--Romantic Times 
Mothers-To-Be

PRISONER OF PASSION

by Lynne Graham 


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?"

"B ella, 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 
 I

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 it as their due.

"How the other half lives," Liz sighed with un hidden envy.

"Time we got this party off the ground!"  Bella stood up, spread a
brilliantly bright smile round her assembled friends, and switched into
extrovert mode.

Dammit, where was the turn-off?  Bella called herself a fool for not staying
the night with Liz as she had originally planned, but Liz had been in the
mood to preach and Bella hadn't been in the mood to listen.  Now it was three
in the morning.  The roads were deserted.  And somehow she had got lost.
There it was!  Jumping on the brakes, Bella swung into a frantic last-minute
turn.  As she made it Sa gigantic yawn engulfed her taut facial muscles.  As
she emerged from it, rubbing at her sleepy eyes, another car appeared
directly in the path of her headlights.

With a shriek of horror Bella barely had time to brace herself before impact.
The jolt of the crash shuddered through her entire body, the sickening noise
of buckling metal almost deafening her.  Then there was a terrible silence.
Fast to react, Bella's first thought was for the other driver.  Her
windscreen was smashed.  She couldn't see a thing.  She lurched out of the
Skoda on legs that felt like jellied eels.


A hand clamped round her slim shoulder.

"Are you hurt?  Have you passengers?"

"No!"  Taken aback by someone with even faster reactions than her own, Bella
hovered in the biting wind tunnelling down the street as the powerful head
and shoulders ducked into the cluttered interior of her car, which more
closely resembled a travelling dustbin than a vehicle.  Her teeth chattered
with shock, her aghast attention logged onto the truly appalling amount of
damage done to her car.  The whole bonnet was wrecked.

"You madman!"  she burst out helplessly.

"What were you doing on the wrong side of the road?"

The large presence straightened.  Bella was not small and she was wearing
very high heels, but the male beside her still towered above her.  In the
streetlight his hard, dark features were as unyielding as hewn granite.

"What was I doing?"  he repeated in a raw tone of disbelief, and this time
she caught the foreign inflexion, the thickness of an accent that was
certainly not British.

"Did you forget we drive on the left here?"  Bella asked furiously.

"You stupid bitch ... you're on a one-way street!"  With that he strode back
to his own car.

A one-way street?  About to open her mouth and loudly disclaim that
ridiculous assertion at the same time as she asked him who the hell he
thought he was calling a stupid bitch, Bella looked back to the corner and
saw the sign.  A one-way street.  She had turned right into a one-way street
and not unnaturally had had a head-on collision.

Devastated by the realisation that the accident was entirely her fault, Bella
leant against the wing of the Skoda because her knees were threatening to
give way.

The other driver was lifting something out of his car.  Oh, dear God, what
had she hit?  For the first time she looked at the other vehicle.

It had a hideous ddj vu familiarity, only it had looked considerably more
pristine earlier.  A 
Bugatti.  She had wrecked a Bugatti Supersport which
retailed at somewhere around a quarter of a million pounds.  She wanted to
throw herself down on the road and scream like a banshee in torment.  Her
insurance premium would rocket into outer space after this .  correction;
she'd be lucky to get insurance.  This wasn't her first accident, although it
was certainly by far the worst.  Dammit, what was the guy's name?  Why, oh,
why had she let her temper rip and called him a madman?

"What are you doing?"  she demanded in a weak voice, moving forward.

He was lounging against his status-symbol car, which was not quite the status
symbol it had been.  And he had a mobile phone in his hand.

Just her luck--a guy with a phone in his car!

"I am calling the police," he imparted, with a decided edge of, And aren't
you going to enjoy that?  in his growling delivery.

"The p-police?"  Bella stammered shrilly, plunged into further depths of un
hidden horror.  She turned as white as a sheet.

"Naturally.  Why don't you get back into your vehicle and await their
arrival?"

"Do we need the police?"  she asked in a shaky voice, her heart sinking to
the soles of her feet at the prospect of being arrested on a charge of
careless driving.

"Of course we need the police."

Bella took another desperate step forward.

"Please don't get the police!"  she muttered frantically.

"I should imagine that you will be breathalysed."

"I haven't been drinking.  I just don't see the necessity to get the police!"

"I expect they already have more than a passing acquaintance with you."  Rico
da Silva sent a glittering look of derision over her.


"Well, we wouldn't be complete strangers, let's put it that way," Bella
conceded, thinking back miserably to her earliest memories of what her
travelling mother had called police harassment.

No matter how hard she tried Bella had never lost that childhood terror of
the uniformed men who had moved them on from their illegal camping grounds.

"I didn't think so.  It's a hard life on the street," he murmured, shooting
her scantily clad, shivering figure an intent but unreadable glance.

"Heading home from the nightshirt?"

What the hell was he talking about?  Struggling to concentrate, she moved
even closer.

"We could sort this out ... just you and me, off the record," she assured him
in desperation, skimming an anxious glance across the street as another car
passed by, slackened speed to have a good look at the wreckage, and then
drove on.  Any minute now a patrol car would be along.

"Es verdad Diamond-bright dark eyes scanned her beautiful, pleading face,
his strong jaw line clenching hard as a long finger stabbed buttons on the
mobile phone without her even being aware of it.

"I

don't think so.  In that one field alone I prefer amateurs.  "

"Amateur what?"  Bella returned in despair, deciding that he had definitely
been drinking.

And then she heard the police answering the call, registered that he had
already dialled, and allowed sheer panic to take over.  Snaking out a hand,
she grabbed at the phone.  Lean fingers as compelling as steel cuffs closed
round her wrist and jerked it ruthlessly down.  She burst into floods of
tears, her overtaxed emotions shooting to a typically explosive Bella climax
and spilling over instantaneously.  "You bully!"  she sobbed accusingly.

With a raw gasp of male fury, the background of the police telephonist's
voice was abruptly silenced as if the man before her had cut the connection.

"You attacked me!"  he grated.

"I just didn't want you to ring the police!"  she slung back, 
on the brink
of another howl.

"But go ahead!  Have me arrested!  I don't care; I'm past caring!"

"Stop making such a noise," he growled.

"You're making an exhibition of yourself!"

"If I want to have hysterics, that's my business!"  she asserted through her
tears.

"What do you think this is going to do to my insurance?"

There was a short silence.

"You have insurance?"

"Of course I have insurance," Bella mumbled, making an effort to collect
herself and keeping a careful distance from him, since he had already proved
that he was the aggressive type.

"Give me the details and sign a statement admitting fault and you can be on
your way," he drawled with un hidden relish.

Bella shot him an astonished glance.

"You mean it?"

"S pounds pence.   five more minutes in your company and I will understand
why men murder.   Not only that, I will be at the forefront of a campaign to
bring in the death penalty for women drivers!"   Rico da Silva intoned
between clenched teeth.

