His Cinderella's One-Night Heir

‘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.