—Romantic Times Mothers-To-Be(30)

“Getting in here is like getting into Fort Knox,” he complained grimly.

“And as for getting the phone number … forget it. That is highly confidential information!”

Bella stood up with a frown.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m not here by choice.” He sighed.

“Look, if Hector had had a note of the phone number I wouldn’t be here—’ ” Hector? “

“My boss is Hector’s solicitor.” He reminded her of the connection through which they had met.

“I’m afraid the old boy’s had a heart attack.”

Bella stared at him in mute horror and swayed sickly. “Steady on.”

Griff pushed her back down on the seat she had vacated.

“You’re really fond of the old buzzard,” he muttered in surprise.

“He’s not dead but he’s not too good from what I understand.”

Afterwards Bella could never recall that drive to London with Griff.

She spent the whole journey spinning between awful guilt and simple prayer. Had it been her decision to live with Rico which had prompted this? She had only seen Hector twice since then and he had still been trying to persuade her to leave Rico.

“He is seventy-eight,” the sister in Intensive Care told her quietly.

“If he’s still with us in the morning, he has a chance.”

“I thought he was only about seventy,” Bella mumbled thickly through her tears.

“You can sit with him for a while. You’re the only person he asked for.”

“I’ll wait out here,” Griff said resignedly.

She had forgotten about him. Awkwardly she turned to thank him for driving her to the hospital.

“But don’t wait for me. I won’t leave until … well, until I see how it goes,” she completed tautly.

Hector looked so frail, so shrunken lying in the railed bed. She covered his hand with hers, willed him to feel her presence, and sat there, gripped by the awareness that she had been far closer to Hector than she had ever been to her grandfather. Hector had understood her in a way her mother’s father never had.

In the early evening Hector’s solicitor, Mr Harvey, arrived. He gave her the keys to the house and mentioned, with a cloaked look, that if Hector made it out of Intensive Care he would be moved to a private room, and then to a convalescent home. Those were Hector’s wishes as laid down by him in the event of serious illness.

“He’ll hate that.” Bella sighed, refusing to believe that Hector would not live to see those wishes carried out. “What about his relatives? Why aren’t they here?”

“Hector didn’t want them told,” the solicitor admitted. “But I have informed them. They said that they would keep in touch with the situation by phone.”

It was a very long night. Around dawn Hector opened his eyes on Bella and smiled. Then, after weakly squeezing her hand, he drifted away again. She bought herself breakfast in the cafeteria.

She needed sleep. Accepting that reality, she caught a bus back to Hector’s house. She was in the act of wearily climbing the steps when a hand came out of nowhere and snatched the key from her grasp. She spun round.

“Rico!” she gasped in consternation, pressing a hand to her palpitating heart.

“What a fright you gave me!”

He unlocked the door, pushed it back and thrust her inside. Slamming it, he rested back against it and released his breath in a hiss. His eyes were slivers of raw gold condemnation in his dark, set face.

“You little bitch,” he muttered raggedly.

“I beg your pardon?” Reeling with exhaustion and shock at his sudden appearance, Bella slumped down on the stairs and focused on him with dazed eyes.

“Por qud … why?” he slammed at her with un hidden agery.

She could feel the violence in him, coiled up tight’ like a cobra ready to strike. He was struggling to contain it, on the edge. Her brain was moving in slow motion, could not yet comprehend what on earth was the matter with him. “Rico … I—’ ” Don’t try to lie to me! ” he grated with vicious bite. ” You’ve been out all night. You’re still wearing the clothes you had on at breakfast yesterday. Madre de Dios, I trusted you, I actually trusted you! But I make one wrong move and you react like a whore—’ “A whore?” She framed the words with the greatest of difficulty, scrutinising him with wide, incredulous eyes.

Outraged by her lack of response, Rico reached for her with hard hands and hauled her uptight.

“You thought I wouldn’t find out, es ver dad he seethed down at her in a blaze of fury, his diction destroyed by the thickness of his accent.

