Her legs wobbly, Belle got out of the helicopter and merely sought the nearest cover to conceal her weakness. She darted behind a concealing tree and was horribly sick. A supportive hand tugged her hair out of the way and stroked her back.

  ‘You turned green while we were in the air. I knew you were ill,’ Dante admitted. ‘But I thought it better not to mention it...’

  Her head swimming, Belle leant back against his lean, powerful body for momentary support. ‘How’s the deal coming along?’ she whispered, desperate to take his mind off what she had just done.

  ‘Eddie wants to sell the whole lot to me, not only Cristiano’s piece. I’ve agreed,’ Dante said succinctly. ‘I’ll turn the majority of it into a nature reserve, but I’ll keep my brother’s woods private.’

  ‘It’s a lovely way to remember him,’ Belle murmured softly.

  ‘On the way back we’re being dropped off at the cabin. I want you to see it,’ Dante told her. ‘We can drive home from there, so you won’t have to fly again.’

  And there he was once more, being considerate when she least expected it, Belle thought painfully, resting her clammy brow against his shirt front, fighting to muster the courage to detach herself from him when she so badly wanted to cling. She breathed in the rich familiar scent of cologne and husky male and the combination made her head swim with longing. Of course, Dante would be in a good mood with Eddie having agreed to sell the land to him. He had got what he wanted out of their arrangement even if he hadn’t got what he wanted when it came to Belle. There was no way Dante could want their unplanned child. He had always been honest with her but now he would feel forced to prevaricate, for he could hardly admit the truth.

  And she hadn’t admitted her own truths either, had she? Belle scolded herself as she joined their guests to admire the fabulous landscape from the hilltop. She tried to pinpoint the exact moment when she had fallen headlong in love with Dante. It had begun in Paris, long before she had even seen that her heart was at risk; it had begun when he opened up and told her about his brother and his family. Slowly but surely, she had begun to see that, much like her, Dante had not received the love he’d needed as a child and, because of that, he shied away from any hint of that emotion, automatically distrusting it.

  Belle’s grandparents had loved her, but as she’d grown up she had felt increasingly guilty that her mother’s lack of interest had meant that her grandparents were forced to raise a child in their retirement years. Dante had only known his sibling’s love and, without being shown love, it was hard to trust enough to feel love. Yet for Belle, the more she had learned about Dante, the more she had loved him. It had been a slippery slope she’d raced naïvely down at dangerous speed, intimacy making her feel deceptively close to him when she wasn’t because he didn’t return her feelings.

  * * *

  Krystal and Eddie flew on to Florence for lunch while Dante and Belle were deposited in a forest glade overlooking a small tranquil lake. A two-storey wooden structure met Belle’s curious gaze. ‘It’s very modern,’ she commented.

  ‘When Cristiano first had it built it didn’t have electric or heating. He liked to come here to unwind after a demanding week at the bank. I talked him round and my company installed the windmill and the turbine in the stream and the solar panels.’ As Belle gazed around the tall woodland trees and savoured the tranquillity, she said, ‘Wasn’t it rude of us to leave Eddie and Krystal behind?’

  ‘No. Krystal said she’d seen enough countryside to last her a lifetime and Eddie wants to take her shopping to put her in a better mood,’ Dante retorted, unlocking the cabin door. ‘It’s not very large...’

  Belle wandered into the cosy interior, surprised to see a picnic basket and a chilled bottle of wine awaiting them on the table near the stone hearth. ‘Who are these for? Where did they come from?’

  ‘The staff brought over food for our lunch. You have to eat,’ Dante reminded her. ‘Inside or outside?’

  ‘Outside,’ she said, glancing round the cabin, recognising that there was little to see but the walls and the furniture because it had been stripped of any personal possessions. ‘Anywhere there’s shade.’

  Dante spread the rug. Belle removed her shoes and sank down cross-legged to investigate the contents of the basket and lift out plates. Breaking open a soft drink, she murmured, ‘It’s a beautiful place. Did you come here a lot to see Cristiano?’

