The cluster of shouting and gesticulating press-waving cameras as they emerged from the VIP channel at the airport came as a rude wake-up call. ‘Look happy,’ Dante urged in her ear as he locked a supportive hand to her stiff spine. Belle smiled and all the cameras obediently flashed. He didn’t pause to respond to the questions being hurled at him. Security guards escorted them out to the waiting limousine.
‘You’re clearly quite a celebrity in Italy. You should’ve mentioned that,’ Belle told him.
‘Gossip columnists take a ridiculous interest in my private life and for once I’ve given them something to report...thanks to you.’
‘What have I got to do with it?’ Belle demanded.
‘You insisted that you be allowed to be yourself and I have given you your wish. When my staff were asked to identify you, they admitted that you were a waitress I met in France and the press do love to wallow in a whirlwind romance,’ Dante declared with cynical amusement.
‘I just wasn’t expecting that level of public interest in your life,’ Belle told him, already beginning to regret her insistence that she go under her own name with Dante as she wondered if her father would read about her in some newspaper.
On the other hand, she couldn’t imagine her father reading a gossip column, but what did she know about the man? Very little and hopefully any publicity would be confined to the Italian press. Yet her self-respect cringed at the possibility of her father learning that she had moved in with a very rich Italian because he would no doubt assume that she was faithfully following in her gold-digging mother’s footsteps. And she didn’t want to give her long-absent father the excuse to believe that he had been right not to pursue a more normal relationship with her. His rejection and the injustice of being held accountable for her mother’s sins still stung.
Charlie greeted her with rapture at the smart boarding kennels, bounding into her arms as if they had been parted for months. She petted him and calmed him down before turning to Dante to say, ‘Let’s go and say hello to your brother’s dogs while we’re here.’
Dante frowned. ‘I don’t think...’
‘Don’t be mean, Dante,’ Belle argued fierily. ‘Imagine how boring it must be in here for them every day and how much it will mean to them to get a visit.’
Incredulous at being called mean for the first time in his life, Dante spread lean brown hands in frustration and annoyance. ‘Five minutes...that’s all,’ he specified. ‘And that’s all you’ll want because they’re frantic little beasts with no manners at all.’
‘We’ll put Charlie into his travelling box and leave him out here while we visit them. It wouldn’t be fair to unsettle them with a strange dog,’ Belle remarked as she persuaded Charlie into the box. ‘You know, Dante...dogs can learn manners. With a little training, you might find them perfectly acceptable. I’m willing to help if I can.’
‘They’re not coming home with us,’ Dante swore vehemently, registering that when he gave an inch with Belle she tried to take a mile.
‘OK,’ Belle conceded, wondering how long it would take to change his mind as he addressed the proprietor and they were led down a corridor giving access to a line of kennels.
‘They jump up at you and drop hair everywhere,’ Dante complained, angry that he had allowed himself to be shamed into doing something he didn’t want to do.
Belle didn’t know what breed of dog she had expected Dante’s late brother to have owned but she was surprised to see two tiny short-haired chihuahuas, one brown, one black and white, nestled cosily in an extravagant pink basket. As they leapt out of the basket to greet Dante with an enthusiasm he didn’t deserve, Belle crouched down and quite deliberately got in their way. In seconds she had an armful of squirming, overexcited chihuahuas in her lap and she sat down on the floor of the corridor below Dante’s disbelieving gaze and slowly calmed them down with a quiet voice and an occasional sharp no.
‘Do you want to hold them now they’ve settled?’ she asked Dante over her shoulder.
‘No,’ Dante said flatly.
Belle suppressed a sigh and resisted the temptation to ask him to make an effort. She petted the little animals, wondering how Dante could withstand those little pleading dark eyes. He had been doing it for a year, she reminded herself wryly.
‘They’ve never behaved that well for me,’ he confided. ‘Clearly, you’re the beast whisperer.’
Belle sighed as she returned the dogs to their kennels and they whined and clawed at the mesh in disappointment. ‘I suppose I was expecting your brother to have hunting dogs...well, something large and macho.’
‘Cristiano was liked cute dogs,’ Dante admitted quietly. ‘He was gay, and the more our parents criticised him, the more flamboyant he became.’
‘They couldn’t accept him as he was?’
