‘Belle’s asleep,’ Cristo responded, anchoring the sheet more firmly round his naked length as Franco threw his small solid body at him. ‘Bekfast?’ Franco asked hopefully, leaning over him with wide eyes.
Wondering where the nanny was, Cristo promised breakfast and Franco beamed. Indeed, Cristo was startled when his little brother wound his arms round his neck and bestowed a soggy kiss on him. The toddler accompanied him into the en suite, chattering endlessly but using few recognisable words. Cristo showered and shaved while Franco played with the contents of the drawers and cupboards and made an unholy mess. While he got dressed, Franco played under the bed with, ‘Bekfast, Kiss-do?’ a constant refrain to the activity.
Franco closed his hand into Cristo’s as they left the bedroom and the flustered nanny appeared several doors further down the corridor.
‘I’m so sorry, Mr Ravelli. I’ve been looking everywhere for him. He disappeared while I was in the bathroom,’ Teresa confided.
‘Relax, I’ll ensure he gets breakfast.’
‘Bekfast,’ Franco repeated urgently, swinging on Cristo’s hand and skipping with excitement. There was a definite charm to the child’s open-hearted affection and liveliness, Cristo conceded reluctantly.
In the dining room, Umberto provided an ancient wooden high chair for Franco’s use and Cristo advised the manservant to see that a new one was purchased with a safety harness because he was already aware that Franco was an escape artist and guilty of frequently climbing out of his cot. Whatever Cristo ate, Franco wanted to eat and Cristo was quietly appalled at the mess the child made. When he threw a piece of tomato, Cristo told him off and Franco burst into floods of tears, which had to be the exact moment when Belle entered the room.
‘Oh, my goodness, I didn’t know he was with you!’ Belle gasped in dismay.
‘He’s a very determined little character,’ Cristo remarked above the racket Franco was making. ‘I told him off for throwing food.’
‘No hug, then,’ Belle ruled as Franco held out his arms to be comforted. ‘You know you’re not allowed to throw food.’
Franco sulked when his complaints were ignored and finally started eating again.
Belle grinned across the table at Cristo. ‘Thanks for looking after him.’
The natural glory of her smile took his breath away and his dark eyes narrowed appreciatively. It was first thing in the morning and as far as he could tell she wasn’t wearing much make-up but she still looked amazing, her translucent china skin flushed and freckled, green eyes bright, her mane of hair coiling round her slim shoulders with a life all of its own in every bouncy corkscrew curl of auburn. ‘He’s my brother as well,’ Cristo murmured wryly. ‘And quite a handful.’
‘Yes, he is...far too much for Isa to cope with at this age.’ Pleased by that long-awaited concession that Franco was his brother too, Belle stared at Cristo, trying to stop herself from doing it but quite unable to resist the temptation. Her gaze traced the line of his high-cut cheekbones, perfectly straight nose and wide shapely mouth. The perfect features of a dark fallen angel, which got to her every time. A rush of heat tightened her nipples and surged low in her pelvis in a betrayal she could not squash. She still found him irresistibly attractive, she conceded ruefully.
The thwack-thwack of noisy helicopter rotor blades somewhere nearby made Cristo frown and spring upright to stride over to the window. Still munching her toast, Belle followed suit. ‘What is it?’
‘I think you’re about to make the acquaintance of one of my brothers,’ Cristo murmured tautly. ‘Nik. Make allowances for him if he’s short with you. He’s going through a tough divorce and it’s unsettled him.’
‘I’ll just make myself scarce while you catch up with him,’ Belle offered, hastily lifting Franco out of the elderly high chair.
‘No, he should meet you now that he’s here, gioia mia,’ Cristo overruled without hesitation. ‘You’re my wife. I’m not ashamed of you, nor am I going to hide you.’
CRISTO STRODE OUTSIDE to greet his brother, Nik. The two men stopped on the terrace to talk. Belle hovered, hearing an animated exchange between the men in a foreign language. It didn’t sound like Italian and she wondered if it could be Greek. When she heard the other man expostulate loudly several times she guessed that Cristo was telling him about her mother and the children and she winced uncomfortably, feeling agonisingly self-conscious.
Nik Christakis was a big man, even taller than her bridegroom, but he did bear a strong resemblance to Cristo. Nik frowned across the room at her and his frown only darkened more when he saw the young child standing by her side.
‘My wife, Belle, and our youngest little brother, Franco,’ Cristo imparted in calm explanation in response to his brother’s interrogative look. ‘My brother, Nik.’
‘Our?’ Nik queried straight away. ‘The child’s nothing to do with me. Five of them? You would have to be crazy to take that on, Cristo! Gaetano’s dead and buried. What does it matter what comes out about him now?’
‘It would matter to Zarif,’ Cristo countered squarely.
‘Like I care about that!’ Nik quipped darkly, digging into an inside pocket on his jacket to extract a document, which he extended to his brother. ‘Read it and weep. Learn what happens when you get married without a pre-nup.’
‘We didn’t have a pre-nup,’ Belle remarked awkwardly, uneasy with the tension flowing around them, and Nik’s reluctance to even acknowledge her, never mind make polite conversation.
Cristo raised his dark gaze slowly from the document to say, ‘I have to admit that I’m surprised.’
‘Are you? Are you still that naïve? Obviously Betsy married me for my money and now she’s trying to steal half of everything I own!’ Nik declared with raw, unconcealed bitterness.
‘She didn’t marry you for your money,’ Cristo contradicted with quiet assurance. ‘She fell in love with you.’
‘Don’t be naïve. I give you and your wife and her little bunch of Ravelli by-blows two years at most before she walks out and tries to take the shirt off your back!’ Nik vented with ringing derision.
Belle flushed and lifted her chin. ‘I wouldn’t do that. Look, I’ll leave you two to talk in private,’ she completed, anchoring Franco’s hand in her own.
As she left she heard Nik Christakis cursing, something that was instantly recognisable in many languages. She realised that she was very grateful not to be married to a man like that. Nik’s hard-featured face, cold eyes, not to mention the smouldering bitterness that escaped every time he mentioned his estranged wife, Betsy, chilled Belle to the marrow. Nik was clearly tough, obstinate, furiously hostile and, she suspected, the sort of man who would make an implacable enemy, a man who saw only the worst in anyone who crossed him.
Cristo, she reasoned, was more reasonable, more civilised...wasn’t he? She respected him for speaking up in defence of his sister-in-law. Furthermore the night before she had been surprised and reluctantly impressed when Cristo had suggested
