Prisoner Of Passion

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‘By me?’ A lean hand thrust the beaded strands aside. Poised in the doorway, Rico surveyed her with incredulous, blazing golden eyes. The cool-as-ice impression was only on the surface, she registered. Beneath it lurked a deep well of near-murderous rage, rigorously suppressed and controlled.

‘Yes, by you. Then I get thumped and drugged and kidnapped. I wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for you!’ she suddenly spat.

‘And I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for you.’

‘I b-beg your pardon?’

Black lashes dropped, screening his piercing gaze. ‘Forget I said that—’

‘Oh, no, as you once said to me, don’t keep me in suspense!’ she shrieked.

‘Cool down... and grow up,’ Rico drawled in a soft tone that none the less stung like acid. ‘How we got here is unimportant. The only item on our agenda now is survival.’

Bella studied the floor, tears burning at the back of her eyes. It was shock. She was still in shock. She wanted to ask him what he had meant just now. She wanted to know what had happened after she’d blanked out back in that car park. But she pinned her tremulous lips together instead.

‘Let’s eat.’

Eager to do something, she leapt off the chair and opened the fridge. It was bunged to the gills. Great, she thought for a split-second. Her next thought was entirely different. Dear God, how long were his kidnappers planning to keep them here? And, assuming that they hadn’t added to the hoard when they’d realised that they had not one but two victims requiring sustenance, that was an enormous amount of food... most of which wouldn’t keep that long even in a fridge—salad stuffs, cold meats, cheeses, milk, bread, butter. All perishable.

‘There is a stock of tinned goods in the cupboard as well as extra lights and several batteries, plates and cutlery.’

‘We could light another lamp—’

‘We don’t need it. Anything that we don’t need we save,’ he reminded her.

Bella burrowed into the cupboard, locating a tin of stew. ‘If you light that stove, I could heat this on that little hotplate.’

‘There’s no fuel.’

‘We could smash up a chair or something,’ Bella persisted, shivering.

‘The ventilation in here is wholly inadequate. Fumes might not escape. We could be suffocated. The stove cannot be lit.’

The boss man had spoken. Bloody know-it-all! Her teeth ground together. It was freezing cold and it was likely to get considerably colder. He had a lot more clothes on than she had. And where the heck was she to sleep? One bed. Two dining chairs. A metal floor. Guess who would get the floor?

She found a bowl and peeled some leaves off a lettuce, before marching through to the sink which had the sole water supply. When she returned she stood at the cupboard, her back turned to him, washing the salad. And guess who gets to prepare the meal? she thought caustically.

She felt slightly foolish when she turned round to find that he already had two plates on the table, sparsely filled. The pieces of hacked cheese and the tomatoes complete with stalks made her mouth unexpectedly curve up into a grin. He was even less domesticated than she, but she liked him for making the effort.

‘What happened after I got the needle in my arm?’ she asked flatly as he reappeared with the second chair and she sat down.

An ebony brow quirked. ‘Why talk about it?’

‘Because I want to know!’

‘I was afraid you would be shot when you screamed. The smaller one was very nervous. He was taking aim when the other one brought you down.’

Bella bit at her lower lip. ‘I didn’t mean to scream.’

‘I suppose it was a natural response,’ Rico conceded shortly, his mouth clenching.

But not a miscalculation that he would have been guilty of making, she gathered. He had been on all systems alert but in icy control. And for some reason he wasn’t telling her the whole story. She sensed that. ‘What did you do?’

‘I deflected his aim,’ Rico admitted.

‘How?’

‘By wrenching his arm.’

Perspiration broke out on her brow at the image which his admission evoked. ‘You could have been killed!’

‘I could not stand by and do nothing.’

‘And then what happened?’

‘There was a struggle and the other one struck me from behind. I remember nothing more. And when I came to I was in here and my watch was smashed,’ he bit out.

‘At least you weren’t.’ She dug up the courage to look up from her plate, her face flushed and troubled. ‘Thanks for not standing by,’ she muttered tightly.

