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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 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