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Читать книгу: «His Cinderella's One-Night Heir / Consequences Of A Hot Havana Night», страница 2
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.
Saying goodnight to the other wait staff and with Charlie faithfully following her, Belle trudged down to the beach. Dante was a dark silhouette below the trees and then he stepped into the moonlight, which made his black hair gleam blue and lit up his lean, strong features, highlighting his high cheekbones, classic nose and hard jawline. He needed a shave. A shadow of dark stubble accentuated his wide sensual mouth. With his eyes glittering colourlessly over her as he awaited her arrival in silence, Belle could feel herself getting hot again, as if her body was burning up inside her skin. Suddenly she was grateful for the darkness, knowing she was tomato red again.
‘Belle?’ Dante queried. ‘What’s it short for?’
‘Tinkerbelle,’ Belle admitted with extreme reluctance. ‘Unfortunately, my mother thought that was a cute name for a baby girl but my grandparents called me Belle. Belle Forrester.’
‘Tinkerbelle? That’s out of a kid’s movie, isn’t it?’ Dante breathed in surprise, studying her where she stood as stiff and still as though she were on the edge of dangerous quicksand. She had released her hair from the clasp and it foamed across her shoulders in an untamed curling mane.
‘Peter Pan. Tinker Bell was the fairy, but Belle is a movie name too,’ Belle told him with compressed lips.
‘I guess if you’d had wings you’d have flown yourself back home,’ Dante remarked very drily.
‘So...er...the job?’ Belle prompted tautly.
‘The job would be a little unusual but completely above board,’ he assured her and then, as though suddenly recollecting his manners, he moved closer to extend a lean hand. ‘My name is Dante Lucarelli.’
‘Yes.’ Belle barely touched the tips of his fingers. ‘The bartender identified you before you’d been seated for five minutes. He’s a business student.’
‘Tell me about yourself,’ he urged.
‘There’s not a lot relevant to tell,’ Belle retorted uncomfortably, wishing he would just get to the point instead of keeping her in ignorance. ‘I’m twenty-two. I left school at sixteen with a bundle of GCSEs and I haven’t had any educational input since then. I’d like to change that when I get back to London. These days you need training and qualifications to make a decent life.’
‘If you know that why did you skip that opportunity until now?’
‘I never had the opportunity,’ Belle countered wryly, settling down on the concrete bench beneath the trees. ‘My grandmother died and then my grandfather fell ill and needed looking after. After they were both gone, I took a job here, which was basically housekeeping but which turned into full-time caring as well.’
Dante lounged back against a tree trunk, all lithe, lean power and thrumming masculinity. He was as relaxed as she was tense. ‘Is caring for older people what you want to do going forward?’
Belle stiffened. ‘No, definitely not. I think professional caring’s a job you need a vocation for and I don’t have that.’
‘Fair enough,’ Dante murmured, increasingly surprised by her cool, unapologetic self-containment, because at the very least he had expected bubbly encouragement and flirtation from her. In his experience women came on to him whether they thought they had a chance with him or not, but Belle wasn’t making the smallest effort in that direction. ‘You may not have a vocation for the job I’m about to offer you either, but it would eventually get you back to the UK and I would pay you handsomely to do it.’
Belle twisted round to get a better view of him, wishing he would step out of the shadows so that she could see him better. ‘Tell me about it...’
‘I need a woman prepared to pretend that she’s my live-in girlfriend. Faking the part would be all that was required from you,’ Dante assured her with calm emphasis. ‘The job would only last for a couple of weeks and then you would be free to pursue your own plans with the cash I give you. It would be a win-win proposition for both of us.’
Belle was rarely deprived of speech, but the shock of the nature of his job offer was sufficient to glue her tongue to the roof of her mouth because such an exotic possibility wouldn’t have crossed her mind in her wildest dreams. ‘But...er...you don’t even know me,’ she protested weakly when she could find her voice again.
‘Why would I need to know you? Steve vouches for your trustworthiness. It’s a job, a role if you want to call it that. It’s casual and temporary but also financially rewarding,’ he completed smoothly.
