Prisoner Of Passion

by Lynne Graham

  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.

  He was waiting for her in the drawing room. Tall, dark and spectacularly handsome, he surveyed her entrance. Her heart skipped a beat; her mouth went dry. In mute misery she swerved her attention off him again.

  ‘That dress looks like a maternity outfit,’ he drawled.

  Bella flinched and spilt some of the sherry which Haversham always served her before dinner and which she had yet to drink. But, since the same thought about the dress had occurred to her, she thought nothing of the remark. She contrived a shrug and said, ‘It’s comfortable.’

  ‘Allow me to get you another drink,’ Rico said.

  ‘No, I’m not really—Oh, dinner!’ she exclaimed with relief, rising to her feet as Haversham appeared.

  Since she was really hungry, she was on the second course before it crossed her mind that it was time to bite the bullet and convince Rico that their affair was over. So far the meal had been unusually silent. And that, now that she actually thought about it, was strange. Rico was not, as a rule, someone who quietly smouldered. Rico did not suffer in silence. Yet, in spite of emitting hostile vibrations into the steadily thickening atmosphere between them, he had barely opened his mouth.

  ‘Why are you so quiet?’

  He sent her a glimmering smile which made her feel uncomfortable. ‘I wanted to see you eat a decent meal.’

  ‘Like the condemned man?’ Bella looked across the table at him and steeled herself. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t very honest with you this afternoon…’

  He tautened perceptibly. His narrowed dark eyes rested on her with grim intensity. He drained his glass of wine and set it down without taking his attention from her once. ‘I am aware of that fact.’

  For some peculiar reason Bella felt as though the dining-table between them had just become a bank manager’s desk, with her playing the role of debtor asking for a loan that was about to be refused. There was just something so cold and businesslike about Rico’s attitude.

  ‘Well, I owe you the truth,’ she told him.

  ‘You do,’ he agreed.

  ‘I’ve realised that I still have feelings for Griff,’ she muttered, and she didn’t need to pretend to feel guilty saying that; she did feel guilty.

  The silence stretched like a rubber band pulled to breaking-point. Then Rico’s strong face clenched, his sensual mouth flattening into a bloodless line. ‘To employ your jargon… tough!’

  Bella gave him a dazed look, wildly disconcerted by such a response.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me the rest of the truth?’ he invited softly, only there was something innately menacing about that tone.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Maybe you could tell me why you’re not wearing your black dress… or why you’ve sworn off alcohol again?’ Rico invited. ‘Or why one of my closest friends can’t meet my eyes when I ask him a perfectly reasonable question?’

  Bella had turned pale.

  ‘Or how about why you’re developing a bosom worthy of a Playboy centrefold?’

  ‘How dare you?’ she gasped, unable to dredge anything more riveting from a brain in the deep freeze of turmoil. He couldn’t possibly have guessed, she told herself frantically; he couldn’t possibly have!

  Rico vented a harsh laugh and thrust his plate away. ‘You’re pregnant… and all I want to know now is how pregnant?’

  In a wave of pain Bella bowed her head.

  ‘George didn’t tell me but when you got up out of that bed and told me we were finished you told me,’ Rico spelt out. ‘I can add two and two. So tell me, when did this happy event take place?’

  ‘When we were kidnapped—’

  ‘So now I discover why you suddenly agreed to move in with me!’ he shot at her.

  ‘I didn’t know until today!’ she protested, shocked that he could think that.

  ‘And with the best will in the world how am I supposed to believe that?’ he breathed, sounding almost weary.

  ‘Because it’s the truth.’

  ‘For someone who prides herself on telling the truth, and who gives an outstanding impression of always delivering it, you tell a lot of lies!’

  A sob was trapped in her throat. Why, oh, why hadn’t she had the wit to tell him this afternoon as soon as she’d found out? But she knew why. This was the very scene she had sought to avoid and it was tearing her apart. She had believed that a few weeks or months down the line, when they had already split up, she would have been able to handle his bitter reaction a lot more easily. But in avoiding the issue she had only made Rico more suspicious.

  The tip of her tongue stole out to moisten her dry lips. She lifted her vibrant head. ‘I can’t blame you for thinking that, but I just wasn’t ready to face this yet. I was as shocked as you are and I knew how you would feel—’

  ‘Por Dios, you have not a clue how I feel!’ he raked back at her.

  Bella forced herself to explain why she had assumed that she was not pregnant, and at that moment did not much care whether Rico believed her or not. They had both taken that risk two months earlier, and if the first time their lovemaking had been prompted by her, the second time Rico had been the guilty party. The responsibility cut both ways.

