?
?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.