Italian Bachelors: Brooding Billionaires: Ravelli's Defiant Bride / Enthralled by Moretti / The Playboy's Proposition

Cristo reached down to detach the toddler’s painful grip from his leg. Starved of male attention, he recalled, thinking that he could certainly understand that. Neither in childhood nor adulthood had Gaetano ever touched him or, indeed, enquired after his well-being. ‘We have to talk,’ he said succinctly.

‘There’s nothing more to talk about. We said it all last night,’ Belle tossed over a slim shoulder as she started down the beach again and extended her hand. ‘Franco, come here!’

‘No!’ the toddler said stubbornly and, deprived of Cristo’s leg, grasped a handful of his trousers instead, making it difficult for Cristo to walk.

Cristo expelled his breath in a slow measured hiss. ‘I placed the Mayhill estate on the market this morning,’ he fired at her rudely turned back.

Belle came to a dead halt, her narrow spine suddenly rigid as panic leapt inside her at the prospect of losing the roof over their heads. There was certainly no room for them all to squeeze into Isa’s one-bedroom apartment in the village. She stared out to sea but the soothing sound of the surf washing the sand smooth failed to work its usual magic. She turned her bright head, green eyes glittering. ‘Couldn’t that have waited for a few weeks?’

Cristo took his time crossing the sand to join her, her little brother clinging to whatever part of Cristo he could reach and finally stretching up to grip the corner of his suit jacket with sandy fingers. ‘No. I want the property sold as soon as possible. I want Gaetano’s life here to remain a secret.’

‘And what about us? Where are we supposed to go?’ Belle demanded heatedly, her temper rising. ‘It takes time to relocate.’

‘You’ll have at least a month to find somewhere else,’ Cristo fielded without perceptible sympathy while he watched the breeze push the soft, clinging cotton of her top against her breasts, defining the full rounded swells and her pointed nipples. The heavy pulse at his groin went crazy and he clenched his teeth together, willing back his arousal.

‘That’s not very long. Bruno and Donetta will be home from school for the summer soon. Five children take up a lot of space... They’re your brothers and sisters too, so you should care about what happens to them!’ Belle launched back at him in furious condemnation.

‘Which is why I’m here to suggest that we get married and make a home for them together,’ Cristo countered with harsh emphasis as he wondered for possibly the very first time in his life whether he really did know what he was doing.

‘Married?’ Belle repeated aghast, wondering if she’d missed a line or two in the conversation. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘You said that you wanted your siblings to enjoy the Ravelli name and lifestyle. I can only make that happen by marrying you and adopting them.’

Frowning in confusion, Belle fell back a step, in too much shock to immediately respond. ‘Is this a joke?’ she asked when she had finally found her voice again.

‘Why would I joke about something so serious?’

Belle shrugged. ‘How would I know? You thought it was acceptable to suggest to their mother that she give them up to be adopted,’ she reminded him helplessly.

‘I’m not joking,’ Cristo replied levelly, a stray shard of sunlight breaking through the clouds to slant across his lean, strong face.

All over again, Belle studied him in wonder because he had the smouldering dark beauty of a fallen angel. His brilliant dark eyes were nothing short of stunning below the thick screen of his lashes and suddenly she felt as breathless as though someone were standing on her lungs.

‘I’m a practical man and I’m suggesting a practical marriage which would fulfil all our needs,’ Cristo continued smoothly. ‘You’re aware that I don’t want a court case. I also want to prevent the squalid story of Gaetano and his housekeeper leaking into the public domain. You would have to agree not to discuss the children’s parentage with anyone but nobody need tell any lies either. As far as anyone need know, the children are simply your orphaned brothers and sisters.’

Belle breathed in deep and slow but it still didn’t clear her head. ‘I can’t believe you’re suggesting this.’

‘You didn’t give me a choice, did you? The threat of a court case piled on the pressure. Are you prepared to settle this out of court?’ Cristo studied her enquiringly.

Belle didn’t hesitate. ‘No.’

Cristo raised a sleek ebony brow. ‘Then what’s your answer?’

‘It’s not that simple,’ Belle protested.

‘Isn’t it? I’m offering you everything you said you wanted.’

Her lashes flickered above her strained eyes. She felt cornered and trapped. ‘Well, yes, but...marriage? I could hardly be expecting that development!’

