by Lynne Graham
‘What heart?’ Rico slashed back viciously. ‘Por Dios … to see you sitting there holding hands with him! You got exactly the reaction you expected—’
‘I didn’t know you would be there!’ But she knew that she was talking to a brick wall. Rico was convinced that she had set him up. Griff had set them both up, but Rico would not believe that. Why? Because Griff had been so polite that Rico had written him off as a lame brain. But Griff would never have risked offending someone as powerful and rich as Rico da Silva.
‘I want to see these famous paintings, not one of which has ever been sold,’ Rico derided, heading for the pile of canvases stacked along the entire length of the spacious room, ‘but which Nazenby considers works of pure genius… Infierno! He probably couldn’t tell an old master from a Picasso!’
‘No!’ Bella planted herself squarely in his path.
‘And what happened to your terror of the police force? I did everything within my power to support you at that police station,’ Rico reminded her rawly, setting her out of his path with one imperious hand. ‘And now Nazenby talks about you as though you’re part of his family!’
‘Face that container and you can face anything. I’d kept up the fear out of habit… No, Rico!’
‘I want to see them. You live with Hector Barsay and, unless old age has mellowed him, you have to be accustomed to criticism.’
‘Why is it so important for you to see them?’ she wailed in distress.
‘Why is it so important for you to prevent me?’
‘They’re private,’ she muttered tightly.
‘An artist whose every work is private—how thought-provoking,’ he drawled nastily, flipping back the first canvas.
‘Hector says I’m not ready to be shown yet. He thinks my interpretation needs a lot more work…more maturity,’ she proffered unsteadily, voicing her supposed flaws in advance.
The silence went on and on. She clutched her hands together, as nervous as someone watching her children jay-walking across an accident black spot. Rico shone the candelabra on about half a dozen, slowly moving from one to the next. Nothing could be read from the taut lines of his dark features. Expelling his breath, he straightened, but he was still studying an oil of children playing in the mud round a lorry.
‘You paint your childhood,’ he breathed tautly.
‘Not all the time.’
‘Hector is not only a miser, he’s a liar. He wants to hold onto you, es verdad? His own discovery. He can’t let you go. He hid away from that world out there years ago, and if he encourages you to exhibit he knows he’ll lose you!’ Rico sent her a shimmering glance, his expressive mouth compressed into a strangely bloodless line. ‘You have extraordinary talent and you cannot possibly require someone like me to tell you that.’
‘You like them?’
He set the candelabra back by the bed and stood there, watching her with hooded dark eyes. ‘I’m in shock and you know it. Why are you working as a waitress?’
‘It pays the rent. I paint in daylight, work at night. I get fabulous tips—’
‘I can imagine.’
‘The hours suit me.’
‘Biff told me you were a catering. supervisor, not a waitress—’
Spontaneously, Bella laughed. ‘He would say that!’
‘With me you’ll be what you are—an artist—’
Bella stilled. ‘I won’t be with you, Rico. Never again,’ she swore shakily.
‘No more games, gatita mia.’ He strolled fluidly across the bare boards. Even the way he moved, the effortless grace of that lithe, powerful body, shook her to her very depths. He took out his wallet and extracted a cheque.
‘Where did you get this money?’
When Liz had collected her clothes she had also collected the one valuable possession Bella had—a small oil of her mother, painted by her father. Liz had taken it to a top art gallery and sold it for her. She would have made more at auction but she had been desperate to dissolve what she’d seen as her last tie to Rico and settle the debt. The canvas had fetched enough to cover the repairs to the Bugatti and the Skoda.
‘That’s my business.’
‘What did you do?’ he asked, indulgently amused.
‘Tell Hector you were about to be dragged off to prison?’
‘It was my debt. I paid it without anyone else’s assistance,’ she stressed proudly.
‘I don’t want it. In fact, I refuse to accept it.’ Rico tore the cheque in two and let the pieces fall like a statement of intent between them.
