female friends?’
When he nodded with a faint frown, Belle smiled. ‘Well, then, you have known something else.’
‘Why didn’t you make these demands before you married me?’ Cristo derided.
‘I didn’t think it through until now,’ Belle confided truthfully. ‘I was desperate to make the children secure and marrying you was the price. I didn’t think beyond that. I didn’t think about how I would feel...’
Marrying you was the price. Not a statement he had expected to hear from Belle, not one he was even sure he could believe, Cristo mused grimly, dark eyes shielded by his lush lashes. She wanted more. Why did women always want more than was on offer? Were they programmed to want more at birth? All this and five children too, he reflected heavily—had he really thought about what he was doing either?
The forbidding look tensing his lean, dark features stirred Belle’s conscience. ‘I realise this is coming out of nowhere at you and you have a right to be irritated.’
‘That’s not quite the word I would’ve chosen,’ Cristo countered curtly.
Belle steeled herself to be more honest than she really wanted to be. ‘I did have thoughts I shouldn’t have had when I agreed to marry you,’ she admitted gruffly, her pale skin suddenly blossoming with mortified colour. ‘But none of those thoughts related to personal enrichment or social advancement.’ Feeling more uncomfortable than ever, she hesitated. ‘Although I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I had thoughts of getting revenge for what Gaetano put my family through over the years, I certainly had an inappropriate sense of satisfaction when you offered to marry me and I quite deliberately wore my mother’s wedding dress to get married in. I’m ashamed of those feelings now. After all, it was very unfair that you should have to pay in any way for your father’s mistakes. But then we’re both doing that now,’ she completed ruefully.
Cristo was violently disconcerted by her complete honesty. He hadn’t expected that, hadn’t been prepared for her to admit any reactions that might reflect badly on her motivation in marrying him. Getting a rich and powerful Ravelli to the altar had briefly thrilled her but she had owned up to it and that impressed a male who was rarely impressed by the women he met.
‘La via dell’inferno è lastricata di buone intenzione...the road to hell is paved with good intentions,’ Cristo translated sibilantly. ‘Do you ever do anything for the sheer hell of it?’
‘No.’ Belle stiffened as she made that admission. ‘And it doesn’t have to be hell,’ she pointed out uncomfortably. ‘We can make the best of the situation. You said you wanted to treat me like a proper wife, wanted to show me respect...’
The reminder hung there like a dark cloud between them, with Cristo finally registering that his partiality for that lingerie set had evidently caused offence. Last night he had become her first lover and she had been amazing, he recalled, arousal slivering through him at even the memory. He was expecting too much too soon and he gritted his perfect white teeth together. ‘I’ll try harder,’ he told her in a driven undertone.
‘I’ll try too,’ Belle responded with a tentative smile.
But it was too late because Cristo had already turned away and could not have seen her smile, which had combined both regret at her inability to be the purely sexual object he so clearly wanted her to be and her hope for a better understanding between them in the future. Spirits low, she went upstairs to find her little brother and give Teresa a break. Franco’s warm affection and trusting acceptance that he would be loved back were wonderfully soothing to her troubled state of mind. She played hide and seek with the little boy and the upper floor rang with laughter and thudding feet.
Umberto paused in Cristo’s office doorway to say warmly, ‘It is a joy to hear a child playing here again.’
‘There’s another four of them—a boy and a girl of eight and a pair of teenagers,’ Cristo confided, for he had known the kindly manservant since he was a child.
‘Your late father’s children?’ Umberto prompted.
Cristo’s brows drew together. ‘How did you know?’
‘I heard rumours over the years. My cousin flew Mr Gaetano’s helicopter right up until his retirement,’ the older man reminded him gently.
‘Let’s hope the rumours stay buried,’ Cristo commented wryly.
‘No one in my family will gossip,’ the older man assured him with pride. ‘But Mr Gaetano had other staff who may not be so discreet.’
A current of uneasiness assailed Cristo, who had ensured that his father’s surviving employees were paid off with adequate remuneration for their years of service. Was it possible he had got married for no good reason? And inexplicably, at that point, he thought of Franco, who demonstrated such a desperate need for male attention. Franco definitely needed a father figure, Cristo reflected, his stern mouth softening as the toddler’s gales of laughter echoed down from above.
‘No...no...no, Franco!’ Belle gasped in dismay when she found her little brother picking in delight through the collection of items lying on the dressing table in Cristo’s bedroom. ‘Don’t touch those.’
Jingling the car keys still in his hand, Franco dropped the wallet he had been investigating and it fell to the floor. Belle knelt down to gather up the banknotes that Franco had crumpled, smoothing them out before returning them to the wallet along with credit cards, a couple of business cards and...a tiny photograph. Belle lifted the photo and stared down at it in surprise, recognising Nik Christakis’s estranged wife, Betsy. She was a little blonde sprite of a beauty with delicate features and big blue eyes. Her brow furrowed. Had the photo fallen out of the wallet or had it just been lying there forgotten on the floor? The rug beneath her knees, however, bore the ruffled evidence of recent vacuuming. So, assuming the photo had been inside Cristo’s wallet, why was her husband carrying round a photo of his brother’s wife?
And was she even going to ask him why? Belle came out in a cold sweat at the very prospect of so embarrassing a conversation. After her misjudgement of his behaviour with the model, he would never believe that she had accidentally seen the photograph. He would think she had been snooping in his wallet and he would naturally assume that she was one of those madly jealous, distrustful women, who would always be scheming to check his cell-phone messages and his pockets for evidence of infidelity. Cringing at that likelihood, Belle slotted the photo back into his wallet and returned it circumspectly to the dressing table. No, she wasn’t about to ask him any more awkward questions.
Matters were tense enough between them. And yet so many important things hinged on the success of their marriage, she thought wretchedly. If she and Cristo couldn’t make a go of it, what would happen to her siblings? She had made promises, not least those in the chapel, which she had to, at least, try to keep. Unless she was prepared to let Cristo go free, she had to make more of an effort.
But please, no, she prayed, let not the only avenue to success demand the sporting of saucy underwear....
BELLE SAT ALONE at the breakfast table out on the terrace, which overlooked the glorious gardens and, beyond them, the beautiful panorama of the idyllic Umbrian landscape, and decided that nobody would ever credit how miserable and insecure she was. Here she was, all dressed up in gorgeous surroundings, married to an even
