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She dealt him a disbelieving look. ‘No way.’
‘I insist.’ He was digging a wallet out of his pocket with astonishing alacrity.
‘I said no,’ she reminded him flatly, embarrassed to death by the offer and hurriedly attempting to change the subject. ‘Cold for May, isn’t it?’
‘Take the money!’ he bit out with stinging impatience.
Bella frowned, hunching deeper into her battered jacket, one long, shapely thigh crossed over the other, her fantastic head of hair blowing back from her exotic features in the breeze. ‘What’s the matter with you? I have to wait for the tow-truck’
‘I’ll wait for it,’ he told her harshly.
‘Look, it isn’t my car...’
‘What?’ he raked at her.
‘It belongs to this old man I live with. I only have the use of it,’ Bella explained soothingly.
Narrowed dark eyes rested on her, his beautifully shaped mouth hardening, and she found herself staring at him, noticing the shape of his lips. It was the artist in her, she supposed abstractedly. He would be an interesting study to paint.
‘How old is old?’ Rico da Silva enquired, surprising her.
‘As old as you feel.’ Bella laughed in more like her usual manner. ‘Hector says he feels fifty on a good day, seventy on a bad. I reckon he’s about the lattes.’
‘And what are you?’
‘Twenty-one...’ she checked her watch ‘....and four and a half hours.’
‘Yesterday was your birthday?’
‘Lousy birthday,’ she muttered, more to herself than him. ‘I had to work.’
‘It happens,’ he said in a strained voice.
‘And my boyfriend is two-timing me.’ It just came out. She hadn’t meant to say it. Maybe it was the effect of bravely smiling all evening and keeping her mouth shut with her friends.
‘The pensioner?’ He sounded even more strained.
It was the language barrier, she decided. How on earth could he imagine that she was dating a man old enough to be her grandfather?
‘Not Hector—my boyfriend.’
‘Maybe you should think of another occupation-something that keeps you home at night... although perhaps not,’ he muttered half under his breath.
Had she told him that she was a waitress? She didn’t remember doing so but she must have done. Screening another sleepy yawn, Bella sighed. ‘I don’t mind most of the time, although it’s murder on my feet and it’s very boring. Still, it pays the rent—’
‘He charges you rent?’
‘Of course he does... although not very much.’ She yawned again, politely masking her mouth with a slender hand. ‘He tried to claim for me as a housekeeper but the Inland Revenue weren’t impressed. I’m not really very domestic but he wouldn’t like it if I was. It’s kind of hard to explain Hector to people...’
‘Are you in the habit of telling complete strangers the most intimate details of your life?’ Rico da Silva prompted in a tone of driven fascination.
Bella thought about it and then nodded, although she would have disputed his concept of ‘intimate details’. Friends said, ‘I told you so.’ Strangers just listened and volunteered their own experiences. Not that the male standing next to her would. He was the secretive type, she decided. Still waters ran deep—dark and deep as hell with this one, she thought helplessly.
‘You’re a financier,’ she remarked conversationally, thinking that what was good enough for the gander was good enough for the goose.
‘How the hell do you know that?’ he shot at her forbiddingly.
Bella gave him a startled look. ‘I saw you earlier this evening and a friend told me who you were.’
‘And then all of a sudden you crash into me. Two such coincidences in one night strain my credulity!’ Rico da Silva shot at her.
‘Pretty lousy luck, huh? If I’d done the cards this morning I probably wouldn’t have got out of bed—’
‘“The cards”?’ he echoed.
‘Tarot cards. Though mostly I steer clear of the temptation to tell my own fortune these days. Sometimes I think you’re better not knowing what’s ahead of you.’
‘I do not believe in such a coincidence,’ he stated afresh, staring down at her in a very intimidating fashion. ‘It was your intent to meet me, es verdad?’
‘You’re a very uptight personality.’ Bella shook her vibrant head. ‘And a bit weird, to be frank—’
‘Weird?’ Rico da Silva roared. ‘You think that I am weird?’
She raised her hands. ‘Now just count to ten and back off, buster.’
