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‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’
‘You’re terrified.’ His shrewd gaze rested intently on her. ‘A bit over the top for a charge of careless driving and doing so without insurance. If it’s a first offence you’ll be fined. However, if this is merely the latest in a line of other misdemeanours I can quite see why you wouldn’t want the police brought in.’
In his mind she had already gone from being a lousy driver to being a persistent offender. She had met prejudice like that before. Her first year with Gramps had been hell outside the sanctuary of his home. Neighbours, teachers and classmates had been all too ready to point the finger at Bella when there had been a spate of thieving in school. Bella had never stolen anything in her life, but had the true culprit not been caught in the act she was well aware that everyone would have continued to believe her guilty.
With the last ounce of her pride she thrust her head high. ‘I have a clean record!’
‘Excelente. Then you will not throw a fit of hysterics when I take you to the police station.’
‘You ... take me to the p-police station?’ The fire in her was doused, cold fear taking over.
‘Tell me why you are so petrified of the police,’ he invited, almost conversationally.
‘None of your bloody business!’
His strikingly handsome features clenched. ‘It’s not my problem. I suggest we get this over with. I have a busy day ahead of me.’
‘I’m not going to any police station with you!’ Bella gasped strickenly. ‘You’d have to knock me out and drag me by the hair!’
‘Don’t tempt me.’ Rico da Silva sent a look of pure derision raking over her, his eloquent mouth compressing. ‘And stop play-acting. I’m not impressed. You’re no shrinking violet, querida. What you’ve got you flaunt!’
‘Don’t talk to me like that!’
‘I took pity on you last night, but when you strolled in here today you made a very big mistake,’ he asserted with cold emphasis. ‘You thought all you had to do was flash those fabulous legs and the rest of that devastating body and I’d be willing to... shall we say... negotiate?’
‘I didn’t think that!’ Bella objected in sick disbelief.
‘Sí...yes, you did.’ Rico vented a harsh laugh that chilled her. ‘Dios mío...you may not be able to spell anything above two syllables but you market flesh like a real professional. Hot and cold. I could have had you last night if I had wanted you. And I did want you. Just for a moment. There isn’t a man in this building who wouldn’t want you... You’re an exceptionally beautiful young woman,’ he conceded very drily. ‘But I don’t play around with whores. I never have and I never will.’
She was shattered by his view of her, could not begin to understand what she had done to arouse such brutal hostility. Nausea stirred in her stomach. She felt soiled. Apart from that final moment inside his limousine last night she had been totally unaware of him as a man, even as a very attractive man. She had made no attempt to attract him. She hadn’t flirted or looked or done anything which could have warranted this attack on her.
Yet now he was calling her a whore again, clearly still convinced that she was at the very least promiscuous and the kind of woman who used her body like a bargaining counter in a tight corner. It was an image so far removed from reality that she told herself she should be laughing. But instead it hurt—it hurt like a knife inside her breast just the way it had hurt when the village had whispered about her behind her back all those years ago.
He closed a firm hand round her arm and propelled her out of his office towards the lift. Her dazed eyes caught the amazement on his secretary’s face as she appeared in a doorway. Bella was too shocked to relocate her tongue before they were inside the lift.
‘You’re out of your mind,’ she whispered, her temples thumping with tension.
‘Tell it to the police.’
‘You’re not t-taking me to the police!’ Panic set in again as she was recalled to the reality of his intentions. Like an animal suddenly finding herself in a trap, she whirled round, hands flailing against the stainless-steel walls as she sought escape.
He grabbed her with strong hands and settled her back against the wall.
‘Let go of me!’ she screamed, without warning running violently out of control. Fear was splintering through her in blinding waves. ‘Let me go, you bastard!’
He pinned her carefully still with the superior weight and strength of his hard-muscled length. He spat something at her in Spanish, glaring down at her with incandescent eyes of gold and blatant incomprehension. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. Why are you behaving like this? Calm down,’ he bit out from between even white teeth.
‘Let me go... Let me go!’ she chanted wildly. ‘Please!’