‘But pretending to be someone’s girlfriend would mean knowing stuff about each other, that sort of thing,’ Belle protested in a rush. ‘And we’re complete strangers.’
‘I’m sure a simple question and answer session would cover the basics you would need to know,’ Dante fielded without hesitation. ‘Think about this from my point of view.’
Belle’s eyes widened. ‘I don’t know you well enough to do that.’
‘Then let me do it for you,’ Dante responded silkily. ‘I’m offering you the job purely because you’re a stranger and I will be paying you to provide what I require. As a stranger, you’ll walk away afterwards without a problem. You won’t cling or believe that I have any further obligation towards you, nor will you assume that having helped me out makes you special to me in any way.’
Belle stared back at him, stunned by that revealing little speech. ‘Do women often cling to you?’
Dante tensed, glittering dark eyes locking to the pale troubled oval of her face. ‘It’s been a problem in the past. If there’s a stage-five clinger out there, I’ve met her!’
‘I’m not the clingy type,’ Belle whispered abstractedly, marvelling at the impact of those compelling dark eyes of his even in low light. ‘But you still haven’t explained why you need a fake live-in girlfriend.’
‘And I won’t share any more of my private business unless you first express an interest in accepting the job,’ Dante incised impatiently. ‘Sleep on the idea. I’ll see you tomorrow morning at eleven and you can give me an answer then. But be warned...I am a demanding employer with high standards. If you take the job, you’ll have to meet all my requirements. That will mean wearing the clothes I buy for you, breaking the nail-biting habit...and ditching the dog. I’m not keen on dogs.’
Belle’s shamefully bitten nails curled into her palms. He had noticed. She always prayed that people didn’t notice her bad habit but it seemed horribly typical of Dante Lucarelli that he had noticed her stubby nails, and she was mortified. Almost at the same time she reached for Charlie for reassurance and lifted him up onto her lap, sand from his paws and coat flying in all directions. ‘I can’t possibly ditch Charlie.’
‘He can go into kennels for the duration of our arrangement.’
‘No, he needs love and attention, and taken away from everything familiar, he would be frightened!’ Belle reasoned fiercely, hugging Charlie to her as if he were a worn soft toy.
‘He’s not a child,’ Dante reasoned in exasperation.
‘He’s the only family I’ve got, and he’s had a rough ride so far in life,’ Belle argued in growing dismay. ‘I won’t part with Charlie!’
‘Sleep on it,’ Dante advised again. ‘Now, let me walk you back to the campervan.’
‘That’s not necessary,’ Belle told him, springing upright and setting the dog down. ‘It’s only a hundred yards away.’
‘I decide what’s necessary, not you,’ Dante shot back at her, suspecting that she could be more trouble than she was worth because she was emotional, far too emotional. Cristiano had been full of emotion and very much prone to attachments as well and look where that caring, sharing nonsense had got his brother! Cristiano had left behind two heartbroken, seriously clingy and demanding chihuahuas and Dante kept them in exclusive boarding kennels in the very lap of luxury. He visited his brother’s pets religiously once a month. It wasn’t quite the same as taking the dogs home with him, but it was the best he felt able to offer dogs who had never been treated as dogs and who probably didn’t even know that they were dogs. Tito and Carina expected to share beds, sleep on laps and be hand-fed from plates.
Belle breathed in deeply. ‘Do you think maybe you’re having to hire a girlfriend because you’re so rude, heartless and authoritarian?’
‘I can’t remember when a woman last insulted me,’ Dante confided in receipt of that refreshing question and gloriously untouched by the condemnation. A lifetime of criticism from his parents had ensured that he had developed a very tough hide.
‘You must meet an awful lot of uncritical women.’
‘Very rich men rarely meet with anything else,’ Dante imparted with cynical conviction, pausing beside the small rusting campervan below the trees to marvel that anyone could actually be living in the battered vehicle full-time. ‘I’ll meet you in the bar tomorrow at eleven.’
CHAPTER TWO
IN THE CONFINEMENT of her bunk bed, Belle lay awake well into the early hours, pondering her choices, which only got fewer the more she thought about them. As always, she made lists. A long list of important questions that she should have asked but which Dante might not have answered. A list of pros and cons, again full of blanks, owing to her lack of facts on his situation.