“‘Buster”?’ he repeated, snatching in a hissing breath.
‘Mr Silver... no, it wasn’t that, was it?’ She sighed.
‘Rico... da... Silva,’ he enunciated very slowly and carefully, as if he were talking to a complete idiot.
‘Yeah, I knew it was something strange. I hate to tell you this but it is a little weird to imagine that a total stranger would crash into you deliberately to meet you,’ Bella told him gently. ‘I mean, I might have been killed.’
From beneath black lashes so long that they cast crescent shadows on his savage cheekbones, he cast her a glimmering glance. ‘I have known women to take tremendous risks to make my acquaintance.’
‘I wonder why?’ she said, and then realised by the sudden, thundering silence that she had said it out loud instead of just thinking it. ‘What I mean is...well, there’s only one way of saying this, Mr da Silver—’
‘Silva!’ he slotted in rawly.
Uptight wasn’t the word for it. This guy lived on the outer edge. On the brink of gently assuring him that he had met some very peculiar women, Bella was silenced briefly by the sight of the tow-truck surging up the street towards them.
‘Talk about service!’ she gasped. ‘I thought we’d be here for hours!’
‘Another half-hour of your relentless, mindless chatter and I would be—’
‘More hyper than you already are? It’s OK. I’m not offended,’ she told him with a smile. ‘You either love me or you hate me. But, for your own sake, get your blood pressure checked and take up something relaxing like gardening. Guys like you drop dead from heart attacks at forty-five.’ Dragging her attention from the darkening colour of his cheekbones and the razor-slash effect of his incredulous gaze, Bella turned to gape at the arrival of a second tow-truck. ‘Gosh... one each!’
With that, she rushed over to the Skoda, belatedly realising that she would need to clear the car out. She was kneeling on the driver’s seat, poking around amongst the rubbish for stray items of clothing, letters, bills, her sketch-pad and pencils, when his voice assailed her again from behind.
‘I will expect you to pass on your insurance details to my secretary tomorrow. This is the number.’
Awkwardly she twisted round and reached out to grasp a gilded card and dig it into her pocket.
‘If you don’t call, I will inform the police—’
‘Look, what are you trying to do—give me nightmares?’ she exclaimed helplessly, clinging perilously to the steering wheel to lean out and look up at him. ‘I am a law-abiding person.’
‘To trust you goes against my every principle,’ he admitted unapologetically.
‘You wouldn’t want me to lose my licence, would you?’ Bella fixed enormous green eyes on him in reproach. ‘It took me a lot of years to get that licence. The examiners used to draw lots for me and the one that got the short straw was it! I mean, we all have weaknesses and mine is in the driving department, but this is truly the very worst accident I have ever had and I am going to be much more careful in the future... cross my heart and hope to die—’
‘Or shut up.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ She squinted up at him.
He extended his phone with an air of long-suffering hauteur. ‘Ring your boyfriend to come and pick you up.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding. He’d probably say his car had a flat tyre or something anyway,’ she mused, returning to her frantic clean-up.
‘There must be somebody you can contact!’
‘At four in the morning to take me back to London?’ And pigs might fly, her tone said.
‘I am not giving you a lift!’ he snapped in a whiplash response.
So he had been heading for London too. ‘I wasn’t aware I asked for one,’ she hissed. ‘Now why don’t you just go away and leave me alone?’
‘I am being foolish. No doubt you are accustomed to walking lonely streets at this hour of the night, es verdad? But it is hard for me to forget my natural instinct to behave as a gentleman—’
‘I would have said you forgot it the minute I hit your car... but it’s OK,’ Bella continued sweetly. ‘I didn’t notice. I haven’t got much experience of what you would probably call gentlemen. I cut my teeth on creeps.’
There was a fulminating silence.
‘Make sure you make that call tomorrow.’
Bella scrambled out backwards with her bulging carrier bag, wondering why he was still hovering. Approaching the driver of the tow-truck, she told him to be sure to dump the Skoda at the nearest garage possible. Hopefully that would cut the cost. ‘I can’t pay you now,’ she then said awkwardly. ‘I haven’t got enough money on me.’