Sexist pig.  Smearing her non-waterproof mascara over her cheeks as she wiped
at her wet face, Bella bit back the temptation to answer in kind.  After all,
he was going to be civilised.  If he had smashed up her Bugatti she probably
would have wanted blood too.  Prepared to be generous, she still, however,
gave a deliberate little rub to her wrist just to let him know that he might
not have drawn blood but he might have inflicted bruises.

He planted a sheet of paper on the bonnet and handed her a pen.

"You write it, I'll sign it," she proffered glumly.

"I want it to be in your handwriting."

But he still stood over her and dictated what he wanted 
her to write.  She
struggled with the big words he used, her rather basic spelling powers taxed
beyond their limits.  "This is illiterate," he remarked in a strained voice.
Bella's cheeks flamed scarlet.  Her itinerant childhood had meant that she
had very rarely attended a school.  Gramps had changed all that when she had
gone to live with him but somehow her spelling had never quite come up to
scratch.  Laziness and lack of interest, she conceded inwardly, for she
possessed a formidable intelligence which she focused solely on the field of
art.  Spelling came a very poor second.

"But it's fine," Rico da Silva added abruptly, suddenly folding it and
stuffing it into the pocket of his dinner jacket.

Seeing him reach for his phone again, she gabbled the name of her insurance
company in a rush.

"I'm ringing for a tow-truck for the cars," he murmured, reading the
reanimated fear on her expressive face.

"Oh... Thanks," she muttered, turning her head and strolling away while he
made the call, far more concerned with what it would cost to pay for the
towing service.

"I'm sorry about your car.  It was beautiful," she sighed when he had stopped
speaking.

"I'll call a cab for you."

Bella bit out a rueful laugh.  She lived in London, which was almost sixty
miles away.  The cab fare home would be a week's wages--maybe more.

"Forget it."

"I will pay for it."

She dealt him a disbelieving look.

"No way."

"I insist."  He was digging a wallet out of his pocket with astonishing
alacrity.

"I said no," she reminded him flatly, embarrassed to death by the offer and
hurriedly attempting to change the subject.  "Cold for May, isn't it?"

"Take the money!"  he bit out with stinging impatience.

Bella frowned, hunching deeper into her battered jacket, one long, shapely
thigh crossed over the other, her fantastic 
head of hair blowing back from
her exotic features in the breeze.

"What's the matter with you?  I have to wait for the tow-truck."

"I'll wait for it," he told her harshly.  "Look, it isn't my car..."

"What?"  he raked at her.

"It belongs to this old man I live with.  I only have the use of it,"

Bella explained soothingly.

Narrowed dark eyes rested on her, his beautifully shaped mouth hardening, and
she found herself staring at him, noticing the shape of his lips.  It was the
artist in her, she supposed abstractedly.  He would be an interesting study
to paint.

"How old is old?"  Rico da Silva enquired, surprising her.  "As old as you
feel."  Bella laughed in more like her usual manner.

"Hector says he feels fifty on a good day, seventy on a bad.  I reckon he's
about the latter."

"And what are you?"

"Twenty-one..."  she checked her watch '.  and four and a half hours.  "

"Yesterday was your birthday?"

"Lousy birthday," she muttered, more to herself than him.  "I had to work."

"It happens," he said in a strained voice.

"And my boyfriend is two-timing me."  It just came out.  She hadn't meant to
say it.  Maybe it was the effect of bravely smiling all evening and keeping
her mouth shut with her friends.

"The pensioner?"  He sounded even more strained.

It was the language barrier, she decided.  How on earth could he imagine that
she was dating a man old enough to be her grandfather?

"Not Hector--my boyfriend."

"Maybe you should think of another occupation--some-thing that keeps you home
at night.."  although perhaps not," he muttered half under his breath.


Had she told him that she was a waitress?  She didn't{ remember doing so but she
must have done.  Screening other sleepy yawn, Bella sighed.

"I don't mind most of time, although it's murder on my feet and it's very
borJ Still, it pays the rant--' " He charges you rent?  "

"Of course he does ... although not very much."  i yawned again, politely
masking her mouth with a slen hand.

"He tried to claim for me as a housekeeper but Inland Revenue weren't
impressed.  I'm not really very mestic but he wouldn't like it if I was.
It's kind of hard explain Hector to people..."

"Are you in the habit of telling complete strangers most intimate details of
your life?"  Rico da Silva promp in a tone of driven fascination.

Bella thought about it and then nodded, although: would have disputed his
concept of 'intimate de tai Friends said,

"I told you so."

Strangers just listened volunteered their own experiences.  Not that the male
sta: ing next to her would.  He was the secretive type, she cided.  Still
waters ran deep---dark and deep as hell x this one, she thought helplessly.

"You're a financier," she remarked conversationa thinking that what was good
enough for the gander x good enough for the goose.

"How the hell do you know that?"  he shot at her fort dingly.

Bella gave him a startled look.

"I saw you earlier [ evening and a friend told me who you were."

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

"Pretty lousy luck, huh?  If I'd done the cards this mo: ing I probably
wouldn't have got out of bed--' '" The cards"?"  he echoed.

"Tarot cards.  Though mostly I steer clear of the ten 
tat ion 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 ver dad

"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

I'


"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 cleanup.

"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 ver dad 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-track, 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 how she intended to get home.

"Madre de Dios!"  he ground out, skimming a furious hand of frustration
through the air.

"There will be no buses until morning!"

"Morning's only a couple of hours away."

"I'll give you a lift," he bit out between clenched teeth.

"Forget it."

"I said I will give you a lift, but only on one condition--you do not open
your mouth!"

"I prefer the bus.  It's more egalitarian.  I'm allowed to breathe, you know,
that sort of life-enhancing stuff called oxygen?  I use up a lot of it, but
thanks all the same."  And then she saw the limousine waiting by the kerb on
the other side of the street and her sleepy green eyes widened to their
fullest extent.  She had assumed that he was catching a cab.  But a lift in a
real live limo.  She just couldn't resist the offer.

"Mr da Silva?"  she called abruptly.

"I thought you might change your mind," he breathed, without turning his
glossy dark head.

"I must be out of my mind to be doing this."

"Doing what?"

"Give my chauffeur your address and then shut up," he grated.

Bella climbed in and surveyed the opulent interior with un hidden fascination.

"Do you always travel.."  sorry, I forgot!  "

The limo purred away from the kerb.  Her companion 
 stabbed a button, and
under the onslaught of her incredulous scrutiny a revolving drinks cabinet
smoothly appeared.

"Wow," she said, deeply impressed.

"Do you want a drink?"  he asked shortly.

"No, thanks.  My father was next door to being an alcoholic.

Personally speaking, I wouldn't touch the stuff with a barge-pole!  "

He expelled his breath in a hiss.  She watched his hand still and then hover
momentarily before he finally grasped the whisky bottle.

"I guess--' she began, and then sealed her mouth again as those
black-as-night eyes hit on her with silencing effect.

"You guess what?"  he finally gritted.

"Don't keep me in suspense!"

