by Lynne Graham
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.
‘But it’s so quiet—’
‘This container is set inside some sort of building. We are not outdoors. There is some kind of roof far above us. I was able to judge that through the airholes,’ Rico supplied, acknowledging her surprise at his knowledge. ‘There is very little light in the building. It could be a warehouse on an old industrial estate, miles from residential areas. On the other hand, it could equally well be a barn out in the depths of the country—’
‘You’ve really thought about this.’
‘I’ve had more time than you and more practice. International banking is cut-throat. Thinking on my feet comes naturally.’
Bella bent her vibrant head, amused by his assumption of mental superiority. He thought that she was thick just because her spelling was no great shakes. No doubt her second-hand clothing and her habit of chattering when she was nervous added to his prejudice. If he saw her paintings he might change his mind. Then again, he might not.
Hector didn’t think she was ready for a first exhibition as yet. It had been Hector who had told her that she needed more time and more experience to develop as an artist before she even considered trying to show or sell her work. And Hector ought to have known what he was talking about. In the days before he had become a virtual recluse Hector Barsay had been a renowned international art critic, whose opinion had been sufficient to make or break many an artistic career.
‘If we’re inside a barn that probably means there’s a house close by!’ Her sudden animation dimmed as quickly as it had arisen as she took that thought a step further and felt more threatened than ever by it. ‘And if there is a house our jailers are probably inside it…’ she whispered sickly.
‘Sí.’ He did not deny the possibility. ‘But the environment they have chosen for us would suggest to me that they are equally likely to be miles away or even out of the country by now—’
‘Out of the country… leaving us here trapped?’ Bella had gone white.
‘This was very carefully planned… all this,’ Rico stressed again, indicating their surroundings. ‘They did not employ gratuitous violence upon us—’
‘I thought they were very violent.’
‘They used drugs rather than brute force to subdue us. They might have stuck us in a basement somewhere and simply left us without food or any comfort,’ he pointed out.
‘Do you think they’re terrorists?’
‘I think not but I could be wrong. The nervous one did not strike me as a man used to having a gun in his hand. The other one was more professional, more confident … He was even enjoying himself.’
Bella’s sensitive stomach churned. Unlike Rico she did not have the emotional distance to assess their captor’s personalities.
‘To take me in that car park was a challenge, and he was a man accustomed to danger. He enjoyed the risk. Possibly a former soldier or mercenary. He had fast reactions.’
‘I’m scared,’ she muttered in a small voice.
Disconcertingly he reached for her clenched hand where it rested on the table. His large hand briefly engulfed hers with very welcome warmth. ‘Clearly not a halfwit,’ he said with a self-mocking edge.
‘The police will be scouring the countryside for us.’ Endeavouring to cheer herself up, Bella thought for the very first time of the police not as a threat but as the strong arm of the law. Investigators, protectors, rescuers.
There was an odd little silence. She glanced across at Rico.
‘Sí…’ He was staring down into his glass of water.
‘Leaving no stone unturned—a nationwide alert,’ she continued, bolstering her nerves with conviction. ‘It’ll be on television and radio. Everyone will know about us and someone somewhere is sure to have seen something… Maybe a few someones.’
Tight-mouthed, Rico murmured, ‘Tell me about Hector.’
Thrown by the abrupt change of subject, Bella echoed, ‘Hector?’
‘By now he will be aware of your disappearance.’
She thought about that and shook her head. ‘Not yet. We don’t keep tabs like that on each other.’
‘You mean he is accustomed to you not always coming home at night?’ Rico phrased abrasively.
‘Everyone stays over with friends sometimes. And Hector’s a very private person who believes in minding his own business. He has his own very set routines and I’m not a routine sort of person,’ Bella admitted. ‘We don’t share mealtimes very often. When he asked me to move in—’
‘A year ago.’
‘Where did you meet him?’
‘I’ve known Hector for ever.’ Bella grinned. ‘Well, since I was fourteen.’
‘Fourteen?’ Rico grated, his dark features rigid with a response that she couldn’t quite read. It looked remarkably like distaste…but why should he react that way to such a harmless piece of information?
‘Why not?’ Bella frowned.
‘If you see no reason why not, it is not for me to comment,’ Rico returned thinly. ‘Where were your parents?’
