LITMIR.BIZ

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      Pale as milk, Belle wrapped her clammy body in the discarded towel and dropped down on the foot of the disordered bed, deeply shaken at the mere idea that she had run the risk of falling pregnant. And the last thing she wanted to do was raise a child alone with the father having absolutely no interest in his child. It had done nothing for her self-respect to be confronted by a father who couldn’t care less about her, and who indeed seemed to resent her for the simple fact that she had even been born, costing him a small fortune in child-support payments...not that her rich father, a highly successful banker by all accounts, could have found it that much of a challenge to make those payments.

      * * *

      Dante was grateful for the distraction of running the bath. He had never done such a thing for a woman before but felt the effort was required after his less-than-stellar taking of her virginity, which he had hoped to accomplish without hurting her. He was tense and distracted though, already asking himself why he hadn’t gone ahead and had a vasectomy when the idea had first occurred to him some years earlier. Cristiano had talked him out of that idea. But Dante absolutely refused to give his parents the heir they craved to ensure the next generation of their precious dynasty. And they had been such dreadful parents that he was convinced he would be equally hopeless in the same role. That was why he had never wanted a child. He lacked heart and affection.

      But what if he had got Belle pregnant? What would she want to do in such circumstances? If she was even half as fond of children as she was of that scruffy little dog she would want to go ahead and have the child. And then, whether he liked it or not, he would be a father with all a father’s responsibilities.

      ‘Your bath’s ready,’ Dante murmured from the doorway. ‘I’m going for a shower.’

      Belle stood up. ‘What will we do if—’

      ‘We’ll deal with it...if it happens,’ Dante countered levelly, his dark golden eyes veiled. ‘There’s no point fretting about it right now.’

      * * *

      There was a lot of sense in that wait-and-see attitude, Belle told herself as she settled down into the bath, unable to relax into its warmth because she was too tense and far too busy watching Dante’s arrogant dark head shift behind the marble wall that closed off the shower. She supposed she might have considered the morning-after pill had she not been so aware that, had such an option been available to her mother, Tracy, she herself would never have been born at all. And that was a very sobering thought. When Alastair Stevenson had refused to marry Tracy as she had hoped, any interest her mother had had in her unborn child had vanished. Indeed, Tracy had resented being left as an unwed mother and had resented even more the damage pregnancy had done to her previously perfect figure, and she had taken that bitterness out on her daughter.

      Belle didn’t stay long in the bath. In fact, she crept out of the bathroom like a cat burglar, dropped her towel and donned her pyjamas in frantic haste to get back to her own bedroom as quickly as she possibly could. After all, if there had been an ambience between them, it had died after the mishap. His shuttered face had told her all she would ever need to know about Dante’s opinion of her having his child. He didn’t want it to happen. He didn’t even want to think about such a possibility. And in that, she supposed, he wasn’t much different from any other young single guy put in the same position. How else could she expect him to feel? It wasn’t as if he were in love with her. It wasn’t as if he even knew her that well.

      Her dispirited eyes took in the opulence of her bedroom and she sighed. It wasn’t even as if she and Dante came from the same world. She was a girl with a mother and a father who ignored her, only casual friends, and she had been sleeping in a rusty campervan and working as a waitress when Dante had met her. Dante was a guy who travelled in limos, wore incredibly elegant designer suits and he had spent more than half his life being educated. She was a nobody, a nothing in comparison, she decided wretchedly.

      Why, oh, why had she slept with him? Why had she let herself be tempted like that? Live a little? Live a little and live to regret it, she concluded unhappily...

       CHAPTER SIX

      DANTE HAD BEEN up working since the crack of dawn when Belle finally showed.

      She gave him a huge smile from the top of the stairs when their eyes met. It was fake as hell and he liked that he could tell that it was fake because she had a highly expressive face. Faint shadows highlighted her violet eyes and proved that she had not slept much better than he had. Served her right for leaving his bed the way she had, he reflected, dark golden eyes simmering. Dante wasn’t used to women taking him by surprise or making moves on their own, and Belle had done both when he had found her gone when he’d got out of the shower the night before. Well, she wouldn’t be doing that tonight, he thought with innate satisfaction, because she would only be sleeping in his bed while she was in Italy.

      ‘You have about thirty minutes to get breakfast,’ Dante murmured softly, watching the sunlight make a fiery halo of her hair and add sparkle to her eyes. Her outfit—striped cropped trousers and a white top, teamed with canvas sneakers—had a nautical air that gave her the look of a sexy sailor. His keen gaze roamed over her shapely figure and he remembered that she had felt like liquid silk and he hardened instantly.

      ‘I’m starving,’ Belle admitted unselfconsciously as she dropped down into a seat and the butler appeared to take her order. ‘I can hardly wait to be reunited with Charlie.’

      ‘We’ll pick him up on the way home. By the way, I’ve arranged for your packing to be done.’

      Belle nodded and smiled as a pot of tea arrived. She was disturbingly aware of the lingering scrutiny of Dante’s stunning dark golden eyes. What was he watching and waiting for? She had agreed with his wait-and-see outlook and she wasn’t about to freak out over something that might never happen. At the same time, she had had thoughts during the night that would probably horrify Dante because she had tried to imagine herself becoming a mother. For someone who had never had a mother as such that had been a scary prospect, but she had decided that she would cope, somehow, she would cope the way she always had when life threw up unexpected developments.

      And the more she had thought about how different a parent she would be in comparison to her own parents, the more she had warmed to the vague image of a baby she could love. A little boy, a little girl, she didn’t care, but she did like children and the idea of finally having her own family could only warm her heart. That was the right attitude to have, she told herself firmly: turn any negative aspect into a positive so that she was prepared for whatever happened.

      ‘When will we know?’ Dante asked levelly.

      Belle registered that his mind was in exactly the same place as her own and she coloured. ‘In about ten days—’

      ‘We’ll have a test done as soon as possible,’ Dante told her in the same measured tone.

      Belle demolished a croissant in record time, unnerved by Dante’s calm and slightly irritated that he was hiding how he really felt from her, acting all distant and businesslike in the aftermath of the passionate encounter they had shared the night before. Of course, it would be neither civil nor kind of him to admit that he was horrified by their situation, she allowed grudgingly. Really, she was being unreasonable in expecting any more from him than a polite pretence.

      Dante watched Belle’s lips curl round a shred of croissant, the tip of her tongue peeking out as she savoured the pastry with unconcealed pleasure, her head tipping back slightly, lashes lowering, her white throat exposed, her slim body momentarily stretching, the fabric pulling tight across the full firm swell of her breasts. He was fiercely aroused by her sensual enjoyment of her food and he marvelled at the way she could make the simplest things seem impossibly sexy. Thoroughly disconcerted by his reaction, Dante attempted to work out why having Belle once had only whetted his appetite for her and stoked it higher, instead of at least partially cooling his immediate interest.

      Glancing

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