“Becoming a father is not one of your ambitions, I take it.”
“No, definitely’ not on my agenda. A complication I will happily do without.” His bronzed face was shuttered, taut.
“How did we get onto this subject?”
“You started it.”
“Come here…” With a slightly twisted smile, he stretched out both hands and drew her closer.
“If this feels like a big step to you, gatita, it feels just as big to me,” he confided almost harshly, studying her from beneath thick ebony lashes.
“If I get it wrong sometimes, try to make allowances.”
Her tension evaporated. He hadn’t found it easy to make that admission and she loved him all the more for making it. Asking her to live with him had been a very real commitment on his terms, she registered, a relieved feeling of contentment enclosing her, smoothing over the ragged edges of her nerves.
“You’ve been trying to take me home with you ever since you met me,”
she whispered.
“With a notable lack of success,” Rico murmured thickly, tugging her relentlessly across the space that still separated them, dark eyes firing gold.
“But you’re very persistent.”
“And if I say please…?”
“The world’s your oyster,” Bella affirmed, barely able to think straight that close to him.
He linked his arms around her but he tilted his head back, narrowly appraising her.
“You have stars in your eyes, ga-rita. That worries me.”
“You have a fear of being trapped. That worries me even more.”
“Why did you talk to the Press?” he enquired flatly, ignoring her sally.
“I told you why. I just wanted to bring it all to an end. And I thought that if I made it clear that nothing happened between us they would leave me alone—’ ” So you lied. “
“I could hardly tell the truth!” But she flushed, her eyes troubled, her mouth faintly mutinous.
“OK … I lied.”
“Don’t ever do it again. Don’t lie to me and don’t lie about me,”
Rico told her with level emphasis.
“In fact don’t talk about me at all. What is between us is private.”
“I know that!”
“This one time I give you the benefit of the doubt and I forgive you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He surveyed her with cynical dark eyes.
“Bella… I’m not a fool. I can add two and two. Less than forty-eight hours ago you handed me a cheque for a considerable sum of money. Today the article appeared.
Obviously you were paid for that interview. “
She sprang back from him in consternation.
“That money came from the sale of a painting!”
Rico elevated an ebony brow, clearly unimpressed.
“I don’t have you on a pedestal, gatita. So you don’t need to worry about falling off one. I don’t expect perfection but I do expect honesty. Who would pay that much for the work of an unknown artist?”
“It wasn’t one of my paintings!” she flared back at him, both angered and hurt by his lack of trust in her. She would not even have considered accepting money for talking about him to the Press.
“It was one Ivan did of my mother—’ ” Qud dices? ” Rico interrupted, abruptly jerking up out of his lounging position, his attention fully arrested.
“And, before you ask me why I didn’t think of selling it that day I came to the bank to tell you I had no insurance, I’ll tell you why,”
Bella said tightly.
“I forgot about it. I’ve had it all my life. It didn’t occur to me until a few weeks ago that it was a valuable asset which could be sold.”
His incandescent golden eyes bored into her.
“You sold a painting of your mother by your father..” to pay me back? Are you crazy? ” he launched at her.
Bella blinked at him in bewilderment.
“What else could I do?”
“Where was it sold?” he demanded. “What does that matter?” “Where?”
She told him.
“If it’s already been sold, you’ll only have yourself to thank!” he shot at her furiously after he had instructed his chauffeur to head for the art gallery.
“Por Dios … you don’t need to take lessons on how to make me feel bad!”
“I owed you money. It had to be repaid somehow.”
“We were lovers! What do you think I am?” he blazed back at her.
“A
debt collector? “
“You are in banking,” she retorted helplessly, infuriated by the reaction she was receiving. Selling that painting had been a considerable sacrifice and she resented the assurance that it had been an unnecessary one.
“And if you think that I was content to believe that just because we had briefly shared a bed I no longer needed to worry about the fact that I owed you thousands of pounds you don’t know me at all! I also had to cover the repairs to Hector’s Skoda—’ Rico said something incredibly rude about the Skoda, We don’t all slink about in status-symbol cars!”
Bella hissed.
“Why did you tell your driver to go to the art gallery
“If the painting’s still there, naturally I will buy it back for you.”
“You buy that painting, it’s yours,” Bella warned him fiercely.
She sat in the car fuming while he was in the art gallery, having flatly refused to accompany him. If he hadn’t been so damned suspicious and cynical, he would never have known where she’d got the money from! A debt was a debt. She didn’t want it written off. Maybe the money didn’t mean much to Rico but it was the principle that mattered.
He swung back into the car and he wasn’t empty-handed. He settled the small canvas on her lap.
“Here … take Mummy back,” he said very drily.
Bella squinted down at Cleo’s familiar features. Her throat ached but she was stubborn.
“I told you I wouldn’t accept it.”
“Madre de Dios…” Rico bit out with raw impatience.
“I
could shake you until your teeth rattle! “
” What did you pay for it? “
Grudgingly he told her.
“They saw you coming. You were ripped off. It isn’t one of Ivan’s best.”
Rico stabbed a button and the window beside him purred down.
“I’ll just chuck it out, then, shall I?”
A lean hand closed with purpose round the frame. Involuntarily Bella’s gaze clashed with smouldering golden eyes and she gaped.
“You’d do it, wouldn’t you?” Her fingers curved protectively round the disputed article.
“You drive me crazy sometimes.” He slung her a fulminating glance and buzzed up the window again.
And sometimes he shook her rigid. He would have thrown it out. He had called her bluff and Bella was not accustomed to having her bluff called. She had finally met her match in temper and tenacity. For the first time she was in a relationship where she was not the dominating partner.
“Are you planning to pay me rent?” Rico enquired smoothly.
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“But I sense that money promises to be a bone of contention. If we were married would you feel like this?”
“Of course not,” she said, and then wished she hadn’t.
“Illuminating… Clearly I have to suffer for not offering that band of gold,” he murmured sardonically.
She ignored the crack about the wedding ring, barely trusting herself to speak.
“Shut up, Rico…”
“Maybe I should,” he conceded silkily.
“Maybe this is one of those times when you need to make allowances for me.”
Bella was seething. She gritted her teeth.
“This promises to be a deeply challenging relationship. I’m used to having my own way,” he volunteered unapologetically.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
Silence fell. She got lost in her own thoughts. She studied Cleo with far less judge mental eyes than usual.
“I go with my feelings,” her mother had said. And that was exactly what Bella was doing with Rico, had done with Rico even in that wretched container when they’d first made love. No wonder that emotion-driven surrender had filled her with turmoil. Bella always liked to know where she was going. She liked important things cut and dried. But now she had a future in front of her that was a giant unknown.
She surfaced from her introspection as the limousine purred through tall, electronic gates and up a long, winding drive—the Winterwood estate, she gathered, scanning the great sweep of landscaped parkland with curious eyes. In the early summer sunlight of late afternoon the setting was idyllic.
“Do you like the country?”
Bella shrugged a narrow shoulder, struggling not to gape as a vast ancestral pile in stone swam into view round the next bend. It was a magnificent house, designed with all the grace and understated elegance of the eighteenth century. The limousine swept up onto the gravel led frontage and even the soft crunch of the wheels somehow sounded filthy rich. She moistened suddenly dry lips, quite overpowered. What the heck was she doing here with him?
She was wearing a denim skirt with a carefully frayed hem and a T-shirt. She had no make-up on. Her hair was all mussed—his fault.
And there he was, immaculate as usual, all sleek and sophisticated in a pearl-grey suit that fitted like a glove and screamed expensive tailoring. They were the original odd couple. If she lost him at a party, she would be thrown out as a gatecrasher.