Annoyance lanced through Cristo. It was his very first proposal of marriage and he had never before even considered proposing to a woman. Without a shade of vanity he knew he was rich, good-looking and very eligible and yet she was hesitating and he was grimly amused by his irritation.

‘Look, I’ll think it over until tonight,’ Belle muttered uncomfortably.

‘Di niente...no problem,’ Cristo fielded, his wide, sensual mouth compressed. ‘By the way...I mean a real marriage.’

‘Real...?’ Belle spluttered to a halt, the tip of her tongue stealing out to wet her dry lower lip. His intent dark gaze flashed pure naked gold to that tiny movement. Heated colour swept her face as she grasped his meaning in growing disbelief. ‘You’d expect me to sleep with you?’

‘Of course,’ Cristo murmured with an indolent assurance that suggested that that idea was entirely normal and acceptable. ‘I have no plans to emulate my father and entertain mistresses while I’m married. And I don’t want a wife who plays around behind my back either. That kind of lifestyle would not provide a stable home for the children.’

Belle got his point, she really did, but she flushed scarlet at the thought of sharing a bed with him, suddenly very conscious of her own lack of sexual experience. Growing up, she’d had to combat the expectations of the local boys who saw her mother as free and easy in that department and she had had to prove over and over again that she was different. Saying no had been a matter of pride and self-preservation, but as she got older that conditioning along with other needs and insecurities had influenced her and trusting a man enough to drop her guard and make love had proved to be even more of a challenge for Belle.

Cristo settled a business card into her limp hand and she stared down at it blankly.

‘My private cell number. Let me know by seven this evening, bellezza mia,’ he instructed with unblemished cool. ‘That way I can make an immediate start on the arrangements.’

CHAPTER FIVE

‘DON’T DO THIS...don’t do this...’ Isa’s constant refrain was still sounding like a death knell in Belle’s ears as she climbed out of the car Cristo had sent to collect her and mounted the steps that led up into the chapel of St Jude’s. She was wearing an elegant but rather plain vintage dress with a boat-shaped lace neckline. It was her late mother’s wedding gown.

The symbolism of that gesture had appealed to her and in the three weeks that had passed since she last saw Cristo she’d had the dress lengthened to suit her greater height. Mary might never have got her Ravelli to the altar but her daughter was succeeding where she had failed, Belle could not help reflecting with guilty satisfaction. She knew it wasn’t right to feel that way because Cristo was not Gaetano and he had not committed his father’s sins but she couldn’t help it. She was the talk of the neighbourhood, for nobody was quite sure how she had hooked a husband who had only set foot in Ireland for the first time less than a month ago. Indeed there was a crowd of well-wishers waiting outside the old church, quietly ignoring Cristo’s request that the wedding be regarded as a private affair.

Of course, Cristo definitely knew how to garner support and respect in the locals, Belle conceded ruefully. He had decided not to sell Mayhill but to instead gift the historic house to the village as a community centre and endow it for the future. Money talked, money certainly talked very loudly in an area where incomes were low and jobs were few. Mayhill would put the village on the map by becoming a tourist attraction and its maintenance and the business prospects it would provide would offer many employment opportunities. And naturally, it was tacitly and silently understood by the recipients of Cristo’s extraordinary largesse that his father’s affair with Mary Brophy and the birth of their children were matters to be buried in the darkest, deepest closet never to see the light of day again.

Her sisters, thirteen-year-old Donetta and eight-year-old Lucia, were beaming at her from a front pew. Her brothers Bruno, Pietro and little Franco were beside them. Bruno was frowning, too intelligent to be fooled by the surface show and still suspicious of what was happening to his family.

‘Do you really want to marry Gaetano’s son?’ Bruno had demanded the night before when he had returned from school with Donetta, both teenagers granted special leave for the occasion of their sister’s wedding.

‘It was love at first sight,’ Belle had lied, determined to remove the lines of concern from his brow and the too anxious look from his sensitive gaze. ‘And how can you ask me that?’

‘I’m not saying I don’t believe you...but it seems very convenient in the circumstances. I mean, here we are, broke, virtually homeless and sinking fast and along comes Cristo Ravelli in the rescue boat and suddenly our every dream is coming true,’ Bruno had recited thinly. ‘It doesn’t feel real to me—it’s too good to be true. How did you finally bury the hatchet?’

