Ravelli's Defiant Bride

‘There’s another four of them—a boy and a girl of eight and a pair of teenagers,’ Cristo confided, for he had known the kindly manservant since he was a child.

‘Your late father’s children?’ Umberto prompted.

Cristo’s brows drew together. ‘How did you know?’

‘I heard rumours over the years. My cousin flew Mr Gaetano’s helicopter right up until his retirement,’ the older man reminded him gently.

‘Let’s hope the rumours stay buried,’ Cristo commented wryly.

‘No one in my family will gossip,’ the older man assured him with pride. ‘But Mr Gaetano had other staff who may not be so discreet.’

A current of uneasiness assailed Cristo, who had ensured that his father’s surviving employees were paid off with adequate remuneration for their years of service. Was it possible he had got married for no good reason? And inexplicably, at that point, he thought of Franco, who demonstrated such a desperate need for male attention. Franco definitely needed a father figure, Cristo reflected, his stern mouth softening as the toddler’s gales of laughter echoed down from above.

‘No…no…no, Franco!’ Belle gasped in dismay when she found her little brother picking in delight through the collection of items lying on the dressing table in Cristo’s bedroom. ‘Don’t touch those.’

Jingling the car keys still in his hand, Franco dropped the wallet he had been investigating and it fell to the floor. Belle knelt down to gather up the banknotes that Franco had crumpled, smoothing them out before returning them to the wallet along with credit cards, a couple of business cards and…a tiny photograph. Belle lifted the photo and stared down at it in surprise, recognising Nik Christakis’s estranged wife, Betsy. She was a little blonde sprite of a beauty with delicate features and big blue eyes. Her brow furrowed. Had the photo fallen out of the wallet or had it just been lying there forgotten on the floor? The rug beneath her knees, however, bore the ruffled evidence of recent vacuuming. So, assuming the photo had been inside Cristo’s wallet, why was her husband carrying round a photo of his brother’s wife?

And was she even going to ask him why? Belle came out in a cold sweat at the very prospect of so embarrassing a conversation. After her misjudgement of his behaviour with the model, he would never believe that she had accidentally seen the photograph. He would think she had been snooping in his wallet and he would naturally assume that she was one of those madly jealous, distrustful women, who would always be scheming to check his cell-phone messages and his pockets for evidence of infidelity. Cringing at that likelihood, Belle slotted the photo back into his wallet and returned it circumspectly to the dressing table. No, she wasn’t about to ask him any more awkward questions.

Matters were tense enough between them. And yet so many important things hinged on the success of their marriage, she thought wretchedly. If she and Cristo couldn’t make a go of it, what would happen to her siblings? She had made promises, not least those in the chapel, which she had to, at least, try to keep. Unless she was prepared to let Cristo go free, she had to make more of an effort.

But please, no, she prayed, let not the only avenue to success demand the sporting of saucy underwear….

CHAPTER EIGHT

BELLE SAT ALONE at the breakfast table out on the terrace, which overlooked the glorious gardens and, beyond them, the beautiful panorama of the idyllic Umbrian landscape, and decided that nobody would ever credit how miserable and insecure she was. Here she was, all dressed up in gorgeous surroundings, married to an even more gorgeous man and already she had made a mess of things! Although, to be fair, expecting her to be willing to put on provocative lingerie for his benefit had scarcely been calculated to soothe her misgivings.

Do you ever do anything for the sheer hell of it? Cristo had asked. And the truthful answer would have been, no, never. So, how on earth had she managed to leap into marrying Cristo without fully considering what she was doing? She still couldn’t answer that question to her own satisfaction. Had her treacherous attraction to him destroyed every single one of her brain cells? Why hadn’t she listened to her grandmother’s warnings? After all, nobody knew better than Belle that relationships between men and women were often difficult and prone to unhappiness.

Her mother’s over-hasty marriage at a young age to Belle’s drunken father followed by Mary’s long affair with Gaetano Ravelli had taught Belle to be very cautious and sensible and to carefully reason out every move she made in advance with men, except when it came to the opportunity to marry Cristo when she had—inexplicably to her—jumped right in with both feet. And her current wary attitude to intimacy was creating friction with Cristo. Could she blame him for his outlook?

