Cristo had fallen in love with little fairy-like Betsy, who was so tiny and exquisite that Belle was convinced that she herself would look like a comic-book character standing beside her. Belle was taller, curvier, and physically larger in every way, her hair raucous red to Betsy’s pale, subtle blonde. No two women could have been more diametrically opposed in the looks department. Did he try to fantasise that she was Betsy in bed? That cruel suspicion pierced Belle like a knife in her chest, shock still winging through her in blinding waves while her mind leapt on to make even more offensive connections. Cristo had actually dared to marry her when he was in love with another woman! Appalled at this knowledge that sucked out every atom of her former happiness and contentment in her role, Belle slid out of bed and swept up her wrap. She folded herself into it in a jerky motion because her limbs still felt oddly detached from her body.
‘Why on earth did you marry me?’ Anger was roaring through Belle in a giant floodtide that drowned every rational thought and controlled every response. ‘I mean, you were in love with another woman, so why the heck would you ask me to marry you?’
Taken aback by her behaviour, his incomprehension growing at her overreaction to what he now saw as a comparatively insignificant mistake on his own part that had caused no one any harm, Cristo frowned in bewilderment. ‘Why should it bother you?’
‘It doesn’t bother me. I’m not one bit bothered!’ Belle proclaimed in furious vehement denial, her pride answering for her. ‘But obviously I don’t like what it says about you. What sort of man gets involved with his brother’s wife?’
Understanding crossed Cristo’s sleek dark face, swiftly followed by an unmistakeable expression of distaste. ‘I wasn’t sexually involved with Betsy. I didn’t make a single move that crossed the boundaries of friendship with her.’
‘Are you trying to tell me that you haven’t had an affair with her?’ Belle demanded incredulously. ‘Do I look that stupid?’
Honesty, it suddenly struck Cristo for the first time, could be a poisoned chalice. His gift of honesty, offered with the best of intentions, had simply stirred up more serious suspicions. He sprang out of bed and reached for his jeans, pulling them on commando style in a fluid motion. Stunning dark eyes met unflinchingly with Belle’s accusing stare.
‘There was never any question of an affair. For a start, I never told Betsy how I felt, and naturally there was no physical intimacy. Dio mio, she’s my brother’s wife. I couldn’t possibly cross that line.’
‘But they’re getting a divorce!’ Belle cut in furiously.
‘Nik will always be my brother. I could still never go there and from the outset I accepted that there was no future in my feelings for her.’
‘Yet you married me even though you loved her!’ Belle reminded him painfully, scarcely able to frame the words through her chattering teeth. She felt cold and clammy and nauseous. She had never felt so hurt and rejected in her entire life and it was as though a great well of anguish deep inside her was threatening to drag her down and swallow her alive. Suddenly the world looked dark, her future empty and full of threat.
‘Why shouldn’t I have married you? How I believed I felt about Betsy is pretty much irrelevant now. There was no way I was ever going to have anything but a friendship with her, and let’s not forget that you and I agreed to a marriage purely based on practicality.’
That reminder was brutally unwelcome. Belle’s nails bit painfully into the flesh of her hands as she knotted them together. A practical marriage. When had she contrived to forget that revealing description of his expectations and her own agreement on that basis? When had she developed expectations of something a great deal more emotionally satisfying than a detached marriage of convenience? And whatever the answer to those questions was it didn’t really matter at a moment when she was in so much pain that she could barely bring herself to look at him. Just then she was too worked up to argue with Cristo and she was desperate to make an escape lest she embarrass herself by saying something she shouldn’t.
‘Excuse me,’ Belle breathed curtly, sidestepping Cristo to stalk into the bathroom.
The door closed, the lock turning with a fast and audible click.
In frustration, Cristo swore under his breath. Why was she so angry? Why the hell was she so angry with him? Blasted relationships, he reflected with brooding resentment. He was no good at them, and never had been. He had always settled for sex and got out before anything more complex was required. But he couldn’t walk away from Belle and their marriage any more easily than he could escape the fallout from what appeared to be a disastrous error of judgement on his part. He pictured Belle’s face when he had truthfully answered her question. She had turned pale as snow, her eyes blank while immediate constraint tightened her features. One minute she had been in his arms, smiling and happy and affectionate, the next angry and distant and…hurt. His wide sensual mouth compressed grimly at that awareness. Every natural instinct told him he should have lied in his teeth and made up an excuse for still having that photo in his wallet. But although he had told her about Betsy, it had decidedly not been the moment to tell her the rest of that story because she would never have believed him in the mood she was in, he reasoned bitterly.
Trembling with reaction, Belle splashed her face with cold water. Tears were running from her eyes and she washed them away with punitive splashes of more cold water, finally burying her chilled face with a shudder in a soft warm towel. Cristo was in love with Betsy and nothing had ever hurt Belle so much as that discovery. Why was that? she asked herself wretchedly; why was she taking the news so badly, so…personally?
They had married for convenience and her main motivation before the wedding had been the welfare of her brothers and sisters. That goal had been achieved most successfully for Cristo was already accepting that her siblings were also his and therefore family to them both. He wasn’t going to turn round and suddenly desert the children, he was too honourable for that, she reflected heavily. To date he had also kept his promises to her. To say the very least, he treated her with warmth and respect.
Had she hoped he felt more than that where she was concerned? Belle nibbled at her lower lip, afraid to meet her own eyes in the mirror because, on her terms, their relationship had very quickly become intensely personal both in and out of bed. The limits of practicality had been bypassed and forgotten by her within days of the wedding. She had learned to care for Cristo, to enjoy his company, his sense of humour, his kindness to Franco, his thoughtfulness whenever it came to a question of what made her happy. In short she had travelled all the way from initial admiration and appreciation to falling madly in love with her husband, which was why hearing that he loved someone else had caused her such pain. Stupid, stupid man—why on earth had he told her? And, even worse, why had he looked at her as though she was insane when she reacted with furious condemnation? Didn’t he understand anything about women? About her? Maybe she should have framed the experience in terms he would have understood…
‘Cristo!’ Belle bawled across the bedroom on her noisy return, the bathroom door still shuddering behind her from her aggressive exit.
Cristo emerged from the dressing room in the act of buttoning a shirt and fixed enquiring dark eyes on her with exaggerated politeness. ‘You called, bella mia?’
Belle reddened fiercely. ‘All right, I shouted. I’m sorry. It’s just you don’t seem to understand how I feel, so I thought I should give you an example.’
A winged ebony brow elevated. ‘An example?’
‘Try to imagine how you would feel if I was to tell you right now that I was in love with Mark Petrie,’ she urged.
Before her very eyes, Cristo froze into an icy bronzed statue. ‘Are you?’
‘You see, the boot’s very much on the other foot now, isn’t it?’ she fired back. ‘No, of course I’m not in love with Mark, but you don’t like the idea, do you?’
‘Of course, I don’t—you’re my wife.’ Dawning comprehension sliv
ered through Cristo and his shrewd gaze veiled but he remained stubbornly silent, wary as he was of setting her temper off again.
‘No wife would want to hear that her husband ever loved another woman,’ Belle pointed out with dignity. ‘It’s not personal, it’s simply a matter of what’s…what’s…acceptable. You’re my husband. I’m possessive about you. I can’t help that.’
‘We’re both possessive by nature, bella mia,’ Cristo husked, relieved that the storm had been weathered and she appeared to be calming down.