and surveyed the scuffed toes of her fringed cowboy boots. A clump of suited men nearby were studying her as if she had just jumped naked out of a birthday cake.
But then it was that kind of building—a bank. Just being inside it gave her the heebie-jeebies. All marble pillars and polished floors and hushed voices. Sort of like a funeral parlour, she reflected miserably. And she didn’t belong here. She remembered that time she had gone to plead Gramps’ case and the executive had been so smooth and nice that she had thought she was actually getting somewhere. But double-talk had been created for places like this. The bank had still called in the debt and Gramps had lost everything.
‘Miss Ames will see you,’ the receptionist whispered out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Take that lift in the corner.’
‘How can I help you, Miss Jennings?’ She was greeted by the svelte older woman as the lift doors opened on the top floor.
‘I need to see Mr da Silva urgently.’
‘I’m afraid that Mr da Silva is in a very important meeting and cannot be disturbed. Perhaps you would like to leave a message?’
‘I’ll wait.’ Bella groaned. ‘Maybe you could send a message in to him?’
‘And what would you like this message to say?’
‘Can I come in... like, go and sit down?’
The older woman stepped reluctantly aside.
Loan-sharking certainly paid. Bella took in her palatial surroundings without surprise. ‘I’ll write the message.’
A notepad was extended to her. Bella dashed off four words, ripped off the sheet, folded it five times into a tiny scrap and handed it over.
‘Mr da Silva does not like to be disturbed.’
‘He’s going to like what I have to tell him even less,’ Bella muttered, sprawling down on a sofa.
Miss Ames disappeared. The brunette at the desk watched her covertly as though she was afraid that she was about to pocket the crystal ashtray on the coffee-table. Two minutes later Miss Ames returned, all flushed and taut.
‘Come this way, please...’
Bella strode up the corridor, hands stuck in her pockets, fingers curled round the pack of cigarettes that nerves had driven her to buy before she’d entered the bank.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Rico da Silva blazed across the width of the most enormous office she had ever seen. Her heels were sinking into the carpet.
She looked around her with unhidden curiosity and then back at him. He had to be about six feet four. Wide shoulders, narrow hips, long, lean legs. Michelangelo’s David trapped in the clothing chains of convention. Navy pinstriped suit, boring white shirt, predictable navy tie—he probably put on a red one for Christmas and thought he was being really daring. He was looking her over as if she were a computer virus threatening to foul up the entire office network. She tilted her chin, and her gaze collided with glittering golden eyes...
He had really gorgeous eyes. In the streetlight she hadn’t got the full effect. Eyes the colour of the setting sun, spectacularly noticeable in that hard-angled, bronzed face. Eyes that sizzled and burned. The key to the soul. There was a tiger in there fighting to get free—a sexual tiger, all teeth and claws and passion. On some primal level she could feel the unholy heat. Wow, this guy wants me, she registered in serious shock.
‘I asked you what the hell you’re doing here,’ Rico repeated with leashed menace.
Bella dragged her distracted gaze from his, astonished to discover how hard it was to break that connection. Reddening, she went tense all over, embarrassed by her last crazy thought. ‘I said it in my note.’
‘And what exactly is “We have a problem” intended to denote? By the way, problem is spelt with an e, not an a,’ he delivered, hitting her on her weakest flank.
‘I’ll try to remember that.’ She studied her feet and then abruptly, cravenly yielded to temptation and dug out the cigarettes and matches. Never had she been more in need of the crutch she had abandoned the day she’d moved into Hector’s house. She was just on the brink of lighting up when both the match and cigarette were snatched from her. Under her arrested gaze the cigarette was snapped in two and dropped in a waste-paper basket.
‘A member of the hang-’em-high anti-smoking Reich?’ Bella probed helplessly.
‘What do you think?’
She felt that she had never needed a cigarette more. ‘Just one...?’ she begged.
‘Don’t be pathetic. It won’t cut any ice with me,’ he drawled, with a sardonic twist to his mouth. ‘What is the problem?’
Bella swallowed hard and then breathed in deeply.
‘You look guilty as sin,’ Rico informed her grimly.
‘And if my suspicions as to what has prompted this personal appearance prove correct I’m taking you straight to the police.’
The tip of her tongue slid out to moisten her dry lower lip. His lashes lowered. Hooded eyes, revealing a mere slit of gold, dropped to her mouth and lingered there. A buzzing tension entered the atmosphere. The silence vibrated.
As Bella laid her outdated insurance policy on the desk in front of him she felt as though she was moving in slow motion. ‘Can I sit down?’
‘May I sit down,’ he corrected automatically. ‘No.’
He scanned the document.
‘You see, it only ran out Monday,’ Bella pointed out, in a wobbly plea for understanding. ‘And I sent in the new premium and thought it was fine. But when I phoned the company this morning...’
The well-shaped, dark head lifted. Lancing golden eyes bit into her shrinking flesh. ‘You were driving without insurance when you hit me—’
‘Not intentionally!’ Bella gasped, raising both hands, palms outward, in a gesture of sincerity. ‘I had no idea. I thought I was covered. I’d sent off the money and I bet that if I hadn’t had an accident they would have just accepted it and renewed my insur—’
‘You’re whining,’ Rico cut in icily as he rose from behind his impressive desk.
‘I’m not whining. I’m only trying to explain!’ she protested.
‘Point one—if you were not covered by insurance at the time of the accident the oversight was your responsibility. Yours, nobody else’s,’ he stressed with a glacial lack of compassion. ‘Point two—in driving a car without insurance you were committing an offence—’
‘But-’
‘And point three—I most unwisely chose to let you go scot-free from the consequences of the offence you had already committed last night!’
‘What offence...? Oh, the one-way street bit,’ Bella muttered, hunching her narrow shoulders in self-defence. It was like being under physical attack. ‘But that was an accident... It’s not as though it was deliberate. Anyone can have an accident, can’t they? I’m really sorry. I mean, I would do just about anything for it not to have happened, because now everything’s in this horrible mess—’
‘For you, not for me.’ Rico sent her a hard, impassive look. ‘When I inform my insurance company of this they will insist that I bring in the police and they will pursue you for the outstanding monies in a civil case.’
Bella went white and twisted her hands, moving from one long, shapely leg on to the other with stork-like restiveness. ‘Please don’t get the police. Somehow I’ll pay you back... I promise!’ she swore unsteadily.
‘Is Hector going to pay?’
Bella flinched. ‘No,’ she mumbled.
‘I’ve already had a quote for the damage to my car.’