‘All I was trying to do was get rid of the reporters… they were upsetting Hector,’ Bella muttered frantically.
‘And regrettably we’re everywhere you look,’ a wry voice added from a nearby table in what just might have been a friendly warning.
Exhaling his breath in a sudden hiss, Rico surveyed her, his dark gaze chillingly cold. In the space of a moment he had switched from seething rage to black ice, his strong face clenched hard, his mouth twisting. ‘I had you taped from the beginning. No pay, no play…es verdad?’ he murmured in a derisive undertone.
She had never played poker but she caught his drift. Her cheeks burned. Her lashes swept up on her anguished eyes. ‘It’s not like that…’
‘It’s over,’ Rico drawled with lethal finality, and swung away.
Every skin-cell in her body vibrating with raw tension, Bella watched him stride towards the exit. And she knew that if she let him go she would never see him again. Her nervous paralysis gave. Tearing the chintzy apron from round her waist, she flung her hovering boss a look of apology and took off after Rico.
He was already climbing into the limousine waiting by the kerb. As she raced across the pavement he stilled and straightened, one lean hand planted on the door. Glittering dark eyes hit her in near physical assault. ‘What now?’ he demanded.
‘I’ll play…I mean—’ gritting her teeth, cursing her fair skin as it heated, she sealed her lips again and sucked in oxygen ‘—I’ll move in with you.’
His gaze narrowed, sliced even deeper into hers, tension tautening his set features. ‘You surprise me—’
‘Well, you’d better not surprise me,’ she warned fiercely. ‘You’d better treat me right!’
Sudden vibrant amusement banished his stasis. He reached for her in one supple movement and pulled her to him, his hands splaying across the swell of her hips as he looked down at her. ‘You won’t regret it, I promise you,’ he assured her huskily.
‘If you don’t shift this car you’re going to get a ticket,’ she muttered, her heartbeat thundering in her ears as her gaze collided dizzily with his smouldering golden eyes.
But he lowered his head to hers, one hand skimming up her back to wind into her tumbling hair. Their lips met slowly, almost hesitantly, and she trembled, the amount of emotion she was holding back flooding through her in powerful waves. With a ragged groan he forced her closer and took her mouth with a sudden, explosive hunger that made the ground fall away beneath her feet. Her hands closed round him convulsively, holding him to her. And she knew then that when the time came to walk away it would rip her apart.
The limo got a ticket before it rejoined the slow-moving traffic. Bella looked at Rico, every pulse still racing, her heart pounding. It was the first time in her life that she had made a decision that already felt like a foregone conclusion.
A part of her feared the devastating strength of what he could make her feel. Reason hadn’t powered her change of heart. She had reacted on instinct and she was still in shock because of it. He had walked away from her. It had cut her in two, forced her into compromise. But she was painfully aware that she was entering the relationships with needs and expectations that Rico might not be able to meet.
‘I’m flying to Tokyo in the morning for a three-day conference. You can come with me,’ he murmured smoothly.
And Rico might also have needs and expectations that she might not be able to meet, Bella registered abruptly. She wasn’t some little bimbo, ready to drop everything to become a twenty-four-hour handmaiden, programmed to serve with a smile and satisfy every masculine demand.
‘I’ll be working-’
‘Por Dios!’ he gritted in disbelief. ‘Waiting tables?’
‘After the number of plates I broke and my departure at the busiest hour of the day, you can forget that,’ she said ruefully. ‘No. I’ll concentrate on my painting for a while.’
‘Then you can come to Tokyo,’ he asserted forcefully.
‘And what am I going to do with myself all day while you do whatever you do at the conference?’
‘Shop,’ he retorted impatiently.
‘I am not that heavily into shopping, Rico.’
‘Naturally I
will be paying the bills.’
‘When I said that I would move in with you I somehow missed out on the fact that you planned to pay me for my services.’ Bella shot him a furious look. ‘I am not going to be a kept woman!’
Rico treated her to a fulminating stare, visibly hanging onto his temper. ‘I was not aware that I used that designation.’
‘You didn’t need to,’ she said tightly.
‘Basta… so I go alone! Leave it there!’ he ground out with raw bite, patently dissatisfied and antagonised by her response.