"I was going to say that we don't have a lot in common, do we?  It's a bit
like meeting an alien," Bella mumbled, sleep catching up on her as she rested
her heavy head back against the leather upholstery and closed her drooping
eyelids.  "Except even the alien might have had a sense of humour... Someone
was shaking her shoulder hard.  She surfaced groggily, registered that she
was lying face down on some kind of seat, then remembered and hauled herself
upright into a sitting position.

"This cannot be where you live!"  Rico da Silva vented with raw exasperation.

"Is this your idea of a joke?"

Bella focused on the familiar Georgian square of enormous, elegant terraced
houses, which had been her home for the past year.

"Why should it be my idea of a joke?"  She fumbled with the door-release
mechanism but the door remained stubbornly closed.

"I should imagine that not one in a thousand hookers lives in a house worth
millions!"

"Hookers'?  He thought she was a hooker?  He thought she sold her body for
money?  Aghast, Bella stared at him 
for several seemingly endless seconds,
telling herself that she had somehow misunderstood him.

"You think I'm a prostitute?"  she finally gasped, wide-eyed with rampant
disbelief.  "How dare you?  Let me out of this car right now!"

A winged ebony brow quirked.

"Are you saying now that you are not?"

"Of course I'm not!"  Bella threw at him in violent outrage, belatedly
understanding all of his peculiar utterances.  "I've never been so insulted
in my life!  You have a mind 'like a sewer--' " You dress like one--' "Dress
like one?"  Liz's wretched too short skirt!  She wanted to scream.

"And you came on to me like a whore!"  he condemned, without batting an
eyelash.

'"Came on to" you?  " Fit to be fled, Bella looked at him with splintering
green eyes.

"Me ... come on to you?  Are you crazy?"

"You offered yourself to me--' " I what?  You're a lunatic.  Let me out of
this car; I don't feel safe!  " she shrieked.

"I should never have got into it in the first place.  I knew you were weird!"

"Are you trying to tell me that I was mistaken?"  His strong, dark features
were fiercely clenched.

"How dare you think I would come on to you?"  Bella spat at him like a
bristling cat.

"I never go for dark men!  Your car was at more risk than you were!  And I
may wear second-hand clothes, talk with an Essex accent and hardly be able to
spell, but that doesn't mean that I don't have principles!  It might interest
you to know that I'm a virgin-' He burst into spontaneous laughter.  In fact
he threw his dark head back and very nearly choked on his disbelief.  Bella
launched herself across the car at him in a rage and two strong hands snaked
out and closed round her narrow forearms to hold her imprisoned mere inches
from him and 
in devastating contact with every line of his leashed, powerful
body.

"A virgin."  he queried in a shaking voice.

"Maybe not a whore ... but definitely not a virgin."

"Let go of me!"

For a split-second he stared down into her brilliant green eyes and something
happened inside her--something that had never happened to Bella before; a
tight clenched sensation jerked low in her stomach.

It made the hair prickle at the back of her neck, the breath catch in her
throat, every muscle draw taut.  She looked back at him with dawning
comprehension and horror, feeling the swell of her own breasts, the sudden,
painful tightening of her nipples.

"So what do you do on the night shift  Rico da Silva probed in a purring
undertone that set up a strange chain reaction down her spine.

Seriously shaken by the reaction of her own treacherous body, she remained
mutinously silent.

"And where does Hector fit in?"

"Let go of me... I don't feel well," Bella muttered tremulously, and it was
true.

He searched her pallor, abruptly freeing her.  His ebony brows had drawn
together in a sudden frown.  She had the strangest feeling that he was as
disconcerted by his own behaviour as she had been.

"I'll talk to your secretary tomorrow," she mumbled, her nerves strung so
tightly that tension was a fevered pulse-beat through her entire body.

He pressed a button.  The chauffeur climbed out and opened the door in the
humming silence.  Bella flew out like a cork ejected from a bottle and fled
up the steps of the shabbiest house in the row.  Inserting her key, she
unlocked the front door, then rushed into the shelter of the dark house and
rested back against the door like someone who had seen death at close
quarters.  Every sense on super 
alert, she listened to the limo driving off
before she breathed again.

Shock was still reverberating through her.  She had felt so safe for so long.
That had never happened to her before with a man.  And then all of a sudden,
when it was least expected, she had been gripped by the most dangerous drive
in the entire human repertoire--sexual desire.  But she was really proud of
herself.  Control and common sense had triumphed.  She had run like a rabbit.


CHAPTER TWO

IN THE half-light Bella picked her way past the piled-up books and newspapers
that littered every stair and headed up to the second floor and the privacy
of her spacious, cluttered studio.  She was still shaking like a leaf.  So
that was what it felt like!  She lit the candle beside her bed, and slowly
drew in a deep, sustaining breath.

Well, thankfully she was extremely unlikely ever to see him again.

There was no need to worry about temptation in that quarter.  Even so, she
was still shaken.

"I go with my feelings--that can never be wrong," Cleo had once said loftily,
supremely blind to the wreckage of disastrous relationships in her past.  Her
mother had been like a kamikaze pilot with men.

Every creep within a hundred-mile radius had zeroed in on her, stopped a
while and then moved on.  But Cleo had kept on trying, regardless of the
consequences to herself and her daughter, always convinced that the next one
would be different.  And Liz could have no idea just how much it scared Bella
to be told that she suffered from a similar lack of judgement with the men in
her life.

When she came downstairs later that morning Hector was shuffling about in his
carpet slippers in the ancient kitchen.  The gas bill had arrived.  He was
taking it as hard as he always did when a bill came through the letter box.
There were the usual charged enquiries about how often she had used the oven
and boiled the kettle.  Hector Barsay's mission in life was to save money.

It was his one failing but, as Gramps had often said, everybody had their
little idiosyncrasies, and those same little idiosyncrasies got a tighter
hold the older you got.


Beneath his crusty, dismal manner Hector was kind.  He had a bunch of
prosperous relatives just waiting for him to die so that they could sell his
house and make their fortunes.  None of them had visited since the time they
had tried to persuade him into an old folks' home and he had threatened to
leave them out of his will.

"I crashed the car last night," Bella told him tautly.

"Again?"  Hector cringed into his shabby layers of woo ll cardigans and she
squirmed, guilt and shame engulfing her.  "It's not going to cost you
anything!"  she swore.

"I haven't got anything!"  His faded blue eyes rolled in his head at the very
suggestion that his pocket might be touched.

"That's what you have insurance for," she told him in consolation.

"Before you know it the Skoda will be back in the garage as good as new."

Back upstairs, she dug out her insurance details and wrinkled her nose.  The
renewal hadn't yet been sent but then they always took their time about that
and, to be fair, she had been a little late in sending on the money because
Hector had made her ring round half of London trying to get a cheaper quote.
When you had to do it from a phone box, that took time.

She headed out for a phone.  Hector insisted that his phone was only to be
used in an emergency.  The girl at the insurance company was chatty until
Bella explained about the accident.  Then she went off the line for a while.

"I'm sorry, Miss Jennings," she murmured on her return, 'but at the time of
the accident you were not insured with US' "What are you talking about?"
Bella was aghast.

