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

‘Come in, Mr Ravelli,’ Isa Kelly invited politely over her granddaughter’s crouching figure.

Belle’s head came up fast, green eyes stormy. ‘I wasn’t going to ask—’

‘Mr Ravelli is a guest,’ her grandmother decreed. ‘He will visit and you will talk like civilised people.’

Tag growled at Cristo from the security of Belle’s arms. ‘Your father kicked him...so did mine,’ she confided grudgingly. ‘That’s why he doesn’t like men. He’s too old now to change his ways.’

The older woman studied Cristo, hostility creeping into her voice, despite the civility of her words.

Cristo strolled into a hideous lounge with pink walls, hot-pink sofas and embellished with so many pink frills and ostentatious fake-flower arrangements that it was as if his worst nightmare had come to life. ‘I’ve never liked dogs,’ he confided.

A curly-haired toddler clamped both arms round his leg before he could sit down.

‘No, Franco,’ Belle scolded.

‘Or kids,’ Cristo added unapologetically.

Franco looked up at him. He had Gaetano’s eyes and Cristo found that sight so unnerving that he sat down with the kid still clamped awkwardly to one leg.

‘Man,’ Franco pronounced with an air of discovery and satisfaction.

‘He’s a wee bit starved of male attention,’ Belle breathed, setting down the dog to grab the toddler in his place and convey him struggling and loudly protesting into the kitchen with her.

‘Cristo drinks black coffee,’ her grandmother told her from the doorway.

Belle gritted her teeth but she knew that the older woman was talking sense; she did have to talk to Cristo and, having set out her expectations, at least he already knew her plans.

Cristo ignored the dog snarling at him from below the coffee table. It was little and grey around the muzzle and should have known better in his opinion than to embark on a battle it couldn’t possibly win. Cristo never wasted his time on lost causes or thankless challenges but Belle would, no doubt, have been pleased to learn that her threat had focused his powerful intellect as nothing else could have done.

The instant the tray of coffee and biscuits arrived, Cristo rose back upright, feeling suffocated amidst all that horrible pinkness. ‘I don’t want you to take the question of the children’s parentage into court.’

‘Tough,’ Belle said succinctly, not one whit perturbed by his statement because she could hardly have expected him to be supportive on that score. ‘My brothers and sisters have been ignored and passed over far too many times. I want them to have what they’re entitled to.’

‘A few years ago, Gaetano sold up most of his assets and he salted away the proceeds in overseas trusts, which no Irish court will be able to access,’ Cristo volunteered. ‘With the exception of the sale of the Mayhill estate there is very little cash for you to demand a share of on behalf of your siblings.’

‘I’m not looking for a fortune for them.’

‘I have a better idea,’ Cristo told her.

‘I imagine that you always have a better idea,’ Belle quipped helplessly, leaning back against the kitchen door with defensively folded arms while she wondered how any man could look so fit and vital clad in a tailored business suit that belonged in a boardroom.

She was slim as a whip in her tight faded jeans and an off-the-shoulder black tee that revealed an entrancing glimpse of a narrow white shoulder bisected by a black strap that Cristo savoured, glorying in the fact that he was now free to appreciate her glowing beauty while he speculated as to whether or not she was that pale all over, her skin in vibrant contrast to her bright hair and eyes. The instant he developed an erection, he regretted that evocative thought.

‘I will make a settlement on your siblings in compensation for their not pursuing their rights through the courts,’ Cristo delivered, half turning away from her to look out of the window overlooking the drive.

‘We don’t want Ravelli charity,’ Belle traded, lifting her chin.

‘But it wouldn’t be charity. As you said, they’re my father’s children and I should make good on that for all our sakes. My family would find a court case embarrassing,’ Cristo admitted tight-mouthed.

Belle didn’t shift an inch. ‘Why should I care about that?’

‘Publicity is a double-edged sword,’ Cristo warned her. ‘The media loves sleaze. Your mother won’t emerge well from the story. At least three of the children were born while Gaetano was still married.’

At that blunt reminder, a veil of colour burned up below Belle’s fair complexion. ‘That can’t be helped and Mum can’t be hurt now. I have to consider the children’s future. I want them to have the right to use the Ravelli name.’

‘No court that I know of has the ability to bestow that right when no marriage took place between the parents,’ Cristo countered, exasperated by her pig-headedness. ‘You’re being unreasonable. If you keep this out of court and allow me to handle things discreetly, I will be generous. It’s the best offer you’re going to get.’

‘Forgive me for my lack of trust. As I learned today with regard to the ownership of this house, your father was a good teacher.’

