The chauffeur opened the door. Bella stepped out, feeling more and more as though she had stepped into Brideshead Revisited. And then she saw the rose beds and grimaced.
“What’s wrong?” He sounded incredibly anxious, as if he was primed to her every move and change of expression.
“Rico, roses are supposed to riot, not march in lines like soldiers.
That looks like council planting at its worst. ” Then she flushed.
“Sorry, that wasn’t very polite of me.”
He smiled at her.
“I don’t expect you to be polite—’ ” Thanks for the vote of confidence. “
“What I meant was…” he placed an arm around her narrow back ‘you just say what you think. It’s a very unusual trait in the world I move in—’ “Sure, you know loads of dreadful people who have tact and good manners!”
“I like your honesty. It disconcerts me from time to time,” he murmured, ‘but I find it very attractive. “
“Why are you being so nice all of a sudden?” she asked suspiciously.
“This is going to be your home. I want you to relax here, not behave like a guest,” he asserted.
“I thought’I was only here to visit for a month.” “Bella!” he grated.
“Sorry, was I being disconcerting?” She chewed at her lower lip.
“But you know you have to be up front about things like that. At the end of the month we put our cards on the table and if it’s not working out—’ ” We try harder,” he slotted in fiercely.
Bella had been about to conclude that she would move out with no hard feelings . at least, none that she would show.
An elderly little man in a dark suit was awaiting them below the imposing pillared entrance.
“Good evening, Mr da Silva … madam.”
Bella very nearly went off into whoops of laughter. Dear God, he had a butler, a real live butler! Her mouth wobbled. “This is Miss Jennings, Haversham.”
“Miss Jennings.”
“H-Haversham,” she acknowledged, her face frozen as she fought back her giggles.
Rico walked her into a huge, echoing, tiled hall. She felt like someone on a National Trust tour—a member of the paying public, programmed to gawp. She trembled and reckoned that she was winning until a voice said from behind them,
“And what time would you like dinner to be served, sir?”
That was it. Bella went off into gales of laughter.
“Sorry!”
she gasped, bending over and hugging her aching ribs as amusement bubbled out of her convulsed throat.
“Seven,” Rico told his butler in a strained tone.
“Are you going to share this joke?” he asked as the stately footsteps of Haversham retreated.
“Definitely not. You wouldn’t appreciate it.” Wiping her damp eyes, Bella pulled herself together with difficulty. “Try me.”
“I thought butlers died out around half a century ago.”
“Haversham came with the house,” Rico told her very seriously, as if he was excusing himself for possessing one of a dying breed.
Bella shook her head, vibrant hair flying like flames round her shoulders.
“Rico … this is another world for me.”
“And you don’t like what you’ve seen of it?” She grinned.
“No, I’m fascinated.”
“Would you like me to show you around?”
Standing there in the stray patch of sunlight arrowing through a tall sash-window, he looked so good that she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Six feet four inches of spectacular masculinity. Visually she adored every extravagantly gorgeous inch of him, her heart accelerating like a racing car screeching round a bend at a hundred-plus miles an hour. She felt her breasts stir and swell inside the cups of her bra, helplessly struggled to fight the electric tension that was wantonly taking her over.
“Bella…” he murmured unsteadily, his shimmering golden eyes suddenly hotly pinned to her.
Emboldened by the discovery that he could look helpless too, Bella smiled, all female.
“Turned very coy all of a sudden, haven’t you?”
There was nothing coy about the manner in which he grabbed her, and there was nothing cool about the manner in which he kissed her breathless halfway up the fabulous staircase. She wound her arms round his neck and let him carry her.
She wasn’t sure that her own legs were up to the feat.
He kicked the door shut on a wonderfully elegant bedroom, decorated in eau-de-Nil with accents of pale gold. He brought her down on the canopied bed and she laughed again, a slim hand stretching up to flick playfully at an exquisite hand-made tassel.
“Who did your decorating?”
“My sister, Elena:’ ” She has style . but only a sister would have put you in a room this feminine. ” She kicked off her shoes.
