Prisoner Of Passion. Lynne Graham

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      ‘How the hell do you know that?’ he shot at her forbiddingly.

      Bella gave him a startled look. ‘I saw you earlier this evening and a friend told me who you were.’

      ‘And then all of a sudden you crash into me. Two such coincidences in one night strain my credulity!’ Rico da Silva shot at her.

      ‘Pretty lousy luck, huh? If I’d done the cards this morning I probably wouldn’t have got out of bed—’

      ‘“The cards”?’ he echoed.

      ‘Tarot cards. Though mostly I steer clear of the temptation to tell my own fortune these days. Sometimes I think you’re better not knowing what’s ahead of you.’

      ‘I do not believe in such a coincidence,’ he stated afresh, staring down at her in a very intimidating fashion. ‘It was your intent to meet me, es verdad?’

      ‘You’re a very uptight personality.’ Bella shook her vibrant head. ‘And a bit weird, to be frank—’

      ‘Weird?’ Rico da Silva roared. ‘You think that I am weird?’

      She raised her hands. ‘Now just count to ten and back off, buster.’

      “‘Buster”?’ he repeated, snatching in a hissing breath.

      ‘Mr Silver... no, it wasn’t that, was it?’ She sighed.

      ‘Rico... da... Silva,’ he enunciated very slowly and carefully, as if he were talking to a complete idiot.

      ‘Yeah, I knew it was something strange. I hate to tell you this but it is a little weird to imagine that a total stranger would crash into you deliberately to meet you,’ Bella told him gently. ‘I mean, I might have been killed.’

      From beneath black lashes so long that they cast crescent shadows on his savage cheekbones, he cast her a glimmering glance. ‘I have known women to take tremendous risks to make my acquaintance.’

      ‘I wonder why?’ she said, and then realised by the sudden, thundering silence that she had said it out loud instead of just thinking it. ‘What I mean is...well, there’s only one way of saying this, Mr da Silver—’

      ‘Silva!’ he slotted in rawly.

      Uptight wasn’t the word for it. This guy lived on the outer edge. On the brink of gently assuring him that he had met some very peculiar women, Bella was silenced briefly by the sight of the tow-truck surging up the street towards them.

      ‘Talk about service!’ she gasped. ‘I thought we’d be here for hours!’

      ‘Another half-hour of your relentless, mindless chatter and I would be—’

      ‘More hyper than you already are? It’s OK. I’m not offended,’ she told him with a smile. ‘You either love me or you hate me. But, for your own sake, get your blood pressure checked and take up something relaxing like gardening. Guys like you drop dead from heart attacks at forty-five.’ Dragging her attention from the darkening colour of his cheekbones and the razor-slash effect of his incredulous gaze, Bella turned to gape at the arrival of a second tow-truck. ‘Gosh... one each!’

      With that, she rushed over to the Skoda, belatedly realising that she would need to clear the car out. She was kneeling on the driver’s seat, poking around amongst the rubbish for stray items of clothing, letters, bills, her sketch-pad and pencils, when his voice assailed her again from behind.

      ‘I will expect you to pass on your insurance details to my secretary tomorrow. This is the number.’

      Awkwardly she twisted round and reached out to grasp a gilded card and dig it into her pocket.

      ‘If you don’t call, I will inform the police—’

      ‘Look, what are you trying to do—give me nightmares?’ she exclaimed helplessly, clinging perilously to the steering wheel to lean out and look up at him. ‘I am a law-abiding person.’

      ‘To trust you goes against my every principle,’ he admitted unapologetically.

      ‘You wouldn’t want me to lose my licence, would you?’ Bella fixed enormous green eyes on him in reproach. ‘It took me a lot of years to get that licence. The examiners used to draw lots for me and the one that got the short straw was it! I mean, we all have weaknesses and mine is in the driving department, but this is truly the very worst accident I have ever had and I am going to be much more careful in the future... cross my heart and hope to die—’

      ‘Or shut up.’

      ‘I beg your pardon?’ She squinted up at him.

      He extended his phone with an air of long-suffering hauteur. ‘Ring your boyfriend to come and pick you up.’

      ‘You’ve got to be kidding. He’d probably say his car had a flat tyre or something anyway,’ she mused, returning to her frantic clean-up.

      ‘There must be somebody you can contact!’

      ‘At four in the morning to take me back to London?’ And pigs might fly, her tone said.

      ‘I am not giving you a lift!’ he snapped in a whiplash response.

      So he had been heading for London too. ‘I wasn’t aware I asked for one,’ she hissed. ‘Now why don’t you just go away and leave me alone?’

      ‘I am being foolish. No doubt you are accustomed to walking lonely streets at this hour of the night, es verdad? But it is hard for me to forget my natural instinct to behave as a gentleman—’

      ‘I would have said you forgot it the minute I hit your car... but it’s OK,’ Bella continued sweetly. ‘I didn’t notice. I haven’t got much experience of what you would probably call gentlemen. I cut my teeth on creeps.’

      There was a fulminating silence.

      ‘Make sure you make that call tomorrow.’

      Bella scrambled out backwards with her bulging carrier bag, wondering why he was still hovering. Approaching the driver of the tow-truck, she told him to be sure to dump the Skoda at the nearest garage possible. Hopefully that would cut the cost. ‘I can’t pay you now,’ she then said awkwardly. ‘I haven’t got enough money on me.’

      ‘I will take care of it,’ Rico da Silva announced glacially from behind her.

      She grimaced and ignored him to ask the driver what it was going to cost. Her horror was unfeigned. ‘I’m not asking you to fix it!’ she protested in a shattered voice.

      ‘I said I will pay the bill!’ Rico da Silva blitzed. Her temples were pounding like crazy. She just couldn’t fight any more. Once again she nodded. Anything for a quiet life. She started to walk away. Her feet were killing her.

      ‘Where are you going?’

      ‘The bus station.’ She glanced back at him with a frown of incomprehension, well aware that he liked her just about as much as she liked him, wondering why on earth it should matter to him СКАЧАТЬ