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.