“You look incredibly beautiful,” he breathed, his gaze roaming intently over her as he came down on the bed beside her.
Bella reached out and caught his silk tie, drawing him down to her, drowning in the slumbrous glow of his eyes. Their mouths connected, clung, and she went weak, letting her head fall back again. He followed her down, pr ising her lips apart with the tip of his tongue, ravishing the moist interior that she opened to him with a ragged groan.
She pulled his jacket off, tore at his tie, and as he fought his way out of his shirt let her palms smooth up over the warm, hard wall of his muscular chest, her fingertips teasing at the dark whorls of hair in her path. With an earthy growl he brushed her hands away, thrust her T-shirt up and found her breasts.
It was her turn to gasp and quiver as his expert fingers pushed up her bra and tugged at her engorged nipples. Her back arched in a blinding wave of intolerable excitement.
“You have the most exquisite breasts,” he breathed, grazing her swollen lower lip with his teeth.
“So sensitive…”
His dark head swooped and seized a rose-pink bud. Her blood pressure rocketed sky-high. She dug her hands into his hair, driven nearly mindless with the hot, drugging plea sure. She went out of control without a murmur, her heart slamming against her ribcage, every nerve-ending raw with sensation.
He ran a hand up the length of one slim thigh, ruthlessly wrenching her skirt out of his path. Their mouths met again in a torturously hungry mating, and she was shaking, trembling, her hips shifting upwards in a primitive rhythm, all consciousness cent red and driven by the erotic brush of his fingers skating over the taut triangle of cloth still dividing her from him.
She burned and panted for breath as he tugged the briefs away and discovered the damp, hot secret of her desire. Intolerable excitement held her in its grip. Suddenly he was pushing her back, shifting over her, unexpectedly stilling when she was poised with anticipation on the furthest edge, every nerve ready to scream with frustration.
“Don’t stop!” she gasped.
She felt his hands, roughly impatient on her thighs, and then, with a suddenness that stole her breath away, he thrust into her hard and deeply. An ecstatic cry escaped her, wanton in the depth of need it expressed. She stretched up, kissing his throat, licking the salt from his skin, adoring him. But he pushed her back, arching over her like a primitive god, demanding absolute control, thrusting harder and faster, filling her again and again with the driving force of his manhood. The tension exploded inside her and she jerked like a doll under him, her teeth clenching, a wild, excited cry torn from her as the waves of violent pleasure engulfed her.
Lying shattered and winded in the circle of his arms, listening to the ragged edge of his breathing, she was conscious of a surge of love so intense that it hurt. She rubbed her cheek sensuously against his sweat-dampened shoulder.
“Dios … we didn’t even get our clothes off.” Rico stretched luxuriantly against her.
“I planned a romantic dinner, champagne—’ She wrinkled her nose.
“Predictable.”
“Life is not very predictable around you,” he conceded lazily, and withdrew from her.
Belatedly she understood that pause before he’d possessed her. He had been protecting her. Birth control. She brushed a hand abstractedly over her breasts, conscious of a slight ache that was’ new to her experience. It had translated into an intense sensitivity when he’d touched her. She tensed, the sudden memory of a pregnant friend complaining about the soreness of her breasts flying through her head, jolting her. No, next door to impossible, she christened the fear which followed. Any day now she would know that she was all right. With determination she pushed the concern back out of her mind.
Without warning, strong hands settled beneath her as Rico scooped her up into his arms.
“Why so serious?” he murmured curiously.
“Me … serious?” Bella forced a laugh, emerald-green eyes fastening on him, cold fear burrowing up momentarily inside her.
“I was miles away.”
“I want you here,” he told her, setting her down in the beautiful en suite bathroom and peeling her T-shirt off. She reddened.
“I can take my own clothes off.” “I want to take them off.”
“You think I’m a doll or something?”
“It’s an excuse to keep my hands on you,” he breathed. “And right now I would settle for any excuse.”
Her gaze colliding with lustrous dark eyes, she stretched up and linked her hands round his strong brown throat. She felt dizzy with happiness, and generous.