‘What do you think?’ she asked Charlie ruefully as he cuddled up to her. ‘We don’t like or trust people who dislike dogs, do we? Do you think that’s being too judgemental? Unfair? I mean, Steve’s a lovely person and he’s friends with Dante, which says something in his favour.’
Armed with her lists and clad in denim shorts and a light floral top, she walked up to the bar in the morning sunshine. The restaurant was being cleaned and it was time to prepare the tables for lunch. Hips twitching to the beat of the music playing, Belle set out place mats and glasses while she wondered if Dante was even capable of understanding how she felt about her dog.
Charlie hadn’t started out as hers, but necessity had made him hers and they had been together since shortly after her arrival in France. She didn’t have any family. She couldn’t count the father she had only met once in her life or Tracy, who hadn’t stayed in touch once her own parents were both gone. Charlie, silly and scruffy as he was, had become Belle’s family. He wasn’t the brightest of dogs, but he was always cheerful and loving and a wonderful comfort when the world seemed dark and she felt alone.
Dante, fresh from a late breakfast of kids and toddler tantrums, was in the mood to be charmed and the first thing he saw as he mounted the steps was Belle’s bottom swaying in rhythmic time to the music. She had a gorgeous derrière, curvy and firm, and when she was dancing it was a work of art in the making, exactly what the average male wanted to see and take advantage of. Even so, he didn’t intend to take advantage, Dante reminded himself doggedly, because as her potential employer, he would naturally be immune to her appeal. Sex didn’t come into his dealings with employees. No matter how tempted he was, he would never ever make that mistake, he assured himself squarely.
‘Sit down with me,’ he told Belle as he strode past her.
‘I can’t. This is work time,’ she pointed out, her gaze locking on him as though magnetised. ‘I should’ve told you that last night.’
‘I arranged it with your boss. You’ve got an hour off to be with me,’ Dante informed her smoothly.
‘But this is one of the busiest times of the day!’ she exclaimed.
‘I’m paying for your time off the clock,’ Dante told her without hesitation.
Her face burned, hot as hellfire as she settled down at the table he had chosen. Money talked, she knew that, had long accepted it as an unpleasant fact of life. When people paid, they got to break the rules and call the shots. It turned normal into abnormal and deprived her of personal choice. She sat down opposite but her chin came up in challenge. ‘I thought you’d come in earlier than this.’
‘I slept in,’ Dante declared without embarrassment. ‘I travelled all day yesterday to get here.’
Belle was tempted to remark that he had undoubtedly travelled in luxury and could have no idea of the exhausting rigours of cheaper modes of travel, but she swallowed back the cheeky comment, accepting that she wasn’t in a strong enough position to make it. She knew how to keep her lips sealed when she had to, knew all about serving in respectful silence regardless of how rude or provocative people were. That was one advantage of lowly labour, she acknowledged ruefully: it taught humility.
‘I assume that you’re considering taking the job?’ Dante lifted his level black brows in question as Belle’s colleague delivered coffee to the table.
‘Yes,’ Belle confirmed, throwing sugar into the espresso because there was no milk available, and stirring it in haste. ‘But you have to explain it first.’
Dante dragged in a deep breath and his T-shirt stretched taut as the strong muscles beneath the fine cotton flexed. Determined not to stare at his muscular chest, Belle looked at his face instead for the first time since they had sat down. Dazzling dark golden eyes gripped hers and her tummy lurched as if she had been plunged downward on a fairground ride. ‘In two weeks’ time I have a married couple coming to stay at my home for the weekend—Eddie and Krystal Shriner. I have a very important business deal that I hope to make with Eddie. The fly in the ointment is Krystal, whom I was fleetingly involved with four years ago. She’s been trying to get back with me ever since,’ he admitted stonily. ‘And I don’t want her flirting with me in front of her husband because that would destroy any hope I have of making a deal with him. He’s a possessive man.’
Involuntarily, Belle’s interest was caught. ‘Is Krystal the stage-five clinger you mentioned last night?’
