murmured smoothly as she emerged again. ‘Shall we say at ten?’
Belle nodded agreement. ‘When will you want to meet the children?’ she prompted.
Cristo froze, his facial bones locking tight. ‘I don’t...wish to meet them, that is,’ he extended unapologetically, dark eyes cold as black ice.
Belle paled, uncertain of how to take that statement. Was his lack of interest good or bad news for her siblings? Did that mean that the adoption idea was just a silly rumour? She scrutinised his lean, handsome features with frowning green eyes, unnerved by his icy reserve and lack of humanity. Did he think nothing of the blood tie? A lot of people would just have agreed to meet the children for the sake of it, even if they weren’t particularly interested in them, but Cristo Ravelli had chosen to spurn even that polite pretence.
In acknowledging that, Belle felt sheer loathing suddenly leap through her in a fierce wave of antagonism because she was gutted on her siblings’ behalf by his detachment. Was he refusing to accept that the children were part of the Ravelli family? Obviously. Clearly, Mary Brophy’s children were not good enough to make the grade, just as Mary had never been good enough for Gaetano to marry. Bile scoured Belle’s throat as she sped downstairs to clean up the kitchen and go home. She hoped he wasn’t expecting her to come up and cook breakfast when she found the meal she had cooked thrown in its entirety into the bin. Her face burned but her chin came up. So, it hadn’t been one of her best efforts but in her opinion it had been as much as he deserved!
After spending half the summer with Mary over twenty years earlier, Gaetano had confided that he was unhappily unmarried and Mary’s hopes of a happy ending for her romance had risen high. But Gaetano had not asked his Arabic wife for a divorce or even a separation. Over the years the media had published several stories about his extramarital affairs. Her mother had refused to believe the stories, even after Belle had shown her revealing pictures on the Internet. Mary had always been very quick to make excuses in Gaetano’s defence.
‘He feels trapped and lonely in his marriage. It’s only a business arrangement. She was a friend for years before he married her and he doesn’t love her. He needed a hostess to entertain his business colleagues and she comes from an old-fashioned country where a woman needs a husband if she wants any freedom,’ Mary had reasoned. ‘I can’t hold his marriage against him, Belle. I’m not even an educated woman. I couldn’t do what his princess can do for him.’
Mary Brophy had been hopelessly infatuated with Gaetano Ravelli from the moment she first met him and she had allowed nothing to interfere with her rosy view of their relationship. Her grief in the wake of the helicopter crash that had taken Gaetano’s life had been all-consuming.
‘I know you don’t understand,’ she had said to Belle, ‘but Gaetano was the love of my life. I know he wasn’t interested in marrying me but nothing’s perfect. I wasn’t his match in money or background and I can’t blame him for that. When you love someone, Belle, you accept their flaws and he was too much of a snob to want to marry an ordinary woman like me.’
A woman like me, Belle recalled painfully. It was little wonder that Mary had suffered from low self-esteem. She had travelled from a shotgun wedding at the age of seventeen straight into an abusive marriage and had finally ended up as a married man’s mistress. Life had always been tough for her mother, but then, as Isa was prone to reminding Belle, Mary had always made the wrong choices when it came to the men in her life.
Isa was waiting up for Belle when she got back to the Lodge.
‘Well?’ her grandmother pressed. ‘Did he actually credit the idea that you were a woman in her forties?’
‘No, he assumed I must have got involved with his father when I was very young,’ Belle advanced with a dismissive toss of her head. ‘He did do a lot of staring, though. He’s invited me up to the house to talk to him tomorrow at ten, so presumably the kids’ future will be discussed then.’
The older woman released a heavy sigh. ‘I don’t like the way you’re going about this, Belle. Honesty is always the best policy.’
‘But I won’t be dealing with a nice, honest guy.’
‘You hated Gaetano. Don’t take it out on his son.’
Belle folded her lips at that unwelcome advice. ‘He doesn’t even want to meet the kids.’
Her grandmother shook her greying head, her unhappiness at that news palpable. ‘If only your mother had thought about what she was doing and how much the children would be resented by the rest of Gaetano’s family.’
* * *
Cristo had a troubled night of sleep. He dreamt that he was pursuing a woman with the longest legs possible across a misty landscape. Every time he got close she pulled away and laughed and her resistance made him want her more than ever, lust pounding through his veins like an explosive charge. But when he finally caught up with her, she was a different woman, pale blonde hair falling back from her piquant face to highlight big blue enquiring eyes and instantaneous recoil wakened him. He had broken out in a cold sweat, angry frustration and guilt slicing through him for the one woman he couldn’t enjoy having even in his dreams...Betsy, his brother Nik’s estranged wife. His jawline rigid, Cristo sprang out of bed and went for a shower.
His eyes closed tight shut below the refreshing blast of the power shower. He hadn’t meant to wreck his brother’s marriage. There had been no intent on his part to inflict damage, he reasoned painfully. Betsy had come to him for support, devastated by what she had learned from Zarif. But, unhappily, it had been Cristo who first gave Zarif the destructive news that had ruined Nik’s relationship with his wife. Cristo had broken his brother’s confidence and spoken out of turn, but he had never ever at any stage planned to harm Nik or hoped to steal Betsy from him.
For his own benefit, however, he listed the sins he had committed. He had thought that Nik didn’t deserve a woman like Betsy. He had stood by watching while his brother took his wife for granted and he had not warned him of what he was doing. With the basest disloyalty, he had cherished feelings for his brother’s wife. That was why Gaetano’s mess in Ireland was his mess to clean up, Cristo reflected grimly. Nik already had enough on his plate to deal with and Zarif was still suffering the fallout from the loose-tongued confession that had wrecked Nik’s marriage because ever since then the three brothers had barely spoken to each other.
* * *
‘Very mumsy,’ Isa pronounced the next morning with a raised brow when she saw what Belle was wearing. ‘Did that skirt belong to your mother?’
Belle paled. ‘Yes, I kept a couple of things just to remember Mum by. It’s a little big but it looks all right with the belt.’
‘Which is more than you can say about that flapping cardigan and the beads round your neck with that fussy blouse,’ Isa groaned disapprovingly. ‘You look like a young woman trying to look older.’
‘Yes but that’s because you know the truth. It’s daylight now and I need to make a better impression than I did last night,’ Belle pointed out anxiously.
‘Even daylight couldn’t penetrate the amount of make-up you’ve got on,’ her grandmother said drily. ‘But you’re right—it does age you.’
‘Look, I accept that Cristo is eventually going to find out the truth but I want that adoption idea off the table first,’ Belle told her.
‘Even at the cost of infuriating him?’ Isa