"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 entitled to withdraw it.  "

Argument got Bella nowhere.  Reeling with shock, s stood back to let the next
person in the queue use l phone.  From her pocket she removed the card that
Rico Silva had given her.  How could she ring his secretary a tell her she
had no insurance?  Dear heaven, that was criminal offence!

A Bugatti.  In anguish she clutched at her hair, stomach heaving.

And what about the repair of Hecto Skoda?  She would be in debt for the rest
of her life.  Ma3 she would go to prison!  Rico da Silva had that piece paper
on which she admitted turning the wrong way intone-way street without due
care and attention!

An hour later Bella was hanging over a reception de and smiling her most
pleading smile.

"Please ... this is matter of life and death!"

"Mr da Silva's secretary, Miss Ames, has no record your name, Miss Jennings.
You are wasting your time a mine," the elegant receptionist said frigidly.

"But I've already explained that.  He probably for{ about it, you know?  He
had a late night!"  Bella appeal in despair.

"If you don't remove yourself from this desk I will forced to call security."

"At four this morning Rico told me to ring his secretar Bella exclaimed,
shooting her last bolt.

Sudden silence fell in the busy foyer.  Heads turned, q receptionist's eyes
widened and were swiftly concealed her lasheS, faint colour burnishing her
cheeks.

"Excuse, for a moment," she said in a stilted voice.

Bella chewed anxiously at her lower lip and watched 1 retreat to the phone
again; only, this time the conversatJ that took place was very low-key.  She
skimmed a ha 
down over her slim black Lycra skirt, adjusted her cotton
fitted jacket and surveyed the scuffed toes of fringed cowboy boots.  A clump
of suited men nearby studying her as if she had just jumped naked out of a
day cake.

But then it was that kind of building--a bank.  Just inside it gave her the
heebie-jeebies.  All marble pillars polished floors and hushed voices.  Sort
of like a parlour, she reflected miserably.  And she didn't bel on here.  She
remembered that time she had gone to Gramps' case and the executive had been
so smooth nice that she had thought she was actually getting where.  But
double-talk had been created for places like this The bank had still called
in the debt and Gramps had everything.

"Miss Ames will see you," the receptionist whispered of the corner of her
mouth.

"Take that lift in the corner."

"How can I help you, Miss Jennings?"  She was 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 le Bella muttered,
sprawling down on a sofa.

Miss Ames disappeared.  The brunette at the d watched her covertly as though
she was afraid that she, about to pocket the crystal ashtray on the
coffee-table, q minutes later Miss Ames returned, all flushed and taut.
"Come this way, please..."

Bella strode up the corridor, hands stuck in her pock, fingers curled round
the pack of cigarettes that nerves } driven her to buy before she'd entered
the bank.

"What the hell are you doing here?"  Rico da Silva bla across the width of
the most enormous office she had e seen.  Her heels were sinking into the
carpet.

She looked around her with un hidden curiosity and t back at him.  He had to
be about six feet four.  Wide sshoulders, narrow hips, long, lean legs.
Michelangelo's D trapped in the clothing chains of convention.

Navy striped suit, boring white shirt, predictable navy tie-probably put on
a red one for Christmas and thought was being really daring.  He was looking
her over as if were a computer virus threatening to foul up the entire rice
network.  She tilted her chin, and her gaze collided v glittering golden
eyes.  He had really gorgeous eyes.  In the streetlight she hat got the full
effect.  Eyes the colour of the setting sun, si tacularly noticeable in that
hard-angled, bronzed face.  I5 that sizzled and burned.  The key to the soul.
There w: tiger in there fighting to get free--a sexual tiger, all t and
claws and passion.  On some primal level she could the unholy heat.  Wow,
this guy wants me, she regist{ in serious shock.

"I asked you what the hell you're doing here," Rico pea ted with leashed
menace.

Bella dragged her distracted gaze from his, astonishe4 discover how hard it
was to break that connection.  1 
dening, she went tense all over,
embarrassed by her crazy thought.

"I

said it in my note.  "

"And what exactly is

"We have a problem" intended denote?  By the way, problem is spelt with an e,
not an he delivered, hitting her on her weakest flank.

"I'll try to remember that."  She studied her feet and abruptly, cravenly
yielded to temptation and dug out cigarettes and matches.

Never had she been more in of the crutch she had abandoned the day she'd
moved Hector's house.  She was just on the brink of lighting when both the
match and cigarette were snatched from Under her arrested gaze the cigarette
was snapped in and dropped in a waste-paper basket.

"A member of the hang-'em-high anti smoking Bella probed helplessly.

"What do you think?"

She felt that she had never needed a cigarette more.  one.  " she begged.

"Don't be pathetic.  It won't cut any ice with me," drawled, with a sardonic
twist to his mouth.

"What is problem?"

Bella swallowed hard and then breathed in deeply.  "You look guilty as sin,"
Rico informed her grimly.  if my suspicions as to what has prompted this
appearance prove correct I'm taking you straight to the lice.  "

The tip of her tongue slid out to moisten her dry lip.  His lashes lowered.
Hooded eyes, revealing a mere of gold, dropped to her mouth and lingered
there.  A ing tension entered the atmosphere.  The silence vibrated.

As Bella laid her outdated insurance policy on the in front of him she felt
as though she was moving in 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, 
a wobbly plea for
understanding.

"And I sent in the: premium and thought it was fine.  But when I phoned
company this morning..."

The well-shaped, dark head lifted.  Lancing golden e bit into her shrinking
flesh.

"You were driving without surance when you hit me--' " Not intentionally!  "
Bella gasped, raising both haJ palms outward, in a gesture of sincerity.

"I had no ide thought I was covered.  I'd sent off the money and I that if I
hadn't had an accident they would have just accepted it and renewed my
insurm' " You're whining," Rico cut in icily as he rose from hind his
impressive desk.

"I'm not whining.  I'm only trying to explain!"  she tested.

"Point one--if you were not covered by insurance at the time of the accident the
oversight was your responsibi Yours, nobody else's," he stressed with a
glacial lac} compassion.

"Point two--in driving a car without insur you were committing an offence--'
" But--' "And point three--I most unwisely chose to let yot scot-free from
the consequences of the offence you already committed last night!"

"What offence...7 Oh, the one-way street bit," Bella r tered, hunching her
narrow shoulders in self-defence.  It like being under physical attack.

"But that was an dent... It's not as though it was deliberate.  Anyone have
an accident, can't they?  I'm really sorry.  I met would do just about
anything for it not to have happe because now everything's in this horrible
mess--' " For you, not for me.  " Rico sent her a hard, imp as look.

"When I inform my insurance company of this I will insist that I bring in the
police and they will put you for the outstanding monies in a civil case."

Bella went white and twisted her hands, moving f 
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.  "S yes, you did."
Rico vented a harsh laugh that chilled her.

"Dios m o ... 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.

"S pounds pence.  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.

"You pervert!"  she sobbed with rage.

"You loved it," he slung at her, grimacing with pain as he hauled her back to
him with remorseless determination.