What, after all, had Cristo gained from their marriage? Her silence, no court case and five pretty needy children he had promised to adopt into the Ravelli family. Her tense mouth down-curved on the discouraging suspicion that he had sacrificed much more than she had and that few people would feel sorry for her having given up her freedom to work and instead live in the lap of luxury with her fancy designer wardrobe. That thought made her eyes sting fiercely with tears because she had very little interest in the luxury and the vast selection of new clothes that had been delivered in garment bags to her room before she even got out of bed. In fact, she had only donned one of the outfits, a silky top and skirt, because she hadn’t wanted Cristo to think that she was ungrateful for the gesture he had made.

But unfortunately, Cristo wasn’t even around to notice what she was wearing. That was the problem of separate bedrooms in a massive house and two people who didn’t know each other’s habits very well, Belle reflected wretchedly. Cristo had been absent at dinner the night before and now he was absent again. Was he avoiding her? Fed up with her immature outlook? It seemed pretty obvious to her that she was getting absolutely everything in their marriage wrong, and to achieve that at such an early stage suggested that she had cherished completely unreasonable expectations of what being married to Cristo would entail. He had assumed she was a gold-digger and, having brooded over that accusation, she wasn’t sure she could blame him for his cynicism. After all, he didn’t know her and possibly connecting on a physical level was the only way Cristo knew how to get to know a woman, so her coming over all prudish and standoffish because he had hurt her feelings wasn’t helping the situation…

And worst of all, Belle knew she couldn’t even phone her grandmother. Isa Kelly’s sensible advice would have been very welcome even though Belle could not have brought herself to mention the bedroom side of things to the older woman. Indeed even the sound of Isa’s voice and those of her siblings would have been a comfort. Belle was horribly homesick and missed the family dog, Tag, almost as much. But Belle knew that if she phoned home within days of the wedding her grandmother would be astute enough to suspect that things weren’t working out and it wou

ld be very, very selfish to lay yet another worry on her grandmother’s already overburdened shoulders.

Disgusted at her self-pitying mood and lack of activity, Belle suddenly pushed her chair back and stood up. Sitting here feeling sorry for herself and agonising over her possible mistakes wasn’t fixing anything, was it? It was time to go and find Cristo.

Questioned, Umberto smiled and indicated a door at the foot of a short corridor off the main hall. ‘Mr Cristo has been working round the clock in his office since news of the banking crisis broke…’

What banking crisis? Belle had not seen a television or a newspaper since the morning of her wedding. She had noticed that the nanny, Teresa, had a TV in her room but had drawn a blank when she looked for access to one for her own benefit. Perspiration breaking on her brow, she knocked on the door of Cristo’s office and then opened it.

Dark eyes flying up from his laptop screen, Cristo swung round in his chair. Belle’s appearance shocked him on two levels. Dio mio, he had a wife and he had forgotten about her, and then his next thought was that forgetting about her should have been impossible when she was such a beauty, standing in the doorway, a slender, wonderfully leggy figure taut with uncertainty in a peach-coloured top and skirt that toned in perfectly with her torrent of vibrant spiral curls. Wide grass-green eyes assailed his.

‘I wondered where you were,’ she said awkwardly, transfixed as she always was at first glimpse of his tousled dark head, perfect bronze profile and striking eyes. The fact he hadn’t shaved merely added a raw-edged masculinity to his charismatic appeal and she could feel her face warming up, her tummy flipping, her heart rate skipping upbeat: all standard reactions to Cristo. ‘Then Umberto mentioned a banking crisis of some kind. I’m afraid I haven’t seen a newspaper since I arrived and I didn’t know about it. Do you need any help?’

‘Help?’ Cristo queried, ebony brows rising in surprise. ‘How could you help?’

‘I have a first-class degree in business and economics and I worked as an intern for a year in a Dublin bank as part of the course,’ Belle confided hesitantly.

A line of colour flared across Cristo’s cheekbones as it crossed his mind that he should’ve known such elementary facts about the woman he had married, and rare discomfiture sliced through him. ‘I had no idea.’

Her eyes sparkling with genuine amusement, an involuntary grin slanted Belle’s wide and generous mouth. ‘So, you just assumed you were marrying an uneducated Irish peasant, did you?’

‘If you’re willing to help, I’d be grateful, bella mia,’ Cristo admitted, smoothly, gratefully ducking that issue entirely. ‘I’m trying to work with my London staff remotely and it’s complicated but this is supposed to be our honeymoon.’