His disbelief was magnified.
‘Does that really make sense to you, gatita?’ he enquired gently.
Reluctantly she shook her head. In retrospect it didn’t make sense. Finding out that she was pregnant had made her panic. She had not been thinking clearly about what she was doing. ‘I guess I was running away. I couldn’t work up the courage to tell you something I thought you didn’t want to hear.’
‘And that was my fault?’
Bella shrugged. ‘You didn’t want to be trapped into marriage again. That’s fine.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But I don’t want to marry you on that same basis, Rico. Even though both of us were reckless—’
‘I’m never reckless, gatita. I knew the risk and I accepted it. I should have known then that there was something special between us…’
Bella winced. ‘Rico, you would tell me just about anything to persuade me to marry you. I can understand that but—’ A hand had closed round her arm. Rico was pulling her out of bed. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I want to show you something.’
‘It’s four o’clock in the morning!’
But he wasn’t listening to her. He thrust her robe at her and tossed her mules across to her. ‘Come on.’
‘Where?’
‘You’ll see.’ Impatiently he propelled her out of the bedroom and downstairs.
When he climbed into the Bugatti outside she hissed, ‘I’m not dressed!’
‘We’re not leaving the estate.’
He drove down the lane that ran from the stable block out to the fields. At the end of it he parked, leaving the headlights on, and walked over to the fence. Thoroughly exasperated by now, Bella leapt out and followed.
‘Keep your eyes peeled for something vaguely animate that reminds you of a very tatty, small, moving hearth rug.’
A shape ambled out of the darkness, attracted by the light.
‘I located him five days ago,’ Rico murmured. ‘He hasn’t been very well looked after but the vet says he’ll be fine once he’s groomed and fattened up.’
Bella was already striving to climb the fence, somewhat hampered by her flowing nightwear. Rico lifted her over. ‘Fiddlesticks,’ she whispered shakily, and then surged over the grass to the Shetland pony.
Ten minutes later she was wiping at her eyes, genuinely overcome not just by the reunion with the little pony she had never thought to see again but by the fact that Rico had gone to so much trouble to trace him and give him back to her.
Rico swung her back over the fence. She slid back into the car, still in a happy daze.
‘I planned to get a dog and a cat to go with him,’ he murmured very tautly. ‘And I was also planning to present the three of them to you before the party.’
‘Dog… cat… party?’ Bella mumbled in helpless repetition.
‘You told me that you loved children and wanted a large fluffy dog, a cat and a pony for them,’ Rico reminded her stiffly. ‘Well, I was ready to supply them.’
She went rigid, understanding finally sinking in. Rico was telling her that at least a week ago he had been ready to give her what he believed she wanted. And all of a sudden, instead of being touched and pleased by the gesture, she felt like screaming. She wanted him to love her, not drag her out to a field in the middle of the night and offer her a menagerie!
He dug something from his pocket and handed it to her. ‘This is a sample of the invitations I was having printed. It was going to be an engagement party…a surprise,’ he breathed in a harsh undertone. ‘I took a lot for granted, es verdad?’
Bella was reading the invitation, her heartbeat accelerating. Long before he’d known about the baby Rico had intended to ask her to marry him. She sniffed, her eyes stinging. The fear that he only wanted to marry her because of their child was for ever vanquished.
Rico released his breath in a hiss in the continuing silence, seeming not to appreciate that she was stunned by sheer shock. He drove back to the house and switched off the engine. ‘Until you told me you wanted to leave me I thought you loved me…’
‘I do,’ Bella said distractedly.
‘Then why the blazes are you sitting there in silence?’ he roared at her without warning.