‘I was living with my grandfather at the time.’
‘And he did not protect you from this dirty old man?’ he demanded with seething distaste.
Bella’s mouth fell wide in astonishment. She sprang upright. ‘Are you calling Hector a dirty old man?’
‘This appears to come as a big revelation to you…but sí.. yes. Such a relationship is an obscenity!’
Her green eyes fired, her temper exploding. ‘You actually believe that Hector and I have a sexual relationship,’ she realised in disgust. ‘My God, you are stuffed full of prejudices about me! I’m sorry to disappoint your gutter assumptions, Mr da Silva, but Hector’s nothing more than my landlord and a family friend—’
‘A family friend?’ Unperturbed by her anger, Rico surveyed her and merely continued to probe.
‘Hector knew my father back in the sixties,’ she volunteered with pronounced reluctance.
‘When will he notice your absence?’
Bella drank down her glass of water, still trembling with bitter anger. ‘I don’t know. Not tonight anyway. He always goes to bed early and I’m often out all day. I don’t always see him at breakfast. I also work shifts, and sometimes I do extra hours if I’m asked. By the way, I’m a waitress… I’m not out trawling the streets for men to sell my body to!’ she hissed at him. ‘What gives with you anyway? The fact that I’m out late at night and driving a beat-up car doesn’t mean I’m a tart!’
Hooded dark eyes rested on her vibrant and passionately expressive face. His mouth quirked. ‘You are quite correct. But you have a quite stunning quality of raw sexuality which tends to blunt the male perceptive powers. Your looks, your walk and the husky pitch of your voice,’ he murmured softly, ‘add to the confusion you create.’
Wide-eyed and bewildered, Bella stared back at him. He had delivered the assessment with the same distant coolness that an employer might use when he was discussing a potential employee with personnel management. But nobody had ever talked to Bella like that before—certainly not a man. A tide of pink illuminated her porcelain-fine skin.
‘And I don’t think you’re half as aware of the havoc you wreak as I assumed you were, querida.’ He thrust his empty plate away and rose. ‘Now I think it’s time I started trying to attract attention to us again.’
He left her standing there, uncertain, confused, anger and defensiveness still contributing to her feverish tension. The first crash of metal on metal made her flinch. He was hammering the container doors with what looked like a poker. The noise hit her in shock waves. But if someone heard them, came to investigate…? What were the chances? she wondered dully. If the kidnappers had really left them alone here, that signified a fair degree of confidence that their presence was unlikely to be discovered.
Clearing up the dishes, she discovered that a bone-deep exhaustion had settled on her without her even noticing. Rico was still banging the doors, vibrations running through the whole container like thunderclaps, hurting her ears, her teeth, her head. She withstood it, bracing herself. And then he stopped, releasing his pent-up breath in a hiss.
‘I’ll take a turn,’ Bella proffered.
He swung round, his bronzed, startlingly handsome features and curling black hair damp with perspiration. ‘No need. This is allowing me to work out my anger. And you look as though you’re on the brink of collapse. Why don’t you lie down for a while?’
‘I can do my bit just like you can,’ she insisted, hovering.
‘You can do it tomorrow, or in the middle of the night. The noise will carry further then. If you fall asleep I’ll wake you up,’ he assured her.
She gave a rueful laugh. ‘Sleep with that racket?’
‘Try. We need to conserve our strength to stay alert.’ From the shadows he studied her with slumbrous golden eyes and, astonishingly, for the first time since it had happened, she remembered that savage embrace in the lift—the hard, hot hunger of his mouth on hers, the shatteringly sexual feel of that lean, muscular form of his crushing her to him.
‘Yes,’ she muttered, turning away, barely knowing what she was saying, suddenly engulfed by a level of physical awareness that she had never felt before, struggling to thrust that intimate memory away again.
‘You remind me of a marmalade cat,’ he said abruptly.
‘It’s the hair.’
‘I can see you slinking through the undergrowth, stalking your prey.’
‘I haven’t heard that one before.’ She forced a laugh and vanished back through the curtain. At the sink she washed her face and hands, dried herself on one of the two rough, faded towels available, peered at the still wrapped toothbrush and paste. The kidnappers hadn’t planned to make Rico too uncomfortable. The conviction was soothing.
‘Can we share a toothbrush?’ she called in a lull in the noise.