Dante nodded grim confirmation. ‘Another woman living in my home with me would be a safeguard and the only possible precaution I can take. Your presence would infuriate her, but I will seem a much less attractive option if I appear to have already found a woman to settle down with. Krystal won’t risk losing Eddie until she has a viable replacement in her sights.’
Belle grimaced at such calculation and settled back less tensely into her seat. ‘Am I allowed to ask how long you were with this woman when you were involved with her?’ she asked curiously.
His black brows pleated and his shapely mouth compressed into a flat hard line. ‘One weekend...’
‘One weekend?’ Belle gasped in disbelief. ‘And you’ve had all this trouble with her after that?’
‘I didn’t say she was normal,’ Dante fielded drily.
‘And they’re going to be staying with you in London?’
‘No, not in London,’ Dante cut in. ‘They’ll be staying in my home in Italy.’
Belle was nonplussed. ‘But I thought you were offering to take me back to London.’
‘After the job’s done my private jet will take you anywhere you want in the world, but we won’t be travelling to London over the next couple of weeks,’ Dante warned her. ‘If you accept the job, I’ll be taking you to Paris for new clothes. You can’t possibly pass yourself off as my girlfriend with your current wardrobe. We will then fly to Italy, where you will familiarise yourself with my home and lifestyle. As soon as Eddie and Krystal have departed, the job will be over and you will be free to leave.’
Belle cringed at the prospect of Dante buying her clothes because that reminded her too much of her mother’s financially lucrative and rather sordid relationships with men. Tracy was pretty much a professional mistress whose lovers paid for her expensive clothes, jewellery and cruises. Belle had been ashamed when she’d finally worked out the truth of how her mother afforded to live so well without ever apparently having to work and she was no longer surprised that her birth father had spoken with such derision about her mother, referring to her simply as ‘the gold-digger’. Evidently even when she had been much younger Tracy had been busier bedding wealthy men than she had been modelling for a living. Belle was merely grateful that her grandparents had never grasped the truth about their daughter.
‘So,’ Belle said a little desperately as she trailed herself back out of those unpleasant memories and thoughts. ‘The job as such would only last for a couple of weeks?’
‘Sì... Yes,’ Dante translated for her when she looked at him blankly.
Digging hurriedly into her pocket, Belle extracted the lists she’d drawn up the night before. ‘I have some other questions for you, if that’s all right.’
‘I suppose it has to be,’ Dante conceded, watching her tiny tongue slide out to moisten her full lower lip with a fascination the exercise should not have commanded. Instantly he was imagining that tongue working a spell on his all too ready body and he gritted his teeth hard, furious with his failing self-discipline. He was spoilt when it came to women, he acknowledged, because it was rare for him to meet a woman he wanted that he couldn’t have. But she would be working for him. He would be paying her. Adding sex to that arrangement would make it dubious in the extreme.
Belle painstakingly read her first question. ‘“Why do you not have a female friend willing to do this for you?”’
‘I did. She changed her mind and decided it was a matter of pride that she have an engagement ring on her finger before facing Krystal. I wasn’t prepared to take the pretence that far,’ Dante admitted flatly.
‘My goodness, you’re so much in demand with the women in your life, you must feel positively hunted!’ Belle trilled back as sweet as sugar.
Dante played safe by taking the comment at face value and shrugged a broad shoulder in dismissal. ‘Next question?’
‘Charlie’s a big deal.’
Dante frowned. ‘Charlie? Who’s Charlie?’
Belle bridled. ‘My dog. You met him last night.’
‘He’s a dog, not a person. I didn’t meet him,’ Dante told her drily. ‘The kennels I mentioned are not far from my home and I can assure you that they offer the very best of care because they’ve been looking after my late brother’s two dogs for me for over a year.’
Belle studied him, aghast. ‘You’ve left your brother’s dogs in kennels for over a year?’ she gasped in horror. ‘Why haven’t you brought them home with you?’
‘I’m not a dog-oriented person,’ Dante reminded her impatiently. ‘Look, I can’t even believe we’re having this stupid conversation about animals. If you must bring the dog, bring it, but it will be sent ahead of us to Italy. It’s not coming to Paris with us!’