‘What hatchet?’

‘You grew up hating the Ravelli family and now all of a sudden you’re marrying one of them?’

‘He’s your brother,’ Belle had reminded the teenager stubbornly.

‘He’s a super-rich banker and as sharp as a whip. It’s you I’m concerned about. What do you know about being married to a guy like that?’ Bruno had asked worriedly. ‘He lives in a different world.’

But right now, Cristo was in Belle’s world, she savoured helplessly, finally allowing herself to look at the tall, well-built male waiting for her at the altar. Not an iota of the traditional bridegroom’s nervous tension showed on his lean, darkly handsome features. In fact he might just have been an attendant at someone else’s wedding for all the awareness he was showing. Unconsciously, Belle’s chin lifted as if she had been challenged; her heart was pounding fast as a hammer blow behind her ribs and her spine was rigid with all the tension he lacked. After all, she had barely slept since texting him a single word, ‘Yes’, on the day he had proposed to her on the beach.

Accepting had taken a massive amount of courage and she had garnered that courage only by focusing on the advantages of marrying Cristo Ravelli and suppressing all awareness of the downsides. Her family would finally be safe, absolutely safe and secure and that was the bottom line and the only important thing she should concentrate on. What it cost her personally wasn’t important and couldn’t be weighed on the scale of such things.

After all, she had never been in love and was even more certain that she didn’t want to fall in love with anyone. Her memories of her mother’s unhappiness during Gaetano’s long absences were still fresh as a daisy. Mary had only really come alive when Gaetano was around. Every time he departed it had broken Mary’s heart afresh and he would leave her pining and lifeless with only the occasional brief phone call to anticipate while she counted the weeks and days until his next visit. Belle had kept one of those painstakingly numbered calendars as a reminder of what such unstinting, unhesitating love, loyalty and devotion could do to wreck a woman’s life. Mary had lived for Gaetano. Belle only wanted to live for her family and ensure that they enjoyed a much happier and more stable childhood than she had received.

Isa was staying on in the Lodge for the summer and had insisted that Bruno, Donetta and the twins stay on there with her, leaving only Franco to stay with Belle because her little brother was too attached to her to be separated from her for weeks on end. ‘You get your marriage sorted out before you uproot the kids to London and new schools and all the rest of it,’ her grandmother had told her bluntly. ‘You know I don’t approve of what you’re doing and if there’s a risk that this marriage will only last as long as it takes you to come to your senses, you shouldn’t drag the children into it with you.’

Belle had argued until she was finally forced to acknowledge that the older woman was talking good sense. Of course there was a chance that she and Cristo wouldn’t make a go of their ‘practical’ marriage. She would have to make a success of their relationship before she could risk disrupting the children’s lives and bringing them to London to live on a permanent basis. That was a pretty tall order when she had, more or less, agreed to marry a complete stranger.

Thinking along those lines, Belle decided she had to have been insane to say yes with so little thought. It was not that she had not thought about things, simply that she had avoided considering the negative aspects. Going to bed with Cristo had to be one of the more intimidating negative aspects, she conceded, turning hot and cold at the very thought of it, but just living with Cristo, indeed with any man, would surely be the ultimate challenge.

Wintry dark eyes slashed with gold by the sunlight piercing the stained-glass window behind him, Cristo watched his bride approach. She looked absolutely amazing in white, red gold curls tumbling round her narrow shoulders, her bright head crowned by a simple seed-pearl coronet. Lust engulfed Cristo in a drowning wave and his wide, sensual mouth compressed hard. Maledizione! He was convinced that he had never wanted a woman as much before yet he was equally convinced that she would ultimately prove as disappointing as her predecessors. Of course she would, he reflected impatiently, being no fan of optimism or fairy stories. But at least he already knew the worst of her, which was that she was a virtual blackmailer, a gold-digger and a social climber. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t, he conceded sardonically and he was exceptionally well versed on the habits and needs of mercenary women.

Her hand trembled in his when he slid on the wedding ring. A nice touch, he thought cynically, a bridal display of nerves and modesty and utterly wasted on Cristo, who was the last man alive likely to be impressed or taken in by such pretences. He was gaining a very beautiful and desirable wife, he reminded himself doggedly, and putting a lid on the threat of an unsavoury scandal. Even his brothers didn’t know what he was doing, for the last thing he would have risked was bringing either of them to the scene of Gaetano’s reckless shenanigans in this little Irish village.