‘If I don’t take you to the police I’ll take you home.’ Every muscle in his dark features rigid, he slung her a look of smouldering sexual appraisal which was flagrant enough to make her knees sag and her darkened eyes fill with an ocean of sheer shock. ‘Sí...and bed you like you’ve never been bedded before! I have never wanted anything as badly as I want you, and the knowledge that I can afford you doesn’t help. It’s a sick craving and I am not yielding to it,’ he muttered roughly, so close now that she could feel his breath on her cheek as his dark head lowered, degree by mesmerising degree. ‘And, if I did, you’d be sorry. Believe me, the police are the soft option...’
His voice seemed to be coming from miles away. There were so many other things stealing her attention—the heat of his body and the warm, oddly familiar scent of him, the pounding in her veins and the race of her heartbeat, the hot, tight, excitement clutching at her. These were sensations so new and so powerful that they imprisoned her.
His mouth crashed down on hers. Electric shock sizzled through every skin cell. Nothing that intense had ever happened to her before. His tongue stabbed between her lips and heat surged between her thighs. She quivered, letting him splay his hands intimately to the swell of her hips, lifting her to him, melding every inch of her screamingly willing body to the hungry threat of his. It still wasn’t close enough to satisfy. A moan escaped huskily from the back of her throat—a curiously animal moan that she did not recognise as her own.
Abruptly he broke the connection. He broke it with such force, thrusting her back from him, that momentarily she slumped back against the cold wall, surveying him with unseeing eyes glazed by confusion. The lift doors suddenly glided back, letting in a rush of cold air, bringing her to her senses.
Every instinct Bella had was urging her to run. She took off through the doors, the blurred images of parked cars assailing her on all sides. A car park, an underground car park. Two large men were standing just beyond the lift, both of them moving forward, then hesitating, twin expressions of stunned incredulity freezing their faces.
‘Get the hell out of here!’ Rico da Silva roared at them.
‘But Mr da Silva—?’
‘Out!’
Seconds later Bella’s run was concluded. She made it about halfway down the shadowy aisle of cars before she was intercepted by a hand hauling her back as if she were a rag doll. As he spun her round she kicked him in the shin, and would have kicked him somewhere that hurt even more if she had had the time to aim better.
‘You pervert!’ she sobbed with rage.
‘You loved it,’ he slung at her, grimacing with pain as he hauled her back to him with remorseless determination.
‘Don’t move... If you don’t move, nobody will get hurt,’ a completely strange male voice intoned flatly in a startling interruption.
‘What the—?’ As Rico’s head spun round he fell silent, his entire body freezing with a tension that leapt through Bella as well like a lightning bolt.
Following the stilled path of his gaze, Bella looked in turn at the two men standing there. They were wearing black Balaclavas. Both of them had guns. Her jaw dropped, a sharp exhalation of air hissing from her.
‘Keep quiet... Now back away from him slowly.’ The taller one was addressing her. Her! Bella blinked, paralysed to the spot, unable to believe that the men weren’t a figment of her imagination, and yet, on some sixth-sense level, accepting them, fearing them, sensing their cold menace. ‘Move... What a clever girl you’ve been, getting rid of his guards, but frankly you’re surplus to requirements. Is she worth anything to you?’
The scream just exploded from Bella. She didn’t think about screaming, didn’t even know it was coming. The noise just whooshed up out of her chest and flew from her strained mouth—a long, primal wail of terror. And the taller man flew at her, knocking her to the ground so hard that he drove the breath from her lungs and bruised every bone in her body. A large hand closed over her mouth and then something pricked her shoulder, making her gasp with pain... and she was plunging down into a frightening, suffocating tunnel of darkness.
CHAPTER THREE
BELLA was cold and sore. Her head was aching. Something was banging. It sounded like metal on metal—a brutal, crashing noise. Maybe it was inside her head. She had a horrible taste in her mouth and her throat hurt. Her arm was throbbing as well. She felt every sensation separately. Her brain was shrouded in a fog of disorientation. Thinking was an unbearable effort, but she willed her eyes to open.
Her dilated, still semi-drugged gaze fell on a blank wall. She moved her head and moaned with discomfort. She was lying on a bed—a hard, narrow bed. The unbearable banging stopped, but her ears were still so full of it that it was a while before she could actually hear. And then she heard footsteps.
‘I was hoping you’d stay comatose. Then I wouldn’t be tempted to kill you...’
