have to be an enquiry.’
Belle dined in solitary state at the grand dining table, went for a shower and changed into her pyjamas. Before she returned downstairs, she succumbed to curiosity and entered Dante’s bedroom. It was scrupulously tidy with no sign of his hasty departure, but she wasn’t there to snoop, she was there to check out whether her suspicions were correct. And they were. There was a bath in the palatial suite but it was in the bathroom off the master bedroom. It was the bath of her dreams as well, a huge oval tub with a fantastic view of Paris.
Belle had always loved baths, but she hadn’t lived anywhere with a bath for several years. Everyone was putting in showers now. Mrs Devenish’s family had had her original bath taken out and replaced with a shower in which she could safely sit. Belle had missed treating herself to the luxury of a bath and she wondered if she dared make use of Dante’s while he was out but that idea, tempting as it was, struck her as too cheeky and she went back downstairs and watched television instead.
Around ten, the image of that bath overcame her reluctance and, with a sigh of acceptance, she scrambled up, switched off the television and went to take advantage of it. The bathroom was packed with bath preparations in designer pots and she made liberal use of one of them before pinning her hair up in a clasp and climbing in to lower herself slowly into the deliciously scented warm water. Resting her head back on the padded pillow, she sighed, deciding that she was in heaven as she relaxed, truly relaxed for the first time in months.
She realised that she had dozed off only after a noise startled her into wakefulness again. Water sloshing noisily around her, she jerked up into sitting position, needing a moment even to appreciate where she was. Registering that she was still in Dante’s bathroom, she froze for a split second until she heard quick steps on the wooden stairs and then, swiftly depressing the plug to empty out the water, she launched herself upright in sheer panic. She almost fell as she raced across the slippery tiles to snatch up a big grey towel, winding it round her as fast as she could. She was cursing herself for invading his bathroom, which she had planned to leave immaculate so that no one would even know that she had used it. All hope of that remaining a secret was now gone with water very noisily draining out of the bath and an array of wet footprints and splashes marking the high-shine floor tiles.
Dante was not in a good mood on his return. Dealing with the man’s broken-hearted family had been distressing, and learning that the guy had suffered from vertigo but had concealed it because he had been desperate for a good job had been even less pleasant. And then he saw his bedroom door was lying open and emerging from the en-suite bathroom was a very red-faced Belle, wrapped in a towel and clutching a bundle of clothing to her breasts. She looked so guilty and so embarrassed, it was comical.
‘What on earth are you doing in here?’ Dante intoned in wonderment, trying very hard not to laugh.
Belle hopped off one bare foot onto the other. ‘Your room has a bath... Mine doesn’t. I didn’t think you’d mind if you weren’t here...but I didn’t get around to cleaning up, I’m afraid, because I wanted to be out of here before you caught me.’
‘And look how well that turned out,’ Dante commented.
‘I’ll come straight back and clean up once I’ve got dressed,’ she told him apologetically, her face on fire. ‘I swear I wasn’t snooping or anything. That’s probably what you think but I didn’t touch or look at anything in here. I just missed having baths and I was tempted.’
As Dante was tempted, appraising her curvy little body in the towel, noting how the tight hold she had on the clothing merely accentuated the magnificent swell of her breasts over the towel. Pale, lightly speckled flesh that he had already touched and tasted, and which had only ignited his hunger for more of the experience. Her hair was piled up in a glorious curly mass, innumerable little tendrils escaping to accentuate the flushed oval of her face, dominated by huge violet eyes and that glorious mouth. It was every fantasy Dante had ever had of her rolled into one and he went instantly hard. She was also the distraction he badly needed after the evening he had endured.
‘You look amazing,’ he told her gruffly because she did, all bright and flushed and embarrassed in her bare feet but somehow, for all her diminutive size, extraordinarily vibrant, full of life and sass.
‘I hardly think so... You’re a guy, it’s probably just the bath towel,’ she deflected tautly, because she was painfully aware that she wanted him to mean what he had said.
‘No, it’s you...all you,’ Dante husked, logic kicking in to demolish his reservations and neatly shift him to where he wanted to be. As they had both acknowledged, it wasn’t a normal job that he had given her, and it would also be an extremely temporary one. ‘Forget the rules about what you should and shouldn’t do, ditch the lists and the expectations. Just be with me because you want to be.’
Belle was rigid with tension and then a little quiver ran through her, her breathing quickening. She hadn’t expected him to be that bold, hadn’t been prepared for him to strip everything back to the basics.
‘Live a little.’ Dante leant back against the door to close it before crossing the room to gently pull the bundle of clothing out of her too-tight hold and drop it to the floor.
‘But I’m working for you,’ she began urgently as she clutched at the precarious towel to ensure that it didn’t fall.
‘Any court in Europe would deny that our private arrangement has anything in common with a normal job, which is why we shouldn’t feel bound by stupid rules,’ he argued impatiently. ‘Those rules don’t apply to our situation and we don’t need to consider them.’
Live a little, he had said, and he could not know how deeply those words affected her because Belle was unhappily conscious that she had barely lived at all during her twenty-two years on earth. She had missed out on the supposedly fun-filled years of teenaged experimentation and had felt old before her time dealing with major responsibilities like terminal illness, household bills on a small budget and bereavement. With elderly grandparents, she had always had to be sensible and there had been an awful lot of rules to follow. Rules she was still faithfully following, she acknowledged ruefully.
‘I know I’m not that guy on your shopping list whom you would choose,’ Dante murmured. ‘But right now, I’m the one that you want...’
And the mad cacophony of warning voices in her head telling her to back away, go to her own bed and sensibly turn her back on the risk he presented, suddenly went silent. Yes, he was the one she wanted, the only one she had ever wanted, and all of a sudden holding out for that one perfect match of a guy who might never come along seemed spineless and sad. Dante had smashed through her defences because the bottom line was undisputable... I’m the one that you want.
‘That’s true,’ she framed shakily.
‘And it is equally true that I want you,’ Dante breathed, bending down to lift her up and settle her down on the bed. ‘Let’s not make it more complicated than that.’
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