Prisoner Of Passion

by Lynne Graham

  ‘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 chewed anxiously at her lower lip and watched her retreat to the phone again; only, this time the conversation that took place was very low-key. She skimmed a hand down over her slim black Lycra skirt, adjusted her thin cotton fitted jacket 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.’ He gave it to her. Bella watched the carpet tilt and rise as she fought off a sick attack of dizziness brought on by shock. ‘Somehow I don’t think that you can come up with that kind of cash.’

  ‘Only in instalments.’ And if I starved, lived rough and went naked, she added mentally, beginning to tremble. He had spelt out the cold, hard facts and her vague idea that they might somehow be able to come to an arrangement had bitten the dust fast. She couldn’t expect him to pay for the repairs to the Bugatti and wait for twenty years for her to settle the debt. Intelligence told her that, but a numbing sense of terror was spreading through her by the second.

  ‘Not acceptable. So therefore it goes through on the record with the police,’ Rico da Silva informed her flatly.

  Already she was backing away, knowing that she was about to break her most unbreakable rule and copy Cleo. She was going to run, pack a bag and leave London—go back to the old life where there were no names, no pack drill, little chance of being caught by the authorities. How had she ever got the idea that she could make it in this other world with all its rules and regulations?

  ‘You’re not leaving,’ he warned her grimly.

  ‘You can’t keep me h-here!’ Bella stammered fearfully. ‘You can put the police on to me but you can’t keep me here!’

  ‘I call Security or I call the police. I’m not a fool. If you walk out of here you’ll disappear. Maybe the police are already looking for you,’ Rico da Silva suggested, studying her slender, quivering, white-faced figure with cool assessment. ‘For some other offence?’

  ‘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 w
hich 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.