‘I’ll just have to get another one…’ In bewilderment she stared at him. ‘That was your money—’
‘Lovers don’t have debts between them,’ he purred lazily. ‘And if you hadn’t smashed up the Bugatti I would never have met you. In retrospect it seems a very small price to pay for the amount of pleasure you’ve given me.’
Feeling the atmosphere thicken, Bella took a jerky step in retreat. ‘Less than a month ago you were going to take me to the police—’
‘No… I changed my mind in the lift on the way down to the car park… I was taking you home instead,’ Rico drawled with rueful amusement.
‘I wouldn’t have gone! And would you really have done that to Sophie?’
A winged brow elevated. ‘What would it have had to do with her?’
Bella threw him a look of distaste. ‘She was living with you at the time… or did you think I hadn’t worked that out yet?’
‘Sophie had keys for convenience. She never lived with me. I haven’t shared a roof with a woman in the past decade. Live-in relationships can get very messy and possessive—’
‘And with a two-month limit on your interest it really wouldn’t be worth the effort?’
‘You’re talking to me about track records?’ Rico threw back his dark head and laughed with a forbidding lack of humour. ‘What about yours?’
‘Mine?’
‘You are one flighty lady if one half of what I read is true, gatita mia.’
‘I am not flighty—’
‘No… I’ll clip your wings, chain you to the bed when I’m out, take you with me when I go abroad, employ only ugly old men.’ He watched her with mesmeric intensity and then he smiled—a brilliant smile of unconcealed triumph. ‘Then again, I’m really not that worried. Out of all those men I was the only one you slept with, es verdad?’
Outraged by the blazing confidence with which he surveyed her, she said, ‘That wasn’t how you felt at the time.’
‘I’d never made love to a virgin before. You took me by storm.’ Rico spread his smooth brown hands with expressive amusement. ‘I had to escape to fully appreciate what an enormous compliment it was to be selected out of a cast of thousands to make the grade.’
‘I think it’s time you left.’
‘Only if you come home with me. Don’t bother packing. I’ll send someone over to clear this place tomorrow.’
Her nails cut purple crescents into her palms. ‘Are you asking me to live with you?’ she whispered tightly.
He winced. ‘Do you have to be so precise? I suggest we spend a month together and take it from there.’
‘You said live-in relationships get messy and possessive,’ Bella reminded him doggedly.
‘That is a risk I’m prepared to take—’
‘Briefly,’ she inserted, thinking of the month he had designated. Not much of a risk at all.
‘—to have you in my bed again,’ he completed shortly.
‘And that is all you want?’
A spasm of raw impatience flashed across his set features. ‘The generation gap, es verdad? Have you ever heard of subtlety? Infierno…what the hell am I doing here?’
‘When you only came to insult me? I’m wondering too.’
He glowered at her in disbelief. ‘How have I insulted you?’
Bella was starting to shake with rage and reaction, much of which, she acknowledged, stemmed from bitter disappointment. ‘You offer me a month’s trial in your be
d as if you’re some sultan talking to a little harem slave and you don’t think that’s an insult?’ she spat with unashamed contempt.
Rico merely shrugged and looked levelly back at her. ‘What have you got to lose-Biff and the ring he put back in his pocket?’ he mocked.
‘Maybe…’
‘I won’t ever offer you a ring, gatita mia. If that is your goal, settle for your taine little solicitor and suburbia,’ he advised, his lip curling.
Inside herself she ached. Had she had the faintest suspicion that Rico cared for her, she might have settled for the month’s trial in the hope that it might develop into something more. That awareness shamed her. How many rules did you break before you began to hate yourself? Every rule she broke as far as Rico was concerned shaved away her self-respect, and without her pride she would be weak. She was an all-or-nothing person.
‘Since you’ve been so frank, I’ll match you.’ She walked away, working up the courage to do so, her beautiful face deeply troubled, tiny little shivers of high-wire tension rippling through her. ‘I grew up with instability, with my mother’s love affairs, her broken hearts, her depressions, her humiliations. I will not live like that. I saw how you treated Sophie tonight—’
‘Sophie and I were not lovers.’
