by Lynne Graham
‘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 judgemental 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 gravelled 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.
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 rosebeds 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, prising 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 pleasure. She went out of control without a murmur, her heart slamming against her ribcage, every nerv
e-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 centred 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. ‘You don’t need an excuse,’ she whispered with all the natural warmth that lay at the core of her temperament.
‘Tomorrow will come too soon. Tokyo…’ Rico murmured. ‘I’ll send Kenway in my place—just this once.’
And then he covered her mouth with erotic precision, his hands buried in her hair. It was a long time before they made it into the shower.
CHAPTER NINE
‘THEY belong to my sister. They should fit.’
Bella surveyed the riding gear with concealed amusement. ‘I could wear my jeans.’
‘You’ll feel more comfortable in these. Jeans can be very constricting,’ Rico informed her.
‘You’re planning for me to look impressive round your stables?’ She looked at him with mockery.
‘I intend to teach you how to ride.’
Of course, far be it from Rico to ask if she could already ride. He specialised in making assumptions. But then it was encouraging that he should want her to share a pastime which he obviously enjoyed. Obediently sliding into the borrowed outfit, she watched him out of the corner of her eye and wondered where the past two days had gone. Time was already slipping through her fingers like sand.
They hadn’t made it down for dinner that first night. They had picnicked like starving adolescents at the kitchen table in the early hours. The next morning she had insisted on going up to London to see Hector and supervise the removal of her possessions. She had wanted to leave her paintings behind but that had provoked an argument, so she had given way. Rico had already had a room cleared for her to use a studio. Filled with natural light, it was an artist’s dream, and if there was such a thing as inspiration, she reflected wryly, Winterwood would surely provide it.
Although not according to Hector. Bella’s cheeks flushed as she recalled his reaction to her chosen change of abode. He had been shocked, unhappy and dismayed. In all fairness, what other response could she have expected? Hector was of a different generation. But seeing his disappointment in her had upset her.
‘If he cared about you he’d want to marry you,’ he had told her sternly, and she had bitten her lip and refused to argue. Only time would tell whether Rico cared or not.
‘Come closer.’ Rico beckoned with an imperious hand. ‘Horses sense fear. It makes them nervous.’
‘You think I’m afraid?’
‘Why else would you be standing so far back?’ Arrogantly he took her hand and showed her how to become acquainted with the velvet-nosed bay mare that was shuffling restively on the cobbles while a groom saddled her up. ‘Sheba’s a little fresh. I’ll put you on her in the paddock… on a leading rein.’
‘Gosh… it looks a long way up,’ Bella twittered, striving to look scared.
‘I’ll be with you. You’ll be fine. Dios…I told him I wouldn’t be riding,’ he bit out impatiently, only then noticing that the other groom had already tacked up the glossy grey stallion on the other side of the yard.
And I told him you would be, she thought. Grasping Sheba’s reins, Bella planted a foot in the stirrup and mounted up in one smooth movement.
Halfway across the yard Rico swung back. ‘Bella!’ he yelled, clearly thinking that she was being recklessly daring to impress.
‘Last one over the fence is a wimp!’ she called over her shoulder.
Sheba was fresh all right. Given her head, she took off like a bullet out of a gun, racing for the fence. Bella gloried in the wind tearing at her hair and the speed. It was over a year since she had been on a horse. She heard the thunder of pursuit and grinned. Next time Rico would ask whether or not she could do something before he told her she was going to learn.
Sheba sailed over the fence like a champion and galloped across the rolling parkland. Rico’s stallion thundered past and was reined in on a rise beside a clump of massive oak trees. Sheba was slowing down by then. Bella let her trot the last hundred yards.
Two long strides carried Rico to her side as she slid down off the mare’s back.
‘Sorry…but I couldn’t resist it.’ Her spontaneous smile lit up her whole face as she turned to him.
Her smile lurched and died as Rico closed angry hands round her forearms. ‘Don’t ever get on one of my horses again without a hard hat!’ he seethed down at her.
‘I never wear a hat’
‘You will… If you don’t, you don’t ride,’ he spelt out flatly, pale beneath his golden skin. ‘And only an idiot would jump a fence like that on a strange mount!’
‘Or an idiot who asked the groom first how she performed. He told me she jumped like she was on springs.’ Bella looked up at him, into still grim dark eyes, and groaned. ‘I gave you a fright. I’m sorry.’
‘Where did you learn to ride?’
‘Well,
not in a paddock on a leading rein.’ She threw herself down on the lush grass and turned her face into the sunlight. ‘Cleo had friends we sometimes stayed with. They had horses. I was crazy about them. And Gramps kept stables—’
‘Stables?’
‘Boarding, riding lessons, all that sort of stuff.’ She linked her hands round her raised knees and stared down the rolling slope into the distance. ‘The business went bust when I was nineteen. He broke a hip while I was at college. He could’ve asked me to come home but he didn’t. By the time I realised how bad things were the bank was calling in his loan. All he needed was a little more time but they pushed him to the wall.’
‘I gather you tried to persuade the bank otherwise.’
‘A waste of my breath.’ Bella grimaced. ‘And when the horses had to be sold Gramps just gave up. He didn’t own the stables. He had to move out into a council house in the village. It killed him.’
‘Why do you blame yourself?’
Bella tensed, unprepared for someone saying out loud what she had often thought. ‘I could’ve stopped it happening.’
‘How?’
‘I could’ve run the place for him until he got back on his feet.’
‘But he obviously didn’t want you to drop out of college, gatita. And what business experience did you have? Why blame yourself when you lost your home as well?’
‘Fiddlesticks,’ she said, with a wry curve to her expressive mouth. ‘A little tub of an elderly Shetland pony called Fiddlesticks. I was more upset about him being sold. Silly really—I mean, he was only a pet. I was far too big to ride him.’
Rico tugged her back against his chest. ‘Dios…loath as I am to admit it when you have been showing off, you’re a terrific rider.’ His breath stirred her hair, the familiar scent of him blissfully enveloping her.
She felt at peace in Rico’s arms and that worried her. At peace was the last thing she ought to have felt around him. This was an interlude for him. It wouldn’t last. He didn’t even want it to last. He wanted a passionate affair and an open door to freedom at the end of it. No strings, no complications, no recriminations. He had made that resoundingly clear.