 D

"Don't move... If you don't move, nobody will get hurt," a completely strange
male voice intoned flatly in a startling interruption.

"What the?"  -- As Rico's head spun round he fell silent, his entire body
freezing with a tension that leapt through Bella as well like a lightning
bolt.

Following the stilled path of his gaze, Bella looked in turn at the two men
standing there.  They were wearing black Balaclavas.  Both of them had guns.
Her jaw dropped, a sharp exhalation of air hissing from her.

"Keep quiet... Now back away from him slowly."  The taller one was addressing
her.  Her!  Bella blinked, paralysed to the spot, unable to believe that the
men weren't a figment of her imagination, and yet, on some sixth-sense level,
accepting them, fearing them, sensing their cold menace.  "Move... What a
clever girl you've been, getting rid of his guards, but frankly you're
surplus to requirements.  Is she worth anything to you?"

The scream just exploded from Bella.  She didn't think about screaming,
didn't even know it was coming.  The noise just whooshed up out of her chest
and flew from her strained mouth--a long, primal wail of terror.  And the
taller man flew at her, knocking her to the ground so hard that he drove the
breath from her lungs and bruised every bone in her body.  A large hand
closed over her mouth and then something pricked her shoulder, making her
gasp with pain .  and she was plunging down into a frightening, suffocating
tunnel of darkness.


CHAPTER THREE

BELLA was cold and sore.  Her head was aching.  Something was banging.

It sounded like metal on metal--a brutal, crashing noise.  Maybe it was
inside her head.  She had a horrible taste in her mouth and her throat hurt.
Her arm was throbbing as well.  She felt every sensation separately.  Her
brain was shrouded in a fog of disorientation.

Thinking was an unbearable effort, but she willed her eyes to open.

Her dilated, still semi-drugged gaze fell on a blank wall.  She moved her
head and moaned with discomfort.  She was lying on a bed--a hard, narrow bed.
The unbearable banging stopped, but her ears were still so full of it that
it was a while before she could actually hear.  And then she heard footsteps.

"I was hoping you'd stay comatose.  Then I wouldn't be tempted to kill you..."

The tangle of glorious hair moved and she turned over.  "Rico?"  she said
thickly.

"Why didn't I call Security?  Why didn't I just ring the police?"  Rico da
Silva breathed in a driven undertone as he stared furiously down at her.

"Shall I tell you why?  I let lust come between me and my wits.  Dios m
pounds the one time in my life I stray off the straight and narrow I land the
gypsy's curse and nearly get myself killed.  If I come out of this alive I'm
still going to take you to that police station!  And, if there is any justice
in the British legal system, you'll be locked up for ever!"

Her lashes fluttered during this invigorating speech.  Then, slowly, jerkily,
she pulled herself up onto her knees.  "What happened?"  she mumbled weakly.

"I've been kidnapped."


 Oh.  " Incredibly it didn't mean anything to her until she remembered those
final few minutes in the car park.  The men, the guns, the violence.  A wave
of sick dizziness as sailed her.

"Oh, dear God..."  she said shakily.

Rico da Silva already looked so different.  His jacket and tie had been
discarded.  His shirt was smeared with grime.  His black hair was
astonishingly curly, tousled out of its sleek, smooth style.

"No hysteria!"  he warned with lethal brevity.

"You said ... you have been kidnapped.  But I'm here too."  Bella swung her
legs down and slid slowly off the bed.

"I begged them to leave you behind.  I told them you were so thick that you
wouldn't be capable of assisting the 'police.  I told them you were
worthless..."

She thought about it.

"Thanks ... I suppose you did your best."

"Do you have a single, living brain cell?"  Rico slashed at her without
warning.

"Am I condemned to spend what may well be my last hours on this earth with a
half wit

Bella stiffened as though she had been struck.  She was far from half witted
Indeed, she had an IQ rating which put her into the top two per cent of the
population, but that was a fact she never shared.

It tended either to intimidate or antagonise people.

Rico da Silva wanted an argument, she sensed.  She understood that.  He
needed to hit out and she was the nearest quarry.  Forgivingly she ignored
him and concentrated on exploring their immediate environment and its
peculiarities.  She touched the wall.

"It's metal."

"Be grateful.  At least they gave us air holes

She wasn't listening.  She scanned the bed, the single chair, the lit battery
lamp.  It was the only source of light.  And she was used to the kind of
light that came from paraffin, gas and batteries.  She had grown up with it,
sat in darkness when there was no money for replenishment.  There was no
window.  She brushed past him to pass 
through the incongruous beaded curtain
covering a doorway which his bulk had been obscuring.

In the dim light beyond she saw a gas-powered fridge, a small table, another
chair, an old cupboard, and what looked like a tiny, old-fashioned stove
heater connected by a flue to the metal roof.  And then she glimpsed the
door.  She grabbed at the handle, suddenly frantic to see daylight, and was
denied.  The wooden partition concealed only a toilet and a sink.  No
windows--no windows anywhere.

Her throat closed.  She rammed down her panic and drew in a sustaining breath.

"What are we in?"  she demanded starkly.

"A steel transport container.  Most ingenious," Rico explained without any
emotion at all.

"I hope you're not claustrophobic."

She never had been until now.  Automatically she felt the cold metal walls,
stood on tiptoe to touch the roof, felt the air holes he had mentioned, and a
long, cold shudder of fear took her in its hold.

"It's like a metal tomb."

"What time is it?  My watch was smashed."

Somehow that casual enquiry helped her to get a grip on herself.

Moving back through the curtain into the other section, she peered down at
her watch.

"Ten past seven."  "Time to eat."

"Eat?"  Bella echoed shrilly.

"We've just been kidnapped and you want to eat?  I want to get out of here!"

"And you think I don't?"  Lean fingers gripped her taut shoulders as he
yanked her forward.  Grim dark eyes held hers.

"I've been conscious for two hours longer than you.  I have been over every
centimetre of every surface of this metal cell.  But for the air holes it's
solid steel.  We have nothing here capable of cutting through solid steel,"

he spelt out with cool, flat emphasis.

"Have you ever looked at the bolts on container doors?  That is the only
other option..."

She glanced past him to see the doors which were so closely shut that they
were almost indistinguishable from 
 the other walls.

"We'll never get through those either," she mumbled sickly.

"People have died in these containers.."  suffocated, starved--' "I have not
the slightest intention of suffocating or starving," Rico cut in with
ruthless assurance.

"And, if one is permitted to take hope from appearances, neither have my
kidnappers any such intention.  Dead, I'm not worth a cent."

"Appearances she prompted jerkily.

"Someone's gone to a lot of trouble to plan this operation and take the
minimum number of risks," Rico pointed out.  "The necessities of life have
been supplied.  We have food and water.  They have no immediate need to
venture into further contact with us.  They must be very confident we cannot
escape.  This leads me to believe that for the moment we are as safe as it is
possible to be in such a situation."

"S-safe?"

"I would feel more threatened if one of them was sitting in here with us,"
Rico said drily.

