CHAPTER ONE

      HEADS turned when Bella walked down the street. Her rippling mane of Titian curls, her incredibly long legs and her outrageous hotchpotch of colourful clothes caught the eye. But it was her prowling, graceful stride and the light of vibrant energy in her face which made the attention linger. Bella always looked as if she knew exactly where she was going.

      She lifted the public phone off the hook and punched in the number. ‘Griff?’

      ‘Bella, I’m so sorry... something’s come up,’ he groaned. ‘I have to go back into the office.’

      ‘But—’ Her clear eyes froze as she heard a woman giggling somewhere in the background. Griff went on talking, although there was a similar catch of amusement in his voice. Apologising, he assured her that he would be in touch.

      Five minutes later Bella was back in the wine bar with her friends.

      ‘Where have you been?’ Liz hissed, under cover of the animated conversation.

      ‘Calling Griff...’

      ‘You mean he’s not on his way yet?’

      Bella gave a careless shrug.

      ‘He’s let you down, hasn’t he?’ her friend said bluntly.

      Bella didn’t trust herself to speak. And the very last thing she needed right now was a lecture on the subject of Griff Atherton, who was everything Gramps had ever told her to look out for in a man but who was inexplicably as unreliable as they came, in spite of his good education, steady job and stable family background.

      ‘You really know how to pick them,’ Liz lamented. ‘Why do you always latch on to the creeps?’

      ‘He’s not a creep.’

      ‘It’s your birthday. Where is he?’

      Bella shed her battered cerise suede fringed jacket and crossed her legs below the feathered hem of her minuscule new chiffon skirt, covertly attempting to stretch it to a more reasonable length. Liz had bought the skirt for her birthday. It was far too short but she had to be seen to wear it at least this once.

      ‘So what was Griff the Glib’s excuse this time?’

      ‘Wow, look at those wheels!’ Bella exclaimed hurriedly, keen for a change of subject. She craned her neck to gaze out at the gleaming silver sports car drawing up outside the five-star hotel on the other side of the street. ‘That’s a Bugatti Supersport.’

      ‘A what?’ Obediently distracted, Liz peered without a lot of interest and then gasped. ‘Look who’s getting out of it! Now that is what I call—’

      ‘Fabulous engineering.’ Bella was eyeing the sleek lines of the powerful car, not the driver with his smouldering, dark good looks. Bella preferred blonds.

      ‘I haven’t heard Rico da Silva described in quite those terms before.’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘If you ever put your nose inside a serious newspaper, you’d recognise him too. He’s absolutely gorgeous, isn’t he?’ Liz looked rapt. ‘He’s also single and loaded!’

      ‘He has a beautiful set of wheels. Is he into motors?’

      ‘He’s an international financier. The local paper did a profile on him,’ Liz told her. ‘He owns a fabulous country estate just outside town. He spent millions renovating it.’

      Bella grimaced. Finance...money...banks. She never went into a bank if she could help it, didn’t even own a cheque book. People who wheeled and dealed in money and profit made her skin crawl. A faceless smoothie from a bank had pushed Gramps’ business to the wall and put him into a premature grave.

      ‘That’s his current lady,’ Liz murmured as a beautiful blonde woman swathed in fur emerged from the hotel.

      Tall, dark and handsome with the little woman. Bella wasn’t in the mood to be generous. They looked like some impossibly perfect couple from a glossy magazine. His and hers matching glamour. They had that aura of untouchability which only the seriously rich exuded. It was there like a glass wall between them and the rest of the human race. A clump of pedestrians stopped to let them pass in a direct path to the Bugatti. They took