—Romantic Times Mothers-To-Be(25)

“What are you talking about?”

“Your exclusive interview … priceless, absolutely priceless. Let’s do lunch tomorrow. You really should be wearing my ring. It was too late to stop the announcement and I know you didn’t mean what you said,”

he asserted.

Bella dropped the phone as though she had been burnt. Half an hour later she was standing in a news agent s, learning that Hector had spoken truly when he’d said that you shouldn’t talk to journalists.

Rico had been labelled as a boring stuffed shirt, a male so inflated with his own importance that he hadn’t even allowed her to call him by his Christian name, the implication being that he was a raging snob. There wasn’t even a mention of his taking his jacket off . probably because it might have made him sound human.

Bella cringed, cursing her own stupidity. She checked her watch. She had agreed to work a rare lunchtime shift at the restaurant. In her break she would get on the phone and apologise to him. It had never crossed her mind that anyone could turn their ordeal into sheer comedy, or that so unjust a picture might be drawn. If she had been able to choose a fellow victim out of a million names, she would have chosen Rico every time. She could have wept.

Gaston’s was choked to the gills with customers. Serious foodies ate there, studying the yard-long menu with blissful intensity. Bella was loaded with empty plates when she noticed a curious lull in the level of quiet conversation. She turned her head, saw Rico and simply froze.

“What were you paid for that character assassination?” he blazed at her down the length of the entire dining room.

Her staggered gaze clung to him. The tiger had escaped again. Rico in a rage. He strode across the floor in two long, lithe strides, indifferent to the turning heads, the buzz of conjecture.

“How much?”

he breathed in a tone that quivered with fierce emotion.

There was a look of savage betrayal in his brilliant dark eyes. She couldn’t bear it. It cut her to pieces. She forgot she was holding the plates. They dropped with an almighty crash. She barely noticed.

“Nothing…”

“You hate me that much?” he shot at her from between clenched teeth.

“No … no,” she whispered, on the brink of tears, appalled that he had taken it so badly, making the worst possible interpretation of that foolish interview.

“I do not appreciate being lampooned in print. It was a pack of lies!” he condemned with raw distaste.

“All I was trying to do was get rid of the reporters … they were upsetting Hector,” Bella muttered frantically.

“And regrettably we’re everywhere you look,” a wry voice added from a nearby table in what just might have been a friendly warning.

Exhaling his breath in a sudden hiss, Rico surveyed her, his dark gaze chillingly cold. In the space of a moment he had switched from seething rage to black ice, his strong face clenched hard, his mouth twisting.

“I had you taped from the beginning. No pay, no play..” es ver dad he murmured in a derisive undertone.

She had never played poker but she caught his drift. cheeks burned.

Her lashes swept up on her anguished eyes. “It’s not like that…”

“It’s over,” Rico drawled with lethal finality, and swung away.

Every skin-cell in her body vibrating with raw Bella watched him stride towards the exit. And she that if she let him go she would never see him again. nervous paralysis gave. Tearing the chintzy apron round her waist, she flung her hovering boss a ogy and took off after Rico.

He was already climbing into the limousine waiting the kerb. As she raced across the pavement he stilled and straightened, one lean hand planted on the door. dark eyes hit her in near physical assault.

“What now?” demanded “I’ll play … I mean—’ gritting her teeth, cursing her skin as it heated, she sealed her lips again and sucked oxygen ‘—I’ll move in with you.”



His gaze narrowed, sliced even deeper into hers, tension tautening his set features.

“You surprise me—’ ” Well, you’d better not surprise me,” she warned fiercely. ” You’d better treat me right! “

Sudden vibrant amusement banished his stasis. He reached for her in one supple movement and pulled her to him, his hands splaying across the swell of her hips as he looked down at her.

“You won’t regret it, I promise you,” he assured her huskily.

“If you don’t shift this car you’re going to get a ticket,” she muttered, her heartbeat thundering in her ears as her gaze collided dizzily with his smouldering golden eyes.

