‘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.
She felt mean and she acted accordingly. ‘Tell me about your ex-wife.’
The strong muscles in his arms drew taut. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Her name… that would be a start.’
‘Margarita.’
‘And then maybe you could tell me why you’re so bitter,’ she dared.
‘I am not bitter.’
‘Do I remind you of her?’
‘Not at all. She was small, black-haired, blue-eyed.’
‘Beautiful?’
‘Stunning.’
‘You could ease up on the superlatives if you like,’ she told him. ‘So how did you meet?’
‘A nightclub. She was an actress but I had no idea how ambitious she was. In fact I never really knew her at all,’ he admitted flatly. ‘I was twenty, she was two years older. I didn’t know the difference between love and sexual obsession. At that age everything feels so intense. When she told me she was pregnant I married her.’ ‘Yes,’ she whispered softly.
‘Once he was born, Margarita dropped any pretence of wishing to be a mother and went back to the film world,’ he said drily. ‘I tried very hard to make the marriage work. Everyone had told me I was making a mistake. I was determined to prove them wrong … and I trusted her.
‘Even when I found her in bed with another man I didn’t realise that he was one of many. She would have slept with anyone capable of furthering her career. She was drunk that night. She told me how many others there had been. The next morning she moved out and moved in with her producer. I instigated the divorce…’
‘What else could you have done?’ Bella leant her head back against him, understanding all that he had left unsaid. He had been used, kicked in the teeth and dumped. She waited for him to mention the little boy again, realised that he hadn’t even referred to him by name, and also that he had not told her that that child had not been his.
‘Margarita made it a battle, and she revelled in the publicity until it turned on her,’ he drawled. ‘Her career nosedived after the divorce. Nobody came out of it happy.’
Had he still been in love with his ex-wife? His grim intonation suggested regret to Bella. Regret for what? She wanted to probe deeper but resisted the temptation. She knew that she would drag it all out of him eventually. But now, she sensed, was not the time.
‘But I learnt a lot from Margarita,’ Rico murmured with satire.
Nothing good, Bella thought. He didn’t trust women. He was always looking for ulterior motives. He didn’t believe in permanence. And marriage for him had been a destructive trap from which he had gained nothing. But one truth he had spoken. He had said that he wasn’t bitter and on that count she believed him. He had come to terms with that part of his past.
Why, then, did she sense that there was a whole lot missing from what he was telling her? He had glossed over the subject of the child. But then he wasn’t that fussed about kids anyway, was he? In a marriage as bad as that, and as short-lived, it might well have been a relief not to be linked to his ex-wife by a tie as unbreakable as that of a child.
‘What did you learn?’
He settled back on the lush meadow grass and looked down at her, scanning her vibrant face with glittering dark eyes. ‘That I don’t have to get married to enjoy myself. That what we have here, now, is far more exciting than being welded together by an empty contract full of promises destined to be broken. If we stay together it will be a free and uncomplicated choice—’
‘Nothing’s that uncomplicated.’
‘Trust me… I trust you,’ he breathed, lowering his dark head. ‘I know you took a risk on me. I know this wasn’t your dream. This has to be the first time in my life that a woman hasn’t wanted anything from me but myself.’
‘And I’m only after your body, so you can feel safe.’
With an appreciative grin he slid a hard thigh between hers, pinning her in place, studying her slumbrously from beneath the thick veil of his black lashes. ‘When you look at me like that you fill me with uncontrollable lust, gatita mia.’