wasn’t feeling just at that moment. She wondered how Dante was feeling and then remembered that that wasn’t to be discussed until the weekend was over.
Dante got stuck into work, refusing to dwell further on what they had learned. It had happened. He would deal with it. That was how Dante dealt with challenges. He didn’t emote, he didn’t rage and he didn’t whinge. He would process the development and decide on the best way forward.
* * *
Eddie Shriner was a heavily built man in his forties with brown hair and keen grey eyes. Krystal was a tiny blue-eyed blonde with voluptuous curves shown off by a fitted skirt and a low-necked top. She had the low, husky voice of a seductress. Even Belle had to admit that the blonde was a classic beauty but the knowledge that Dante had bedded the other woman made her uncomfortable.
Krystal, however, wasn’t the least bit uncomfortable to find herself in the company of her husband and a former lover. Krystal’s calculating blue eyes locked onto Dante like a heat-seeking missile the instant she walked through the door and she virtually blanked Belle when she was introduced to her, choosing not to comment on the fact that both women were English born and bred.
Dinner was challenging with Krystal’s non-stop attempts to grab Dante’s attention with flirtatious comments, which repeatedly interrupted the men’s conversation. Krystal liked, possibly even expected, to be the centre of male attention, Belle registered, and seemed to have little time for other women. Krystal pretty much ignored Belle’s presence at the table and resisted her efforts to engage her in conversation.
When a member of staff moved to fill Belle’s wine glass, Belle covered it and asked for water instead.
Krystal stared and lifted a questioning brow. ‘You don’t drink?’
‘No,’ Belle confirmed, because even before she had realised she could be pregnant, she had not been much of a drinker. Alcohol gave her an out-of-control sensation that she didn’t enjoy.
‘Ah...a problem drinker,’ Krystal assumed snidely. ‘That must make socialising difficult for you.’
‘Actually...’ Belle breathed, bristling with the urge to empty a glass of water over Krystal’s purring head. Krystal was so smug now, convinced she had identified Belle’s fatal flaw and keen to drag it out into the open to humiliate her. A fierce desire to lay an even more basic claim to Dante assailed Belle. ‘I’m not drinking because Dante and I are expecting our first child...’
At that spontaneous announcement, Dante’s arrogant dark head whipped round in their direction fast, dark golden eyes glittering in the candlelight, his jawline clenching even as Eddie offered them his warmest good wishes. Indeed, Eddie, who was not entirely blind to his wife’s penchant for Dante, beamed at the news and relaxed back into his seat.
Krystal, on the other hand, went rigid, her blue eyes locking like knives to Belle, her shapely mouth compressing into a tight line. ‘My goodness, that’s quick,’ she commented. ‘From what I understand, you’ve only been together for a few weeks.’
‘Sometimes,’ Dante inserted with a glance at Belle’s heightened colour, ‘that’s all it takes.’
‘Yes, I knew Krystal was the woman for me the day I met her,’ Eddie chipped in cheerfully.
* * *
‘You should’ve kept the baby a secret,’ Dante censured when Belle emerged from the bathroom later that night.
Clad in the pyjamas she had stubbornly retained and continued to wear, Belle ignored the sexier garments provided as nightwear with her new wardrobe. Even for Dante, Belle refused to dress up like a mistress or behave like one. To her way of thinking, a mistress strove to attract and retain her lover’s interest in her body and used that same body to cement her hold on him. And she wasn’t prepared to do that.
‘You should have told me the baby was a secret,’ Belle replied with spirit, but, in her heart of hearts, she knew she had blurted out their secret because Krystal had made her jealous and she had wanted to strike back.
‘I wasn’t expecting you to make an announcement,’ Dante imparted.
‘A baby definitely makes us look like more of a couple,’ Belle argued, engaged in combing her wet hair to tease out a knot. ‘Krystal was surprised and furious.’
‘And now she’ll target you rather than me.’
‘Isn’t that better? The more attention she gives you, the less her husband likes it,’ Belle pointed out, having carefully watched the interplay round the dining table.
‘I’m not sure you can cope with her bitchiness,’ Dante breathed, snatching the comb out of her fingers with a curse word in Italian. ‘Stop that! Let me do it. The way you’re doing it, you won’t have any hair left by tomorrow!’
Belle stood still while he calmly teased out the copper tangle and tossed the comb down on the dresser again. ‘Thanks. I’ve met a lot of sharp-tongued women in my time, Dante. I’m not a pushover. I can handle anything she throws at me.’
‘Fortunately, we’ll be busy tomorrow flying out to see the land and you shouldn’t be exposed to her that much,’ Dante commented.
‘I’m tough. This is, after all, what you hired me to do,’ Belle reminded him tartly.
Dante grimaced. ‘I can do without that reminder now,’ he told her tautly, stepping back from her to walk over to a table and tear a sheet from the pad there. ‘I want to get what I owe you out of the way now. Write down your bank details and I’ll organise the payment straight away... OK?’
No, it wasn’t OK. Hugely taken aback, Belle stared down at the blank sheet. Her cheeks burned, her mouth quivered, and her eyes were full of pain and mortification. He was still determined to pay her, and she didn’t want it now, didn’t want that reminder of how they had met and what they had agreed to, because nothing had happened the way it was supposed to happen.
‘I don’t want the money any more, of course. I don’t,’ Belle confessed wretchedly, looking up. ‘It’s like you’re paying me for sex.’
‘I’ve never paid for sex, so why would you twist everything up and accuse me of that?’ Dante demanded angrily, colour flaring over his high cheekbones.
‘That’s what it feels like to me!’ Belle argued, refusing to be silenced.
‘I pay my debts and I owe you it,’ Dante framed harshly. ‘Let’s not make it an issue.’
He sent her a brooding appraisal as she sank down on the end of the bed, his dark eyes aglow with censure, his lean, darkly beautiful face grim with restraint. ‘We have enough to worry about without arguing about trivialities.’
Obviously, he meant the baby, she reflected painfully, the baby that he saw as a problem and she saw as a blessing. She supposed she would put the money away for the baby since he was determined to pay it and she printed out her bank details with a heavy heart. He strode out of the room and eventually she slid into bed, too tired to agonise any more and reluctant to greet Krystal over breakfast with the visible evidence of a troubled night. Her phone beeped and her head lifted again because she didn’t receive many texts, her friends in London having gradually fallen out of touch when she’d failed to return from France.
With
