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Her hair was asold 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 slis 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 foah, decidedly not his style

‘That’s Belle Erground control to Dante?’ Steve joked when Dante failed to even look his way

With difficulty, Dante dredged his attention back fro 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 a in his frank brown eyes

‘What’s a looker like that doing waitressing in a place like this?’ Dante de to the all-roin

‘Possibly waiting for an opportunity like you to co to save up enough ain You could step in like a good guy and fly her over to London with you’

‘Is this why you brought ?’ Dante delorious 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 jas, 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 suuy will make waves with her’

‘Charust 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 ot pride and she’s honest She told me she couldn’t take the money because she didn’t kno she would ever pay it back’

‘And she’s a waitress End of story,’ Dante responded sardonically ‘I don’t mess around aitresses’

‘You’re a snob and I never knew it,’ Steve remarked in wonderment ‘Of course, I knew about the blue blood, the fas you claim to despise’

‘What would a waitress do if she was plunged intoderision

‘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 sio for it I hear she can be a bit of a hothead’

Dante said nothing because he collided with the eyes of the wo 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 unassuarchitect with a string of international offices Steve was also an unashamed family man with four beautiful kids and an even uest was as physically different froht 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 alh 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 nificent as a black panther, physically beautiful in a wild, natural way and probably equally dangerous

Several woress Belle went back inside to do her job, silently listening as the bartender, a keen user of social er as Dante Lucarelli Evidently, he was soy She walked over to serve Steve and his guest and as the Italian glanced up at her fro lashes that ickedly wasted on a olden eyes For a terrifying split second, she fr

oze 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 hiood-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 inhim 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 toe of twenty-two as it had when she had been at school and the butt of unkind jokes Diht, red-haired, freckled, as well as overly endowed in the chest category, she had been very, very low on the cool scale of popularity at school

Dante was hugely amused by the top-to-toe blush that had enveloped Belle When had he last seen a woman blush? He could not re blushing with either shyness or innocence He was much more inclined to link it to sexual attraction and awareness He was accusto hi since he was sixteen, when he had lost his virginity to one of hisconfronted by his ht, he took it for granted that ninety-nine out of a hundred wo his bed if he asked And rarely did he even have to ask Sex was frequently offered to Dante on a plate and without the sement

Belle delivered the drinks without once looking in Dante’s direction and that overheated feeling in her body began ain It was normal to notice an attractive man, she soothed herself, and it wasn’t her fault that she blushed fire-engine red Just an unfortunate fact of life and she needed to learn to deal with it, as she had learned to deal with so many other unfortunate facts