pretty special to make you go to these lengths to attain it.’
‘Krystal’s husband, Eddie, owns a piece of land that I hope to reclaim.’
Belle frowned. ‘Reclaim?’ She questioned his choice of that word.
‘The land used to belong to my brother and he was very attached to it. My parents sold it off when I was abroad on business because they’re not sentimental people.’
‘Couldn’t you have bought the land direct from them?’ she asked.
‘No, they would have made other demands of me. I don’t put myself in a vulnerable position with them,’ he replied in a guarded tone, glancing across the room in relief as a collection of suitcases on a trolley were wheeled towards the lift. ‘I believe it’s time for us to leave.’
* * *
Dante worked during the flight, barely lifting his head from his laptop. Belle pondered the situation she was about to enter, the ‘snake pit’ as Dante had referred to it as. An array of unappealing characters awaited her, it seemed, the nasty parents, the clingy troublemaking ex from hell. But no, when he didn’t get on well with his parents, she would hardly be dragged out to meet them, she reasoned, striking his titled parents from the list of challenges ahead. Instead she concentrated on her reunion with Charlie.
The cluster of shouting and gesticulating press-waving cameras as they emerged from the VIP channel at the airport came as a rude wake-up call. ‘Look happy,’ Dante urged in her ear as he locked a supportive hand to her stiff spine. Belle smiled and all the cameras obediently flashed. He didn’t pause to respond to the questions being hurled at him. Security guards escorted them out to the waiting limousine.
‘You’re clearly quite a celebrity in Italy. You should’ve mentioned that,’ Belle told him.
‘Gossip columnists take a ridiculous interest in my private life and for once I’ve given them something to report...thanks to you.’
‘What have I got to do with it?’ Belle demanded.
‘You insisted that you be allowed to be yourself and I have given you your wish. When my staff were asked to identify you, they admitted that you were a waitress I met in France and the press do love to wallow in a whirlwind romance,’ Dante declared with cynical amusement.
‘I just wasn’t expecting that level of public interest in your life,’ Belle told him, already beginning to regret her insistence that she go under her own name with Dante as she wondered if her father would read about her in some newspaper.
On the other hand, she couldn’t imagine her father reading a gossip column, but what did she know about the man? Very little and hopefully any publicity would be confined to the Italian press. Yet her self-respect cringed at the possibility of her father learning that she had moved in with a very rich Italian because he would no doubt assume that she was faithfully following in her gold-digging mother’s footsteps. And she didn’t want to give her long-absent father the excuse to believe that he had been right not to pursue a more normal relationship with her. His rejection and the injustice of being held accountable for her mother’s sins still stung.
Charlie greeted her with rapture at the smart boarding kennels, bounding into her arms as if they had been parted for months. She petted him and calmed him down before turning to Dante to say, ‘Let’s go and say hello to your brother’s dogs while we’re here.’
Dante frowned. ‘I don’t think...’
‘Don’t be mean, Dante,’ Belle argued fierily. ‘Imagine how boring it must be in here for them every day and how much it will mean to them to get a visit.’
Incredulous at being called mean for the first time in his life, Dante spread lean brown hands in frustration and annoyance. ‘Five minutes...that’s all,’ he specified. ‘And that’s all you’ll want because they’re frantic little beasts with no manners at all.’
‘We’ll put Charlie into his travelling box and leave him out here while we visit them. It wouldn’t be fair to unsettle them with a strange dog,’ Belle remarked as she persuaded Charlie into the box. ‘You know, Dante...dogs can learn manners. With a little training, you might find them perfectly acceptable. I’m willing to help if I can.’
‘They’re not coming home with us,’ Dante swore vehemently, registering that when he gave an inch with Belle she tried to take a mile.
‘OK,’ Belle conceded, wondering how long it would take to change his mind as he addressed the proprietor and they were led down a corridor giving access to a line of kennels.
‘They jump up at you and drop hair everywhere,’ Dante complained, angry that he had allowed himself to be shamed into doing something he didn’t want to do.
Belle didn’t know what breed of dog she had expected Dante’s late brother to have owned but she was surprised to see two tiny short-haired chihuahuas, one brown, one black and white, nestled cosily in an extravagant pink basket. As they leapt out of the basket to greet Dante with an enthusiasm he didn’t deserve, Belle crouched down and quite deliberately got in their way. In seconds she had an armful of squirming, overexcited chihuahuas in her lap and she sat down on the floor of the corridor below Dante’s disbelieving gaze and slowly calmed them down with a quiet voice and an occasional sharp no.
‘Do you want to hold them now they’ve settled?’ she asked Dante over her shoulder.
‘No,’ Dante said flatly.
Belle suppressed a sigh and resisted the temptation to ask him to make an effort. She petted the little animals, wondering how Dante could withstand those little pleading dark eyes. He had been doing it for a year, she reminded herself wryly.
‘They’ve never behaved that well for me,’ he confided. ‘Clearly, you’re the beast whisperer.’
Belle sighed as she returned the dogs to their kennels and they whined and clawed at the mesh in disappointment. ‘I suppose I was expecting your brother to have hunting dogs...well, something large and macho.’
‘Cristiano was liked cute dogs,’ Dante admitted quietly. ‘He was gay, and the more our parents criticised him, the more flamboyant he became.’
‘They couldn’t accept him as he was?’
‘Oh, they’re very liberal and accepting in public, and they have gay friends, but they still didn’t want a gay eldest son and heir,’ Dante derided. ‘They tried to disinherit him, tried to change the succession rules to prevent him from inheriting my father’s title, but there was no legal recourse. Tragically, his death suited them.’
Belle stroked his arm as they got into the limo, Charlie already on board, tail thumping noisily inside his plastic carrier box. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘As children we were never allowed a pet because my mother doesn’t like animals. Tito and Carina were Cristiano’s first rebellion. He used to joke that at least the presence of the dogs prevented our mother from making unannounced visits to his apartment in Florence,’ he told her gruffly.
Belle smiled. ‘He had a sense of humour, then.’
‘In the right mood he was the life and soul of the party, but he always suffered from low self-esteem and when anything went wrong,
