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‘But that would be ridiculous!’ Belle objected. ‘Gaetano had nothing to do with the kids even when he was here.’
‘Not according to the law. He paid the older children’s school fees, signed the Lodge over to your mother,’ Mark reminded her with all the devotion to detail inherent in his law-student studies. ‘He may have been a lousy father in the flesh but he did take care of the necessities, which could conceivably give Gaetano’s sons a bigger say than you have in what happens to the children now.’
‘But Gaetano left all five of them out of his will,’ Belle pointed out, tilting her chin in challenge.
‘That doesn’t matter. The law is the law,’ Mark fielded. ‘Nobody can take their birthright away from them.’
‘Adoption...’ Eyes still stunned by that proposition, Belle sank heavily back down into her chair. ‘That’s a crazy idea. They couldn’t have tried this nonsense on if my mother were still alive!’ she exclaimed bitterly. ‘Nobody could have said their mother didn’t have the right to say what should happen to them.’
‘If only Mary had lived long enough to deal with all this,’ Isa sighed in pained agreement. ‘But maybe, as the children’s granny, I’ll have a say?’
‘I doubt it,’ Mark interposed. ‘Until you moved in here after Mary’s death, the children had never lived with you.’
‘I could pretend to be Mum...’ Belle breathed abruptly.
‘Pretend?’ Isa’s head swivelled round to the younger woman in disbelief. ‘Don’t be silly, Belle.’
‘How am I being silly? Cristo Ravelli doesn’t know Mum is dead and if he thinks she’s still alive, he’s very unlikely to try and interfere in their living arrangements.’ Belle lifted her head high, convinced she was correct on that score.
‘There’s no way you could pretend to be a woman in her forties!’ Mark protested with an embarrassed laugh at the idea.
Belle was thinking hard. ‘But I don’t need to look like I’m in my forties...I only need to look old enough to have a fifteen-year-old son and, at the age women are having children these days, I could easily only be in my early thirties,’ she reasoned.
‘It would be insane to try and pull off a deception like that,’ her grandmother told her quellingly. ‘Cristo Ravelli would be sure to find out the truth.’
‘How? Who’s going to tell him? He’s a Ravelli—he’s not going to be wandering round asking the locals nosy questions. He would have no reason to question my identity. I’ll put my hair up, use a lot of make-up...that’ll help—’
‘Belle...I know you’re game for anything but it would be a massive deception to try and pull off,’ Mark said drily. ‘Think about what you’re saying.’
The kitchen door opened and a thumb-sucking toddler with a mop of black curls stumbled in. He steadied himself against Belle’s denim-clad thigh and then clambered up clumsily into his sister’s lap, taking his welcome for granted. ‘Sleepy,’ he told her, the words slurring. ‘Hug...’
Belle cradled her youngest half-sibling gently. Franco was very affectionate and he was quick to curve his warm, solid little body into hers. ‘I’ll take him upstairs for a nap,’ she whispered, rising upright again with difficulty because he was a heavy child.
Belle tucked Franco into his cot beside her bed and for a moment stood looking out of the rear window, which provided a picturesque view of Mayhill House, a gracious grey Georgian mansion set in acres of parkland against the backdrop of the ancient oak woods. Her mother had been a widow and Belle only eight years old when Mary had first started work as Gaetano Ravelli’s housekeeper.
Belle’s own father had been a violent drunk, renowned for his foul-mouthed harangues and propensity for getting into fights. One night he had stepped out in front of a car when under the influence and few had mourned his demise, least of all Belle, who had been terrified of her father’s vicious temper and brutal fists. Mother and daughter had believed they were embarking on a new and promising life when Mary became the Mayhill housekeeper. Sadly, however, Mary had fallen madly in love with her new boss and her reputation had been destroyed from the instant Belle’s eldest half-sibling, Bruno, had been born.
