—Romantic Times Mothers-To-Be(24)

“I said I wanted you. I didn’t say I was down on my knees and certifiably insane!”

“I didn’t say I wanted marriage!” she gasped strickenly. “You don’t need to. You could spell it out in fireworks above my bank and it would be less obvious than what I see in your face!” he bit out with sudden viciousness as he strode forward and closed hard hands round her forearms before she could retreat.

“I was right all along. You had your price all right. But it’s not a price I would even contemplate, and you have to be bloody naive to imagine that I would be that desperate!”

“I never mentioned marriage!”

“In the next breath you were about to mention children, no doubt,” he scorned.

“Madre de Dios…”

“I love them!” Bella flung at him, losing her head.

“I also want a large fluffy dog and a cat and a pony for them. So take yourself off, Rico! Go find a bimbo to audition for the honour of sharing your precious bed! And if she amuses herself on the side with your gardener or one of your security men you will only be getting what you deserve!”

“Por Dios … you may have an IQ higher than my credit rating but you are unhinged.” Rico swore furiously.

“No normal woman would speak like this to me!”

“I’m ashamed I ever let you touch me. I’ll be scrubbing myself clean for a month!” she shouted back.

“How dare you come here into my home and talk to me as if I’m some sort of glorified whore? Was I going to get a Porsche as well?”

“Driving lessons,” he raked down at her, his dark head lowering.

“Putting you behind the wheel of a Porsche would be like putting an arsonist in a barn!”

“Don’t you dare!” she warned, shaking like a leaf as scent of him washed over her, as the taut, muscular angles of his hard body met in direct collision with hers. “You’re gasping for it too.”

He kissed her and the world fell away and everything else soared to an ungovernable height of excitement. He closed his arms around her so tightly that she couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t want to breathe.

Dizzy and disorientated, she clung to him, lost in the devastating plunge into passion, her heart racing, her pulses throbbing, every muscle taut with a hunger that dominated and controlled. Heat surged into her loins, making her thighs tremble against the aroused thrust of his manhood. He swept her up in his arms and then dropped her on the ancient feather mattress from a height.

“You’re a pushover, querida.” He stared down at her, his hard-boned features grim and derisive.

“And you will crawl for that month’s trial before I am finished with you!” he stated chillingly.

“Push off, you bastard!” Bella shrieked, her voice cracking.

“And you will stop using language like that,” he hissed in outrage.

“If you want me to treat you like a lady, talk like one!”

“You wouldn’t recognise a lady if you fell over one!” she sobbed, out of control with rage and self-loathing.

“I hate you, Rico!”

The door closed. She thumped the pillow with clenched fists. She hadn’t buckled. She had been tempted but she hadn’t buckled, hadn’t surrendered. Why then didn’t she feel better? Why had the sound of that door closing filled her with dread? But she knew why, didn’t she? He had left her alone again and, for a charged instant, she didn’t believe that she could bear the emptiness that stretched ahead without him.





CHAPTER EIGHT


‘“A COMPLETE gentleman” ,” the journalist repeated woodenly, disappointment emanating from her in waves. It might have been an exclusive interview but the content was not of the salacious variety guaranteed to titillate. ” Absolutely,” Bella stressed.

The woman coughed.

“I understand there was only one bed—’ ” Mr da Silva slept on the floor. “

“Mr? You mean you didn’t even get on first-name terms?”

“I think of him as Mr da Silva,” Bella muttered.

The brunette sighed.

“He’s so gorgeous… He looks so… sexy.”

“Looks can be deceptive.”

“He sounds about as exciting as cold porridge.”

“He did take his jacket off and give it to me to keep me warm when we were escaping!” Bella rushed to assert, fearful that she had overdone her efforts to silence press speculation.

Hector was sitting in the kitchen over a cup of tea.

“The paparazzi will vanish tomorrow when that interview is published,” Bella told him with forced cheer.

“The phone will stop ringing and the doorstep will be clear again. Our lives will return to normal.”

“You should never talk to journalists. They twist things,” he warned her.



Bella cleared her throat and surveyed him “Rico said you were stinking rich…”

Hector choked on his tea. She had to bang him on the back. It was five minutes before he stopped spluttering. “Absolute rubbish!” he swore weakly.

“But maybe you have a few savings … just for a day?”

He looked distinctly cornered and shifty.

“It’s ” And maybe you could afford to put on a few li and then. If you have a fall in the dark at your age,” pointed out gently, ‘it could be serious. Gramps was the same after his tumble down the stairs. The shock an awful lot out of him. And then there’s the Hector. They’re a fire hazard.”

“I’ll think it over,” he muttered, looking grey at the pictures she had painted.

“You’re not thinking of out, are you?”

“Where on earth would I go?” she laughed, seeing fear.

Hector sighed.

“I meant to say to you last night but I asleep… I used to know da Silva’s father, Jolo. He had tremendous art collection. Old money, of course. the son made such an idiot of himself, but then young people do…”

Bella frowned at him and then sat down “You’re talking about Rico?”

“I was living in Spain then. Must be easily ten years he mused.

“His divorce case was plastered all over newspapers out there. He had married some totally able female. She was an actress or some such thing. had a string of lovers. There was a young child as well—’ :! ” A child? ” she broke in helplessly.

“It wasn’t his child. I remember feeling very the family, and particularly for the boy, having all that dirty washing dragged out. Ghastly.” Hector shook his head expressively, shooting her a troubled glance.

“Not an experience I should think he came through unscathed. These days he seems to have more of a reputation as a womaniser.”

Bella was shaken by what Hector had told her. A failed marriage she was already aware of but this was something else entirely.

“The Press went over my life with a fine-tooth comb … how come they didn’t pick up on his marriage?”

“It happened in a different country. He’s just been lucky.”

She lay in bed that night mulling the bare facts over. By the sound of it Rico had been badly burnt. And at what age—twenty-one? He couldn’t have been much older. The same age as she was now. But Rico might well have been far more vulnerable. Growing up in a rich, privileged and happy family did not necessarily prepare you very well for the darker side of life and the people who used and abused you.

In fact money had probably made him more of a target.

He had told her so much but she just hadn’t been listening carefully enough. That very first day, when he had quite unreasonably accused her of flaunting herself and trading on her looks, he had also called his attraction to her ‘a sick craving’. Right from the outset Rico had fought to deny that attraction. Heavens, did she remind him of his ex-wife? She recalled his preoccupation with the possibility of consequences. “The honey trap and then the price’… Had it been a shotgun Wedding?

Whatever the circumstances, Rico had been betrayed and humiliated, and just thinking about that made Bella’s heart go out to him. She was a soft touch. She couldn’t help it. Her fury with him from the night before evaporated. For all she knew the suggestion that she live withhirn for a month—an invitation that he had denied ever offering to any other woman—had been a courageous stab at what had felt like a mega-commitment on his part.

On the other hand, it could equally well have been a deeply basic indication of how highly he valued the sexual passion they had shared. Beneath those beautifully tailored suits lurked one very passionate male, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. And he did have a sense of humour. Anyone who could handle Hector without batting an eyelash deserved applause.

He wasn’t remotely intimidated by her intelligence either and even in a rage he had been capable of eating his own words and admiring her paintings. He even fitted Gramps’ yardstick of eligibility—good education, stable family background, steady employment. And she loved him. It was a shame that he had gone ballistic when she’d mentioned the large fluffy dog, the cat and the pony. Rico did not want children. Still, you couldn’t have everything.

And right at this moment you have nothing, she reminded herself in exasperation.

Griff rang her mid-morning the next clay.

“Bella … it would have been kinder to hit the guy with the bottle in the restaurant!”