"Or someone had come along to tell me to stop making such a racket when I was
thumping the walls."

"The noise--that was you," she registered, shaking her head.

"I wanted to know if there was a guard out there ... or even if it was
possible to attract anyone's attention.  But, this time, no joy."  His
sculpted mouth tightened to a thin, hard line.

"However, we will keep on trying.  There is always the chance that we could
be heard at any time of the day or night."

"Yes."  He was giving her something to hang on to--a slender hope.

Bella nodded, almost sick with the nerves that were threatening her wavering
composure.  He had had the time and privacy supplied by her unconsciousness
to come to terms with their situation.  She had not had that time or that
privacy.  She was angry and scared to the same degree.  Somebody had deprived
her of the most basic of human 
rights--freedom.  But even worse than that
was the terror that in the end they might take her life as well.

"You hear that silence?"  His nostrils flared as he flung his dark head back.

"Now we listen for some sound of humanity--traffic, a dog barking.."
anything.  "

"These walls would act like double glazing, I bet.  A friend of mine has just
got new windows in and you can't hear the traffic through them..."  Her voice
trailed to a halt as she glimpsed Rico's arrested expression.

"Sorry, I sort of rattle on some--' " Stop rattling," he articulated with
ruthless precision.  " You mentioned food?  " " In the fridge.  "

"Enough for two?"  she whispered as it suddenly dawned on her that his
kidnappers could never have planned on having to imprison two people.

"We'll conserve it as far as possible.  The same with the light.  We have no
idea how long we will be here," he delivered smoothly.

The wild idea that in a strange way Rico da Silva was in his element occurred
to her.  It doused her urge to scream and shout uncontrollably.  Pride kept
her quiet.  There he was, certainly tense but on the surface as cool as ice.

"Anybody could be forgiven for thinking that this has happened to you
before!"  she muttered with scantily leashed resentment.

"I have been prepared for this situation by professionals.  Although I admit
I did not expect to have to put what I learnt into action."

Bella flashed through the beaded curtain and sank down on the chair by the
table.  Wrapping her hands together, she bowed her head.  She just could not
believe that this was happening to her.  She just could not credit that she
had been kidnapped.  That was something that occurred to strangers in the
headlines .  and they didn't all come out alive!  Her stomach heaved again.


 How rich are you, Rico?  " she asked in a wobbly voice.  " Filthy rich.  "
" Good.  "

He had said that the kidnapping had been well organised.  Hopefully they were
not in the hands of maniacs.  There would be a ransom demand and Rico's bank
or his family or whatever, she thought vaguely, would pay up and they would
be released just as soon as the money was handed over.

"Will they want money for me?"  she muttered helplessly.  "I doubt it."

She was worthless.  His own assertion to the kidnappers drifted back to her.
And she didn't know whether to be glad or sorry.  She had been in the wrong
place at the wrong time, an innocent bystander caught up in something that
was nothing to do with her.  And it was his fault.

But for him she wouldn't have been in that car park!  On the other hand, if
anything happened to Rico--if, for instance, stress made him drop dead with a
coronary--the kidnappers might just kill her to get rid of her.

"Surplus to requirements'... Nobody was going to pay for her release!  " Are
you healthy?  " she whispered.  " Very.  "

In silent relief she nodded.  But still she couldn't believe that it was
real.  Just twenty-four hours ago she had not even known that Rico da Silva
walked this earth.  Helplessly she pointed out to him that this time
yesterday they had not even met.

"And wasn't ignorance bliss?"

"I don't see why you have to be so nasty!"  Bella snapped.  "Personally I
think I'm taking this very well.  I've already been threatened and assaulted
by you--' " By me?  " A lean hand thrust the beaded strands aside.  Poised in
the doorway, Rico surveyed her with incredulous, blazing golden eyes.  The
cool-as-ice impression was only on the surface, she registered.

Beneath it lurked a deep well 
of near-murderous rage, rigorously suppressed
and controlled.

"Yes, by you.  Then I get thumped and drugged and kidnapped.  I wouldn't have
been there if it hadn't been for you!"  she suddenly spat.

"And I wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for you."

"I b-beg your pardon?"

Black lashes dropped, screening his piercing gaze.

"Forget I said that--' " Oh, no, as you once said to me, don't keep me in
suspense!  " she shrieked.

"Cool down ... and grow up," Rico drawled in a soft tone that none the less
stung like acid.

"How we got here is unimportant.  The only item on our agenda now is
survival."

Bella studied the floor, tears burning at the back of her eyes.  It was
shock.  She was still in shock.  She wanted to ask him what he had meant just
now.  She wanted to know what had happened after she'd blanked out back in
that car park.  But she pinned her tremulous lips together instead.  "Let's
eat."

Eager to do something, she leapt off the chair and opened the fridge.

It was bunged to the gills.  Great, she thought for a split-second.

Her next thought was entirely different.  Dear God, how long were his
kidnappers planning to keep them here?  And, assuming that they hadn't added
to the hoard when they'd realised that they had not one but two victims
requiring sustenance, that was an enormous amount of food .  most of which
wouldn't keep that long even in a fridge--salad stuffs, cold meats, cheeses,
milk, bread, butter.  All perishable.

"There is a stock of tinned goods in the cupboard as well as extra lights and
several batteries, plates and cutlery."

"We could light another lamp---' " We don't need it.   Anything that we
don't need we save," he reminded her.

Bella burrowed into the cupboard, locating a tin of stew.


 If you light that stove, I could heat this on that little hot plate  "

"There's no fuel."

"We could smash up a chair or something," Bella persisted, shivering.

"The ventilation in here is wholly inadequate.  Fumes might not escape.  We
could be suffocated.  The stove cannot be lit."

The boss man had spoken.  Bloody know-it-all!  Her teeth ground together.  It
was freezing cold and it was likely to get considerably colder.  He had a lot
more clothes on than she had.  And where the heck was she to sleep?  One bed.
Two dining chairs.  A metal floor.  Guess who would get the floor?

She found a bowl and peeled some leaves off a lettuce, before marching
through to the sink which had the sole water supply.  When she returned she
stood at the cupboard, her back turned to him, washing the salad.  And guess
who gets to prepare the meal?  she thought caustically.

She felt slightly foolish when she turned round to find that he already had
two plates on the table, sparsely filled.  The pieces of hacked cheese and
the tomatoes complete with stalks made her mouth unexpectedly curve up into a
grin.  He was even less domesticated than she, but she liked him for making
the effort.

"What happened after I got the needle in my arm?"  she asked flatly as he
reappeared with the second chair and she sat down.

An ebony brow quirked.

"Why talk about it?"  "Because I want to know!"

"I was afraid you would be shot when you screamed.  The smaller one was very
nervous.  He was taking aim when the other one brought you down."

Bella bit at her lower lip.

"I didn't mean to scream."

"I suppose it was a natural response," Rico conceded shortly, his mouth
clenching.


But not a miscalculation that he would have been guilty of making, she
gathered.  He had been on all systems alert but in icy control.