Someone like Cristo Ravelli, Belle reflected bitterly, could have absolutely no grasp of how other less fortunate mortals lived. Cristo was handsome, brilliant and obscenely successful. He had grown up in a golden cocoon of cash, the son of a very wealthy Italian princess who was renowned as a leading society hostess. His stepfather was a Hungarian banker, his home a Venetian palace and he had attended an exclusive school from which he had emerged literally weighed down with academic and athletic honours. It was hardly surprising that Cristo was a dazzling star of success in every corner of his life. After all, he didn’t know what it was to be humiliated, ignored or mocked and she’d bet he had never had to apologise for his parentage.
On the other hand Bruno had only been thirteen when Gaetano first accused his son of being gay because that was the only way Gaetano could interpret Bruno’s burning desire to be an artist. Belle’s little brother had been devastated by that destructive indictment from a father whom he had long been desperate to impress. His growing unhappiness at school where he was being bullied had resulted in a suicide attempt. Belle still got the shivers recalling it, having come so terrifyingly close to losing her little brother for ever. Bruno needed his family for support. Bruno, just like his siblings, needed love and commitment to grow into a contented, well-adjusted adult. There was nothing Belle would not have done to ensure that her siblings remained happy and together.
Having delivered his warning, Mark was taking his leave when she returned downstairs.
‘I’ll get supper on,’ Belle’s grandmother declared.
‘You’re not serious about trying to pretend to be Mary, are you?’ Mark pressed on the doorstep.
Belle straightened her slight shoulders. ‘If that’s what it takes to keep the family together, I’d do it in a heartbeat!’
* * *
The evening light was fast fading when Cristo’s car finally turned up the long driveway to Mayhill.
He had never visited Gaetano’s Irish bolt hole before because Gaetano had never invited any of his relatives to visit him there or, indeed, anywhere else. His father had never bothered to maintain relationships and the minute he was bored he had headed for pastures new and wiped the slate clean of past associations.
A woman with a little dog running at her heels was walking across the sweeping front lawn. Cristo frowned; he didn’t like trespassers. But a split second later he was staring, watching that cloud of colourful curls float back from a stunning heart-shaped face, noting the way her loose top blew back to frame her lush full breasts and a sliver of pale flat stomach, exposing the denim shorts that hugged her derriere and accentuated her long, long shapely legs. She took his breath away and the pulse at his groin reacted with rampant enthusiasm. He gritted his teeth, trying to recall when he had last been with a woman, and when he couldn’t blamed that oversight for his sudden arousal. In reality, Cristo always chose work over sex for work challenged and energised him while he regarded sex as a purely stress-relieving exercise.
He unlocked the massive wooden front door and stepped over the top of a pile of untouched post into a large black-and-white-tiled hall. His protection team composed of Rafe and John moved past him. ‘We’ll check the house.’
A fine layer of dust coated the furniture within view and Cristo was not surprised when Rafe confirmed that the house was vacant. But then, what exactly had he expected? Mary Brophy and her five children occupying the property? Yes, that was exactly what he had expected and why he had used his keys to emphasise the fact that he had the right of entry. He strode through the silent rooms, eventually ending up in the kitchen with its empty fridge standing wide open, backed by the sound of a dripping tap. His handsome mouth curved down as he noted the phone on the wall. One of the buttons was labelled ‘housekeeping’. Lifting the phone, he stabbed the button with exasperated force.
‘Yes?’ a disembodied female voice responded when he had almost given up hope of his call being answered.
‘It’s Cristo Ravelli. I’m at the house. Why hasn’t it been prepared for my arrival?’ he demanded imperiously.
At the other end of the phone, Belle went on all systems alert at the vibrating tone of impatience in that dark, deep accented drawl and her green eyes suddenly glinted as dangerously as emeralds in firelight. ‘Do you think maybe that could be because the housekeeper’s wages were stopped the same day Mr Ravelli crashed his helicopter?’