  ‘Often,’ Dante said gruffly, poised between her and the sun, a lean, powerful figure with a shock of black hair and the golden eyes of a tiger. ‘He used to sleep outside on the roof during the summer and he made a point of not using the electric I had installed for him. He preferred lanterns. He was at peace here...at his best.’

  ‘The dogs must’ve loved it too,’ Belle mused, wondering why he had yet to sit down and why his lean, darkly handsome features were so tense.

  ‘We have to have a serious discussion,’ Dante informed her tautly.

  ‘I thought we were waiting until Eddie and Krystal were gone.’

  ‘Last night I realised it couldn’t wait any longer,’ Dante incised. ‘We have a child to plan for now.’

  ‘I’ll deal with the baby stuff,’ Belle parried firmly, nudging the filled plate she had prepared for him in his direction. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

  ‘Not really.’

  An uneasy little silence fell.

  ‘It’s my child too.’ Dante, it seemed, was still set on making his point. ‘Naturally I want to be fully involved.’

  Belle frowned. ‘Do you?’ she asked, her incredulity unhidden.

  Dante crouched down lithely on a level with her, black denim stretching taut across his muscular thighs, and a current of hunger rippled through Belle, which she tried to suppress. ‘A child doesn’t have to be planned to be wanted,’ he murmured with assurance. ‘I want to marry you, Belle...’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Belle told him with complete confidence, even as her heart squeezed tight with stress and heartfelt regret that that should be the case. ‘I know the gossip columnists went mad over you moving me into the palazzo with you only because you’re famous for being a commitment-phobe. A man with that outlook is unlikely to welcome a child into his carefree life, because there is no bigger or more lasting responsibility than a child. Please don’t tell me polite untruths to impress me.’

  His stunning eyes shimmered, his wide, sensual mouth compressing. ‘I’m not trying to impress you. Everything changed when you came into my life—’

  ‘Yes, I screwed it up,’ Belle broke in sharply, steeling herself against his arguments. As she saw it, she was protecting them both from the possibility of making a terrible mistake. Marrying a man who only wanted to marry her because he thought he had to and who didn’t love her would be a disaster. ‘I fell pregnant. You feel responsible.’

  A raw glitter lit his eyes. ‘I do not.’

  ‘You feel so responsible you’re willing to go against your own nature and offer a solution you have never wanted,’ Belle condemned tightly, anxiety and pain licking cruelly at her because she considered a proposal made out of pity and the conviction that she couldn’t cope alone truly humiliating. ‘But I am perfectly capable of returning to the UK and making my own life and bringing up my child.’

  ‘Of course, you are, but that’s not what’s best for either of us. I want to be with you. I want to be with my child,’ Dante bit out impatiently, angry that the dialogue was going even worse than he had expected. He hadn’t expected enthusiasm, nor had he expected the level of resistance she was giving him.

  ‘You should know me well enough to know that I would never try to keep you away from our child and that I will happily agree any reasonable access arrangements,’ Belle protested.

  ‘That’s not enough.’ Dante vaulted back upright, poured himself a glass of chilled wine and leant back against the cabin to study her. ‘I won’t give up on this, you know. I’m very stubborn when you challenge me.’

  Belle breathed in deep and slow. Her eyes were prickling and stinging with the tears she was holding back. She blinked hard and angled her attention away from him into the trees. She couldn’t bear to marry him because she was pregnant, couldn’t bear to reach that position in his life and then watch as whatever physical attraction she held for him slowly waned until finally they had nothing left but their child to share. He deserved better than to have to marry a woman he didn’t love, and she deserved better than a man who didn’t love her.

  ‘You’ve until tomorrow evening to think over my proposal,’ Dante breathed tautly. ‘I have a funeral to attend in Brittany tomorrow. I’ll be leaving in the morning.’

  ‘The employee who died?’

