I would come on to you?’ Bella spat at him like a bristling cat. ‘I never go for dark men! Your car was at more risk than you were! And I may wear second-hand clothes, talk with an Essex accent and hardly be able to spell, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have principles! It might interest you to know that I’m a virgin—’
He burst into spontaneous laughter. In fact he threw his dark head back and very nearly choked on his disbelief. Bella launched herself across the car at him in a rage and two strong hands snaked out and closed round her narrow forearms to hold her imprisoned mere inches from him and in devastating contact with every line of his leashed, powerful body.
‘A virgin?’ he queried in a shaking voice. ‘Maybe not a whore... but definitely not a virgin.’
‘Let go of me!’
For a split-second he stared down into her brilliant green eyes and something happened inside her—something that had never happened to Bella before; a tight clenched sensation jerked low in her stomach. It made the hair prickle at the back of her neck, the breath catch in her throat, every muscle draw taut. She looked back at him with dawning comprehension and horror, feeling the swell of her own breasts, the sudden, painful tightening of her nipples.
‘So what do you do on the nightshift?’ Rico da Silva probed in a purring undertone that set up a strange chain reaction down her spine.
Seriously shaken by the reaction of her own treacherous body, she remained mutinously silent.
‘And where does Hector fit in?’
‘Let go of me... I don’t feel well,’ Bella muttered tremulously, and it was true.
He searched her pallor, abruptly freeing hei. His ebony brows had drawn together in a sudden frown. She had the strangest feeling that he was as disconcerted by his own behaviour as she had been.
‘I’ll talk to your secretary tomorrow,’ she mumbled, her nerves strung so tightly that tension was a fevered pulse-beat through her entire body.
He pressed a button. The chauffeur climbed out and opened the door in the humming silence. Bella flew out like a cork ejected from a bottle and fled up the steps of the shabbiest house in the row. Inserting her key, she unlocked the front door, then rushed into the shelter of the dark house and rested back against the door like someone who had seen death at close quarters. Every sense on super-alert, she listened to the limo driving off before she breathed again.
Shock was still reverberating through her. She had felt so safe for so long. That had never happened to her before with a man. And then all of a sudden, when it was least expected, she had been gripped by the most dangerous drive in the entire human repertoire—sexual desire. But she was really proud of herself. Control and common sense had triumphed. She had run like a rabbit.
CHAPTER TWO
IN THE half-light. Bella picked her way past the piled-up books and newspapers that littered every stair and headed up to the second floor and the privacy of her spacious, cluttered studio. She was still shaking like a leaf. So that was what it felt like! She lit the candle beside her bed, and slowly drew in a deep, sustaining breath. Well, thankfully she was extremely unlikely ever to see him again. There was no need to worry about temptation in that quarter. Even so, she was still shaken.
‘I go with my feelings—that can never be wrong,’ Cleo had once said loftily, supremely blind to the wreckage of disastrous relationships in her past. Her mother had been like a kamikaze pilot with men. Every creep within a hundred-mile radius had zeroed in on her, stopped a while and then moved on. But Cleo had kept on trying, regardless of the consequences to herself and her daughter, always convinced that the next one would be different. And Liz could have no idea just how much it scared Bella to be told that she suffered from a similar lack of judgement with the men in her life.
When she came downstairs later that morning Hector was shuffling about in his carpet slippers in the ancient kitchen. The gas bill had arrived. He was taking it as hard as he always did when a bill came through the letter box. There were the usual charged enquiries about how often she had used the oven and boiled the kettle. Hector Barsay’s mission in life was to save money.
It was his one failing but, as Gramps had often said, everybody had their little idiosyncrasies, and those same little idiosyncrasies got a tighter hold the older you got. Beneath his crusty, dismal manner Hector was kind. He had a bunch of prosperous relatives just waiting for him to die so that they could sell his house and make their fortunes. None of them had visited since the time they had tried to persuade him into an old folks’ home and he had threatened to leave them out of his will.
‘I crashed the car last night,’ Bella told him tautly.
‘Again?’ Hector cringed into his shabby layers of woolly cardigans and she squirmed, guilt and shame engulfing her.
‘It’s not going to cost you anything!’ she swore.
‘I haven’t got anything!’ His faded blue eyes rolled in his head at the very suggestion that his pocket might be touched.
‘That’s what you have insurance for,’ she told him in consolation. ‘Before you know it the Skoda will be back in the garage as good as new.’
Back upstairs, she dug out her insurance details and wrinkled her nose. The renewal hadn’t yet been sent but then they always took their time about that and, to be fair, she had been a little late in sending on the money because Hector had made her ring round half of London trying to get a cheaper quote. When you had to do it from a phone box, that took time.
She headed out for a phone. Hector insisted that his phone was only to be used in an emergency. The girl at the insurance company was chatty until Bella explained about the accident. Then she went off the line for a while.
‘I’m sorry, Miss Jennings,’ she murmured on her return, ‘but at the time of the accident you were not insured with us—’
‘What are you talking about?’ Bella was aghast.
‘Your premium should have arrived by Tuesday. Unfortunately it was two days late—’
‘But surely-?’
‘You were given an adequate period in which to respond to the renewal notice.’
‘But I—’
‘We will be returning your premium in the post. The offer was not accepted within the stated period and we are entitled to withdraw it.’
Argument got Bella nowhere. Reeling with shock, she stood back to let the next person in the queue use the phone. From her pocket she removed the card that Rico da Silva had given her. How could she ring his secretary and tell her she had no insurance? Dear heaven, that was a criminal offence!
A Bugatti... In anguish she clutched at her hair, her stomach heaving. And what about the repair of Hector’s Skoda? She would be in debt for the rest of her life. Maybe she would go to prison! Rico da Silva had that piece of paper on which she admitted turning the wrong way into a one-way street without due care and attention!
An hour later Bella was hanging over a reception desk and smiling her most pleading smile. ‘Please... this is a matter of life and death!’
‘Mr da Silva’s secretary, Miss Ames, has no record of your name, Miss Jennings. You are wasting your time and mine,’ the elegant receptionist said frigidly.
‘But I’ve already explained that. He probably forgot about it, you know? He had a late night!’ Bella appealed in despair.
‘If you don’t remove yourself from this desk I will be forced to call security.’
‘At four this morning Rico told me to ring his secretary!’ Bella exclaimed, shooting her last bolt.
Sudden silence fell in the busy foyer. Heads turned. The receptionist’s eyes widened and were swiftly concealed by her lashes, faint colour burnishing her cheeks. ‘Excuse me for a moment,’ she said in a stilted voice.
Bella