Buch lesen: «His Cinderella's One-Night Heir»

CHAPTER ONE

DANTE LUCARELLI, BILLIONAIRE renewable energy entrepreneur, roared down the private road on the powerful motorbike, revelling in the wind against his skin, in the rare sense of freedom. For a very short space of time all his problems evaporated. And then that magical moment was over and he was recalling his duties as a guest and slowing down to enable his host, Steve, to overtake him.

‘You let me win!’ Steve growled, punching the taller male’s arm in retribution as they parked the bikes. ‘Where’s the fun in that?’

‘Didn’t want to show you up in front of the locals,’ Dante tossed back, his thick blue-black hair tousled, white teeth glinting in the sunlight against his lean bronzed features as he grinned down at his former schoolmate. ‘Anyway, it’s your bike... And so this is it? Your latest venture?’ he added, glancing through the overhanging pine trees at the restaurant surrounded by decking and overlooking the swimming lake. Sited above the sandy beach, it had a funky, carefree, Caribbean vibe. ‘Kind of small, isn’t it, for a guy who builds skyscrapers for a living?’

‘Knock it off,’ his friend urged, a burly blond man with the build of a rugby player. ‘It’s seasonal and does very well when the weather’s good.’

‘And employs a lot of those locals you like to take a paternal interest in,’ Dante mocked, knowing Steve’s sense of civic responsibility all too well. Steve Cranbrook was a kind man and one of the very few men Dante trusted.

They were in the south-east of France, a rural, far-from-touristic area where Steve had bought a chateau on a hill as a summer home for himself and his family. His all too numerous family, Dante reflected with a near shudder. Steve had four of the little blighters, two sets of twins under five, and they had been crawling over Dante and demanding attention ever since he had flown in earlier that day, which was why the break from the chateau was welcome. It wasn’t that Dante disliked children, just that he wasn’t used to them and weathering Steve’s sociable kids was like trying to stand in the path of a hurricane armed with innumerable arms, legs and chattering tongues.

‘It’s not like that,’ Steve protested. ‘I just invest when I see the chance and contribute if there’s a good cause. There aren’t many employment opportunities around here.’

Dante took a seat at a wooden table hewn out of a giant tree trunk. Shrewd dark-as-pitch eyes swept the colourful bunting fluttering in the breeze as he picked up on the rampant beat of the music coming from the speakers and noted the youthful gathering at the bar. ‘I bet this is the only party place in the neighbourhood,’ he commented.

‘Pretty much, but the food’s good too. We get a lot of family trade when the beach is busy. So, tell me, when are you meeting with Eddie Shriner?’

Dante’s lean, darkly handsome features tensed as the bite of his biggest problem sank its teeth into him afresh. ‘In two weeks’ time, and I still haven’t got a woman on board to keep Krystal at bay.’

‘I thought Liliana was stepping up as a favour,’ Steve incised in surprise.

‘No, that fell through. Liliana wanted an engagement ring as an inducement,’ Dante admitted with an exasperated frown of recollection. ‘Even though it would be a phoney engagement, I wasn’t taking the risk of travelling down that road even with her.’

‘An engagement ring?’ Steve queried in surprise. ‘Why on earth would she need a ring to pretend that she was your girlfriend again for Krystal’s benefit?’

Dante shrugged a lean shoulder. ‘She said it was a matter of pride, that she would lose face in front of Krystal if she didn’t have a ring, because why else would she have reconciled with me when we broke up years ago?’

‘Your love life...’ Steve groaned, raking a rueful hand through his floppy blond hair. ‘If you didn’t dump so many women and leave them bitter and angry, you wouldn’t be in this situation.’

Dante compressed his eloquent mouth in silent disagreement. He had no intention of ever marrying and producing children, and he had never lied to a woman on that score. He was upfront about his sex life and there was no room for love in it. Any woman who thought otherwise soon learned her mistake. He didn’t get attached to women—never had, never would—and Liliana was the only exception to that rule. She was an ex who had become a friend and he genuinely respected and liked her, but he had still not been able to love her or want a more serious relationship with her.

Even trusting Liliana had initially been a challenge because Dante had never had quite the same view of women since he had caught his deceitful mother in bed with one of his father’s closest friends. His snobbish mother, who stood in social judgement over others for their smallest mistakes and was quick to turn her back on them. He had soon realised that his parent regularly slept around. His indifference to Liliana had, however, told Dante all he needed to know about his own essentially cold heart. Without a doubt, he had inherited that ice gene from his unloving parents, he acknowledged grimly.

His sole experience of love had been his deep attachment to his older brother, Cristiano, and when Cristiano had died a year ago, it had shattered Dante and left him tormented with guilt. He often thought that had he been less selfish he might have saved his brother. Tragically, however, Cristiano had taken his own life because he had never been able to stand up for himself. Placed under intolerable pressure by their demanding parents and trying desperately hard to please as the eldest son and heir, Cristiano had crumbled and ultimately snapped under the strain.

