‘I thought I was only here to visit for a month.’
‘Bella!’ he grated.
‘Sorry, was I being disconcerting?’ She chewed at her lower lip. ‘But you know you have to be up front about things like that. At the end of the month we put our cards on the table and if it’s not working out—’
‘We try harder,’ he slotted in fiercely.
Bella had been about to conclude that she would move out with no hard feelings…at least, none that she would show.
An elderly little man in a dark suit was awaiting them below the imposing pillared entrance. ‘Good evening, Mr da Silva… madam.’
Bella very nearly went off into whoops of laughter. Dear God, he had a butler, a real live butler! Her mouth wobbled.
‘This is Miss Jennings, Haversham.’
‘Miss Jennings.’
‘H-Haversham,’ she acknowledged, her face frozen as she fought back her giggles.
Rico walked her into a huge, echoing, tiled hall. She felt like someone on a National Trust tour—a member of the paying public, programmed to gawp. She trembled and reckoned that she was winning until a voice said from behind them, ‘And what time would you like dinner to be served, sir?’
That was it. Bella went off into gales of laughter. ‘Sorry!’ she gasped, bending over and hugging her aching ribs as amusement bubbled out of her convulsed throat.
‘Seven,’ Rico told his butler in a strained tone. ‘Are you going to share this joke?’ he asked as the stately footsteps of Haversham retreated.
‘Definitely not. You wouldn’t appreciate it.’ Wiping her damp eyes, Bella pulled herself together with difficulty.
‘Try me.’
‘I thought butlers died out around half a century ago.’
‘Haversham came with the house,’ Rico told her very seriously, as if he was excusing himself for possessing one of a dying breed.
Bella shook her head, vibrant hair flying like flames round her shoulders. ‘Rico… this is another world for me.’
‘And you don’t like what you’ve seen of it?’
She grinned. ‘No, I’m fascinated.’
‘Would you like me to show you around?’ Standing there in the stray patch of sunlight arrowing through a tall sash-window, he looked so good that she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Six feet four inches of spectacular masculinity. Visually she adored every extravagantly gorgeous inch of him, her heart accelerating like a racing car screeching round a bend at a hundred-plus miles an hour. She felt her breasts stir and swell inside the cups of her bra, helplessly struggled to fight the electric tension that was wantonly taking her over.
‘Bella…’ he murmured unsteadily, his shimmering golden eyes suddenly hotly pinned to her.
Emboldened by the discovery that he could look helpless too, Bella smiled, all female. ‘Turned very coy all of a sudden, haven’t you?’
There was nothing coy about the manner in which he grabbed her, and there was nothing cool about the manner in which he kissed her breathless halfway up the fabulous staircase. She wound her arms round his neck and let him carry her. She wasn’t sure that her own legs were up to the feat.
He kicked the door shut on a wonderfully elegant bedroom, decorated in eau-de-Nil with accents of pale gold. He brought her down on the canopied bed and she laughed again, a slim hand stretching up to flick playfully at an exquisite hand-made tassel. ‘Who did your decorating?’
‘My sister, Elena.’
‘She has style… but only a sister would have put you in a room this feminine.’ She kicked off her shoes.
‘You look incredibly beautiful,’ he breathed, his gaze roaming intently over her as he came down on the bed beside her.
Bella reached out and caught his silk tie, drawing him down to her, drowning in the slumbrous glow of his eyes. Their mouths connected, clung, and she went weak, letting her head fall back again. He followed her down, prising her lips apart with the tip of his tongue, ravishing the moist interior that she opened to him with a ragged groan.
She pulled his jacket off, tore at his tie, and as he fought his way out of his shirt let her palms smooth up over the warm, hard wall of his muscular chest, her fingertips teasing at the dark whorls of hair in her path. With an earthy growl he brushed her hands away, thrust her T-shirt up and found her breasts.