Bella stared at him in shock.
‘Sophie acted as my hostess. We probably would have become intimate,’ he admitted, ‘but then you and I were kidnapped and everything changed.’
‘Everything changed’. Yes, everything had changed for Bella too. Within the space of less than thirty-six hours the entire course of her life had been altered. Bonds had been formed, emotions unleashed and her every desperate attempt to put the clock back had failed.
‘It was over before it ever began between Sophie and me. This evening she invited herself,’ Rico revealed grimly.
‘Even so, you didn’t give a damn about her!’ Bella accused, recalling his complete detachment from the other woman, knowing that there would be a day when she would earn a similar lack of interest. ‘I’m worth more than that.’
‘You should have kept that in mind, querida…before you offered yourself to me. That was your value, not mine.’
Bella flinched as though she had been struck. She was in love with a total, irredeemable swine. Cleo’s bad taste paled beside this demonstration of raw masculine arrogance. She refused to lower herself to the same level.
She thrust her head high. ‘I won’t do it. I need more.’
‘You want marriage.’ Rico dealt her a look of supreme derision, but at the back of that derision lurked a simmering pool of explosive rage. ‘I said I wanted you. I didn’t say I was down on my knees and certifiably insane!’
‘I didn’t say I wanted marriage!’ she gasped strickenly.
‘You don’t need to. You could spell it out in fireworks above my bank and it would be less obvious than what I see in your face!’ he bit out with sudden viciousness as he strode forward and closed hard hands round her forearms before she could retreat. ‘I was right all along. You had your price all right. But it’s not a price I would even contemplate, and you have to be bloody naive to imagine that I would be that desperate!’
‘I never mentioned marriage!’
‘In the next breath you were about to mention children, no doubt,’ he scorned. ‘Madre de Dios…’
‘I love them!’ Bella flung at him, losing her head. ‘I also want a large fluffy dog and a cat and a pony for them. So take yourself off, Rico! Go find a bimbo to audition for the honour of sharing your precious bed! And if she amuses herself on the side with your gardener or one of your security men you will only be getting what you deserve!’
‘Por Dios…you may have an IQ higher than my credit rating but you are unhinged.’ Rico swore furiously. ‘No normal woman would speak like this to me!’
‘I’m ashamed I ever let you touch me. I’ll be scrubbing myself clean for a month!’ she shouted back. ‘How dare you come here into my home and talk to me as if I’m some sort of glorified whore? Was I going to get a Porsche as well?’
‘Driving lessons,’ he raked down at her, his dark head lowering. ‘Putting you behind the wheel of a Porsche would be like putting an arsonist in a barn!’
‘Don’t you dare!’ she warned, shaking like a leaf as the scent of him washed over her, as the taut, muscular angles of his hard body met in direct collision with hers.
‘You’re gasping for it too.’
He kissed her and the world fell away and everything else soared to an ungovernable height of excitement. He closed his arms around her so tightly that she couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t want to breathe. Dizzy and disorientated, she clung to him, lost in the devastating plunge into passion, her heart racing, her pulses throbbing, every muscle taut with a hunger that dominated and controlled. Heat surged into her loins, making her thighs tremble against the aroused thrust of his manhood. He swept her up in his arms and then dropped her on the ancient feather mattress from a height.
‘You’re a pushover, querida.’ He stared down at her, his hard-boned features grim and derisive. ‘And you will crawl for that month’s trial before I am finished with you!’ he stated chillingly.
‘Push off, you bastard!’ Bella shrieked, her voice cracking.
‘And you will stop using language like that,’ he hissed in outrage. ‘If you want me to treat you like a lady, talk like one!’
‘You wouldn’t recognise a lady if you fell over one!’ she sobbed, out of control with rage and self-loathing. ‘I hate you, Rico!’
