair better when it was au naturel. Well, what did you know? She was astonished but decidedly flattered.

An hour later, she was sporting a designer watch and bracelet, sapphire-and-diamond earrings and a sapphire-and-diamond pendant, the absolute basics without which Dante had insisted she could not perform her role.

The limousine dropped them on the Carré Rive Gauche, which was full of antiques dealers and the kind of esoteric shops haunted by interior designers. Belle found herself much more interested in what was on offer there than she had expected to be because the sheer quirkiness of some of the items intrigued her.

‘You’re seeing stuff that interests you,’ Dante noted.

‘I like finding out the history behind them... I like that seat,’ she said, pointing at an elaborately upholstered and very comfortable-looking low-slung armchair.

The proprietor, quick to recognise Dante for the rich buyer that he was, hastened over to talk about the chair and demonstrated the weird way part of the arms swivelled back at a touch. Their exchange of French was too fast for her to follow and Belle stared up at Dante in surprise as he began to laugh. Poised there with his dark eyes gleaming with intense amusement, his lean, darkly handsome features relaxed, he was so breathtakingly beautiful and male that she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

‘What’s so funny?’ Belle whispered.

‘I’ll tell you later. We’re taking the chair... Come on, keep looking,’ Dante urged, one long-fingered hand pressing against her taut spine as he walked her along with him. ‘You have a whole room to fill and none of the rooms in my home are small.’

A fat sofa, an Indian carved bookcase, a small inlaid table, a beautiful mirror and an eccentric art deco drinks cabinet followed in quick succession.

‘And as an ordinary girl, how am I supposed to have acquired all these valuable items?’ Belle enquired with reluctant amusement.

‘They are all gifts from me,’ Dante teased with a smile. ‘I’ve also ordered a selection of English classics and contemporary novels for you from a bookseller.’

In the limo on the way back to the hotel, he told her that he was taking her out for dinner again and then on to a club. Belle was lazily contemplating the options in her new wardrobe when Dante appeared in the doorway.

‘Rain check, I’m afraid,’ he murmured quietly. ‘There’s been a fatal accident on one of my wind farms in Brittany and I have to visit the site. I don’t know when I’ll get back but it could be the early hours. We’ll still be flying to Italy in the morning.’

‘Fatal?’ she queried in dismay.

Dante nodded. ‘A construction engineer fell in one of the turbine towers,’ he told her grimly.

‘That’s dreadful. Will you be seeing his family?’

‘Yes,’ Dante replied gravely. ‘And checking out whether or not safety procedures were correctly followed. There’ll have to be an enquiry.’

Belle dined in solitary state at the grand dining table, went for a shower and changed into her pyjamas. Before she returned downstairs, she succumbed to curiosity and entered Dante’s bedroom. It was scrupulously tidy with no sign of his hasty departure, but she wasn’t there to snoop, she was there to check out whether her suspicions were correct. And they were. There was a bath in the palatial suite but it was in the bathroom off the master bedroom. It was the bath of her dreams as well, a huge oval tub with a fantastic view of Paris.

Belle had always loved baths, but she hadn’t lived anywhere with a bath for several years. Everyone was putting in showers now. Mrs Devenish’s family had had her original bath taken out and replaced with a shower in which she could safely sit. Belle had missed treating herself to the luxury of a bath and she wondered if she dared make use of Dante’s while he was out but that idea, tempting as it was, struck her as too cheeky and she went back downstairs and watched television instead.

Around ten, the image of that bath overcame her reluctance and, with a sigh of acceptance, she scrambled up, switched off the television and went to take advantage of it. The bathroom was packed with bath preparations in designer pots and she made liberal use of one of them before pinning her hair up in a clasp and climbing in to lower herself slowly into the deliciously scented warm water. Resting her head back on the padded pillow, she sighed, deciding that she was in heaven as she relaxed, truly relaxed for the first time in months.

She realised that she had dozed off only after a noise startled her into wakefulness again. Water sloshing noisily around her, she jerked up into sitting position, needing a moment even to appreciate where she was. Registering that she was still in Dante’s bathroom, she froze for a split second until she heard quick steps on the wooden stairs and then, swiftly depressing the plug to empty out the water, she launched herself upright in sheer panic. She almost fell as she raced across the slippery tiles to snatch up a big grey towel, winding it round her as fast as she could. She was cursing herself for invading his bathroom, which she had planned to leave immaculate so that no one would even know that she had used it. All hope of that remaining a secret was now gone with water very noisily draining out of the bath and an array of wet footprints and splashes marking the high-shine floor tiles.

