His Cinderella's One-Night Heir. LYNNE GRAHAM
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say you’re not sentimental and yet look at the lengths you’re willing to go to, simply to buy that woodland back.’
Dante’s high cheekbones and strong jawline clenched hard. ‘That’s different.’
‘It must be, particularly as I seem to remember that the first time you stayed in Cristiano’s log cabin, you hated it like hell.’
‘I don’t enjoy roughing it, but Cristiano was always a back-to-nature freak,’ Dante recalled abstractedly, his attention locking back on Belle as a couple of young guys flirted with her while she delivered their drinks. She wasn’t blushing for their benefit, she was brisk and professional, he noted with helpless satisfaction. He signalled her with a graceful brown hand to order another set of drinks.
‘Not for me,’ Steve demurred with regret. ‘Sancha will have dinner on and she hates it when I’m late for meals.’
‘It’s only nine,’ Dante pointed out incredulously.
‘Well, to be honest, my wife doesn’t really like me out of her sight for too long,’ Steve admitted with quiet pride.
Dante winced at the very idea of his freedom to do as he liked being curtailed in such a fashion.
‘Listen, don’t knock being married until you’ve tried it!’ Steve protested in his own defence.
‘I am never ever going to try it,’ Dante assured him with a grim look of amusement. ‘But I am in the market for a girlfriend I can employ and I may be late back tonight.’
Dante returned to watching Belle, his attention drawn involuntarily to the bountiful swell of her breasts as she bent down to lift drinks off the tray, not to mention the enticing curve of her bottom thrust out and the skirt rising to expose the backs of her slender bare thighs. He shifted in his seat again, his even white teeth gritting with irritation. He wasn’t a horny teenager. Why was he reacting like one? She brought him his drink and he tossed a note down, telling her to keep the change.
* * *
‘It’s too much,’ she said uncomfortably.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Dante advised succinctly. ‘I’d like a word with you in private when you finish your shift.’
‘I’m tired. I’ll be going straight to bed,’ she told him swiftly. ‘Sorry!’
‘Don’t blow me off before you hear what I have to say,’ Dante urged. ‘It’s possible that I could have a job for you, a job that would eventually get you back to the UK.’
Belle tensed like a greyhound fired up at the starting line. Her eyes lifted from the table they had been carefully studying and surged up to his lean, darkly handsome features instead. There she clashed unwarily with stunning dark golden eyes and she took a very slight step back, gooseflesh tingling on her exposed skin. ‘A job? What kind of a job?’ she questioned.
A lazy grip on his beer bottle, Dante lounged back gracefully against the balustrade surrounding the decking. ‘Later,’ he murmured silkily. ‘That is...if you can contrive to stay awake that long.’
Belle reddened at the comeback. He was so sure of himself he set her teeth on edge. He dangled the bait and then waited for her to jump. Well, she wasn’t going to jump, was she? What sort of job could he possibly offer her? Aside from waitressing, her only work experience was in housekeeping and caring, and it was unlikely that he would seek to hire her for domestic work. Intelligence told her that a wealthy man would use an agency to fill such positions. On the other hand, she had no reason to suspect that he could be on the brink of offering her anything immoral. She was not irresistible, she was not the sort of bombshell that men moved mountains to impress or entrap, she acknowledged impatiently. No, the only sort of sleazy offers she got came from bored married men and randy young ones, thinking that a foreigner might offer a taste of something more exciting than a local. Though surely it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that Dante Lucarelli could have an elderly relative in need of care?
Then, even in that line, there were plenty of people with the paper qualifications for caring that Belle ironically lacked. Fate had forced her into a caring role after her widowed grandfather had become sick. She had had to drop out of school to look after him when he was diagnosed as terminally ill. But it would have been unthinkable for Belle to do any less when her grandparents had loved and cared for her since she was a baby.
Tracy, Belle’s mother and her grandparents’ only child, had been a fashion model in love with the high life, and when Belle’s father had refused to marry Tracy after she fell pregnant, Tracy had refused to become a single parent struggling to survive. At only a few weeks old, Belle had been dumped with her grandparents. On the only occasion when Tracy had chosen to take Belle home with her, it had proved a disaster for both mother and daughter. Tracy was a man’s woman and the man in her life always came first. That was why, in the end, Tracy had satisfied her maternal instincts by making regular payments to her parents in return for which they had raised Belle for her.
Between the ages of five and fifteen, Belle had not seen her mother once, merely following her parent’s jet-set progress round the world with the aid of a map and infrequent postcards. It had been a huge source of disappointment and hurt to Belle when she was fourteen to be invited to live with Tracy and then just as swiftly be thrown back out of her mother’s life again. Tracy’s lover had made a pass at Belle and Tracy had caught him in the act. Although she had forgiven the man involved, she had not forgiven her daughter for the sin of having attracted his attention. After that episode, Belle had not laid eyes on her mother again until her grandfather’s funeral, when Tracy had only come home for long enough to collect the proceeds of her parents’ estate.
‘For goodness’ sake, you’re old enough to be keeping yourself now!’ Tracy had complained bitterly when Belle had asked her for financial help. ‘Don’t be looking for any more handouts from me! Your father stopped paying his dues for you years ago and now, finally, it’s my turn to be free of you.’
Yet Belle had sacrificed three years of her life and the education she had badly wanted to nurse her grandfather. She had also conserved Tracy’s inheritance by ensuring that her grandfather, Ernest, did not have to sell his home to fund his own place in a care home. Ignoring those unwelcome realities, Tracy had sold everything that could be sold and had left Belle penniless and sleeping on a friend’s couch in London. Ironically, back then the advertised job in France with Mrs Devenish had looked like manna from heaven, Belle conceded ruefully.
Belle had needed somewhere to live, and London had been too expensive. In addition, the very idea of working abroad had seemed to promise adventure, something that Belle’s life had sorely lacked. She had leapt in with both feet, believing that all she would have to do was cook, clean and shop and provide occasional companionship to a lonely elderly woman. She had assumed that she would have free time in which to explore and had never dreamt that she would end up trapped and working round the clock in a dull rural village without even a café.
As Belle helped to collect the last glasses, she glanced down at the beach, where she could see Dante Lucarelli poised below the pine trees. Was he waiting for her? Of course she was going to ask him about the job! She was not in a position to ignore even the vaguest chance of getting back home again because the restaurant would be closing for the season in another few weeks and then where would she be? She wasn’t a French citizen and couldn’t sign up for welfare or anything like that. At least in London, if she had no other choice, she could fall back on the benefits system.
Saying goodnight to the other wait staff and with Charlie faithfully following her, Belle trudged down to the beach. Dante was a dark silhouette below the trees and then he stepped into the moonlight, which made his black hair gleam blue and lit up his lean, strong features, highlighting his high cheekbones, classic nose and hard jawline. He needed a shave. A shadow of dark stubble accentuated his wide sensual mouth. With his eyes glittering colourlessly over her as he awaited her arrival in silence, Belle could feel herself getting hot again, as if her body was burning up inside her skin. Suddenly she was grateful for the darkness, knowing she was tomato red again.