Italian Bachelors: Brooding Billionaires: Ravelli's Defiant Bride / Enthralled by Moretti / The Playboy's Proposition

‘Pro-proposition?’ Belle framed shakily, fighting like mad to maintain control over her temper. So, she’d had bad news and she was going to have to deal with it. She stared stonily back at Cristo, clashing with stunning dark eyes nailed to her with unsettling intensity. In the rushing silence that had fallen, her throat closed over and her mouth ran dry.

‘I want to ask you to consider the idea of having your children adopted,’ Cristo suggested quietly. ‘It would surely be best for them to leave their troubled and questionable parentage behind them and have the opportunity to live a normal life.’

‘I can’t believe you just said that to my face,’ Belle confided between gritted teeth of restraint.

‘I would make the sacrifice very well worth your while,’ Cristo continued evenly as if what he was suggesting were perfectly normal and acceptable. ‘My father should have ensured that you have a home and an income but since he hasn’t done it, I will take care of it instead.’

‘No decent mother would surrender her children for financial gain,’ Belle declared in a raw undertone while shooting him a look of scorn that he could even suggest otherwise. ‘What sort of women are you used to dealing with?’

‘That’s not your affair. I am not my father and I have no children,’ Cristo replied with cold dignity.

‘And don’t deserve any either!’ Belle lashed back at him. ‘For goodness’ sake, those children you’re talking about are your own brothers and sisters!’

‘I do not, and will not, acknowledge them as such,’ Cristo retorted with icy hauteur.

‘Why? Aren’t they good enough to be Ravellis?’ Belle shot back at him resentfully. ‘The housekeeper’s kids...not very posh, is it? Not quite the right background, am I right? Well, let me tell you something—’

‘No. I don’t want you to tell me anything while your temper is out of control,’ Cristo cut in with the cutting edge of an icy scalpel.

‘And you pride yourself on being an iceberg, don’t you?’ Belle launched back fearlessly, her generous mouth curling with contempt. ‘Well, I’m not ashamed to be an emotional person and ready to do what’s right no matter how unwelcome or difficult it is!’

‘Does your ranting ever get you to the point?’ Cristo enquired witheringly.

Belle’s slender hands coiled into tight fists. She had never wanted to hit another living person before and she was shocked by the fact that she would very much have liked to slap him. How dared he stand there looking down on her and her siblings as if they were so much lesser than him? How dared he suggest that her brothers and sisters be torn away from the people they loved and settled in another home with adoptive parents? Couldn’t he appreciate that the children were living, breathing people with emotions and attachments and a desperate need for security after the losses they had already sustained? And couldn’t he accept that while Mary Brophy might have had her flaws when it came to picking reliable men, she had also been a wonderful loving mother every day of Belle and her siblings’ lives?

‘The point is...’ Belle breathed in a voice that literally shook with the force of her feelings. ‘My mother may only have been a housekeeper and she may have been your father’s mistress for years, but she was also a very special, kind and caring person and, having lost her, her children deserve the very best that I can give them.’

‘Your...mother?’ Cristo repeated flatly. ‘Mary Brophy was your mother?’

And Belle froze there, her skin slowly turning cold and clammy with shock as she realised what she had revealed in her passionate attempt to bring Cristo round to her point of view. For a moment, she had totally forgotten that she was pretending to be her mother in her desperate need to defend the older woman’s memory.

‘So, if you’re not Mary Brophy...where is she? And who are you?’ Cristo framed doggedly, incensed that she had dared to try and fool him.

‘I’m Belle Brophy. My mother died about a month after your father. She had a heart attack,’ Belle admitted with pained green eyes, accepting that she could no longer continue the pretence and that her own unruly temper had betrayed her when she could least afford for it to do so. Unfortunately Cristo Ravelli’s unfeeling detachment and innate air of command and superiority were like vinegar poured on an already raw wound.

‘You had no intention of telling me that your mother was dead... You lied to keep the Lodge,’ Cristo condemned without hesitation.

Dismay assailed Belle at how quickly he had leapt to that unsavoury conclusion and had assumed she had had a criminal motivation for her masquerade. ‘It was nothing to do with the Lodge. Until I came here today I believed my mother owned it and that as her children it became ours after her death,’ she reminded him. ‘But I didn’t think you’d listen to what I want for the children if you knew I was only their sister and not their mother.’

Cristo had a very low tolerance threshold for people who lied to him and tried to deceive him. He was remembering the long-legged redhead crossing the lawn the evening before and guessing that that had been Belle Brophy all along. Outrage swept through his big powerful body, sparking his rarely roused temper. Anger fired his dark eyes gold and he took a sudden livid step towards her. ‘You pretended to be your mother... Are you crazy? Or simply downright stupid?’

Her heart suddenly thumping very fast at the dark masculine fury etched in his lean, strong face, Belle sidestepped him and raced for the door. She never hung around long when a man got mad in her vicinity; her childhood had taught her that rage often tumbled over the edge into physical violence.

Cristo closed a hand round her slender forearm as she opened the door. ‘You’re not going anywhere yet.’

‘Let go of my arm!’ Belle slung up at him furiously, feeling intimidated by the sheer size of him standing that close. ‘I made a mistake but that doesn’t give you the right to manhandle me!’

‘I’m not manhandling you!’ Cristo riposted in disgust. ‘But you do owe me an explanation for your peculiar behaviour!’

Her green eyes flared with anger and she yanked her arm violently free of his hold. ‘You’re a Ravelli! The day I owe you anything there’ll be two blue moons in the sky!’

For a split second, Cristo watched her stalk across the hall, stiletto heels tap-tapping, slender spine rigid, red corkscrew curls beginning to untidily descend from her inexpertly arranged chignon. ‘Come back here!’ he roared at her, out of all patience.

Belle spun round angrily, watching him move towards her, and then she spun out a hand and grabbed up a heavy vase from the table beside her and brandished it like a weapon. ‘Don’t you dare come any closer!’ she warned him.

‘Is it normal for you to act like a madwoman?’ Cristo asked softly, mastering his fury and his exasperation with the greatest of difficulty.

‘I’m going to take you to court, force you to recognise the children!’ Belle spat back at him in passionate challenge. ‘They have legal rights to a share of your father’s estate and you can’t prevent them from receiving it. And I am not a madwoman.’

An inner chill gripped Cristo at the threat of a court case in which every piece of Gaetano’s dirty linen would be aired with the media standing by happy to scoop up and publicise every sordid detail. ‘Calm down,’ he advised tersely. ‘And we’ll talk.’

‘I don’t trust you!’ Belle hurled back. ‘Let me leave or I’ll throw this at you!’

An instant later, Cristo could not comprehend that he had walked forward in the face of that warning instead of just letting her go, particularly when it was clear that he wouldn’t be able to get a sane word out of her until she had calmed down.

Belle flung the vase at him and fled, cringing from the sound of breaking porcelain hitting the tiled floor as she hauled open the front door and raced down the front steps.

‘Technically that was an attempt to assault you,’ his bodyguard, Rafe, remarked from the stairs as Cristo brushed flakes of porcelain from his suit, his handsome mouth compressed and lean, dark face a grim mask.

‘She couldn’t hit a barn door at ten paces. Next time, I won’t jump out of the way,’ Cristo breathed from the steps as he watched her stalk down the driveway, her head held high like an offended queen. She was mad, completely and utterly mad, nutty as a fruitcake. How was he supposed to negotiate with a woman like that? But he had to deal with her or face a very public and embarrassing court case.

‘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 (#uca032b44-5670-52ad-a716-c379e0f219ac)

‘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.’