‘Rich?’
‘Rich,’ he conceded almost apologetically.
Involuntarily she glanced up and collided with a positively dazzling half-smile that gave her a seductive glimpse of another Rico entirely—a Rico with a sense of humour and considerable charm. That smile made her feel curiously light-headed. ‘What were your parents like? Distant?’
‘Not at all.’ He looked surprised by the suggestion. ‘We were a happy family but I was born late in their lives. My father died when I was a teenager, my mother a couple of years ago—’
?
?So what age are you?’
‘Thirty-two…far too old for you,’ he murmured in unwelcome addition.
‘Look, we’re not going to talk about things like that!’ Bella snapped, emerald-green eyes flashing reproach and reproof. ‘You’re an…Aquarius… right?’
Rico frowned. ‘Ah… astrology. Sí.’
‘We should avoid each other like the plague,’ she told him morosely. ‘It’s a combustible combination.’
‘I do not require a horoscope to know that, gatita,’ he returned with dark satire. ‘So tell me about your background.’
‘Forget it. It would give you indigestion.’
‘I would like to know. Who were your parents?’
Bella stiffened. Of course he didn’t mean ‘who’ in the worldly sense. He certainly wouldn’t be expecting to hear a name that he might recognise. She lifted her vibrant head, her sultry mouth compressing. ‘My father was Ivan Sinclair.’
His winged ebony brows drew together in unconcealed surprise. ‘The artist?’
‘My mother was one of his models. They had an affair. I was the result.’ She wondered why she had told him something that she usually kept very much to herself.
His dark visage was set in uninformative lines. ‘There was no marriage?’
‘Ivan didn’t believe in marriage. He visited Cleo on and off for a while after I was born but that eventually ground to a halt,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t see him again until I was thirteen. And my mother initiated that meeting. She wanted him to take charge of me… It was a really stupid idea…’
The silence stretched and then Rico murmured, ‘What happened?’
‘Nothing much.’ With a jerky shrug she got up and began to clear the table. ‘He was furious at being put on the spot. He accused her of trying to blackmail him, even tried to say I wasn’t his… He was quite pathetic actually. He was no hero.’
‘He had a lot of talent.’
‘But, let’s face it, he was much better known as a drunk and a womaniser.’ Bella stated the obvious for him.
‘Scarcely a suitable guardian for a thirteen-year-old. Why did your mother even consider such an arrangement?’
She turned back to him, her beautiful face strong and her expression clear. ‘She had a lover who didn’t want a kid hanging around,’ she said bluntly. ‘But her visit to Ivan wasn’t a total disappointment. He coughed up some cash to get rid of us; she bought a new van and dumped me with my grandfather instead.’
An ebony brow quirked. ‘A new van?’
‘My mother was a traveller. She wasn’t born to the life, but then few are.’ Bella sighed. ‘She left home when she was eighteen. She was a hippie. Gramps said she was wild. He threw her out after an argument and then regretted it, but he didn’t see her again until she showed up with me twenty-odd years later. She was only involved with Ivan for a couple of years and then she met some guy with a lorry and took to the road—’
‘For how long… until you were thirteen?’
She nodded.
‘But you must have settled somewhere at some stage?’
‘Never for longer than a month.’