Belle decided to quit while she was ahead. The arrangement wasn’t perfect, but she could see that he thought he was being very generous with that concession and she didn’t want to be so demanding that she talked herself out of the job.
‘You still haven’t said what you’re prepared to pay me,’ Belle remarked uncomfortably.
‘What did you earn working last year?’ Dante shot back at her, annoyed that he was going to have to live with a dog under his feet, no matter how briefly. She was an odd little creature, he decided, and far too attached to the dog, but such human quirks and his apparent acceptance of them could well make her seem more convincing in the role he was giving her.
Taken aback by that blunt demand, Belle blinked and told him before she could think better of such honesty.
‘Seriously...that’s all?’ Dante checked in apparent disbelief.
Belle reddened. ‘That’s all but it was a live-in position and those always pay less.’
‘Multiply that sum by fifty and that’s what you’ll walk away with in a few weeks’ time,’ Dante assured her without skipping a beat.
‘By fifty? You can’t pay me that much and buy me clothes into the bargain!’ Belle objected in amazement. ‘That’s an outrageous sum.’
‘Deal with it. It’s not an outrageous sum to me,’ Dante declared. ‘And if you make a genuine effort to meet the demands of the role, I’ll give you a bonus as well.’
Belle was almost white with shock at the thought of so much money coming her way. Even frantic on-the-spot calculations screamed that that much cash would turn her life around and give her options for the first time ever. She would be able to come up with the deposit to rent a flat in London and organise some sort of educational course to make herself more employable. In fact, the sky would be the limit with a financial nest egg that decent behind her. She was ashamed of the truth, that his offer had made her mentally tear up her pros and cons list because a risk that would improve her life so radically seemed well worth taking. It was not as though she had anything to lose aside from Charlie.
‘It’ll be like winning the lottery,’ she whispered helplessly.
‘No, I’m the lottery you have apparently won,’ Dante contradicted. ‘Start getting into that role. What I’m willing to pay you will merely be pocket change when compared to the life you would lead living with me.’
‘The pocket change wins though,’ Belle told him. ‘I think living with you will be a real challenge.’
Dante ignored that comment, rising above the temptation to inform her that having any woman living below his roof and invading his cherished privacy would be a punishment for him. ‘I’ll have travelling arrangements made for the dog and I’ll pick you up tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’ she echoed, blinking in surprise. ‘That soon?’
‘We haven’t got time to waste and you can’t have much to pack. Give me your phone number,’ Dante instructed. ‘I’ll text you to let you know when we’re leaving.’
As Dante cleared the steps down into the car park in a couple of strides to head back to his motorbike, Belle was left in a total daze. She went back to setting tables because she couldn’t quite accept that she was leaving the restaurant and that her life could change so suddenly. On the score of packing, Dante had hit the nail on the head because she had very few possessions and an even smaller collection of clothing, she conceded. Though she would give Charlie a bath and a good brush to ensure that he looked his smartest and that he wasn’t mistaken for some unloved and neglected stray. She would also have to thoroughly clean the campervan and pass the key back to her boss.
When Dante arrived to collect Belle the following morning she was in floods of tears over parting with the dog and the pet transporters his PA had organised were hovering beside their van, reluctant to step in and hurry matters along. Fortunately, Dante had no such inhibitions.
‘Say goodbye to the dog, Belle,’ Dante told her. ‘It’s only for a few days.’
‘He’s scared,’ Belle whispered shakily. ‘He’s never been in a cage before.’
‘Put him in the cage. How are you planning to get him into the UK?’ Dante enquired. ‘Presumably at some point of the journey he will have to tolerate a cage. This will be good practice for him.’
Charlie went into the cage and cowered at the back of it like a dog expecting to be beaten. Stifling a sob, Belle handed over the paperwork Charlie had arrived in France with two years earlier. ‘He looks so pathetic,’ she muttered wretchedly.
‘Yes, he’s feeling very sorry for himself,’ Dante agreed, thinking that Charlie should be onstage because he certainly knew how to work an audience. ‘But you’ll be reunited very soon. Pull yourself together.’
