‘I don’t like visitors,’ Hector snorted. ‘But you can stay.’ And off he went.
Bella raced upstairs.
‘Where do you hang out?’ Rico enquired, shooting an incredulous glance over the peeling walls and general air of decay surrounding him. ‘In the attic with the bats? No wonder you’re off the wall, gatita. He’s as nutty as a fruitcake.’
‘How dare you?’ she said, her teeth gritted. ‘He can’t help being poor—’
‘Poor?’ Rico burst out laughing. ‘He could buy and sell everyone else in this street! He has a solid-gold investment portfolio that keeps on raking in the cash year after year.’
‘I don’t believe you—’
‘He has just about everyone fooled but I checked him out. Hector Barsay is stinking rich and he never parts with a penny if he can help it. Charities know not to knock on this door.’
‘You’ve mixed him up with someone else…you must have done!’
‘Where’s your lair?’
Stiff-backed, she mounted the second flight of stairs ahead of him and reluctantly pushed open the door. He reached for the light switch.
‘There’s no bulb,’ she said with pleasure, and then abruptly she recalled her paintings and spun round. ‘We’ll go downstairs.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ve always wanted to see a starving artist’s garret. Where’s the flea-ridden straw pallet and the mousetraps?’ he enquired, lifting the solid-silver candelabra by her bed and using the matches sitting beside it. ‘Madre de Dios…’ he breathed, surveying the bare room with an emotion akin to incredulous fascination. ‘You will think you have entered paradise when I take you home with me!’
‘You’re not taking me anywhere, Rico.’ She folded her arms. In the flickering light from the candles he was a dark silhouette in bronze and black—lithe and sleek and as graceful as a jungle cat. Her mouth went dry.
‘Even if you can’t paint anything other than blobs in primary colours I’ll be your patron,’ Rico said smoothly. ‘And you deserve that I say that to you. I’ve learnt more about you in the papers than you ever deigned to tell me.’
She flushed. ‘And that should tell you something—’
‘That you like to dramatise… that you like to play games?’ He shot the demand at her in fast, fluent French. ‘You may not attach too much importance to spelling but you speak French, German, Italian and Russian like a native, I believe.’
She tensed even more, her mouth tightening. ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you read—’
‘Do you or don’t you?’ he raked at her in German.
‘OK… OK… guilty as charged!’
‘You described yourself to me as a waitress—’
‘I’m not ashamed of being a waitress—’
‘But you could have been a rocket scientist if you’d wanted to be! Your teachers said you were brilliant—’
‘A slight exaggeration—’
‘But bone-idle academically and fixated on art… and I have this awful suspicion that you can’t paint for peanuts,’ Rico bit out harshly. ‘Hector’s the father you never had and you would very much like to walk in your lousy father’s footsteps!’
Bella had turned white. She hadn’t expected such a forceful attack as this. Rico was so angry. Why? Did he think that she had made a fool of him? Was she supposed to have reeled off a boastful list of her abilities for his benefit? ‘Clever clogs’, the other kids had whispered nastily behind her back when she had been at school. Bella had learnt the hard way that it was easier to be average than gifted.
‘Biff thinks you’re as thick as the proverbial plank; can’t understand why the papers are making up so many ridiculous lies,’ Rico derided.
‘His name is Gr
iff and he does not think I’m thick—’
‘“Exquisite on the eye, dizzy as a dodo,” he told me cheerfully. He would run a mile if he knew that you were capable of out-thinking, out-guessing and out-plotting his every move!’
Bella compressed her lips. ‘What are you doing here?’