And now the best that Dante could do in memory of his late brother was strive to buy back that little piece of woodland heaven where Cristiano had gone whenever life became too much for him. Sadly, in the wake of their firstborn’s death, their parents had immediately sold that piece of land for the highest price possible to Eddie Shriner, a resort developer currently married to Dante’s most embittered former lover. Even since marrying Eddie, Krystal had made several unashamed attempts to get Dante back into her bed. The woman was incorrigible and the last thing Dante needed was Krystal coming on to him while he was trying to make a business deal with her husband.

‘You should hire an escort to play your girlfriend. That sort of a woman, someone you pay,’ Steve disconcerted him by suggesting, his voice dropped to a discreet level across the table lest he be overheard.

‘Sounds dodgy and dangerous,’ Dante countered with a grimace, his attention stolen by the petite young woman standing by the bar with a tray.

Her hair was as multicoloured as a Halloween bonfire, a vivid curling mass of untidy copper, red and glinting gold anchored by a clasp to the back of her head. She had the porcelain pale skin of a true redhead and the legs and breasts of a goddess, Dante decided, following the slim shapely length of those fantastic legs down into the scuffed cowboy boots she wore teamed with a floaty short floral skirt and a fitted top, above which the swell of her lush breasts foamed like a desert mirage. Quirky fashion sense though, decidedly not his style.

‘That’s Belle. Er...ground control to Dante?’ Steve joked when Dante failed to even look his way.

With difficulty, Dante dredged his attention back from those ripe, enthralling curves and the classic shape of the oval face above the display, and glanced wryly back at his companion.

‘That’s Belle,’ Steve repeated with amusement glinting in his frank brown eyes.

‘What’s a looker like that doing waitressing in a place like this?’ Dante demanded as he shifted restlessly on his bench seat, reacting to the all-male punch of pure lust pulsing at his groin.

‘Possibly waiting for an opportunity like you to come knocking,’ Steve mocked. ‘Look, she’s trying to save up enough money to get back to the UK and set herself up there again. You could step in like a good guy and fly her over to London with you.’

‘Is this why you brought me here? Since when do I do anything for nothing?’ Dante demanded, lifting his sunglasses to get a better look at that glorious oval face, only to discover on that closer inspection that it was unexpectedly dotted with freckles. He was almost relieved that there was a flaw in all that perfection. He wondered what colour her eyes were. Big eyes, too big?

‘Of course not. It just occurred to me this minute that you could both do each other a favour. Why not hire Belle? She’s in a jam... Oh, and there’s a dog in the story too. You like dogs, no? Well, by all accounts she’s a very nice girl, probably not your type at all. They’ve been running a book behind the bar all summer betting on which guy will make waves with her.’

‘Charming,’ Dante breathed, his nostrils flaring with disgust as he looked away. ‘I don’t do nice girls.’

‘But this isn’t one you would plan to do,’ Steve pointed out very drily. ‘You need a fake girlfriend, not a lover, and she needs the money. I offered her a loan but she wouldn’t take it. She’s got pride and she’s honest. She told me she couldn’t take the money because she didn’t know how she would ever pay it back.’

‘And she’s a waitress. End of story,’ Dante responded sardonically. ‘I don’t mess around with waitresses.’

‘You’re a snob and I never knew it,’ Steve remarked in wonderment. ‘Of course, I knew about the blue blood, the family palazzo, the title and all the rest of those trappings you claim to despise.’

‘What would a waitress do if she was plunged into my world?’ Dante enquired with biting derision.

‘What you were paying her to do, which is more than you can say for most of the entitled women we both know,’ Steve pointed out levelly. ‘It would be a simple hire-and-fire situation but I’m not sure she would go for it. I hear she can be a bit of a hothead.’

Dante said nothing because he collided with the eyes of the woman coming to serve them. Yes, the eyes were big and they were a sparkling, unusually dark blue that verged on violet, very noticeable against that ivory freckled skin of hers.

* * *

While Belle was on her break she had watched the two men walk in from the car park. Everyone knew Steve, the British owner of the restaurant, a friendly and unassuming man in spite of his wealth and success as an award-winning architect with a string of international offices. Steve was also an unashamed family man with four beautiful kids and an even more beautiful Spanish wife, but his guest was as physically different from him as night was from day.

He was very tall, lean and powerful in build and he moved with the lithe precision of a man very much at home with his own body. His luxuriant wind-tousled black hair, falling almost long enough to touch his broad shoulders, blew back in the breeze, accentuating his hard, sculpted features. Even in jeans and an open-necked shirt, he was as sleekly magnificent as a black panther, physically beautiful in a wild, natural way and probably equally dangerous.