“You would’ve told me that you came up to see Hector and stayed the night here. If I hadn’t seen you coming back this morning I wouldn’t have known that you had been with Atherton all night!”

The penny finally dropped with Bella. Her stomach heaved with nausea.

“The butler talked,” she said with heavy irony.

“He told you that I left Winterwood with Griff.”

As Rico released her with a vicious burst of Spanish she slumped back down again, feeling really ill. That Rico could believe for one second that she could be that treacherous, that disloyal and that cheap filled her with shrinking distaste.

When she spoke it was more like talking to herself than to Rico.

“I

meant to phone last night and leave a message for you but I was so upset that I forgot. It didn’t even occur to me that you would distrust me to this extent . that you could. Dear God. ” Bella groaned, staggering uptight on a wave of nausea more powerful than any she had yet managed to tide out and heading blindly for the sanctuary of the downstairs cloakroom,

“I’ve been sleeping with a stranger… ’” I kiss’d thee ere I kill’d thee,” she mumbled in a daze as she yanked open the door. ’” He was a gentleman on whom I built An absolute trust. “

“Othello and Macbeth,” Rico growled in incredulous recognition. His bewilderment and frustration unconcealed, he simply stood there glowering at her. The phone started ringing. Neither of them paid it any heed.

To the accompaniment of the phone shrilling, Bella just managed to shut the door before she was horribly sick. As someone who had always rejoiced in an iron digestive system, she was shaken by her own bodily weakness. Afterwards she clung to the sink and rinsed her mouth out. At least the phone had finally stopped.

The door opened.

“Go away,” she said thickly.

“The phone,” Rico breathed tautly.

“It’s some cousin of Hector’s. He wants to know what hospital Hector’s in… He’s waiting for an answer.”

Bella swallowed hard and gave the answer, then listened dully to him concluding the call.

“How bad is it?” Rico murmured even more tautly.

“Dios, you look terrible—’ i He was a quick study. Reasoning had returned, suggesting the real explanation for her overnight absence. Bella wished that the call hadn’t come. She would have left Rico to stew in his own vile assumptions. He didn’t deserve to be let off the hook this quickly and this easily. This was the male she had sacrificed her dreams for, the male she had burnt her rule book over and where had it got her?

Maybe exactly where she deserved to be.

“Bella, Hector’s not…?”

“No, he’s still hanging in there.” As she spoke he attempted to curve an arm round her. Jerking dizzily away and grabbing hold of the banister, she gasped,

“Leave me alone!”

Ignoring her demand, Rico closed his arms round her from behind.

“Forgive me,” he said tightly.

She was too physically weak to fight him.

“Why can’t you just go?

I’ve been at the hospital all night and I’m not in the mood for you or any of this. It’s probably my fault he’s in there in the first place! ” she completed with a stifled sob, her hand flying up to her wobbling mouth.

“It couldn’t possibly be your fault.”

“He was upset when I moved in with you!” she slung at him shakily.

She heard him expel his breath.

“Oh, just go away,” she mumbled, barely able to stand, she felt so faint.

“I’m not leaving you like this. I’ll take you back to my apartment—’ ” I’m staying here. “

Rico swept her up into his arms.

“You’re not well. You can’t stay here alone. You should be in bed.”

“Someone should be here to answer the phone—’ ” Not you in the condition you’re in,” Rico spelt out.

He carried her out to the limo and there was nothing she could do to prevent him. All her concentration was bent on holding back the sick wooziness that was afflicting her. She would be all right once she had a couple of hours’ sleep but she could not understand why her body was letting her down so badly. Had she caught some bug? Worse, could she have put Hector at risk by sitting with him? She had never felt so drained in her entire life.

When they reached the spacious apartment Bella crawled straight into bed. She had nothing to wear. Rico produced a silk pyjama jacket which she donned in silence. He said that he had called a doctor—a friend of his in the private sector—who had consulting rooms just down the street. Dully she nodded, relieved to notice that her nausea was beginning to recede.