The tangle of glorious hair moved and she turned over ‘Rico?’ she said thickly.
‘Why didn’t I call Security? Why didn’t I just ring the police?’ Rico da Silva breathed in a driven undertone as he stared furiously down at her. ‘Shall I tell you why? I let lust come between me and my wits. Dios mío...the one time in my life I stray off the straight and narrow I land the gypsy’s curse and nearly get myself killed. If I come out of this alive I’m still going to take you to that police station! And, if there is any justice in the British legal system, you’ll be locked up for ever!’
Her lashes fluttered during this invigorating speech. Then, slowly, jerkily, she pulled herself up onto her knees. ‘What happened?’ she mumbled weakly.
‘I’ve been kidnapped.’
‘Oh.’ Incredibly it didn’t mean anything to her until she remembered those final few minutes in the car park. The men, the guns, the violence. A wave of sick dizziness assailed her. ‘Oh, dear God...’ she said shakily.
Rico da Silva already looked so different. His jacket and tie had been discarded. His shirt was smeared with grime. His black hair was astonishingly curly, tousled out of its sleek, smooth style. ‘No hysteria!’ he warned with lethal brevity.
‘You said...you have been kidnapped. But I’m here too.’ Bella swung her legs down and slid slowly off the bed.
‘I begged them to leave you behind. I told them you were so thick that you wouldn’t be capable of assisting the police. I told them you were worthless...’
She thought about it. “Thanks...I suppose you did your best.’
‘Do you have a single, living brain cell?’ Rico slashed at her without warning. ‘Am I condemned to spend what may well be my last hours on this earth with a halfwit?’
Bella stiffened as though she had been struck. She was far from halfwitted. Indeed, she had an IQ rating which put her into the top two per cent of the population, but that was a fact she never shared. It tended either to intimidate or antagonise people.
Rico da Silva wanted an argument, she sensed. She understood that. He needed to hit out and she was the nearest quarry. Forgivingly she ignored him and concentrated on exploring their immediate environment and its peculiarities. She touched the wall. ‘It’s metal.’
‘Be gtateful. At least they gave us airholes.’
She wasn’t listening. She scanned the bed, the single chair, the lit battery lamp. It was the only source of light. And she was used to the kind of light that came from paraffin, gas and batteries. She had grown up with it, sat in darkness when there was no money for replenishment. There was no window. She brushed past him to pass through the incongruous beaded curtain covering a doorway which his bulk had been obscuring.
In the dim light beyond she saw a gas-powered fridge, a small table, another chair, an old cupboard, and what looked like a tiny, old-fashioned stove heater connected by a flue to the metal roof. And then she glimpsed the door. She grabbed at the handle, suddenly frantic to see daylight, and was denied. The wooden partition concealed only a toilet and a sink. No windows—no windows anywhere. Her throat closed. She rammed down her panic and drew in a sustaining breath.
‘What are we in?’ she demanded starkly.
‘A steel transport container. Most ingenious,’ Rico explained without any emotion at all. ‘I hope you’re not claustrophobic.’
She never had been until now. Automatically she felt the cold metal walls, stood on tiptoe to touch the roof, felt the airholes he had mentioned, and a long, cold shudder of fear took her in its hold. ‘It’s like a metal tomb.’
‘What time is it? My watch was smashed.’
Somehow that casual enquiry helped her to get a grip on herself. Moving back through the curtain into the other section, she peered down at her watch. ‘Ten past seven.’
‘Time to eat.’
‘Eat?’ Bella echoed shrilly. ‘We’ve just been kidnapped and you want to eat? I want to get out of here!’
‘And you think I don’t?’ Lean fingers gripped her taut shoulders as he yanked her forward. Grim dark eyes held hers. ‘I’ve been conscious for two hours longer than you. I have been over every centimetre of every surface of this metal cell. But for the airholes it’s solid steel. We have nothing here capable of cutting through solid steel,’ he spelt out with cool, flat emphasis. ‘Have you ever looked at the bolts on container doors? That is the only other option...’