Cristo was not accustomed to smart-mouthed replies and his wide sensual mouth hardened. ‘I didn’t make that instruction.’
‘Well, it doesn’t really matter now, does it? Regrettably nobody works for free,’ Belle told him drily.
Cristo bit back a curse. He was tired and hungry and in no mood for a war of words. ‘I gather you’re the housekeeper?’
It was the moment of truth, Belle registered, and for a split second she hesitated. An image of her siblings rehomed in an orphanage on the slippery slope to a foster home gripped her tummy and provoked nausea. ‘Er...yes,’ she pronounced tightly.
‘Then get yourself up to the house and do your job. I can assure you that you will be well paid for your time,’ Cristo informed her grittily. ‘I need food and bedding—’
‘There’s several shops in the village. You must’ve driven past them to get to the house,’ Belle protested.
‘I’m happy to pay you to take care of those tasks for me,’ Cristo fielded smoothly before returning the phone to the wall and wondering if it had been wise to recall an insolent housekeeper to her former duties. Reminding himself that he only planned to stay a couple of days before arranging to have the house sold, he dismissed the matter from mind. The housekeeper, he reflected, would be a useful source of local knowledge to have on hand.
Following that call, Belle was in an infinitely more excitable state. After all, it was now or never. She couldn’t introduce herself as Mary’s daughter and then change her mind. Either she pretended to be her mother or she went up to Mayhill and told Cristo Ravelli that his father’s former housekeeper/lover was dead. But when she thought of the influence she could potentially wield for the children’s benefit by acting as their mother, her doubts fell away and she hurried upstairs, frantically wondering how she could best make herself look more mature.
The first thing she did was take off her shorts and top. Rustling through her wardrobe, she found a short stretchy skirt and a long-sleeved tee. Her mother had never ever worn flat heels or jeans and Belle owned only one skirt. Clinging to those Mary Brophy habits as if they might prove to be a good-luck talisman, Belle pulled out a pair of high heels and hurriedly got dressed. That achieved, she went into the bathroom, pushed her hair back from her face and grimaced at her porcelain-pale complexion, which she had often suspected made her look even younger than her years. Surely if she put her hair up and went heavy on the make-up it would make her look older? Brows pleating, she recalled the smoky eye treatment that a friend had persuaded her to try on a night out and she dug deep into her make-up bag for the necessary tools.
She stroked on the different shadows with a liberal hand, blurred the edges with an anxious fingertip and added heaps of eyeliner. Well, she certainly looked different, she acknowledged uneasily, layering on the mascara before adding blush to her cheeks and outlining her mouth with bright pink gloss.
‘I was about to call you down for supper...’ Isa Kelly froze in the tiny hall to watch her granddaughter come downstairs. ‘Where on earth are you going got up like that?’
Belle stiffened. ‘Why? Do I look odd?’
‘Well, if you bent over you could probably treat me to a view of your underwear,’ Isa commented disapprovingly.
An awkward silence fell, interrupted within seconds by the noisy sound of the back door opening and closing. Children’s voices raised in shrill argument broke the silence and a dark-haired boy and girl of eight years of age hurtled into the hall still engaged in hurling insults.
‘If you don’t stop fighting, it will be early to bed tonight,’ Belle warned the twins, Pietro and Lucia.
The twins closed their mouths, ducked their tousled heads and surged up the stairs past their eldest sister.
‘You can tell me now why you’re wearing a skirt,’ Isa pressed Belle.
‘Cristo Ravelli phoned...in need of a housekeeper.’ Belle quickly explained what had transpired on the phone. ‘I need to look at least ten years older.’
As Belle spoke, Isa studied the younger woman in consternation. ‘You can’t possibly pretend to be Mary... It’s an insane idea. You’ll never get away with it.’
Belle lifted her chin. ‘But it’s worth a try if it means that Cristo Ravelli has to listen to what I have to say. He obviously knows nothing about Mum. I don’t think he even realises that she was his father’s housekeeper.’