  ‘And what are your plans now—a termination?’ he demanded abruptly.

  She looked back at him in horror.

  ‘I had to ask,’ he murmured tautly, and oddly enough her unspoken rejection of such an option seemed to remove much of the strain stamped into his bronzed features. ‘I was afraid that that was your intention.’

  �
�No,’ she confirmed, decidedly knocked off balance by his reaction because deep down inside she had been equally afraid that that might have been his intention.

  ‘I would not have allowed that,’ Rico added, just in case she hadn’t got the message.

  ‘And I wouldn’t have considered it,’ she asserted tightly.

  ‘We will get married as soon as possible.’

  Bella very nearly fell off her chair. Wide-eyed, she stared back at him, refusing to believe that he had simply murmured that statement as if it almost went without saying that they should now get married, as if any other response to their predicament was not even to be considered.

  Rico dealt her shocked face a look of granite-hard determination untinged by any amusement. ‘I intend to have full legal rights over this child.’

  Bella unglued her tongue from the roof of her mouth. Just minutes ago he had told her that she didn’t have a clue how he felt about her being pregnant. Now she was tasting the literal truth of that assurance. ‘But—’

  ‘Let’s go into the drawing room,’ he suggested drily, rising fluidly from his seat. ‘I doubt that either of us is likely to eat any more tonight.’

  Once there, Bella sank down into an armchair. ‘How can you talk about marriage?’ she whispered helplessly. ‘I thought you didn’t even like children—’

  ‘When did I ever say that?’

  ‘You said you had no desire to become a father.’

  ‘Naturally not… outside marriage,’ he stressed.

  She was shaken by the simplicity of that clarification.

  ‘As it happens, I am very fond of children,’ he breathed tautly as he poured himself a brandy. ‘But children make you vulnerable. I had a son once and I lost him again. It was an experience I did not wish to repeat.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand.’ He was talking about the child he had had with his ex-wife.

  ‘His name was Carlos.’ Rico sent her a brooding look, his tension palpable. ‘And to this day I do not know whether or not he was my child. But it really didn’t matter because when he was born I believed he was and I loved him,’ he proffered tightly. ‘He was the only good thing to come out of a rotten marriage, the only reason I tried so hard to make the marriage work.

  ‘Margarita didn’t give a damn about him. He was simply the means by which she married money. But when it came to the divorce he was also the means by which she hoped to achieve a very large settlement.’

  All at once Bella was seeing how wildly off-centre her own assumptions had been. ‘I wish you had told me this sooner.’

  ‘When Margarita moved out she took Carlos with her. She expected me to buy him back,’ he muttered harshly, his jaw clenching. ‘But she wanted more than I could afford to pay then. When I didn’t pay up she lost her head and told everyone that he wasn’t mine anyway—’

  ‘How could she do that to you?’ Bella whispered.

  ‘The reality was that she didn’t know whether he was or not. I had not been her only lover at the time of his conception. Her claim threw the custody battle into chaos, causing a delay in the giving of the judge’s decision. Tests had to be carried out. Carlos remained with Margarita and…’ he hesitated and gave an almost clumsy shrug ‘…one day when she was partying he fell into a swimming pool and drowned.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Bella mumbled in shock.

  ‘He was eighteen months old,’ Rico revealed curtly. ‘And she wasn’t fit to have the charge of him. She had had a row with his nanny and sacked her the day before. He didn’t have a hope in hell.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ She swallowed back the tears that were threatening and watched the carpet swim instead. She was appalled by what he had told her.

  ‘And I swore I would never have another child because losing Carlos was the toughest challenge I have ever had to face.’ His facial muscles locked, he downed his brandy in one. ‘But be assured that now you carry my baby inside you everything changes…’

  ‘Yes.’ Her head was aching from the tension he had induced.

  ‘We do the very best we can for that baby,’ he informed her with sudden savage ferocity. ‘And I will not allow you to walk away as Margarita did and take that child from me! He or she is as much mine as yours…and the sooner you accept that reality the better!’

  ‘I don’t want to walk away,’ Bella said thickly just as the door closed. She looked up. Rico had gone. She flew to her feet and went after him, but by the time she realised that he had left the house and not just gone into another room he had already driven off.

  She was distraught and yet part of her wanted to kick him for not telling her about Carlos sooner. It wasn’t her fault that she had made a series of false suppositions on the subject of how he felt about children, it was his. Yet she understood why he hadn’t told her as well. Understandably, talking about that tragedy really upset him. Dear God, what an evil bitch he had married, she thought helplessly.