And for some reason he wasn't telling her the whole story.  She sensed that.

"What did you do?"  "I deflected his aim," Rico admitted.  "How?"

"By wrenching his arm."

Perspiration broke out on her brow at the image which his admission evoked.

"You could have been killed!"

 "I could not stand by and do nothing."   "And then what happened?"

"There was a struggle and the other one struck me from behind.  I remember
nothing more.  And when I came to I was in here and my watch was smashed," he
bit out.

"At least you weren't."  She dug up the courage to look up from her plate,
her face flushed and troubled.

"Thanks for not standing by,"

she muttered tightly.

"Don't thank me.  What I did was foolish.  He would not have fired that gun.
His companion was in the way, probably already in the act of injecting you
with the drug that knocked you out.  Sometimes instinct betrays one badly,"
he completed grimly.

He was denying the fact that he had saved her life.  He didn't want her
gratitude.  But Bella was deeply impressed by his heroic lack of concern for
his own safety.

"Instinct', he'd called it, depriving the act of anything personal.  However,
that did not change the fact that many men would have put themselves first
sooner than risk their own life at the expense of someone who was little more
than a stranger.

A stranger.  Rico da Silva ought still to feel like a stranger to her, only
he didn't any more.  Shorn of the obvious trappings of his wealth, the male
across the table was as human as she was.  But she reminded herself how
deceptive the situation in which they were now trapped was.  They were stuck
with each other.  This uneasy intimacy between two 
 people from radically
different worlds had been enforced, not sought.

"If I hadn't been there, what would you have done?"  she found herself asking.

"There is no profit in such conjecture."

"You're a typical money man, aren't you?"  Bella condemned helplessly.

"No such thing as answering a straight question!"

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 imp orta 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.

"Pot 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 air holes 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.

"S ."  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 half wit 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.

"S pounds pence."  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--' " And
when was that?  "

"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 up-right.  "Are you
calling Hector a dirty old man?"

"This appears to come as a big revelation to you ... but sl ... 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 unful-filling.  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
commitment 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.

He expelled his breath in a resonant hiss of exasperation.  "You are not that
naY ve  I am a man, lying in bed with a half-naked woman on top of me.  I'm
not a corpse, devoid of all sexual response.  But I have no intention of
making love to you."

"I don't believe you!"  she bit out, rigid as a stick of rock, 
holding her
entire length taut in a fruitless endeavour to lessen the points of contact
between them.

"I am fully in control of my sexual urges," he extended grittily into her ear.

"But not my temper, I warn you."

"I don't trust you," she whispered back with venomous bite, infuriated by the
position in which she found herself.  "I could fall asleep and you--' " Oh, I
do believe you would wake up if I touched you.  I believe that I can safely
say a woman has never slept through my attentions!  "

"Don't be disgusting!  Let me go!"

He gave vent to something rough and charged in Spanish and moved with an
abruptness that took her completely by surprise.  Suddenly she was flipped
onto her back and Rico was lying above her instead, their positions reversed
without warning.  Before she could open her startled lips to demand an
explanation he took her mouth in a surge of angry passion.

And what happened next she definitely wasn't prepared to deal with.

As his tongue drove into the moist interior she had already accidentally
opened to him she was seized by an explosive wave of excitement.  It left her
dizzy and stripped of every coherent thought.

The intensity of her own response electrified her, opening up another world
that was full of unbearable physical temptation.  She returned the kiss with
a kind of wondering innocence, arching her head back to deepen the pressure,
involuntarily greedy and inviting more.

"Por Dios..."  he groaned raggedly, his lean, hard body coming down into
abrupt and abrasive contact with her yielding curves where, seconds earlier,
he had held himself at a distance.

"I--'

Driven entirely by instinct, Bella speared her unsteady fingers into the
thick silk of his hair and held him down to her, tracing the shape of his
head in an exploratory caress.  Touching had never felt so good, never felt
so necessary.


 Entrapped by the discovery and fired by the leaping, un familiar energy
sizzling along her nerve-endings, she threw herself with natural generosity
into the conflagration of their mouths' second meeting a split-second later.

Incredible heat rose from deep inside her, making her body shake and quiver
with the sheer power of what she was feeling.  He pulled her to him as he
slid onto his side, his hand curving to the pouting thrust of one full
breast, inadequately protected by the thin lace cup of her bra.  And then the
barrier was inexplicably no longer there, his fingers shaping her naked,
sensitised flesh with an expertise that made her gasp.  In the darkness she
felt him move, and the yearning peak of one engorged nipple was brushed by
the tip of his tongue and then engulfed by his mouth.

Bella moaned, and jerked as though she had been electrified.  All she could
hear was the rasp of her tortured breathing, the thunder of her heartbeat.
Sensation so intense that it came close to torment had her in its grip.  She
was out of control, sensed it, felt it, knew it, and being out of control was
something Bella never, ever allowed herself to be with a man.  The shock of
that realisation awakened her brain from its slumber, and in panic she
wrenched herself free by rolling backwards.

"No!"  she slung at him from between clenched teeth as she hit the hard floor
with a force that hurt.  Rolling over, feeling the nakedness of her back and
breasts in dismayed confusion, she fumbled out blindly to feel-the wall
opposite the bed and sat there, hugging her knees and shivering as the light
went on.

"Madre de Dios..."  Rico hissed, studying her with incandescent golden eyes
from the vantage point of the bed.  "What the hell are you playing at?"

"Please return my clothing to me."  She lowered her eyes and studied her
raised knees, embarrassment and an unfamiliar self-loathing assailing her.
But still she could see that strong-boned, hard face, brought alive by those
astonishingly passionate eyes of his, the lithe, powerful symmetry of his
bronzed, beautifully masculine body.  Her nails dug into her skin in angry,
fearful confusion as she fought to wipe out that unbelievably intense and
detailed image.

Her jacket and her bra landed in a heap beside her bare toes.  She skidded
upright, twisting away from him, and dug her arms shakily into the sleeves of
the jacket, ignoring the bra because he was watching her.  She hadn't even
noticed that he had removed both articles while she had been in his arms.  It
was a small point but somehow it underlined just how far her control and
awareness had slipped and emphasised how complete had been his.

Smooth bastard, she reflected shakily, deciding that you couldn't know where
you were with a guy possessed of that variety of sexual expertise.  At least
with the ones who grabbed and clutched you got fair warning of their
intentions.

"You are behaving as though I attacked you," he grated in a furious undertone.

"You started it, I finished it.  Let's leave it there," she muttered
unsteadily, with her back still cravenly turned to him.

"I did not do anything--' " That I didn't encourage you to do," Bella
completed in a grudging interruption.

"I know."

There was a smouldering silence.

"If you acknowledge that--' and his accented drawl told her just how
astonished he was that she had made that acknowledgement '--then why?"

"My hormones are out of sync ... or something."

"Qud dices...?"  Now he sounded slightly dazed.

Bella forced herself to turn around.  It took courage.