  ‘Such a waste of a good man.’ Dante sighed. ‘There were other positions he could have gone for. He didn’t need to work at heights.’

  And that was why she loved Dante. He genuinely cared about his employees. Even though that workforce ran into quadruple digits, he sincerely regretted the loss of one. He had a heart even though he didn’t acknowledge it. That was why she had to withstand his innate desire to do ‘the right thing’. He felt he had to marry her because she was pregnant and that was an outdated idea, and unnecessary. She would manage fine on her own. It would make her much unhappier to marry him and then lose him again.

  * * *

  Krystal and Eddie departed early the next morning and Dante left not long after them, a new distance in his attitude to her. He was annoyed with her for refusing to marry him, she conceded ruefully, because he had decided that that was the magical solution to the baby he saw as a problem. But a marriage wouldn’t solve the baby complication, it would only create more problems.

  Belle went to visit Cristiano’s dogs that afternoon and arrived back at the palazzo to be informed that she had a visitor waiting for her.

  Consternation gripped her when she walked into the elegant drawing room and saw Tracy comfortably ensconced in an armchair, flicking through a fashion magazine over a cup of tea.

  ‘Well, you’ve certainly landed on your feet here,’ her mother mocked as she cast down the magazine and stood up, a tall slim blonde in her fifties, who looked a good decade younger than her years.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘RELAX,’ TRACY URGED as Belle parted her lips. ‘I was discreet. I didn’t identify myself as your mother, only as a friend. I’m quite sure you’ve glossed over your downmarket background with Dante. It’s never wise to remind a man that you come from a lower level of society than he does.’

  Belle relocated her tongue. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  Tracy raised a brow, her green eyes hard. ‘It’s your own fault. You said you were too busy to see me. What did you expect me to do?’

  ‘Take the hint and leave me alone,’ Belle said ruefully. ‘As I did three years ago when you left me in London broke and dossing on someone’s couch.’

  ‘You’re still my daughter.’

  ‘The daughter you never wanted,’ Belle reminded her. ‘And yet you used me to con thousands and thousands of pounds out of my father, which you certainly never chose to share with Grandad and Gran, who were raising me for you.’

  ‘So, you’ve seen Alastair and listened to his lies?’ Tracy assumed angrily. ‘And you believe them?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid I do,’ Belle admitted tautly. ‘I’ve got nothing more to say to you and I can’t imagine what you’re doing here.’

  ‘You’re not that stupid,’ Tracy told her. ‘Naturally I’m here hoping that you will share a little of the pot of gold you’re living in.’

  ‘I haven’t got any money to share,’ Belle retorted sharply.

  ‘He must give you an allowance, at the very least...’

  ‘No, he’s terribly stingy,’ Belle told her without skipping a beat.

  ‘I wonder how stingy he would be if I threatened to approach the press and sell the whole sordid story of your background...and believe me, there are dirty details you know nothing about,’ Tracy told her with a sneer.

  Belle had paled but she stood her ground. ‘I shouldn’t think Dante would give a damn,’ she countered. ‘I definitely don’t think he would let you blackmail either of us.’

  Tracy swept up her clutch bag with a flourish. ‘If you change your mind, you have my number. We’ll see...won’t we?’

  Belle didn’t breathe again until her mother drove off in the taxi she had had waiting for her outside. She felt quite sick and dizzy from the stress of Tracy’s visit and her shoulders hunched as she registered that her mother had asked her not one single question about her well-being or her relationship with Dante. Tracy simply saw her as a potentially profitable source she was keen to milk. Of course, that was all she had ever been to her mother, the cash cow she used to punish Alastair Stevenson for not marrying her. She blinked back tears of hurt and hated herself for that weakness because it was a long time since she’d had any illusions about Tracy.