‘I doubt if he’s that ignorant,’ Isa opined thoughtfully. ‘It could be a shrewd move. Naturally he’s going to want to meet the children’s mother as soon as possible. But I don’t want you going up there to run after the man, doing his shopping and cooking and making up his bed, especially dressed like that!’
‘What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?’
‘It might give the man the wrong idea.’
‘I seriously doubt that,’ Belle responded, smoothing her stretchy skirt carefully down over her slim hips. ‘As far as I’m aware he’s not sex-mad like his father.’
Isa compressed her lips. ‘That kind of comment is so disrespectful, Belle.’
‘It’s a fact, not a nasty rumour.’
‘Gaetano was the children’s father. He may not have been much of a father but you still shouldn’t talk about him like that where you could be overheard,’ her grandmother rebuked her firmly.
Aware that the older woman was making a fair point, Belle reddened with discomfiture. ‘May I borrow your car, Gran?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Belatedly aware that Belle had successfully sidetracked her concern about the deception she was preparing to spring on Cristo Ravelli, Isa planted a staying hand on the front door before Belle could open it. ‘Think about what you’re about to do, Belle. Once you try to deceive this man, there’s no going back and he’ll have every right to be very angry with us all when he discovers the truth...as eventually he must,’ she reasoned anxiously.
‘Cristo is a Ravelli, Gran...shrewd, tricky and unscrupulous. I need an advantage to deal with him and the only way I can get that advantage is by pretending to be Mum.’
CHAPTER TWO
BELLE DROVE DOWN to the garage shop in the village to stock up on basic necessities for the Mayhill kitchen and was taken aback by the cost of the exercise.
Cristo Ravelli was expecting her to cook but she couldn’t cook, at least not anything that required more than a microwave and a tin opener. She pondered her dilemma and decided on an omelette, salad and garlic bread. Surely even she could manage a meal that basic? She had often watched her mother and her grandmother making omelettes. Bruno was also a dab hand in the kitchen. They always ate well when he was home at weekends.
Tense as a steel girder, she drove round to the back of the house, noting that the lights weren’t on. The back door was still locked and with a groan she lugged her carrier bags round to the front, mounted the steps and pressed the doorbell.
Cristo was on the phone when the bell echoed through the hall. Brows drawing together, he went to answer the door, stepping back in surprise when a slender redhead in sky-high heels tramped in past him. The housekeeper? Not his idea of a housekeeper, he conceded, swiftly concluding his call, his brilliant dark eyes flaring over one of the shapeliest bodies he had ever seen and very probably the best ever legs. Legs that put him in mind of the girl he had seen walking across the lawn, his gaze rising to the woman’s face to note the huge anxious green eyes lost in the heavy make-up and the ripe full mouth. She was not his type, no way was she his type, too obvious, too loud, hair too red. Indeed Cristo knew to his cost that he was most attracted to tiny ice-cool blondes with big blue eyes. His conscience sliced through that thought instantaneously, reminding him that that particular image was forbidden for very good reasons. Lush black lashes shielding his grim and guilty gaze, he rested his attention quite deliberately on the redhead’s remarkable breasts. Now, those were truly a work of art like her legs, he conceded abstractedly.
Sadly accustomed to the effect her full bosom tended to have on the male sex, Belle studied Cristo Ravelli at her leisure. By any estimate, he was drop-dead gorgeous. He had luxuriant black hair closely cropped to his arrogant head, spectacular bone structure and quite stunning dark-as-charcoal eyes enhanced by absurdly long sooty lashes. A light shadow of stubble roughened his olive-skinned jaw line, adding to an already overpoweringly masculine presence.