Cristo pretty much ignored Belle on the short drive back to the Lodge, where a small catered buffet and drinks had been laid on for the family and the few friends invited. It had not escaped Belle’s notice that Cristo had not invited a single person and it bothered her, making her wonder if he was ashamed of her and her humble background and lack of designer polish.

Bruno walked up to Cristo in the hall. ‘Could we have a word?’ he asked, youthful face taut and pale.

Bruno was the living image of Zarif as a teenager and that likeness had unsettled Cristo at their first brief and awkward meeting the evening before. It seemed that Gaetano had stamped the Ravelli genes very firmly on all his offspring.

‘Is there a problem?’ Cristo enquired, a fine ebony brow lifting.

The teenager backed into the small space at the foot of the stairs and said gruffly, ‘If you hurt my sister like your father hurt my mother, I swear I’ll kill you.’

Cristo almost laughed but a stray shard of compassion squashed his amusement when he recalled his own turbulent teenaged years. In any case the warning had all the hallmarks of a prepared speech and, having delivered it, Bruno was backing off fast, troubled brown eyes nervously pinned to Cristo as though he was expecting an immediate physical attack. Before the boy could leave, Christo called him back.

‘We’re family now and I’m not like my father in any way,’ Cristo responded very quietly to the teenager. ‘I have no desire to hurt any woman.’

From a tactful distance, Belle absorbed that little interplay. Although she hadn’t heard the conversation, she suspected that Bruno had probably been very rude in his outspoken need to protect her and she recognised with a sense of unfamiliar warmth that Cristo had handled her kid brother with surprising sympathy. Their kid brother, she mentally corrected, yet there it was—Cristo might not be ready yet to acknowledge that blood tie, but he had restrained both his cutting tongue and his temper when he dealt with Bruno and she was grateful for his kindness.

As Bruno moved hurriedly away, his goal evidently accomplished, Cristo studied the slim dark man whose eyes were welded to Belle’s vibrant face as she talked to her grandmother’s friends. Cristo stiffened, aggression powering through him as he recognised the son of the land agent, Petrie. Petrie’s son, Mark, was attracted to his wife. His wife. The shock of that designation ricocheted through Cristo as well and he suppressed his awareness of both strange reactions. He concentrated on Belle instead and watched when she fell still the instant she saw him looking at her, enabling him to clearly see her sudden tension and insecurity.

The golden power of Cristo’s gaze was almost mesmeric in its intensity and Belle gulped down the rest of the wine in her glass.

‘Eat something,’ Isa instructed. ‘You didn’t have any breakfast.’

Belle accepted the sandwich extended for the sake of peace, for although her tummy felt hollow it had nothing to do with hunger. ‘I’ll go and get changed,’ she said uneasily, ruffling Franco’s curly head where he stood by her side.

Cristo was still in the hall, detached from the small crowd by a barrier of reserve that chilled her.

‘He’s not very friendly, is he?’ her sister Donetta whispered in her ear.

Belle forced a smile, cursing Cristo’s detachment and his clear reluctance to use the opportunity to get to know his younger siblings. ‘He’s just shy.’

‘Shy?’ Donetta gasped in surprise.

‘Very shy,’ Belle lied, wanting to lay the teenager’s concerns to rest. ‘It’ll be different when he gets to know all of you properly.’

And the burden of ensuring that it would be different was on her shoulders, Belle acknowledged apprehensively, registering what a challenge she had set herself. Cristo had been raised an only child and a family the size of hers had to be a shock to his reticent nature. Franco was tugging at his jacket, looking up at Cristo with adoring brown eyes, and Cristo was at least tolerating the child, she reasoned ruefully, wondering if that was the most she could hope for from him when it came to the children. And her? Would he only be tolerating her as well? A shiver of distaste at that image ran down her back until she was warmed by the recollection of his considered response to Bruno.

‘Where are you going?’ Cristo enquired when she brushed past him to head for the stairs.

‘I’m getting changed...for the flight you mentioned,’ she extended awkwardly, lashes screening her strained green eyes.