The door closed. She thumped the pillow with clenched fists. She hadn’t buckled. She had been tempted but she hadn’t buckled, hadn’t surrendered. Why then didn’t she feel better? Why had the sound of that door closing filled her with dread? But she knew why, didn’t she? He had left her alone again and, for a charged instant, she didn’t believe that she could bear the emptiness that stretched ahead without him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘“A COMPLETE gentleman”,’ the journalist repeated woodenly, disappointment emanating from her in waves. It might have been an exclusive interview but the content was not of the salacious variety guaranteed to titillate.
‘Absolutely,’ Bella stressed.
The woman coughed. ‘I understand there was only one bed—’
‘Mr da Silva slept on the floor.’
‘Mr? You mean you didn’t even get on first-name terms?’
‘I think of him as Mr da Silva,’ Bella muttered.
The brunette sighed. ‘He’s so gorgeous… He looks so… sexy.’
‘Looks can be deceptive.’
‘He sounds about as exciting as cold porridge.’
‘He did take his jacket off and give it to me to keep me warm when we were escaping!’ Bella rushed to assert, fearful that she had overdone her efforts to silence press speculation.
Hector was sitting in the kitchen over a cup of tea.
‘The paparazzi will vanish tomorrow when that interview is published,’ Bella told him with forced cheer. ‘The phone will stop ringing and the doorstep will be clear again. Our lives will return to normal.’
‘You should never talk to journalists. They twist things,’ he warned her.
Bella cleared her throat and surveyed him reflectively. ‘Rico said you were stinking rich…’
Hector choked on his tea. She had to bang him on the back. It was five minutes before he stopped spluttering.
‘Absolute rubbish!’ he swore weakly.
‘But maybe you have a few savings…just for a rainy day?’
He looked distinctly cornered and shifty. ‘It’s possible.’
‘And maybe you could afford to put on a few lights now and then. If you have a fall in the dark at your age,’ Bella pointed out gently, ‘it could be serious. Gramps was never the same after his tumble down the stairs. The shock took an awful lot out of him. And then there’s the candles, Hector. They’re a fire hazard.’
‘I’ll think it over,’ he m
uttered, looking grey at the grim pictures she had painted. ‘You’re not thinking of moving out, are you?’
‘Where on earth would I go?’ she laughed, seeing his fear.
Hector sighed. ‘I meant to say to you last night but I fell asleep… I used to know da Silva’s father, João. He had a tremendous art collection. Old money, of course. Shame the son made such an idiot of himself, but then young people do…’
Bella frowned at him and then sat down opposite. ‘You’re talking about Rico?’
‘I was living in Spain then. Must be easily ten years ago,’ he mused. ‘His divorce case was plastered all over the newspapers out there. He had married some totally unsuitable female. She was an actress or some such thing. She had a string of lovers. There was a young child involved as well—’
‘A child?’ she broke in helplessly.
‘It wasn’t his child. I remember feeling very sorry for the family, and particularly for the boy, having all that dirty washing dragged out. Ghastly.’ Hector shook his head expressively, shooting her a troubled glance. ‘Not an experience I should think he came through unscathed. These days he seems to have more of a reputation as a womaniser.’
Bella was shaken by what Hector had told her. A failed marriage she was already aware of but this was something else entirely. ‘The Press went over my life with a fine-tooth comb… how come they didn’t pick up on his marriage?’
‘It happened in a different country. He’s just been lucky.’
She lay in bed that night mulling the bare facts over. By the sound of it Rico had been badly burnt. And at what age—twenty-one? He couldn’t have been much older. The same age as she was now. But Rico might well have been far more vulnerable. Growing up in a rich, privileged and happy family did not necessarily prepare you very well for the darker side of life and the people who used and abused you. In fact money had probably made him more of a target.
He had told her so much but she just hadn’t been listening carefully enough. That very first day, when he had quite unreasonably accused her of flaunting herself and trading on her looks, he had also called his attraction to her ‘a sick craving’. Right from the outset Rico had fought to deny that attraction. Heavens, did she remind him of his ex-wife? She recalled his preoccupation with the possibility of consequences … “The honey trap and then the price’ … Had it been a shotgun wedding?