Belatedly, Belle registered that Dante looked very different. No longer casually clad in jeans, he sported an exquisitely tailored dark grey business suit that showcased his tall broad, narrow-hipped physique to perfection. Staring for a moment longer than she was comfortable with, she hurriedly twisted her head away. ‘I am perfectly together. I was just upset,’ she proclaimed defensively.
‘Crying in public is not acceptable unless you’re attending a funeral or a wedding. Saying goodbye momentarily to a dog is not a good enough excuse,’ Dante informed her as her single bag was dropped in the capacious boot of the car and the driver yanked open the passenger door for them.
‘S-sorry,’ Belle said in a wobbly voice, turning her tear-stained face away from him as she climbed into the opulent car.
The car ferried them at speed to Toulouse-Blagnac Airport, where they were rushed through the VIP channel at speed to board Dante’s private jet. Eyes wide from her first glimpse of the opulent oyster-coloured leather seating and the sumptuous interior, Belle accepted the pile of high-fashion magazines the stewardess brought to her and tried not to stare while the same woman flirted madly with Dante with loads of hair flicking, smiles and a provocative wriggle in her too-tight pencil skirt that would’ve caught the attention of a dead man. Dante, however, remained remarkably untouched by the display and flipped open a laptop to work. Belle wondered if women always vied for his attention so blatantly and then asked herself why she was even interested.
He was a breathtakingly handsome guy, rich and sophisticated, as alien to her as snow in the summer heat. Her hormones went all out of kilter around him and she felt uncomfortable in her own body as it betrayed her in ways she hadn’t expected. It had never occurred to her before that she could be attracted to someone she didn’t like, that a mere flashing glance from tigerish dark golden eyes could make her breasts swell and her nipples tighten and a hot dull ache blossom at the junction of her thighs. That weakness was a revelation because it was new to her, but it wasn’t something that particularly worried her.
She was convinced that she would never give way to that kind of temptation because she was painfully aware that sex meant very little unless it was accompanied by genuine feelings. None of her mother’s many affairs had lasted or cured Tracy’s essential dissatisfaction with her life. And Belle wanted much more for herself than a fleeting sexual thrill or a luxurious lifestyle. She wanted love, a man who would make her feel whole and safe, and when she finally found him, she would have a family with him, recreating the family she had both lost and never really had, she thought fondly. He wouldn’t be a commitment-phobe like Dante, who saw women as clingy and probably didn’t like children much more than he liked dogs. He would be an ordinary guy, willing to settle down when he met someone who made him happy.
‘Have you ever been to Paris before?’ Dante asked, watching Belle peer out of the limo windows like a child on a school trip, afraid of missing out on a single sight.
‘No.’
‘And yet you’ve been in France for...how long?’
‘Almost three years.’
‘Why didn’t you travel around?’
‘I couldn’t leave Mrs Devenish or Charlie to look after themselves and, to be honest, I never really had enough money to go off exploring.’
‘Then why did you lumber yourself with a dog into the bargain?’ Dante enquired drily.
‘He wasn’t mine initially. Mrs Devenish’s niece brought Charlie out here as a gift for her. Unfortunately, she wasn’t well enough to look after a puppy, but she did enjoy seeing him round the house,’ Belle confided ruefully. ‘She was a lovely old lady but her relatives didn’t want to accept that she was ill. They liked coming out here in the summer for their holidays and they insisted that I was exaggerating her condition. It took the doctor to convince them otherwise and by that stage, as it turned out, she only had a few more weeks to live.’
‘You need to learn how to stand up for yourself more effectively,’ Dante censured.
Belle shrugged. ‘Only if you can afford to take the consequences and I had neither another job to go to nor anywhere else to live.’
‘You shouldn’t have put yourself in that position.’
‘Haven’t I just done the same thing again with you?’
Dante frowned at her in bemusement. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Well, I don’t have an employment contract or any safeguards with you either...and you’ve now got Charlie to hold over me,’ she pointed out, lifting her chin.
‘You can’t think I’m likely to hold Charlie hostage? Or ditch you in Paris without money?’ Dante breathed in a raw undertone, insulted beyond belief by her suspicions.
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