him in wonder because he had the smouldering dark beauty of a fallen angel. His brilliant dark eyes were nothing short of stunning below the thick screen of his lashes and suddenly she felt as breathless as though someone were standing on her lungs.
‘I’m a practical man and I’m suggesting a practical marriage which would fulfil all our needs,’ Cristo continued smoothly. ‘You’re aware that I don’t want a court case. I also want to prevent the squalid story of Gaetano and his housekeeper leaking into the public domain. You would have to agree not to discuss the children’s parentage with anyone but nobody need tell any lies either. As far as anyone need know, the children are simply your orphaned brothers and sisters.’
Belle breathed in deep and slow but it still didn’t clear her head. ‘I can’t believe you’re suggesting this.’
‘You didn’t give me a choice, did you? The threat of a court case piled on the pressure. Are you prepared to settle this out of court?’ Cristo studied her enquiringly.
Belle didn’t hesitate. ‘No.’
Cristo raised a sleek ebony brow. ‘Then what’s your answer?’
‘It’s not that simple,’ Belle protested.
‘Isn’t it? I’m offering you everything you said you wanted.’
Her lashes flickered above her strained eyes. She felt cornered and trapped. ‘Well, yes, but...marriage? I could hardly be expecting that development!’
Annoyance lanced through Cristo. It was his very first proposal of marriage and he had never before even considered proposing to a woman. Without a shade of vanity he knew he was rich, good-looking and very eligible and yet she was hesitating and he was grimly amused by his irritation.
‘Look, I’ll think it over until tonight,’ Belle muttered uncomfortably.
‘Di niente...no problem,’ Cristo fielded, his wide, sensual mouth compressed. ‘By the way...I mean a real marriage.’
‘Real...?’ Belle spluttered to a halt, the tip of her tongue stealing out to wet her dry lower lip. His intent dark gaze flashed pure naked gold to that tiny movement. Heated colour swept her face as she grasped his meaning in growing disbelief. ‘You’d expect me to sleep with you?’
‘Of course,’ Cristo murmured with an indolent assurance that suggested that that idea was entirely normal and acceptable. ‘I have no plans to emulate my father and entertain mistresses while I’m married. And I don’t want a wife who plays around behind my back either. That kind of lifestyle would not provide a stable home for the children.’
Belle got his point, she really did, but she flushed scarlet at the thought of sharing a bed with him, suddenly very conscious of her own lack of sexual experience. Growing up, she’d had to combat the expectations of the local boys who saw her mother as free and easy in that department and she had had to prove over and over again that she was different. Saying no had been a matter of pride and self-preservation, but as she got older that conditioning along with other needs and insecurities had influenced her and trusting a man enough to drop her guard and make love had proved to be even more of a challenge for Belle.
Cristo settled a business card into her limp hand and she stared down at it blankly.
‘My private cell number. Let me know by seven this evening, bellezza mia,’ he instructed with unblemished cool. ‘That way I can make an immediate start on the arrangements.’
‘DON’T DO THIS...don’t do this...’ Isa’s constant refrain was still sounding like a death knell in Belle’s ears as she climbed out of the car Cristo had sent to collect her and mounted the steps that led up into the chapel of St Jude’s. She was wearing an elegant but rather plain vintage dress with a boat-shaped lace neckline. It was her late mother’s wedding gown.
The symbolism of that gesture had appealed to her and in the three weeks that had passed since she last saw Cristo she’d had the dress lengthened to suit her greater height. Mary might never have got her Ravelli to the altar but her daughter was succeeding where she had failed, Belle could not help reflecting with guilty satisfaction. She knew it wasn’t right to feel that way because Cristo was not Gaetano and he had not committed his father’s sins but she couldn’t help it. She was the talk of the neighbourhood, for nobody was quite sure how she had hooked a husband who had only set foot in Ireland for the first time less than a month ago. Indeed there was a crowd of well-wishers waiting outside the old church, quietly ignoring Cristo’s request that the wedding be regarded as a private affair.
Of course, Cristo definitely knew how to garner support and respect in the locals, Belle conceded ruefully. He had decided not to sell Mayhill but to instead gift the historic house to the village as a community centre and endow it for the future. Money talked, money certainly talked very loudly in an area where incomes were low and jobs were few. Mayhill would put the village on the map by becoming a tourist attraction and its maintenance and the business prospects it would provide would offer many employment opportunities. And naturally, it was tacitly and silently understood by the recipients of Cristo’s extraordinary largesse that his father’s affair with Mary Brophy and the birth of their children were matters to be buried in the darkest, deepest closet never to see the light of day again.
Her sisters, thirteen-year-old Donetta and eight-year-old Lucia, were beaming at her from a front pew. Her brothers Bruno, Pietro and little Franco were beside them. Bruno was frowning, too intelligent to be fooled by the surface show and still suspicious of what was happening to his family.
‘Do you really want to marry Gaetano’s son?’ Bruno had demanded the night before when he had returned from school with Donetta, both teenagers granted special leave for the occasion of their sister’s wedding.
‘It was love at first sight,’ Belle had lied, determined to remove the lines of concern from his brow and the too anxious look from his sensitive gaze. ‘And how can you ask me that?’
‘I’m not saying I don’t believe you...but it seems very convenient in the circumstances. I mean, here we are, broke, virtually homeless and sinking fast and along comes Cristo Ravelli in the rescue boat and suddenly our every dream is coming true,’ Bruno had recited thinly. ‘It doesn’t feel real to me—it’s too good to be true. How did you finally bury the hatchet?’
‘What hatchet?’
‘You grew up hating the Ravelli family and now all of a sudden you’re marrying one of them?’
‘He’s your brother,’ Belle had reminded the teenager stubbornly.
‘He’s a super-rich banker and as sharp as a whip. It’s you I’m concerned about. What do you know about being married to a guy like that?’ Bruno had asked worriedly. ‘He lives in a different world.’
But right now, Cristo was in Belle’s world, she savoured helplessly, finally allowing herself to look at the tall, well-built male waiting for her at the altar. Not an iota of the traditional bridegroom’s nervous tension showed on his lean, darkly handsome features. In fact he might just have been an attendant at someone else’s wedding for all the awareness he was showing. Unconsciously, Belle’s chin lifted as if she had been challenged; her heart was pounding fast as a hammer blow behind her ribs and her spine was rigid with all the tension he lacked. After all, she had barely slept since texting him a single