Several women peered out from the bar to admire his progress. Belle went back inside to do her job, silently listening as the bartender, a keen user of social media and a business student, identified the stranger as Dante Lucarelli. Evidently, he was some mega-rich Italian, a tycoon in the field of renewable energy. She walked over to serve Steve and his guest and as the Italian glanced up at her from beneath long black curling lashes that were wickedly wasted on a member of the male sex, she collided with vibrant dark golden eyes. For a terrifying split second, she froze as if a detonator had gone off inside her and her whole body burned as if he had set her on fire.

Flushed and filled with discomfiture, she took their drink orders and hastened back to the bar to fill them. She shouldn’t have looked at him, shouldn’t have looked anywhere near him, she scolded herself fiercely. He was extraordinarily good-looking and he knew it. Of course he did. Nobody saw a face like that in a mirror every day and failed to notice its lack of flaws and, even if he didn’t look in mirrors much, every woman under sixty was studying him with appreciation and he could hardly be unaware of the amount of attention he attracted.

Belle’s face was red and she hated that she couldn’t stop that rush of self-conscious colour that turned her the colour of an overripe tomato. It embarrassed her as much at the age of twenty-two as it had when she had been at school and the butt of unkind jokes. Diminutive in height, red-haired, freckled, as well as overly endowed in the chest category, she had been very, very low on the cool scale of popularity at school.

* * *

Dante was hugely amused by the top-to-toe blush that had enveloped Belle. When had he last seen a woman blush? He could not remember, but then he didn’t make the mistake of associating blushing with either shyness or innocence. He was much more inclined to link it to sexual attraction and awareness. He was accustomed to women looking at him and wanting him. After all, it had been happening since he was sixteen, when he had lost his virginity to one of his mother’s friends, his rebellion after being confronted by his mother’s extramarital fling. At the age of twenty-eight, he took it for granted that ninety-nine out of a hundred women would say yes to sharing his bed if he asked. And rarely did he even have to ask. Sex was frequently offered to Dante on a plate and without the smallest encouragement.

* * *

Belle delivered the drinks without once looking in Dante’s direction and that overheated feeling in her body began mercifully to fade, allowing her to breathe again. It was normal to notice an attractive man, she soothed herself, and it wasn’t her fault that she blushed fire-engine red. Just an unfortunate fact of life and she needed to learn to deal with it, as she had learned to deal with so many other unfortunate facts.

Predictably, her mind strayed back to the bad luck that seemed to thread through almost every wrong decision she made. She had been born to a woman who didn’t want her, and a father who wanted nothing to do with her and told her so without embarrassment. Her grandmother, Sadie, had told her that that lack of interest was her parents’ problem and not something that Belle should take personally. Her grandparents had loved her, she recalled with a prickling sensation behind her eyes, but her gran and grandad were both gone now and thinking about their loss only made Belle feel sad because it reminded her all over again that she was alone in the world with nobody and nothing to fall back on when things went wrong. And in France, things had gone very, very wrong for Belle.

* * *

Dante studied Belle as she moved round the bar, striving to imagine her dressed in haute couture, and that was a challenge when for some juvenile reason his brain only wanted to picture her naked. Clearly, a new wardrobe would make her infinitely more presentable but, of course, she would have to stop biting her nails. Such a disgusting habit, he reflected with distaste.

‘What’s she doing in France?’ he asked Steve carelessly, angling his chin in Belle’s direction.

‘I only know local gossip. Word is she came out here about three years ago as a housekeeper/ companion for an elderly English widow living in the village. The widow’s family hired her in London and left her to sink or swim as the old lady drifted into dementia. Eventually the local doctor got a little help for her but Belle was basically left to struggle.’

Dante slanted up an ebony brow. ‘She sounds like an idiot. Why didn’t she just walk out and go home when the job got too much for her?’

Steve frowned. ‘She was attached to the old lady by then and didn’t want to let her down or abandon her.’

‘How did she end up working here, in the bar?’

‘The widow had a heart attack and died and as soon as the funeral was over, her family sold her house and left Belle homeless and without sufficient money to get home on. They also threw out the old lady’s dog...Charlie,’ Steve murmured as a small raggedy mutt badly in need of grooming nudged up against his leg for attention before moving on to eagerly greet another regular customer, who was more likely to offer him food.

Dante paid no heed to the dog, his attention resting on his friend. ‘And then?’

‘The guy who rents this place offered Belle an old campervan to live in. It’s parked in the overflow car park behind the trees and she and the dog moved in. Then he gave her a job here.’

‘So, she’s pretty much one of life’s losers,’ Dante surmised without surprise. ‘I’m more into winners.’

‘But losers are undoubtedly easier and less demanding to negotiate with,’ Steve remarked with cynical acceptance. ‘And when have you ever been shy about profiting from other people’s misfortunes?’

Dante grinned. ‘Being ruthless is in my genes.’

‘Except when it came to your brother. I lost count of the times you dragged Cristiano out of trouble,’ Steve murmured, unimpressed. ‘And you 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.