“Why is it so important for you to see them?” she wailed in distress.
“Why is it so important for you to prevent meS’ ” They’re private,”
she muttered tightly.
“An artist whose every work is private—how thought-provoking,” he drawled nastily, flipping back the first canvas. .
“Hector says I’m not ready to be shown yet. He thinks my interpretation needs a lot more work … more maturity,” she proffered unsteadily, voicing her supposed flaws in advance.
The silence went on and on. She clutched her hands together, as nervous as someone watching her children jaywalking across an accident black spot. Rico shone the candelabra on about half a dozen, slowly moving from one to the next. Nothing could be read from the taut lines of his dark features. Expelling his breath, he straightened, but he was still studying an oil of children playing in the mud round a lorry.
“You paint your childhood,” he breathed tautly.
“Not all the time.”
“Hector is not only a miser, he’s a liar. He wants to hold onto you, es ver dad His own discovery. He can’t let you go. He hid away from that world out there years ago, and if he encourages you to exhibit he knows he’ll lose you!” Rico sent her a shimmering glance, his expressive mouth compressed into a strangely bloodless line.
“You have extraordinary talent and you cannot possibly require someone like me to tell you that.”
“You like them?”
He set the candelabra back by the bed and stood there, watching her with hooded dark eyes.
“I’m in shock and you know it. Why are you working as a waitress?”
It pays the rent. I paint in daylight, work at night. I get fabulous tips—’ “I can imagine.”
“The hours suit me.”
“Biff told me you were a catering supervisor, not a waitress—’ Spontaneously, Bella laughed.
“He would say that!”
“With me you’ll be what you are—an artist—’ Bella stilled.
“I won’t be with you, Rico. Never again,” she swore shakily.
“No more games, gatita mia.” He strolled fluidly across the bare boards. Even the way he moved, the effortless grace of that lithe, powerful body, shook her to her very depths. He took out his wallet and extracted a cheque. “Where did you get this money?”
When Liz had collected her clothes she had also collected the one valuable possession Bella had—a small oil of her mother, painted by her father. Liz had taken it to a top art gallery and sold it for her. She would have made more at auction but she had been desperate to dissolve what she’d seen as her last tie to Rico and settle the debt. The canvas had fetched enough to cover the repairs to the Bugatti and the Skoda.
“That’s my business.”
“What did you do?” he asked, indulgently amused.
“Tell Hector you were about to be dragged off to prison?”
“It was my debt. I paid it without anyone else’s assistance,” she stressed proudly.
“I don’t want it. In fact, I refuse to accept it.” Rico tore the cheque in two and let the pieces fall like a statement of intent between them.
Tll just have to get another one. ” In bewilderment she stared at him.
“That was your money—’ ” Lovers don’t have debts between them,” he purred lazily. ” And if you hadn’t smashed up the Bugatti I would N
never have met you. In retrospect it seems a very small price to pay for the amount of pleasure you’ve given me. “
Feeling the atmosphere thicken, Bella took a jerky step in retreat.
“Less than a month ago you were going to take me to the police—’ ” No. I changed my mind in the lift on the way down to the car park . I was taking you home instead,” Rico drawled with rueful amusement.
“I wouldn’t have gone! And would you really have done that to Sophie?”
A winged brow elevated.
“What would it have had to do with her?”
Bella threw him a look of distaste.
“She was living with you at the time … or did you think I hadn’t worked that out yet?”
“Sophie had keys for convenience. She never lived with me. I haven’t shared a roof with a woman in the past decade. Live-in relationships can get very messy and possessive—’ ” And with a two-month limit on your interest it really wouldn’t be worth the effort? “
“You’re talking to me about track records?” Rico threw back his dark head and laughed with a forbidding lack of humour.
“What about yours?”
“Mine?”
“You are one flighty lady if one half of what I read is true, gatita mia.”
“I am not flighty—’ ” No . I’ll clip your wings, chain you to the bed when I’m out, take you with me when I go abroad, employ only ugly old men. ” He watched her with mesmeric intensity and then he smiled—a brilliant smile of unconcealed triumph. ” Then again, I’m really not that worded. Out of all those men I was the only one you slept with, es ver dad
Outraged by the blazing confidence with which he surveyed her, she said,
“That wasn’t how you felt at the time.” i “I’d never made love to a virgin before. You took me by storm.” Rico spread his smooth brown hands with expressive amusement.
“I had to escape to fully appreciate what an enormous compliment it was to be selected out of a cast of thousands to make the grade.”
“I think it’s time you left.”
“Only if you come home with me. Don’t bother packing. I’ll send someone over to clear this place tomorrow.”
Her nails cut purple crescents into her palms.
“Are you asking me to live with you?” she whispered tightly.
He winced.
“Do you have to be so precise? I suggest we spend a month together and take it from there.”
“You said live-in relationships get messy and possessive,” Bella reminded him doggedly.
“That is a risk I’m prepared to take—’ ” Briefly,” she inserted, thinking of the month he had designated. Not much of a risk at all.
‘—to have you in my bed again,” he completed shortly. ” And that is all you want? “
A spasm of raw impatience flashed across his set features. “The generation gapes ver dad Have you ever heard of subtlety?
Infierno . what the hell am I doing here? “
“When you only came to insult me? I’m wondering too.”
He glowered at her in disbelief.
“How have I insulted you?”
Bella was starting to shake with rage and reaction, much of which, she acknowledged, stemmed from bitter disappointment. “You offer me a month’s trial in your bed as if you’re some sultan talking to a little harem slave and you don’t think that’s an insult?” she spat with unashamed contempt.
Rico merely shrugged and looked levelly back at her. “What have you got to lose—Biff and the ring he put back in his pocket?” he mocked.
“Maybe…”
“I won’t ever offer you a ring, gatita mia. If that is your goal, settle for your tame little solicitor and suburbia,” advised, his lip curling.
Inside herself she ached. Had she had the faintest sin pi cion that Rico cared for her, she might have settled the month’s trial in the hope that it might develop into: something more. That awareness shamed her. How rules did you break before you began to hate Every rule she broke as far as Rico was concerned shavedl away her self-respect, and without her pride she would be weak. She was an all-or-nothing person.
“Since you’ve been so. frank I’ll match you.” She walked away, working up the courage to do so, her beautiful deeply troubled, tiny little shivers of high-wire tension rippling through her.
“I grew up with instability, with mother’s love affairs, her broken hearts, her her humiliations. I will not live like that. I saw how treated Sophie tonight—’ ” Sophie and I were not lovers. “
Bella stared at him in shock.
“Sophie acted as my hostess. We probably would become intimate,” he admitted, ‘but then you and I kidnapped and everything changed. “
“Everything changed’. Yes, everything had changed for Bella too.
Within the space of less than thirty-six hours the entire course of her life had been altered. Bonds had formed, emotions unleashed and her every desperate attempt to put the clock back had failed.
“It was over before it ever began between Sophie and me. This evening she invited herself,” Rico revealed grimly. : “Even so, you didn’t give a damn about her!” Bella accused, recalling his complete detachment from the other woman, knowing that there would be a day when she would earn a similar lack of interest.
“I’m worth more than that.”
“You should have kept that in mind, querida … before you offered yourself to me. That was your value, not mine.”
Bella flinched as though she had been struck. She was in love with a total, irredeemable swine. Cleo’s bad taste paled beside this demonstration of raw masculine arrogance. She refused to lower herself to the same level.
She thrust her head high.
“I won’t do it. I need more.”
“You want marriage.” Rico dealt her a look of supreme derision, but at the back of that derision lurked a simmering pool of explosive rage.