  At first she planned to sit up and wait for him and explain how she had misunderstood. But then she began to go back over all that Rico had said. Marriage hadn’t been on his agenda because he hadn’t wanted to risk having another child with any woman. Once bitten, twice shy. But the fact that a baby was actually on the way had completely altered his attitude.

  And he wasn’t worried about losing her, was he? It was a bitter irony. Rico was more worried about losing control of the new life in her womb! No wonder he had relaxed when he’d realised there was to be no threat of a termination. Rico, whether he realised it or not, could not wait to get his paws on her baby! He was even prepared to marry her to ensure that he had greater legal rights!

  She went up to bed, deeply shaken and deeply hurt. She was distressed by what he had told her about Carlos but never in her entire life had she felt more rejected. Regardless of the fact that Rico really seemed to want their child, he seemed to have pitched their relationship right out the window. And she just couldn’t comprehend why it was happening that way.

  He woke her up coming to bed. It was some unholy hour of the morning and he was humming under his breath. She couldn’t believe it. Her teeth clenched. And when, ten seconds after he got into bed, a pair of arms reached for her she presented him with a back as welcoming as Everest in a blizzard.

  ‘I asked you to marry me. I thought you’d be pleased,’ he murmured without any expression at all.

  Bella shot upright as if he had stabbed her with a knife. ‘Why the hell would I be pleased?’

  ‘It is what you wanted at the beginning.’

  ‘I wised up!’ she screeched.

  A lamp was switched on. ‘Calm down,’ he instructed. ‘How do you think that baby feels listening to you scream?’

  ‘It’s listening to you too… being totally, hatefully objectionable!’ she sobbed, her every worst fear about the exact nature of her value to him now confirmed.

  He enclosed her in his arms. She did her stick of rock impression.

  ‘Bella…’ he said tautly. ‘I was under a lot of strain earlier. I felt incredibly confused. I was scared that you were pregnant… and then scared that you might not be! But by the time I was cracking open the champagne with George…’ Bella froze in absolute disbelief at this revelation of how he had passed his time away from her ‘…I realised how extraordinarily happy I feel about this baby,’ he delivered with positive fervour, in the tone of someone who believed that he was telling her exactly what she wanted to hear.

  ‘You’ve been celebrating with my doctor?’ Bella enunciated in a voice which shook.

  ‘Naturally we did not discuss you either medically or personally,’ Rico assured her.

  ‘You toad!’ she spat.

  Rico dropped his air of insouciance and compressed his lips, his glittering golden eyes splintering into hers. ‘Do you really think he’ll still want you when you tell him you’re pregnant?’

  ‘Who?’ Bella looked blank.

  ‘Who?’ Rico echoed, cuttingly incredulous.

  Comprehension assailed
her. A heady tide of pink washed over her complexion. Somehow, in all the turmoil of the evening, she had forgotten telling him that lie about Griff. Since it now seemed pointless to continue it, she muttered, ‘I made that up—’

  ‘Qué dices?’

  ‘About Griff… that was a little white lie—’

  ‘“A little white lie”?’ Rico thundered, springing out of bed. ‘Madre de Dios… you tell me you’re in love with another man and you call that “a little white lie”?’

  ‘I had to give you a reason for leaving!’ Bella protested.

  ‘So if you are not pining for Biff why were you leaving?’ he slung at her with a positively feral snarl as he began to get dressed.

  ‘Because of the baby.’ Bella gave him an ‘are you stupid?’ look of angry reproof. ‘I thought you wouldn’t want it… I thought it would be the worst news you had ever heard—’

  ‘And when was I going to hear this news?’ he roared at her.

  ‘Some time after we’d split up… when the subject wasn’t so emotive.’

  Rico sent her a glimmering glance of disbelief.

  ‘When it felt less… personal,’ she floundered in desperation.

  His disbelief was magnified.

  ‘Does that really make sense to you, gatita?’ he enquired gently.

  Reluctantly she shook her head. In retrospect it didn’t make sense. Finding out that she was pregnant had made her panic. She had not been thinking clearly about what she was doing. ‘I guess I was running away. I couldn’t work up the courage to tell you something I thought you didn’t want to hear.’

  ‘And that was my fault?’

  Bella shrugged. ‘You didn’t want to be trapped into marriage again. That’s fine.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But I don’t want to marry you on that same basis, Rico. Even though both of us were reckless—’

  ‘I’m never reckless, gatita. I knew the risk and I accepted it. I should have known then that there was something special between us…’

  Bella winced. ‘Rico, you would tell me just about anything to persuade me to marry you. I can understand that but—’ A hand had closed round her arm. Rico was pulling her out of bed. ‘What are you doing?’