Dante was not in a good mood on his return. Dealing with the man’s broken-hearted family had been distressing, and learning that the guy had suffered from vertigo but had concealed it because he had been desperate for a good job had been even less pleasant. And then he saw his bedroom door was lying open and emerging from the en-suite bathroom was a very red-faced Belle, wrapped in a towel and clutching a bundle of clothing to her breasts. She looked so guilty and so embarrassed, it was comical.

‘What on earth are you doing in here?’ Dante intoned in wonderment, trying very hard not to laugh.

Belle hopped off one bare foot onto the other. ‘Your room has a bath... Mine doesn’t. I didn’t think you’d mind if you weren’t here...but I didn’t get around to cleaning up, I’m afraid, because I wanted to be out of here before you caught me.’

‘And look how well that turned out,’ Dante commented.

‘I’ll come straight back and clean up once I’ve got dressed,’ she told him apologetically, her face on fire. ‘I swear I wasn’t snooping or anything. That’s probably what you think but I didn’t touch or look at anything in here. I just missed having baths and I was tempted.’

As Dante was tempted, appraising her curvy little body in the towel, noting how the tight hold she had on the clothing merely accentuated the magnificent swell of her breasts over the towel. Pale, lightly speckled flesh that he had already touched and tasted, and which had only ignited his hunger for more of the experience. Her hair was piled up in a glorious curly mass, innumerable little tendrils escaping to accentuate the flushed oval of her face, dominated by huge violet eyes and that glorious mouth. It was every fantasy Dante had ever had of her rolled into one and he went instantly hard. She was also the distraction he badly needed after the evening he had endured.

‘You look amazing,’ he told her gruffly because she did, all bright and flushed and embarrassed in her bare feet but somehow, for all her diminutive size, extraordinarily vibrant, full of life and sass.

‘I hardly think so... You’re a guy, it’s probably just the bath towel,’ she deflected tautly, because she was painfully aware that she wanted him to mean what he had said.

‘No, it’s you...all you,’ Dante husked, logic kicking in to demolish his reservations and neatly shift him to where he wanted to be. As they had both acknowledged, it wasn’t a normal job that he had given her, and it would also be an extremely temporary one. ‘Forget the rules about what you should and shouldn’t do, ditch the lists and the expectations. Just be with me because you want to be.’

Belle was rigid with tension and then a little quiver ran through her, her breathing quickening. She hadn’t expected him to be that bold, hadn’t been prepared for him to strip everything back to the basics.

‘Live a little.’ Dante leant back against the door to close it before crossing the room to gently pull the bundle of clothing out of her too-tight hold and drop it to the floor.

‘But I’m working for you,’ she began urgently as she clutched at the precarious towel to ensure that it didn’t fall.

‘Any court in Europe would deny that our private arrangement has anything in common with a normal job, which is why we shouldn’t feel bound by stupid rules,’ he argued impatiently. ‘Those rules don’t apply to our situation and we don’t need to consider them.’

Live a little, he had said, and he could not know how deeply those words affected her because Belle was unhappily conscious that she had barely lived at all during her twenty-two years on earth. She had missed out on the supposedly fun-filled years of teenaged experimentation and had felt old before her time dealing with major responsibilities like terminal illness, household bills on a small budget and bereavement. With elderly grandparents, she had always had to be sensible and there had been an awful lot of rules to follow. Rules she was still faithfully following, she acknowledged ruefully.

‘I know I’m not that guy on your shopping list whom you would choose,’ Dante murmured. ‘But right now, I’m the one that you want...’

And the mad cacophony of warning voices in her head telling her to back away, go to her own bed and sensibly turn her back on the risk he presented, suddenly went silent. Yes, he was the one she wanted, the only one she had ever wanted, and all of a sudden holding out for that one perfect match of a guy who might never come along seemed spineless and sad. Dante had smashed through her defences because the bottom line was undisputable... I’m the one that you want.

‘That’s true,’ she framed shakily.

‘And it is equally true that I want you,’ Dante breathed, bending down to lift her up and settle her down on the bed. ‘Let’s not make it more complicated than that.’

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