She glanced past him to see the doors which were so closely shut that they were almost indistinguishable from the other walls. ‘We’ll never get through those either,’ she mumbled sickly. ‘People have died in these containers... suffocated, starved—’
‘I have not the slightest intention of suffocating or starving,’ Rico cut in with ruthless assurance. ‘And, if one is permitted to take hope from appearances, neither have my kidnappers any such intention. Dead, I’m not worth a cent.’
‘Ap-pearances?’ she prompted jerkily.
‘Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to plan this operation and take the minimum number of risks,’ Rico pointed out. ‘The necessities of life have been supplied. We have food and water. They have no immediate need to venture into further contact with us. They must be very confident we cannot escape. This leads me to believe that for the moment we are as safe as it is possible to be in such a situation.’
‘S-safe?’
‘I would feel more threatened if one of them was sitting in here with us,’ Rico said drily. ‘Or someone had come along to tell me to stop making such a racket when I was thumping the walls.’
‘The noise—that was you,’ she registered, shaking her head.
‘I wanted to know if there was a guard out there...or even if it was possible to attract anyone’s attention. But, this time, no joy.’ His sculpted mouth tightened to a thin, hard line. ‘However, we will keep on trying. There is always the chance that we could be heard at any time of the day or night.’
‘Yes.’ He was giving her something to hang on to—a slender hope. Bella nodded, almost sick with the nerves that were threatening her wavering composure. He had had the time and privacy supplied by her unconsciousness to come to terms with their situation. She had not had that time or that privacy. She was angry and scared to the same degree. Somebody had deprived her of the most basic of human rights—freedom. But even worse than that was the terror that in the end they might take her life as well.
‘You hear that silence?’ His nostrils flared as he flung his dark head back. ‘Now we listen for some sound of humanity—traffic, a dog barking... anything.’
‘These walls would act like double glazing, I bet. A friend of mine has just got new windows in and you can’t hear the traffic through them...’ Her voice trailed to a halt as she glimpsed Rico’s arrested expression. ‘Sorry, I sort of rattle on some—’
‘Stop rattling,’ he articulated with ruthless precision.
‘You mentioned food?’
‘In the fridge.’
‘Enough for two?’ she whispered as it suddenly dawned on her that his kidnappers could never have planned on having to imprison two people.
‘We’ll conserve it as far as possible. The same with the light. We have no idea how long we will be here,’ he delivered smoothly.
The wild idea that in a strange way Rico da Silva was in his element occurred to her. It doused her urge to scream and shout uncontrollably. Pride kept her quiet. There he was, certainly tense but on the surface as cool as ice.
‘Anybody could be forgiven for thinking that this has happened to you before!’ she muttered with scantily leashed resentment.
‘I have been prepared for this situation by professionals. Although I admit I did not expect to have to put what I learnt into action.’
Bella flashed through the beaded curtain and sank down on the chair by the table. Wrapping her hands together, she bowed her head. She just could not believe that this was happening to her. She just could not credit that she had been kidnapped. That was something that occurred to strangers in the headlines... and they didn’t all come out alive! Her stomach heaved again.
‘How rich are you, Rico?’ she asked in a wobbly voice.
‘Filthy rich.’
‘Good.’
He had said that the kidnapping had been well organised. Hopefully they were not in the hands of maniacs. There would be a ransom demand and Rico’s bank or his family or whatever, she thought vaguely, would pay up and they would be released just as soon as the money was handed over.
‘Will they want money for me?’ she muttered helplessly.
‘I doubt it.’
She was worthless. His own assertion to the kidnappers drifted back to her. And she didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry. She had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, an innocent bystander caught up in something that was nothing to do with her. And it was his fault. But for him she wouldn’t have been in that car park! On the other hand, if anything happened to Rico—if, for instance, stress made him drop dead with a coronary—the kidnappers might just kill her to get rid of her. ‘Surplus to requirements’... Nobody was going to pay for her release!
‘Are you healthy?’ she whispered.
‘Very.’
In silent relief she nodded. But still she couldn’t believe that it was real. Just twenty-four hours ago she had not even known that Rico da Silva walked this earth. Helplessly she pointed out to him that this time yesterday they had not even met.
‘And wasn’t ignorance bliss?’
‘I don’t see why you have to be so nasty!’ Bella snapped. ‘Personally I think I’m taking this very well. I’ve already been threatened and assaulted by you—’