‘If we can share a bed we can share a toothbrush,’ Rico murmured lazily.
But they were not going to share that bed. They would take turns. Very democratic. Very sensible. One asleep, one awake and alert. And always that background of deafening noise. Thud, thud, crash, crash. It was impossible that anyone could fall asleep against that background. Having removed her boots and her tights in the kitchen section, Bella walked back to the bed. Covertly undoing a couple of the buttons on her fitted jacket, she slid below the blanket, rested her head on the pillow, and turned away from him towards the wall.
But still his image lingered behind her lowered eyelids, stamped there like a cattle brand seared into her flesh. Involuntarily she remembered the kiss, relived the wildness he had unleashed—from inside her, from inside him. Trying to fly off the top of a tall building would have been less dangerous, less foolhardy. She shivered. The fire had simply taken over, burning out all self-control.
No man had ever made her feel like that. And she didn’t ever want to feel like that again. Passion was greedy and mindless. Passion was lust, a purely physical thing which had no staying power. Bella knew that some people were lucky enough to find both love and passion in a lasting relationship but those people were in the minority. Many more mistook infatuation for love and then wondered why their feelings faded so quickly. But Bella knew the difference and knew what to guard against.
Both of her parents had been passionate people and neither Cleo nor Ivan had controlled that side of their nature. Neither of them had ever managed to sustain a stable relationship, not with each other and not with anybody else. Their love affairs had been volatile, short-lived and unfulfilling. Why? Because they had been greedy, impatient and always afraid that the grass might be greener with someone else.
Bella was determined not to fall into the same trap. Yes, she had needs and drives just like any other young, healthy woman, but she wanted to choose her life partner with her intellect, not with her body. It dawned on her that she had not thought of Griff in almost twenty-four hours. She was shaken. But then, it had been a frantic and worrying twenty-four hours, and Griff had hurt her, and no doubt she was already in the recovery phase. Bella’s feelings shut down fast when she was disappointed or betrayed.
But she had been very fond of Griff. She had enjoyed his company, respected his intelligence and believed that his outlook and expectations of life matched her own. That, she had foolishly assumed, had been a sufficient basis on which to build a good relationship. Only it hadn’t been enough for Griff. She had refused to go to bed with him in the absence of any deeper commitm
ent on his part.
That giggle in the background on the phone had told her that he had been finding physical entertainment elsewhere. Griff had made his choice but she knew him well enough to know that he would still believe that he could string her along. But Bella wouldn’t allow that. It was over. Griff was immature, clearly not yet ready to think in terms of permanence in spite of all the things he had said to the contrary.
That sorted out tidily in her mind, Bella contrived to do what she had not believed possible. She fell asleep. And she awakened to a situation that was entirely new to her.
She was lying on top of a living, breathing pillow. Her nostrils flared at the clean, soapy scent of warm male. Her breasts were crushed against a rough-haired chest, her cheek pillowed in the hollow of a smooth shoulder, and her pelvis was in direct contact with the thrust of a very masculine arousal. In the darkness her head flew up, her eyes wide with consternation.
CHAPTER FOUR
A HAND pressed her back down again. ‘Go back to sleep,’ Rico breathed tautly.
‘Like hell I will!’ Bella gasped in alarm, trying to rise but thwarted by the powerful arm wrapped around her hips.
‘Dios! Relax,’ he hissed with raw impatience.
‘You’ve just got to be kidding! You’re in bed with me!’
‘Madre de Dios, it’s four in the morning—’
‘Time I got up and took my turn at thumping walls!’
Both arms closed round her. ‘Forget it,’ he groaned. ‘It’s the middle of the night. I need sleep. If you start, I won’t get any.’
‘I am not sharing this bed with you!’
‘What do you think I am—a rapist?’ he growled incredulously.
‘How… do… I… know?’ she fielded with growing fury. ‘You’re not wearing any clothes!’
‘As I have only one set I refuse to go to bed in them. But I am not naked.’ Closing his hand round one of hers, he thrust it down to the hard jut of his hips, splaying her fingers against the band of cloth there to prove his point.
Bella nearly went into orbit at the intimacy of the gesture. ‘How dare you?’ she screeched, snatching her hand back even though she hadn’t been anywhere near the danger zone that she was already outrageously aware of.