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

Her mother’s over-hasty marriage at a young age to Belle’s drunken father followed by Mary’s long affair with Gaetano Ravelli had taught Belle to be very cautious and sensible and to carefully reason out every move she made in advance with men, except when it came to the opportunity to marry Cristo when she had—inexplicably to her—jumped right in with both feet. And her current wary attitude to intimacy was creating friction with Cristo. Could she blame him for his outlook?

What, after all, had Cristo gained from their marriage? Her silence, no court case and five pretty needy children he had promised to adopt into the Ravelli family. Her tense mouth down-curved on the discouraging suspicion that he had sacrificed much more than she had and that few people would feel sorry for her having given up her freedom to work and instead live in the lap of luxury with her fancy designer wardrobe. That thought made her eyes sting fiercely with tears because she had very little interest in the luxury and the vast selection of new clothes that had been delivered in garment bags to her room before she even got out of bed. In fact, she had only donned one of the outfits, a silky top and skirt, because she hadn’t wanted Cristo to think that she was ungrateful for the gesture he had made.

But unfortunately, Cristo wasn’t even around to notice what she was wearing. That was the problem of separate bedrooms in a massive house and two people who didn’t know each other’s habits very well, Belle reflected wretchedly. Cristo had been absent at dinner the night before and now he was absent again. Was he avoiding her? Fed up with her immature outlook? It seemed pretty obvious to her that she was getting absolutely everything in their marriage wrong, and to achieve that at such an early stage suggested that she had cherished completely unreasonable expectations of what being married to Cristo would entail. He had assumed she was a gold-digger and, having brooded over that accusation, she wasn’t sure she could blame him for his cynicism. After all, he didn’t know her and possibly connecting on a physical level was the only way Cristo knew how to get to know a woman, so her coming over all prudish and standoffish because he had hurt her feelings wasn’t helping the situation...

And worst of all, Belle knew she couldn’t even phone her grandmother. Isa Kelly’s sensible advice would have been very welcome even though Belle could not have brought herself to mention the bedroom side of things to the older woman. Indeed even the sound of Isa’s voice and those of her siblings would have been a comfort. Belle was horribly homesick and missed the family dog, Tag, almost as much. But Belle knew that if she phoned home within days of the wedding her grandmother would be astute enough to suspect that things weren’t working out and it would be very, very selfish to lay yet another worry on her grandmother’s already overburdened shoulders.

Disgusted at her self-pitying mood and lack of activity, Belle suddenly pushed her chair back and stood up. Sitting here feeling sorry for herself and agonising over her possible mistakes wasn’t fixing anything, was it? It was time to go and find Cristo.

Questioned, Umberto smiled and indicated a door at the foot of a short corridor off the main hall. ‘Mr Cristo has been working round the clock in his office since news of the banking crisis broke...’

What banking crisis? Belle had not seen a television or a newspaper since the morning of her wedding. She had noticed that the nanny, Teresa, had a TV in her room but had drawn a blank when she looked for access to one for her own benefit. Perspiration breaking on her brow, she knocked on the door of Cristo’s office and then opened it.

Dark eyes flying up from his laptop screen, Cristo swung round in his chair. Belle’s appearance shocked him on two levels. Dio mio, he had a wife and he had forgotten about her, and then his next thought was that forgetting about her should have been impossible when she was such a beauty, standing in the doorway, a slender, wonderfully leggy figure taut with uncertainty in a peach-coloured top and skirt that toned in perfectly with her torrent of vibrant spiral curls. Wide grass-green eyes assailed his.

‘I wondered where you were,’ she said awkwardly, transfixed as she always was at first glimpse of his tousled dark head, perfect bronze profile and striking eyes. The fact he hadn’t shaved merely added a raw-edged masculinity to his charismatic appeal and she could feel her face warming up, her tummy flipping, her heart rate skipping upbeat: all standard reactions to Cristo. ‘Then Umberto mentioned a banking crisis of some kind. I’m afraid I haven’t seen a newspaper since I arrived and I didn’t know about it. Do you need any help?’

‘Help?’ Cristo queried, ebony brows rising in surprise. ‘How could you help?’

‘I have a first-class degree in business and economics and I worked as an intern for a year in a Dublin bank as part of the course,’ Belle confided hesitantly.

A line of colour flared across Cristo’s cheekbones as it crossed his mind that he should’ve known such elementary facts about the woman he had married, and rare discomfiture sliced through him. ‘I had no idea.’

Her eyes sparkling with genuine amusement, an involuntary grin slanted Belle’s wide and generous mouth. ‘So, you just assumed you were marrying an uneducated Irish peasant, did you?’

‘If you’re willing to help, I’d be grateful, bella mia,’ Cristo admitted, smoothly, gratefully ducking that issue entirely. ‘I’m trying to work with my London staff remotely and it’s complicated but this is supposed to be our honeymoon.’

‘I’ve got nothing else to do,’ Belle pointed out gently, convinced that a couple of their ilk scarcely qualified for the itinerary or the behaviour of a normal honeymoon couple.

Cristo immediately recognised yet another screaming indictment of his behaviour as a new husband and hurriedly sidestepped that awareness by offering Belle the laptop beside his own and springing upright to ask Umberto to go and find another chair. His conscience reacted as though someone had given it a good hard kick. Marriage, he was learning by slow and painful steps, would demand much more of him than he had imagined and would entail considering Belle’s needs as well as his own.

For the first time, he appreciated that he had had absolutely no right to judge his brother, Nik, for the mess he had made of his marriage to Betsy. After all, he only knew one side of that story and tiny, fragile Betsy weeping out her heartbreak on Cristo’s chest had definitely cornered the sympathy vote as far as appearances went. His lip curled as he skimmed a glance across Belle’s composed and lovely face and he almost smiled in relief. There was nothing helpless about Belle and at least she wasn’t crying hysterically, complaining, condemning...

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