  But there was no denying that she was horrified at the idea of Tracy approaching the tabloid press with some cooked-up and no doubt sleazy story to sell about her. That would embarrass Dante, and Belle couldn’t bear the concept of that because Tracy was her cross to bear, not his. In fact, the only way she could protect Dante from her mother was by leaving him because, if she was no longer living with him, nobody would be the slightest bit interested in buying a story about her ordinary self. Dante, after all, was her sole claim to fame.

  Perhaps Tracy had done her a favour by jolting her out of her comfortable groove in Dante’s opulent home. Belle knew that she didn’t belong under Dante’s roof. Now her job was done. Eddie had agreed to sell Cristiano’s land back and Dante was paying her for her two weeks in his life, paying her handsomely too. That would provide her with a nest egg for their baby.

  She needed to leave Dante. Of course, she would get in touch again in a few months, by which time things would have settled down and he would have accepted that marriage hadn’t been a very good idea. What was the point in her staying? If she went, he would have his freedom back. Staying, she decided wretchedly, would be clingy, considering that he had never once asked her to stay on and had already paid her for pretending to be his girlfriend.

  Furthermore, if she stepped away now, she would hopefully begin to get over him. If she stayed, however, she would probably surrender and end up marrying him while falling deeper and deeper in love with him. Being only briefly his wife and becoming accustomed to the joy of having a proper place in his life and then having to leave that security would ultimately hurt her much more. A short-term shock of severance would be easier for her to bear than getting involved in a marriage destined to die when Dante’s interest faded.

  But getting back to the UK with Charlie in tow quickly was impossible, for there were all sorts of regulations to be met. Travelling back to France, on the other hand, would be relatively easy and cheap. She would travel by train and return to the campervan until she got Charlie’s travel documents sorted out. She didn’t have much to pack because none of the new clothes would fit in a few months and, obviously, she wasn’t taking the jewellery with her. But maybe she should take it to sell at a later date for the baby? Dante would pay child support, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t abandon them, she told herself urgently. He would be relieved, though, when his most pressing problem moved out from under his roof.

  Tears tripping her, Belle packed a small case, gulping and swallowing back the thickness in her throat and the increasingly terrifying image of having to live without Dante. He’d only been in her life for two short weeks and he had turned it upside down. He had walked into her heart and taken up residence there and she couldn’t imagine her life without him, which probably meant that she was one of those stage-five clingers he had mentioned and despised.

  She had managed for years on her own and she would manage again. Two weeks were two weeks and hopefully she could return to the level-headed, practical being she had been before he’d got a hold of her. That belief taking charge, she opened up the laptop Dante had given her for her use to research train schedules.

  * * *

  Dante returned to be informed that Belle had left earlier that evening with Charlie and a suitcase.

  It took him a moment or two to process that information. She couldn’t have walked out on him, he told himself, because no woman walked out on Dante. He had always been the one to do the ditching and the walking away. Now it seemed it was his turn to see the other side of the fence. There was a note in the bedroom, the jewellery he had bought her stacked neatly beside it, so the breezy, ‘Thanks for the money, I’ll be in touch’ note didn’t really have the effect she might have hoped.

  Belle had refused to entertain even the thought of marrying him. He had known from early on in their relationship that she didn’t have a mercenary bone in her tiny curvy body So, it wasn’t a question of her having gratefully taken the money and run. He didn’t credit that. Yes, she had been upset by the marriage proposal, but not enough to leave him over it. If he had been in the mood to laugh, he would have savoured the reality that asking Belle to become his wife had upset her rather than pleased her. He, who had long known himself to be one of the biggest prizes on the marriage market and the target of every designing single woman, had been shot down in flames. But, sadly, he wasn’t in the mood to laugh there in that empty bedroom without Belle.

  He hadn’t got halfway to the funeral he had attended before he had realised where he had gone wrong with the proposal. He hadn’t said a tenth of what he should’ve said. He had struck out because he had put his pride first. He hadn’t told her he loved her. He had been too proud to put that out upfront. He swore under his breath and attempted to picture his life without Belle. So bleak was the picture he summoned up, he paled. She had even taken the dog with her!