Her pupils dilated, her heart began hammering an upbeat tempo and her tummy performed acrobatics. It was nerves, she told herself, nerves and adrenalin reacting to the challenge of the deception she was embarking on. It didn’t help that Cristo was also extremely tall, actually tall enough to make her feel small even though she was an easy five feet eight inches in height and stood even higher in heels. His shoulders were broad below the tailored jacket of his no doubt expensive business suit, his chest wide, his lean hips tapering down to legs that were very long and powerful.
‘I’ll take these down to the kitchen and start cooking,’ Belle told him, raising her arms to display the bulging carrier bags.
Her rounded breasts shimmied below the fine jersey top and Cristo’s mouth ran dry. ‘You’re my father’s housekeeper?’ he prompted because she was not at all what he had expected, having dimly imagined some feisty but sensible countrywoman of indeterminate age.
Abandoning her attempt to walk right by him, Belle set the bags on the floor at her feet and lifted her head high. ‘I’m Mary Brophy,’ she announced, thrusting up her chin in challenge.
Both disconcertion and disbelief assailed Cristo and his dark deep-set eyes narrowed to increase their searching intensity as he scrutinised her. ‘You were my father’s...mistress?’ he asked.
Nausea stirred in her tummy at that label but she could think of no more accurate description for the compromising position her late mother had occupied in Gaetano’s life and colour fired her cheeks. ‘Yes.’
A split second earlier, Cristo had been mentally undressing her and that awareness now revolted him as the ultimate in inappropriate activities now that he knew who she was. This was the woman who had occupied his father’s bed for at least fifteen years, earning a longevity that no other women had contrived to match in Gaetano’s easily bored existence. And looking at her, suddenly Cristo was not surprised by that fact because self-evidently this woman worked at her appearance. Even after giving birth to five children she still had the slender waist of a young girl and, below the make-up she seemed to trowel on as thick as paste, her fine pale skin was unlined and still taut. She was too young, way too young-looking though to match the woman he had expected to meet, he decided, his ebony brows pleating in perplexity.
‘You were also Gaetano’s housekeeper?’ Cristo questioned.
‘Yes.’ With determination, Belle bent down to lift the bags again. ‘Omelette and salad all right for you?’ she asked, heading for the kitchen at speed.
A very decorative housekeeper, Cristo thought numbly, still quite unable to picture her as the mother of five children. Five!
‘You must have been very young when you met my father,’ Cristo commented from the kitchen doorway.
Belle stiffened as she piled the perishable food into the fridge. ‘Not that young,’ she fielded, wanting to tell him to mind his own business but reluctant to cause offence. After all, she needed his support to secure a decent future for her siblings. Although what realistic chance did she have of gaining it? At worst, Cristo Ravelli might despise and resent his father’s illegitimate children, and at best, he might be simply indifferent to them. Adoption, for goodness’ sake, she reflected in lingering disbelief. How many people would even dare to suggest such an option?
‘I assumed you would be living here in the house,’ Cristo remarked, his attention clinging of its own volition to the amount of slender thigh on view as she crouched down to pack the fridge.
‘I only...er...lived in when Gaetano was here,’ Belle said awkwardly.
‘And the rest of the time?’ Cristo enquired, because as far as he knew his father had only come to Ireland three or four times a year and had never stayed for longer than a couple of weeks at most.
‘I live in the lodge at the gates,’ Belle admitted grudgingly, straightening to set out lettuce and eggs on the granite work counter.
Cristo gritted his teeth at the news because she and her children would have to vacate the lodge house before he could put Mayhill on the market. Of course he would have to pay her for the inconvenience of finding another home. Her hair shone bright as a beacon below the lights, displaying varying shades of gold, auburn and copper, tiny curls of hair adorning the nape of her long, elegant neck. She had very curly hair, the sort of hair he had once seen on a rag doll, he mused absently, irritated by the random nature of the thought. He studied the smooth line of her jaw and the full lush softness of her bold red-painted mouth with a persistent sense of incredulity. She had to be a lot older than she looked to be the parent of a teenager, although perhaps he was being naïve. It was perfectly possible that Mary Brophy looked so amazingly youthful because his father had paid for her to have plastic surgery.
