“What I realise now is that we sort of became dependent on each other in that container, and I don’t want to be dependent any more. I want my freedom back.”
“I might be more impressed if you looked me in the face and told me that,” he drawled with derision.
Bella looked up, blocked him out, a terrible pain scything through her.
“It’s over. I’m sorry but that’s the way it is.”
“You are one lousy liar,” Rico said grimly, crossing the room in one long, menacing stride.
“What the hell is going on here?”
Before he could reach her Bella dived for the door. In seconds she was out of the apartment and into the mercifully waiting lift. She made it out onto the busy street at speed. Sobs were tearing at her convulsing throat. She dashed her hand across her streaming eyes, devastated by the force of her emotions. Then she drew in a deep, slow breath and walked on down the street.
CHAPTER TEN
AN HOUR later Bella was sitting by Hector’s bedside with the fixed expression of someone in shock and striving to hide it. He had already been moved out of Intensive Care and into a private room. But while she had been asleep at the apartment Rico had visited him.
“Absolute nonsense for you to think my dicky heart had anything to do with your love life,” Hector was telling her in reproof.
“I had an attack three years ago, as you very well know. As for you and Rico… well, times have changed and he seems very fond of you—’ ” Fond of me? “
“Why else would he invite me to Winterwood to convalesce?”
He s done what. she squeaked, shattered by the news. “I must say I’m really looking forward to seeing the house again.” He sighed fondly.
“When it belonged to the Cliffords in the fifties I was a regular visitor there—’ ” But I thought you were planning on a convalescent home? “
“Rico told me what that would cost.” Weak as he was, Hector all but shuddered in recollection.
“How clever… I mean, how conscientious of him to have found out for you,” she managed with the greatest difficulty. “But I could look after you at home if you like.”
“Not with that showing at the Matheison Gallery coming up. I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Bella’s nails dug into her palms like talons. Ten minutes with Hector had sent her from utter despondency to sheer rage. Rico had trussed her up like a goose ready for the oven!
Perfectly well aware that their relationship was in deep water, he had ensured that it would be virtually impossible for her to move out. Hector was positively looking forward to a break in the country which would cost him not a penny and where he would be waited on hand and foot.
How could she now announce that she had broken up with Rico? That was no longer the news which she had innocently imagined would cheer Hector up. Indeed, she had the hideous suspicion that Hector, who liked very few people, had decided to make an exception of Rico.
As he drifted off to sleep he was mumbling about what ingenious ideas Rico had on the enthralling subject of reducing expenditure and making the most of a small income. Fit to be tied, Bella stalked out of the room.
She found Rico standing in the small waiting area at the end of the corridor. He watched her striding towards him with supreme cool.
“You devious toe-rag!” she launched at him from ten feet away.
‘“A slippery and subtle knave,” Rico murmured smoothly.
“Don’t you dare quote Shakespeare at me!” she hissed in fury.
“How could you use an old man like that … how could you?”
“If you don’t lower your voice, I shall treat you exactly as if you were the child you are choosing to emulate,” he drawled in a whiplash tone.
“Now take a deep breath and calm down … right now.”
Her outraged eyes shimmered. She buttoned her mouth shut, not trusting herself to speak. She wanted to slap him and he knew it and he wasn’t impressed. Flinging her a grim glance, he stood back for her to enter the waiting lift.
“We’ll talk in the car,” he told her.
Bella shot into the back seat of the limousine like a ting cat, temper still blazing through her.
“How dare?”
“Be silent,” Rico said sharply.
“You cannot make accusations of that variety and expect to get away with it. tor Barsay may not be a blood relative but you are very attached to him. Since he was also a friend of my late father’s for many years, I naturally felt that I should visit him.”
Gritting her teeth, she studied her tightly clenched hands. So far, so good, but there was no way he could explain himself out of what he had done during that visit. “When I saw him earlier you were sulking—’ ” I do not sulk—’ “You sulk,” Rico assured her.
“We had had an but when I went to that hospital I had no idea that when I returned to the apartment you would announce that our relationship was at an end.”
Bella swallowed hard. It was a point she had to concede. “Hector doesn’t want to go to a home where he will be surrounded by strangers. He also misses you a great That I should offer him hospitality was a natural progression from those facts. At Winterwood he will have every comfort but he will also have the privacy which is so important to him.”
“All right, I’m sorry,” Bella muttered from clenched teeth.
“But where does that leave us now?”
“You appear to have already made that decision,”
retorted drily.
“I gather you didn’t tell him the truth?”
“How could I?” she demanded fiercely.
“Especially when you would have looked a little stupid when I’d told him that you were staying put.”
She looked at him for the first time.
“I beg your pardon?”
Hooded dark eyes rested intently on her.
“You’ve been crying. Your nose is still pink.”
“Thank you so much for telling me,” she mumbled in a wobbly voice, suddenly feeling tearful again and ready to scream at the hormonal upheaval of pregnancy. Of course, that was what was the matter with her.
“We’re going back to Winterwood,” he informed her. “I’m going back to Hector’s house.”
“I have the keys. I’m not giving them to you until you calm down.”
“I am perfectly calm,” Bella bit out furiously.
“Give me those keys!
I don’t know what I’m going to do when Hector comes out of hospital but that has to be a few weeks away and I’ll deal with it then! “
“You’re not getting those keys.”
“And you call me childish.9’ But he didn’t answer her. Her throat was thick with clogged tears.
Defensively she turned her head away again. In a sense this was all her own fault. Back at the apartment she had not been prepared to face Rico. She had not had time to work out what she needed to say to sound convincing.
In short, she had made a mess of telling him that their relationship was over—so great a mess that he thought that she was simply being pathetically immature and vindictive over that argument in spite of his apologies. He did not believe that she really wanted to break off their affair.
And, since the truth was that she didn’t, it really wasn’t that surprising that Rico should think that way. Walking away from the man she loved demanded a degree of detachment and acting ability which Bella now acknowledged she did not possess. It was going to take lies to convince Rico that she had meant what she said. Maybe she ought to tell him that she had realised yesterday that she still had feelings for Griff . or maybe she should just tell him the truth.
No, not yet, she decided tautly. That would be a truth more easily dealt with when they were no longer together.
As she headed for the stairs in the echoing hall at Winterwood Rico murmured,
“I expect you to come down to dinner.”
Bella almost exploded. He had tied her up in knots with Hector, forced her to return to Winterwood and he was withholding the keys to Hector’s house. He had been treating her like a fractious toddler on the brink of a temper tantrum from the minute she’d walked out of Hector’s room!
She spun round.
“Tough!”
“It’ll be Haversham’s turn to laugh if I have to carry you downstairs,” Rico warned her.
“You wouldn’t dare.” But she knew he would, knew she could push him so far and no further. Biting her tongue, green eyes blazing, Bella looked back at him, thwarted.
“Don’t wear that figure-hugging black velvet dress,” he murmured softly.
“I don’t like it.”
“I’ll wear whatever the hell I want!”
And from the minute Bella got out of the shower she knew it would be that dress which she put on. Only, the zip proved oddly reluctant to go up. When she finally got it up and turned to look in the mirror she realised why. Her breasts now foamed over the straining neckline like overripe fruits. She looked down at them in horror and attempted to squash them down again. It was a pointless exercise. Until that moment she really hadn’t appreciated just how much her shape had already changed.
Coming down the staircase in a relentlessly shapeless floral dress which had been a fashion accident, Bella found herself wondering why Rico had told her not to wear that black dress. He had only ever seen her in it twice and the second time, weeks ago, he had told her she looked stunning in it.