‘I will take care of it,’ Rico da Silva announced glacially from behind her.
She grimaced and ignored him to ask the driver what it was going to cost. Her horror was unfeigned. ‘I’m not asking you to fix it!’ she protested in a shattered voice.
‘I said I will pay the bill!’ Rico da Silva blitzed. Her temples were pounding like crazy. She just couldn’t fight any more. Once again she nodded. Anything for a quiet life. She started to walk away. Her feet were killing her.
‘Where are you going?’
‘The bus station.’ She glanced back at him with a frown of incomprehension, well aware that he liked her just about as much as she liked him, wondering why on earth it should matter to him how she intended to get home.
‘Madre de Dios!’ he ground out, skimming a furious hand of frustration through the air. ‘There will be no buses until morning!’
‘Morning’s only a couple of hours away.’
‘I’ll give you a lift,’ he bit out between clenched teeth.
‘Forget it.’
‘I said I will give you a lift, but only on one condition—you do not open your mouth!’
‘I prefer the bus. It’s more egalitarian. I’m allowed to breathe, you know, that sort of life-enhancing stuff called oxygen? I use up a lot of it, but thanks all the same.’ And then she saw the limousine waiting by the kerb on the other side of the street and her sleepy green eyes widened to their fullest extent. She had assumed that he was catching a cab. But a lift in a real live Hmo... She just couldn’t resist the offer. ‘Mr da Silva?’ she called abruptly.
‘I thought you might change your mind,’ he breathed, without turning his glossy dark head. ‘I must be out of my mind to be doing this.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Give my chauffeur your address and then shut up,’ he grated.
Bella climbed in and surveyed the opulent interior with unhidden fascination. ‘Do you always travel... sorry, I forgot!’
The limo purred away from the kerb. Her companion stabbed a button, and under the onslaught of her incredulous scrutiny a revolving drinks cabinet smoothly appeared. ‘Wow,’ she said, deeply impressed.
‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked shortly.
‘No, thanks. My father was next door to being an alcoholic. Personally speaking, I wouldn’t touch the stuff with a barge-pole!’
He expelled his breath in a hiss. She watched his hand still and then hover momentarily before he finally grasped the whisky bottle.
‘I guess—’she began, and then sealed her mouth again as those black-as-night eyes hit on her with silencing effect.
‘You guess what?’ he finally gritted. ‘Don’t keep me in suspense!’
‘I was going to say that we don’t have a lot in common, do we? It’s a bit like meeting an alien,’ Bella mumbled, sleep catching up on her as she rested her heavy head back against the leather upholstery and closed her drooping eyelids. ‘Except even the alien might have had a sense of humour...’
Someone was shaking her shoulder hard. She surfaced groggily, registered that she was lying face down on some kind of seat, then remembered and hauled herself upright into a sitting position.
‘This cannot be where you live!’ Rico da Silva vented with raw exasperation. ‘Is this your idea of a joke?’
Bella focused on the familiar Georgian square of enormous, elegant terraced houses, which had been her home for the past year. ‘Why should it be my idea of a joke?’ She fumbled with the door-release mechanism but the door remained stubbornly closed.
‘I should imagine that not one in a thousand hookers lives in a house worth millions!’
‘Hookers’? He thought she was a hooker? He thought she sold her body for money? Aghast, Bella stared at him for several seemingly endless seconds, telling herself that she had somehow misunderstood him. ‘You think I’m a prostitute?’ she finally gasped, wide-eyed with rampant disbelief. ‘How dare you? Let me out of this car right now!’
A winged ebony brow quirked. ‘Are you saying now that you are not?’
‘Of course I’m not!’ Bella threw at him in violent outrage, belatedly understanding all of his peculiar utterances. ‘I’ve never been so insulted in my life! You have a mind like a sewer—’
‘You dress like one—’
‘Dress like one?’ Liz’s wretched too short skirt! She wanted to scream.
