The Italian's Ruthless Seduction

Exasperation finally had Bella’s head lifting, her glare more than a little angry. ‘I didn’t actually leave Andrei, Mum. We never lived together. I broke up with him because he was sleeping with other women at the same time as he was sleeping with me.’

‘So you said. But truly, Bella, all seriously wealthy men have wandering eyes. And Andrei isn’t just wealthy. He’s a billionaire many times over. I read on the internet that he’s just opened the most luxurious hotel in the world in Istanbul. Just think what kind of life you could have as his wife. He doesn’t care about those other girls. It’s you he pursued and wanted. You he would have proposed to, in the end.’

‘No, he wouldn’t have, Mum. Andrei’s not the marrying kind.’

‘Which is why I advised you to get pregnant. He would have married you then. A proud man like that would not have wanted to have an illegitimate child.’

Bella shook her head, thinking ruefully she should have told her mother the truth about Andrei. Yes, he was proud but was also totally selfish with absolutely no conscience. He’d fallen in lust with her when he’d seen her on stage one night in New York, pursuing her quite ruthlessly—and romantically—till she’d given in and gone to bed with him. At the time, she’d actually thought he loved her, and vice versa.

Unfortunately, their sex life was not a great success. Her fault, of course. It was always her fault; all of her lovers over the years—and there’d been a lot less than the tabloids suggested—having grown bored with her after a relatively short while. None of them could believe that she was actually quite shy in the bedroom. That was why she’d been a virgin till she was twenty-one, and why it always took a very determined admirer to seduce her.

When Bella had confronted Andrei with his unfaithfulness last year—his cavorting on the deck of his yacht with some female had been all over the gossip rags—he’d claimed that her lack of passion was why he had to have other women. He’d said he’d grown tired of her refusing to do all the erotic and exotic things he craved. But he would put up with her being somewhat boring in bed, he’d added, because he loved having a woman of her exquisite beauty on his arm in public. He’d even offered to buy her an apartment in Paris, if she would overlook his other mistresses and continue to go out with him. He’d actually been shocked when she’d told him their relationship—such as it was—was over. Andrei was not used to rejection from the opposite sex.

Of course, if Bella had told her mother all that, she would have said that she’d been a fool not to at least accept the apartment in Paris.

She was indomitable, her mother. Indomitable and dominating and downright infuriating, with a moral compass that was as suspect as Andrei’s. Bella had grown up thinking Dolores was wonderful: a single mother who’d become estranged from her own family when she’d fallen pregnant during a working holiday overseas; supposedly seduced by a married Swedish chap she’d met on the snowfields of Switzerland. She’d refused to tell her disgusted parents the father’s name, refused to have an abortion, then refused to live under their roof by their rules. Bella had admired that. If it were true, that was. She’d come to believe in recent times that maybe a lot of what Dolores had told her over the years might not have been strictly true. Still, it was true that Dolores had worked hard to give her daughter everything she’d needed. She’d even managed to budget her meagre wage as a receptionist to pay for dance and singing lessons. Though not with the kind of teacher she’d wanted for her talented Isabel.

So when a new boss had arrived on the scene, an Italian widower who’d been sent out to Sydney by his father to head the Australian branch of the family’s import business, Dolores had seen the answer to all her problems. From photographs Bella had seen, Dolores had been a very attractive woman back then. Poor Alberto hadn’t stood a chance, and soon Dolores had acquired a husband able to provide everything for his new stepdaughter that Dolores had wanted. Not only the best private tuition money could buy but also enrolment at a top school that specialised in the performing arts.

And the rest, as they said, was history.

Bella looked at her mother and wished she didn’t still love the woman. Impossible not to, she supposed. She was her mother. On top of that, she knew Dolores did love Bella back, even if she was a pain in the neck.

‘Mum,’ she said firmly. ‘I am not going to Europe to meet up with Andrei. Neither am I going to tell you where I’m going, except to say that I am going alone. Now I want you to leave this room ASAP. If you don’t, I will pick you up bodily and carry you out.’ Which she could. All those years of dancing had made Bella very strong. She was also a good eight inches taller than her mother, who barely topped five feet. Bella had obviously inherited her height and fair colouring from her Swedish father.