He was her husband, for goodness’ sake, and he had decreed that they would be flying out of Ireland within hours of the ceremony. She had thought about arguing but then had seen no point in trying to put off the inevitable. She had given up her life to enter his and leaving home was the first step in that process.

‘No. I like the dress. Don’t take it off.’

Thoroughly taken aback by the command, Belle glanced up at him in astonishment at the request. ‘I can’t trudge through an airport dressed like this.’

‘I have a private jet and we won’t be trudging anywhere. Don’t take the dress off, bellezza mia,’ Cristo instructed sibilantly, a strong dark forefinger curling below her chin to lift it so that she collided with smouldering golden eyes. ‘I want to be the one who takes it off.’

Face burning, breath coming in tortured bursts, Belle fled upstairs, barely able to credit that he had said that to her. She had read about male fantasies and he had just told her his with a lack of embarrassment that made her all the more conscious of her own ignorance. He was already fantasising about removing her bridal gown. It was a useful message as to what went on in Cristo’s arrogant head. While she was worrying about him getting to know and like their brothers and sisters he was thinking about sex. Was that all their marriage meant to him? Sex and the threat of a big scandal removed?

And if it was, what on earth could she do about it? All her gran’s warnings and dire predictions came crashing down on her at once. What if he was cruel? Unfaithful? Belle swallowed hard, mastering her tumultuous emotions. You made your bed, now you have to lie on it...literally, she told herself sternly as she checked that she had packed the most essential things for herself and Franco.

* * *

Franco cried and begged to get out of his car seat all the way to the airport. Aware of the irritation Cristo couldn’t hide and with her own spirits low at having left home and everything and almost everyone familiar behind her for goodness knew how long, Belle tried to distract the child.

‘Why did your mother have so many children with my father?’ Cristo asked suddenly.

‘She always wanted a big family and I think the kids were her compensation for not seeing much of your father,’ Belle opined and then, hesitating, added, ‘Gaetano wanted nothing to do with them though. When he was here they went to stay with Isa and maybe only saw him once for about ten minutes and it would be very strained. He just wasn’t interested.’

‘He was the same with me and my brothers.’

‘I hated him!’ Belle admitted in a driven undertone. ‘I felt guilty about that when he was killed in the crash.’

‘You shouldn’t, cara,’ Cristo parried. ‘He was a very selfish man, who lived only for his pleasure and his profit. Nothing else mattered to him.’

Belle settled into her seat on Cristo’s opulent private jet. Franco was in the sleeping compartment and, once she had settled her little brother down for his nap, Cristo had informed her that he had hired a nanny for the child, who would be waiting when they reached their destination.

‘Which...is?’

‘Italy. I’m taking you to my home in Italy.’

‘Venice...we’re going to Venice?’ Belle carolled in sudden excitement.

‘No, that is where my mother and stepfather live. I inherited a house in Umbria, which has belonged to my mother’s family for generations. Sorry, it’s not Venice,’ Cristo quipped.

‘Won’t your mother be upset that she wasn’t at your wedding?’ Belle prompted, shooting him a look of wide-eyed curiosity.

‘I doubt it. Anything that reminds Giulia of Gaetano puts her in a very bad mood,’ Cristo admitted, compressing his lips. ‘She never recovered from what he put her through. You couldn’t be in her company for five minutes before she told you that he stole the best years of her life, robbed her blind and slept with—among others—her best friend and her maid.’

‘Good grief...’ Belle breathed, reeling from that blunt admission.

During the flight, even with his laptop open in front of him, Cristo found his attention continually straying from the financial report he was checking. He studied Belle’s delicate profile from below his dense lashes, marvelling at the display of innocence and vulnerability that she continued to exude. Was he supposed to be impressed? Did he strike her as that stupid? After all, Mary Brophy’s daughter was considerably shrewder than her mother had ever been because she had not hesitated to use Gaetano’s children as a weapon to enrich herself. But his awareness of that aspect of her less than stellar character faded whenever Cristo looked at her, appreciating the vibrancy of her Titian curls against her porcelain-pale skin, the clarity of her beautiful green eyes, the feminine elegance of the fingers and unpainted nails adorning the slim hands that held a magazine. She always looked so amazingly natural, he registered, black brows drawing together in a bemused frown as he questioned the depth of his fascination and hurriedly returned to his financial report, trying and singularly failing to rustle up an immediate image of Betsy’s face.