His Cinderella's One-Night Heir / Consequences Of A Hot Havana Night

Bemusement about her exact motivation and discomfiture over her own conduct kept Belle lying awake for a long time. She accepted that she was discovering stuff about herself with Dante that she would have sooner not known. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stamp out her attraction to him, nor could she remain level-headed enough to stay in control in his arms. All she could do now, she reasoned ruefully, was be on her guard and endeavour not to offer Dante any more conflicting signals.

Dante had a cold shower and wondered why he hadn’t simply swept Belle straight off to his bed. He was considerably more disturbed by the inexplicable truth that even foreplay with Belle was more exciting than anything he had ever had with another woman. She turned him on, hard and fast, and then she melted with delicious response whenever he touched her. Instead of being furious with her for walking away without giving him the satisfaction he needed, he was already thinking with anticipation about the next time she succumbed to the same hunger that was currently tormenting him. And then maybe he would walk away to teach her a lesson.

Picturing that scenario, Dante grinned with helpless amusement, knowing that the last thing he would do was walk away. He wouldn’t have the self-discipline to walk away because he had let her get under his skin, let her light him up for the first time ever with a fiery need to possess one particular woman. And why was that? Or what was it about her that had penetrated his defences?

What, for instance, had made him talk so very honestly about losing Cristiano? It was true that she would need that background to understand his family set-up and why the land deal was so very important to him. But he had shared details he didn’t need to share, drawn out by her warmth and those big compassionate eyes that seemed to offer understanding. In all likelihood it was all an act on her part, he told himself sagely, and she was striving to impress him, possibly hoping to stay in his life for longer than two short weeks.

The following morning, Belle was in a surprisingly good mood. She had behaved foolishly the night before, but she knew that she couldn’t turn back time and magically eradicate her mistake. All she could do was avoid getting too close to Dante and start trying to treat him more like her employer. Furthermore, the sun was shining, and she would hopefully be reunited with Charlie soon. More clothing had arrived for her to try and it was a definite treat to skim through the different items and pick a brand-new outfit to wear. She chose a light skirt and top combination, but she frowned at her hair, which was displaying defiant waves again after only one short evening of behaving like her fantasy straight hair. Her true self was fighting to come out again, she thought ruefully, and Dante would just have to accept that she couldn’t look perfectly groomed all the time.

‘A jeweller is visiting after breakfast,’ Dante informed her as she came down the stairs, trying to evade his gaze without being too obvious about it while her colour rose like a banner to advertise her self-consciousness. ‘And then we’re heading out to shop for furniture and some other items. Tomorrow, we’ll fly home to Italy.’

‘Why would we need to shop for furniture?’ Belle asked as she settled down at the breakfast table with him.

‘You’re moving in with me. Presumably a woman moving in with a man would have items she wanted to bring with her. You have nothing, so we will have to buy some stuff. I want us to look like an authentic couple, to my staff and everyone else in my life,’ Dante admitted calmly. ‘That we are only pretending has to remain our secret.’

‘Charlie’s authentic,’ Belle pointed out helplessly. ‘I am moving in my dog.’

Dante lounged back in his chair to study her. In silk that accentuated the swell of her breasts and somehow enhanced the satiny softness of her pale skin, she looked incredibly sensual and very touchable. He watched as she tucked a stray strand of bright hair behind one small ear and nibbled at her lower lip and reminded himself that seducing her would be cruel, because he was never going to offer her the serious relationship she wanted. He breathed in deep, recognising the erotic pulse gaining strength at his groin, and he shifted position in outright denial of her libidinous effect on him. ‘Charlie’s not enough on his own. We need to buy you some artworks and some presentable pieces of furniture.’

Her smooth brow furrowed. ‘Art? Why would I need artworks?’

‘Part of your new image. You’re an art lover like me,’ Dante told her.

‘Yes, I do like some art,’ Belle conceded thoughtfully. ‘But not on the sort of level you would admire. I agreed to do this, Dante, but I didn’t agree to pretend to be someone I’m not.’

An ebony brow lifted enquiringly. ‘Meaning?’

‘The relationship may be fake but, while I’m in it, I’m going to be me,’ Belle informed him stiffly. ‘I’m not going to fake being something I’m not, so I don’t want fancy artworks or furniture. I’m an ordinary working woman and I wouldn’t know where to begin acting as if I was someone much fancier and richer.’

‘That’s quite a speech and I appreciate the sentiments you express but I don’t see what difference it makes in our circumstances.’

‘Well, then, you’re not listening,’ Belle interrupted more sharply. ‘I’m me and I’m staying me because that way I’m less likely to make mistakes. I’ve been a housekeeper, a carer and a waitress, and I won’t pretend otherwise.’

‘And if you’re not part of my world, how am I supposed to have met the real you?’ Dante asked very drily.