‘Oh, they’re very liberal and accepting in public, and they have gay friends, but they still didn’t want a gay eldest son and heir,’ Dante derided. ‘They tried to disinherit him, tried to change the succession rules to prevent him from inheriting my father’s title, but there was no legal recourse. Tragically, his death suited them.’
Belle stroked his arm as they got into the limo, Charlie already on board, tail thumping noisily inside his plastic carrier box. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘As children we were never allowed a pet because my mother doesn’t like animals. Tito and Carina were Cristiano’s first rebellion. He used to joke that at least the presence of the dogs prevented our mother from making unannounced visits to his apartment in Florence,’ he told her gruffly.
Belle smiled. ‘He had a sense of humour, then.’
‘In the right mood he was the life and soul of the party, but he always suffered from low self-esteem and when anything went wrong, he blamed himself.’
‘Does your mother make unannounced visits to your home?’ Belle asked apprehensively.
‘Not for a long time. Relax... If she shows up, I will deal with her,’ Dante assured her confidently.
‘How far are the kennels from your house?’ Belle prompted.
‘A ten-minute drive.’ A faint hint of colour flared over Dante’s high cheekbones as he met her surprised violet eyes. ‘I’ll look into rehoming the dogs. It wasn’t what Cristiano wanted for them but you’re right, it would be kinder.’
He wasn’t used to pets, having been raised without them, but her heart ached at the depth of grief and guilt that still tormented Dante. He was so very different from the man she had initially assumed him to be. His emotions ran deep and strong. There was nothing superficial about him. If she discovered that she was pregnant, she didn’t believe that he would try to pressure her into doing anything she didn’t want to do and that was a relief. She had had a friend once who had allowed her boyfriend to persuade her into a termination. Her friend had agreed in the belief that it would save the relationship, but it hadn’t, and it had taken a very long time for her to get over the decision she had made. Belle didn’t want to be put in that position, although in her case, she acknowledged unhappily, there would be no relationship to save.
The limo was travelling up a spiralling road with hairpin bends and, almost at the top of the hill, it turned into a lane. Belle was still twisting her head around to catch another glimpse of the staggeringly beautiful view of the Tuscan countryside, green hills and valleys studded with cypress trees, little pale stone hilltop villages, composed of houses with vivid terracotta roofs.
‘Welcome to the Palazzo Rosario,’ Dante murmured, and she swivelled back to be confronted by the magnificent mansion sited a
t the foot of the drive and her brows went up in stunned surprise.
‘You could’ve mentioned that it was a Palladian palace,’ she whispered in awe.
‘How do you know it’s the work of Palladio?’ Dante enquired.
Belle flushed and her soft full mouth compressed. ‘Why? Isn’t a waitress supposed to know about stuff like that?’ she snapped.
‘Few would recognise the fact at first glimpse,’ Dante told her wryly. ‘I’m curious.’
‘My grandfather had a great interest in architecture and a big collection of books,’ Belle admitted. ‘Growing up he dreamt of being an architect but, of course, it was just a dream.’
‘Why?’
Belle sighed. ‘When he was young, working-class boys went straight out to work as soon as they were legally able to leave school. It didn’t matter how clever they were. Further education wasn’t free, and it wasn’t an option. Grandad worked as an accounts clerk in an office all his life.’
‘But he taught you about architectural history,’ Dante gathered.
‘It was his personal interest. He would save up to buy these big books and then he would share the best pictures and highlights with me,’ she recalled fondly, thinking once again that she had been very fortunate in her grandparents.
‘I learned young as well. The palazzo belonged to my uncle on my mother’s side, Jacopo Rozzi. He was an art historian. He never married and when he died, he left his entire estate to me, which effectively made me independent of my family,’ Dante admitted. ‘I owe him a great debt for his generosity.’
‘Is that how you started out in business?’ Belle asked curiously, climbing out of the limo to look up in wonder at the long colonnaded frontage and the perfect symmetry of the rows of tall windows.
‘Jacopo invested in my business while I was still at university and got me off to a flying start.’ Dante looked down at her, the glow of her usual exuberance drawing him even as he reflected in bewilderment that he had never done so much talking in his life with a woman as he had done with her. She was so natural with him and he had not had that experience with her sex before. Even the attention she was giving the palazzo, rather than him, was outside his normal experience and weirdly annoying.