Belle unwrapped the garlic bread and shoved it on an oven tray to cook. She wished he would go away. Standing there, all looming six feet four inches or so of him, he made her feel nervous and clumsy. She had to search through cupboards to find the utensils she wanted because she had rarely visited Mayhill since childhood. Indeed she had avoided it on principle whenever Gaetano was in residence. Her green eyes darkened as she recalled the way she and her ever-growing band of siblings would go and stay with her grandmother in the village even before Gaetano arrived, leaving her mother free to make her preparations for his arrival. Mary had always, always put Gaetano Ravelli first.
Belle remembered her mother’s excitement when Gaetano was due to arrive, the frantic exercising, hair appointments and shopping trips to ensure that Mary could look her very best for her lover. Belle had long since decided that she would rather die than want to please any man to that extent. Certainly Mary’s rather pathetic loyalty and devotion had not won her any prizes.
Belle prepared the salad quickly, heaping it into a bowl and then making up her mother’s favourite salad dressing as best she could because she couldn’t quite recall the proportions of the different ingredients. That achieved, she embarked on the omelette. Cristo had vanished by then and she heaved a sigh of relief as she walked through to set the table in the spacious dining room across the hall.
He had accepted that she was Mary Brophy without protest and why shouldn’t he? It meant nothing to him that her poor mother was gone. Mark’s father, the land agent Daniel Petrie, would eventually catch up on the local gossip and learn that the woman he had long despised was dead and buried. But Belle thought it was unlikely that Daniel would bother making an announcement of that fact to Cristo Ravelli as, not only would he feel foolish about having misinformed his employer, but he would also most likely assume that Cristo had already found out the truth. Soothing herself with such reflections, Belle returned to her cooking and struggled to control the gas burners because she was accustomed to cooking with electric.
* * *
Cristo surveyed his meal with an appetite that very quickly vanished. He prodded the omelette with a fork. It had the solid consistency of a rubber mattress but lacked the bounce. The salad had been drowned in a vat of oil. Even the garlic bread was charred although valiant attempts had been made to cut away the most burnt bits. He swallowed hard and pushed the plate away. She couldn’t cook, but presumably she and his father had dined out. Distaste suddenly filled Cristo and he stood up in a lithe movement, his lean strong face hard and taut. He didn’t want to be in Ireland. He didn’t want to deal with the wretched woman and the consequences of her sordid long-term affair with his father. But he knew that he didn’t have a choice. Mary Brophy and her children were not a problem he could afford to ignore. In any case, there was no one else to deal with the situation.
Belle was digging into the linen cupboard on the upper landing when she heard a noise behind her and whirled round to stare in dismay at the tall square-featured young man leaning back against the bannister. He was built like a solid brick wall.
‘So this is where the bedding is hidden,’ he remarked.
‘Who are you?’ Belle demanded nervously.
‘Rafe is one of my two bodyguards,’ Cristo interposed, strolling up onto the landing. ‘Rafe and John are staying here with me.’
‘John and I need bedding. We can take care of ourselves though,’ Rafe declared, stepping past her to peruse the tidy, labelled shelves just as she emerged clutching the linen she required for the master bedroom. Conscious of Cristo Ravelli’s stare, and feeling somewhat harassed, Belle walked stiffly down the corridor. Damn the man! Why was he watching her like that? Did she have two heads all of a sudden? And why hadn’t he told her he had companions? She hadn’t bought enough food and that thought reminded her that she had to get him to settle up with her for the shopping she had done on his behalf. Dropping the linen on the bed, she dug into her pocket for the till receipt and turned to offer it to him.
‘This is what you owe me,’ she told him.
Cristo dug out his wallet and extended a banknote while still engaged in frowning at the gilded furniture and mirrors and the fantastically draped red king-size bed. ‘Is this my father’s room?’