‘Make it a funny story. I served you in a bar one night? You met me when you visited someone I was looking after or working for... You picked me up when I was hitchhiking? Use your imagination. Maybe you’re moving in with me because I’m different from the other women you’ve had in your life. Don’t try to make me hide the real me, as if that is something to be ashamed of,’ Belle urged ruefully.

‘You’re very stubborn.’

‘And so are you.’

‘Consequently, no artworks?’ Dante checked with a censorious shake of his arrogant dark head. ‘But there has to be some furniture, so that you can turn some room in my house into your room... Isn’t that what women do when they move in with a man?’

Belle shrugged. ‘How would I know? And it’s an awful lot of fuss and expense to go to simply to put on an act for one weekend,’ she reasoned, searching his lean bronzed features with curiosity sparkling in her dark blue eyes. ‘Presumably you think getting this business deal is worth any amount of trouble.’

‘Pretty much,’ Dante agreed.

‘Well, then, if it’s just one room I could choose a comfortable chair, a small table, bookshelves...oh, and books,’ she added reflectively, her eyes warming at the prospect. ‘But brand-new furniture won’t look very convincing—’

‘We’ll buy antiques,’ Dante incised in a tone of finality.

‘But you’re not going to expect me to pretend to be something I’m not?’ Belle pressed, seeking reassurance.

‘No,’ Dante conceded, marvelling that he was giving way on that point for in truth he had planned to set her up with an entire false identity, which would have protected his privacy and her anonymity. ‘You appreciate that the media will take a much stronger interest in me hooking up with a waitress?’

‘I’ll be out of your life again before anyone has even identified me,’ Belle parried confidently, lifting her head, vibrant waves of copper-red hair shifting across her shoulders and glinting fierily in the light.

‘It goes against the grain to admit it, but I liked your hair better before the beauty consultants in the spa got their hands on you. Curly hair suits you,’ Dante framed, already questioning what he was saying and frowning at that unplanned dive into personal comment as he sprang lithely upright to greet the older man with a large leather case and his accompanying security guard being shown into the room. ‘Monsieur Duchamp, you are very welcome.’

Belle tugged her fingers down from the hair she had involuntarily been touching. He liked her hair better when it was au naturel. Well, what did you know? She was astonished but decidedly flattered.

An hour later, she was sporting a designer watch and bracelet, sapphire-and-diamond earrings and a sapphire-and-diamond pendant, the absolute basics without which Dante had insisted she could not perform her role.

The limousine dropped them on the Carré Rive Gauche, which was full of antiques dealers and the kind of esoteric shops haunted by interior designers. Belle found herself much more interested in what was on offer there than she had expected to be because the sheer quirkiness of some of the items intrigued her.

‘You’re seeing stuff that interests you,’ Dante noted.

‘I like finding out the history behind them... I like that seat,’ she said, pointing at an elaborately upholstered and very comfortable-looking low-slung armchair.

The proprietor, quick to recognise Dante for the rich buyer that he was, hastened over to talk about the chair and demonstrated the weird way part of the arms swivelled back at a touch. Their exchange of French was too fast for her to follow and Belle stared up at Dante in surprise as he began to laugh. Poised there with his dark eyes gleaming with intense amusement, his lean, darkly handsome features relaxed, he was so breathtakingly beautiful and male that she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

‘What’s so funny?’ Belle whispered.

‘I’ll tell you later. We’re taking the chair... Come on, keep looking,’ Dante urged, one long-fingered hand pressing against her taut spine as he walked her along with him. ‘You have a whole room to fill and none of the rooms in my home are small.’

A fat sofa, an Indian carved bookcase, a small inlaid table, a beautiful mirror and an eccentric art deco drinks cabinet followed in quick succession.

‘And as an ordinary girl, how am I supposed to have acquired all these valuable items?’ Belle enquired with reluctant amusement.

‘They are all gifts from me,’ Dante teased with a smile. ‘I’ve also ordered a selection of English classics and contemporary novels for you from a bookseller.’

In the limo on the way back to the hotel, he told her that he was taking her out for dinner again and then on to a club. Belle was lazily contemplating the options in her new wardrobe when Dante appeared in the doorway.

‘Rain check, I’m afraid,’ he murmured quietly. ‘There’s been a fatal accident on one of my wind farms in Brittany and I have to visit the site. I don’t know when I’ll get back but it could be the early hours. We’ll still be flying to Italy in the morning.’

‘Fatal?’ she queried in dismay.

Dante nodded. ‘A construction engineer fell in one of the turbine towers,’ he told her grimly.

‘That’s dreadful. Will you be seeing his family?’

‘Yes,’ Dante replied gravely. ‘And checking out whether or not safety procedures were correctly followed. There’ll 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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