Spontaneously, Bella laughed. ‘He would say that!’
‘With me you’ll be what you are—an artist—’
Bella stilled. ‘I won’t be with you, Rico. Never again,’ she swore shakily.
‘No more games, gatita mia.’ He strolled fluidly across the bare boards. Even the way he moved, the effortless grace of that lithe, powerful body, shook her to her very depths. He took out his wallet and extracted a cheque.
‘Where did you get this money?’
When Liz had collected her clothes she had also collected the one valuable possession Bella had—a small oil of her mother, painted by her father. Liz had taken it to a top art gallery and sold it for her. She would have made more at auction but she had been desperate to dissolve what she’d seen as her last tie to Rico and settle the debt. The canvas had fetched enough to cover the repairs to the Bugatti and the Skoda.
‘That’s my business.’
‘What did you do?’ he asked, indulgently amused.
‘Tell Hector you were about to be dragged off to prison?’
‘It was my debt. I paid it without anyone else’s assistance,’ she stressed proudly.
‘I don’t want it. In fact, I refuse to accept it.’ Rico tore the cheque in two and let the pieces fall like a statement of intent between them.
‘I’ll just have to get another one…’ In bewilderment she stared at him. ‘That was your money—’
‘Lovers don’t have debts between them,’ he purred lazily. ‘And if you hadn’t smashed up the Bugatti I would never have met you. In retrospect it seems a very small price to pay for the amount of pleasure you’ve given me.’
Feeling the atmosphere thicken, Bella took a jerky step in retreat. ‘Less than a month ago you were going to take me to the police—’
‘No… I changed my mind in the lift on the way down to the car park… I was taking you home instead,’ Rico drawled with rueful amusement.
‘I wouldn’t have gone! And would you really have done that to Sophie?’
A winged brow elevated. ‘What would it have had to do with her?’
Bella threw him a look of distaste. ‘She was living with you at the time… or did you think I hadn’t worked that out yet?’
‘Sophie had keys for convenience. She never lived with me. I haven’t shared a roof with a woman in the past decade. Live-in relationships can get very messy and possessive—’
‘And with a two-month limit on your interest it really wouldn’t be worth the effort?’
‘You’re talking to me about track records?’ Rico threw back his dark head and laughed with a forbidding lack of humour. ‘What about yours?’
‘Mine?’
‘You are one flighty lady if one half of what I read is true, gatita mia.’
‘I am not flighty—’
‘No… I’ll clip your wings, chain you to the bed when I’m out, take you with me when I go abroad, employ only ugly old men.’ He watched her with mesmeric intensity and then he smiled—a brilliant smile of unconcealed triumph. ‘Then again, I’m really not that worried. Out of all those men I was the only one you slept with, es verdad?’
Outraged by the blazing confidence with which he surveyed her, she said, ‘That wasn’t how you felt at the time.’
‘I’d never made love to a virgin before. You took me by storm.’ Rico spread his smooth brown hands with expressive amusement. ‘I had to escape to fully appreciate what an enormous compliment it was to be selected out of a cast of thousands to make the grade.’
‘I think it’s time you left.’
‘Only if you come home with me. Don’t bother packing. I’ll send someone over to clear this place tomorrow.’
Her nails cut purple crescents into her palms. ‘Are you asking me to live with you?’ she whispered tightly.