Ravelli's Defiant Bride

‘There’ll be a next time?’ Rafe could not help responding in surprise.

Cristo’s smile was as cold and threatening as a hungry polar bear’s. ‘Oh, there’ll be a next time all right.’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘IT’S ALL OUT in the open now, which is much better,’ Isa told Belle comfortably. ‘Now we all know where we stand.’

Belle dashed a stray curl from her hot brow with a forearm, finished wiping the work surface and dried her hands. She had indulged in an orgy of cleaning since returning to the Lodge. She had needed a physical outlet to work off her excess energy. Her grandmother always reacted to stressful situations with calm and acceptance and when Belle had mentioned worst-case scenarios in the homeless field, Isa had quietly reminded her that it would be a few weeks before Bruno and Donetta returned home for the summer and that that was ample time in which to find somewhere to rent. Belle had had to swallow back the thorny question of how she would pay rent because she didn’t have the money and Isa didn’t either.

Tag began to bark noisily a split second before the doorbell went. Belle walked out to the hall with Tag bouncing excitably at her heels.

Cristo Ravelli stood on the step, six feet four inches tall at the very least and Belle had no heels on, so he towered over her, radiating raw energy and power. His lean, darkly beautiful face was hard and forbidding. ‘Miss Brophy?’

‘Belle,’ she corrected curtly.

Cristo looked his fill from the mane of colourful curls tumbling round her shoulders to the porcelain-pale delicate features that provided the perfect frame for grass-green eyes and a full pink mouth. Out of disguise and bare of the tacky make-up she was absolutely breathtaking.

Belle flushed and parted her lips to ask what he wanted and her grip on the door loosened, allowing Tag to take advantage and dart outside to spring an attack on the visitor.

Cristo got off the step fast as the little dog snarled and attacked his ankles. Belle squatted down, saying not very effectively, ‘No, Tag, no!’

Cristo received the impression that the dog was welcome to eat him alive if he chose to do so.

‘Grab Tag!’ an older woman snapped from the hall.

Belle gathered the frantic little dog into her arms. ‘I’m sorry. He’s suspicious of men.’

‘Come in, Mr Ravelli,’ Isa Kelly invited politely over her granddaughter’s crouching figure.

Belle’s head came up fast, green eyes stormy. ‘I wasn’t going to ask—’

‘Mr Ravelli is a guest,’ her grandmother decreed. ‘He will visit and you will talk like civilised people.’

Tag growled

at Cristo from the security of Belle’s arms. ‘Your father kicked him…so did mine,’ she confided grudgingly. ‘That’s why he doesn’t like men. He’s too old now to change his ways.’

The older woman studied Cristo, hostility creeping into her voice, despite the civility of her words.

Cristo strolled into a hideous lounge with pink walls, hot-pink sofas and embellished with so many pink frills and ostentatious fake-flower arrangements that it was as if his worst nightmare had come to life. ‘I’ve never liked dogs,’ he confided.

A curly-haired toddler clamped both arms round his leg before he could sit down.

‘No, Franco,’ Belle scolded.

‘Or kids,’ Cristo added unapologetically.

Franco looked up at him. He had Gaetano’s eyes and Cristo found that sight so unnerving that he sat down with the kid still clamped awkwardly to one leg.

‘Man,’ Franco pronounced with an air of discovery and satisfaction.

‘He’s a wee bit starved of male attention,’ Belle breathed, setting down the dog to grab the toddler in his place and convey him struggling and loudly protesting into the kitchen with her.

‘Cristo drinks black coffee,’ her grandmother told her from the doorway.

Belle gritted her teeth but she knew that the older woman was talking sense; she did have to talk to Cristo and, having set out her expectations, at least he already knew her plans.

Cristo ignored the dog snarling at him from below the coffee table. It was little and grey around the muzzle and should have known better in his opinion than to embark on a battle it couldn’t possibly win. Cristo never wasted his time on lost causes or thankless challenges but Belle would, no doubt, have been pleased to learn that her threat had focused his powerful intellect as nothing else could have done.