‘I will not allow you to take this sordid mess into a public courtroom,’ Cristo spelt out harshly. ‘If you do that I will fight you every step of the way and I warn you—you don’t want me as an enemy.’

‘Fight me all you like...it’s still going to court,’ Belle replied thinly. ‘We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.’

‘What would it take for you to drop this idea?’ Cristo growled, almost shuddering at the threat of how much damage a media smear campaign could do to his brother. Zarif’s standing in Vashir was delicate, his having only recently ascended the throne. The last thing Zarif needed right now was a great big horrible scandal that would give all too many people the impression that he was from a sleazy family background and was far from being the right ruler for a very conservative country. Zarif, Cristo reminded himself grimly, had already taken the fall for revealing Nik’s biggest secret to Nik’s estranged wife, Betsy, when the first careless spilling of that secret was entirely Cristo’s fault.

‘I’d probably be asking for the impossible,’ Belle admitted ruefully, ‘but I want my siblings to have the lifestyle they would have enjoyed had Gaetano married my mother. It’s very unfair that they should have to pay the price for the fact that he didn’t marry her.’

‘You’re being irrational,’ Cristo condemned, impatiently, moving out of the room. ‘You can’t change the past.’

‘I don’t want to change the past. I simply want to right the wrongs that have been done to my siblings.’

‘Leave the past behind you and move on.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ Belle quipped. ‘Not so easy in practice. And I’m not irrational—’

In the hall, Cristo swung round, surprisingly light on his feet for so large and powerfully built a man. ‘You’re the most irrational woman I’ve ever met.’

Belle collided with his stunning dark eyes and for a timeless moment the world stopped turning and she stopped breathing.

‘And for some reason I find it incredibly sexy,’ Cristo purred the admission, his accent roughening his dark deep drawl as he flicked her tee shirt back up over her exposed shoulder with a long careless forefinger.

‘You can’t get round me. I’m not as naïve as my mother was,’ Belle told him tartly.

‘Wake up and smell the roses, cara. You’re a child trying to play with the grown-ups,’ Cristo told her thickly, his intimate intonation vibrating down her taut spinal cord.

Suddenly, Belle was short of breath and she stared up at him, her eyes very wide and scornful. ‘A child? Is that the best you can do on the insult front?’

‘I wasn’t trying to insult you.’ Up that close his dark eyes had tiny gold flecks like stars. His hand curved to her shoulder and the scent of clean, warm male overlaid with a faint hint of cologne ignited a burst of heat low in Belle’s tummy. Just as suddenly she was locked into his eyes and it was as though her feet were encased in concrete and she literally couldn’t move. He lowered his handsome dark head and took her parted lips with a scorching urgency that sent something frighteningly wild and alive flying through her like an explosive charge. It was a fiery kiss and like no other she had experienced. The minute his tongue plunged into the tender interior of her mouth, it sent a wave of violent response crashing through her, and she was lost. Her hands roamed from his broad shoulders up into his luxuriant dark hair while she rejoiced in the taste of him, the unique sexual flavour of a dominant and surprisingly passionate male. His arms tightened round her, long fingers smoothing down her spine to pin her into uncompromising awareness of his erection. She gasped beneath the thrust of his tongue, mind flying free to picture a much more sexual joining and craving that completion with a strength that started an ache between her thighs.

The sheer intensity of what she was feeling totally spooked Belle. With a startled sound of rejection, she pushed him back from her. ‘No, we’re not doing this!’ she told him furiously.

Dark eyes veiled, Cristo stepped back and drew in a long, deep, steadying breath. Maledizione! He was too aroused to be comfortable with the sensation or the woman who had got him into that condition. ‘I seem to recall that I was trying to persuade you not to take private family business into a court of law,’ he murmured flatly.

Belle shot him a disconcerted glance, unable to credit that he could act as frozen as ever in the wake of that passionate kiss. Passion, it seemed, didn’t control Cristo Ravelli. All in the space of a moment she resented his assurance, was insulted by his cool indifference and furious that she hadn’t fought him off. But, my goodness, he could kiss. That mortifying thought crept through her mind no matter how hard she tried to kill it dead.

Belle had done a lot of kissing and not much else as a student, very much hoping to experience a volcanic reaction that would signal that all-important spark of true, overwhelming physical attraction. Now fate was having the last laugh by finally serving up that long-awaited, miraculously special kiss and it was happening with the wrong man. She had no doubt that Cristo Ravelli was wrong in every way for her. He was stuffy and cold and unfeeling and she was a warm, emotional and impulsive individual.

‘I’m sorry. I’m going to do what’s best for my siblings and take this matter to court to get it sorted out,’ Belle told him curtly.