But he lowered his head to hers, one hand skimming up her back to wind into her tumbling hair. Their lips met slowly, almost hesitantly, and she trembled, the amount of emotion she was holding back flooding through her in powerful waves. With a ragged groan he forced her closer and took her mouth with a sudden, explosive hunger that made the ground fall away beneath her feet. Her hands closed round him convulsively, holding him to her. And she knew then that when the time came to walk away it would rip her apart.

The limo got a ticket before it rejoined the slow-moving traffic.

Bella looked at Rico, every pulse still racing, her heart pounding.

It was the first time in her life that she had made a decision that already felt like a foregone conclusion.

A part of her feared the devastating strength of what he could make her feel. Reason hadn’t powered her change of heart. She had reacted on instinct and she was still in shock because of it. He had walked away from her. It had cut her in two, forced her into compromise. But she was painfully aware that she was entering the relationship with needs and expectations that Rico might not be able to meet.



“I’m flying to Tokyo in the morning for a three-day conference. You can come with me,” he murmured smoothly.

And Rico might also have needs and expectations that she might not be able to meet, Bella registered abruptly. She wasn’t some little bimho, ready to drop everything to become a twenty-four-hour handmaiden, programmed to serve with a smile and satisfy every masculine demand. “I’ll be working—’ ” Por Dios. ” he gritted in disbelief.

“Waiting tables?”

“After the number of plates I broke and my departure at the busiest hour of the day, you can forget that,” she said ruefully.

“No. I’ll concentrate on my painting for a while.”

“Then you can come to Tokyo,” he asserted forcefully.

“And what am I going to do with myself all day while you do whatever you do at the conference?”

“Shop,” he retorted impatiently.

“I am not that heavily into shopping, Rico.”

“Naturally I will be paying the bills.”

“When I said that I would move in with you I somehow missed out on the fact that you planned to pay me for my services.” Bella shot him a furious look.

“I am not going to be a kept woman!”

Rico treated her to a fulminating stare, visibly hanging onto his temper.

“I was not aware that I used that designation.”

“You didn’t need to,” she said tightly.

“Basta … so I go alone! Leave it there!” he ground out with raw bite, patently dissatisfied and ant agonised by her response.

He just doesn’t know any better, she told herself painfully. He was accustomed to having his own way with her sex. Sophie hadn’t been offered a Porsche for acting as his hostess alone. He might not have slept with her but it had been a pay-off. She hadn’t earned it, the blonde had said

bluntly. Bella’s nostrils flared with distaste. If Rico knew what was good for him, he would keep the financial aspect out of their relationship. Bella might not be rich but she considered herself his equal on every other level.

“Where are we going?” she asked abruptly.

“My estate … I’m taking you home with me.” Rico’s mouth compressed.

“Don’t tell me … you have an objection to that as well?”

“If you want to rescue a stray, try Battersea Dog’s Home I’ ” What the hell is the matter with you? ” he suddenly exploded.

“I just don’t like being taken over as if I’m some sort of cypher!”

She swallowed hard, feeling the dismaying sting of tears in her eyes.

“Look… this—’ ” Maybe now that you appreciate that the dog, the cat and the pony will be neither required nor appropriate you’re having second thoughts! ” he grated in a tense undertone.

“I seriously doubt that I’ll be with you long enough for it to become a pressing problem!” Bella was angered and embarrassed at having her own words thrown back in her face.

He went rigid, his jaw-line squaring.

“Don’t miscalculate and make it one.”

Bella paled.

“I wouldn’t do something like that!” She was shocked by the suggestion that he thought she might.

Abruptly Rico muttered an imprecation and released his breath.

“How can I even say that to you after the risks we ran a few weeks ago?”

he murmured drily.

“Let us face facts; we are fortunate indeed that you are not now pregnant.”

Bella bent her head, suppressing an urge to tell him that she was only now expecting the confirmation that their passion was to have no further consequences. Why worry him unnecessarily? It wasn’t as if she was worried that that confirmation would not arrive. It was extremely unlikely that conception could have taken place at that time of her cycle, she reminded herself, and it was precisely because of that unlikelihood that she had not allowed herself to spend the past three weeks anxiously fretting.