‘Don’t thank me. What I did was foolish. He would not have fired that gun. His companion was in the way, probably already in the act of injecting you with the drug that knocked you out. Sometimes instinct betrays one badly,’ he completed grimly.

He was denying the fact that he had saved her life. He didn’t want her gratitude. But Bella was deeply impressed by his heroic lack of concern for his own safety. ‘Instinct’, he’d called it, depriving the act of anything personal. However, that did not change the fact that many men would have put themselves first sooner than risk their own life at the expense of someone who was little more than a stranger.

A stranger. Rico da Silva ought still to feel like a stranger to her, only he didn’t any more. Shorn of the obvious trappings of his wealth, the male across the table was as human as she was. But she reminded herself how deceptive the situation in which they were now trapped was. They were stuck with each other. This uneasy intimacy between two people from radically different worlds had been enforced, not sought.

‘If I hadn’t been there, what would you have done?’ she found herself asking.

‘There is no profit in such conjecture.’

‘You’re a typical money man, aren’t you?’ Bella condemned helplessly. ‘No such thing as answering a straight question!’

His strong features darkened. ‘Estupendo... then I’ll give it to you straight. As you screamed I was about to activate the alarm on my watch. It would have alerted my bodyguards.’

‘The alarm—it would have been that loud?’

Impatience tightened his mouth, hardened his narrowed gaze. ‘It is a highly sophisticated device. The kidnappers would have heard nothing, but the signal emitted would have automatically activated an emergency alert on the radios my bodyguards carry.’

‘And brought them running,’ she filled in, dry mouthed. ‘Some watch.’

‘It would also have acted as a homing device once it was activated.’

‘The marvels of technology,’ Bella mumbled, regarding her lettuce with a fast disappearing appetite, unable to bring herself to meet his accusing gaze. It was her fault that his watch had been smashed, her fault that he hadn’t got to activate the damned thing. ‘You were wired like a bomb.’

“That went off like a damp squib.’

She fumbled to think of something to say in her own defence. ‘There might have been a shoot-out if your guards had come rushing back.’

‘They are too highly trained for such idiocy,’ Rico retorted crushingly. ‘In all likelihood they would have simply tracked me and followed without revealing their presence and risking my safety.’

Bella pushed away her plate. He was telling her that she had wrecked his chances of escape. But for her persistence he would have continued to exercise restraint on that point. Rico da Silva was not the type to cry over spilt milk but, challenged beyond his tolerance threshold, he had given her what she’d asked for. And honesty had never been less welcome.

‘Sorry really wouldn’t cover it, would it?’ she breathed jerkily.

‘No importa... Who can tell what would have happened? A hundred things could have gone wrong,’ he dismissed wryly. ‘I bear my own share of responsibility for our plight. I dismissed my bodyguards. And had I not taken you down there you would not be here now. They were waiting for me. I have business lunches almost every day. As a potential target you are told to vary your schedule but lunch... lunch is difficult to vary—’

‘I guess.’ Bella was surprised by his sudden denial of her culpability.

Lustrous dark eyes glimmered in the dim light over her anxious face. ‘Por Dios... It is inexcusable that I should take my anger and frustration out on you. I owe you my apologies. I am not accustomed to this feeling of being powerless. I have always been aware that I could be the target for such a crime but I did not seriously believe that this could happen to me. Arrogance brings its own reward.’

‘I don’t see what you could have done to prevent it.’ It was hard to drag her fascinated gaze from him. He was being so honest, so open. She had not expected that candour from a male as sophisticated and powerful as Rico da Silva. And the apology shook her rigid.

In her own way she saw that she had been as prejudiced as he was. She had not been prepared for the strength of will and purpose that he had revealed from the outset of their imprisonment. Survival was the only item on their agenda, he had said. He meant it; he would act on it. But what was really driving him crazy right now, she sensed, was the apparently foolproof setting in which their kidnappers had chosen to place them.

‘Where do you think we are?’

‘If they spent the time I was unconscious driving, we could be hundreds of miles from London. Then again, we could still be inside the city limits.’ He shifted an expressive brown hand, his mouth tightening.