"It's this situation ... the proximity, the misleading intimacy, the tension
we are both under," she offered.

"I'm sorry I let it go so far but neither one of us can want to wake up in
the 
 morning trapped with a sleazy one-night stand we can't escape from--' '
" Sleazy"?"  he echoed in disbelief.

"Listen, I am the girl whom just a few hours ago you believed to be shacked
up with an old guy of seventy."  Having given the gentle reminder, Bella
tilted her chin.  "And sex without emotional involvement or commitment is
sleazy in my book.  I don't know you well enough to say whether or not it
wOuld be in yours.  But, if you're like most of the men I meet, you don't
intellectualise much over taking sex where it's offered.  You just do it and
you don't have the sensitivity to feel bad about it."

She gave a dismissive little shrug, the absorbing focus of his stunned
scrutiny.

"But that's OK.  I don't judge men on that.  That's just the way nature
programmed you to behave.  Survival of the species and all that."

His brilliant dark eyes shimmered, his facial muscles stiff with sudden
hauteur, a faint but perceptible flush overlying his hard cheekbones.

"I did not emerge from the primordial soup within recent memory," he gritted
from between even white teeth.

"Only you don't think on your feet when you're in bed with a half-naked woman
and feeling randy--' " I refuse to believe I am hearing this!  "

Bella lifted his jacket, which he had laid across the chair, and began to
empty the pockets.

"What are you doing?"  he murmured in a seriously taut tone, his accent thick.

"I'm going to use your jacket as a blanket for an hour and then maybe, when
you've managed to drop off, I can take up the door-bashing again."

"Don't be ridiculous.  Come back to bed.  I will not lay a finger on you," he
swore icily.

"It's not a very good idea for us to share that bed right now, Rico.

Take it from me," Bella muttered feelingly, 'it would just be asking for
trouble."


"If you are determined to treat me like some sort of lech--' She cleared her
throat awkwardly and mumbled,

"No, that's not what I'm trying to say.  I'm simply trying to be sensible--'
" Trust me!  " he bit out, with audible difficulty, anger and a whole host of
other emotions she didn't recognise fracturing his diction.

"I'd like to ... I'd really like to, but I don't trust me either," she
admitted in a stifled confession which she felt that, in all fairness, she
owed him.

"You don't trust...?  Ah."  A faint purr of complacency softened his drawl.

"I thought you didn't go for dark men?"

"There's an exception to every rule ... but maybe Dracula could start looking
appealing in this setup."

He sighed.

"I have never been so tired in my life.  Come back to bed.

I promise you .  you will be safe as a nun handcuffed to a priest in
captivity.  "

Bella sent him a dubious glance.  He had slumped back dowr again, black
lashes fanned down on his cheekbones.  Exhaustion emanated from every line of
his long, muscular body.

"Go to sleep, Rico," she whispered, a strange little arrow of tenderness
piercing her.

"Just go to sleep."

"I can't leave you on the floor..."  he mumbled thickly.  "I've slept on a
lot of floors in my time."  She sighed, thinking that no two individuals
could have been more different.

She sat on the chair, wrapped in his jacket, watching him sleep.  The
exception t the rule, she reflected tautly.  Well, you've been well and truly
rocked off your smug perch this time, Bella.

She was locked in a container with the only male who had ever managed to
penetrate her physical and mental de fences  That scared her; that really did
scare her.

Men flocked to Bella like bees round a honey pot but nine out of ten
invariably wanted what she didn't want to 
 give.  Being a sex object was no
compliment.  Either she dated for fun and friendship or she quite cheerfully
chose and dated a man who impressed her as having the kind of qualities she
would like to find in a husband.  There was nothing in between for Bella--no
infatuations, no affairs no regrets.  She was determined not to give her
heart unless she felt safe and secure.

And until now passion had left her alone and untouched by any inconvenient
cravings.  Saying no when lovemaking went beyond a certain boundary had never
been a problem for her, and she had always sensibly ensured that she did not
give any man the ammunition to accuse her of being a tease.  Bella believed
in being honest and fair with the opposite sex.  It had not crossed her mind
that some day a man might touch her and with every fibre of her being she
might crave the passion he inspired inside her, and crave it with such
intensity that she almost broke the rules she had lived by for so long.

Rico da Silva had taught her differently.  He had shattered her control as
easily as a child smashed an egg and with a similar lack of care or regard
for the consequences.  And did she blame him for that?  Neither of them might
emerge from this container alive, she thought, with a shiver of fear.  When
two people were attracted to each other and forced into such intimacy the act
of sex might seem a very small thing to share in comparison to that hard
reality.  But Bella was too conscious of her own vulnerability--this strange,
new and scary vulnerability that she was feeling.  Rico da Silva disturbed
her more than any other male she had ever met.  He was clever; he was strong;
he was unexpectedly candid about his own emotions.  And he also attracted her
more violently than she had ever believed possible.

In the dim light she looked at him lying in the bed, and knew that lying in
that bed with him would result in a conflagration of passion which she would
find very difficult 
to handle.  Yet she also knew that on some dark, deep
level inside herself, unexplored until this moment, she wanted that passion
very, very badly.

Why?  Their situation, as she had told him?  No, it was something more than
that.  He was so different from her.  In every way.  And that fact in itself
fascinated her.  Nowhere did they share anything in common--background,
nationality, status, education, income, outlook.

Rico would have been quite capable of making love to her and forgetting her
existence one second after he'd achieved the satisfaction of physical
release.  Rico was ruthless, single-minded, a sexual predator in this
particular fight corner .  Rico wouldn't have felt awkward over the
break-fast-table.  On his scale it would have been a minor event, unimportant
when set against survival.

But Bella was not half as tough on the inside as she liked to pretend on the
outside.  Her outer shell of careless insouciance had been formed in the hard
school of her childhood with the slow, painful acceptance that her father
didn't give a damn about her, and that her mother dragged her about in her
wake not out of choice but out of necessity, because there was nobody else to
take responsibility.  And when one day the possession of that child, now
grown to an awkward thirteen-year-old threatened to come between Cleo and her
latest man Cleo had dumped her on her grandfather, who hadn't even known of
her existence.

Bella had learnt not to let people get too close.  She had learnt to protect
her inner self from invasion.  On the surface she was open, but inside
herself she knew she told nobody anything which mattered.

And now she could feel that reserve being threatened, her essential emotional
distance coming under attack.  Griff hadn't hurt her, Griff had disappointed
her, but she had the horrible suspicion that Rico da Silva had the power to
tear her inside out.  "Por Dios, what the hell are you doing?"

Bella jumped and unsealed her lips from the cold metal, 
 her shoulders and
arms aching from the awkward stance she had repeatedly taken up over the past
few hours.  She teetered on the chair, her legs stiff, and she would have
fallen if a pair of strong arms hadn't closed round her and lowered her down
to the floor.

Rico was staring without comprehension at the line of tins, deprived of their
labels, on the table.  An incredulous frown was dug between his ebony brows
as he abruptly noticed his open wallet, now emptied of the considerable
amount of paper money that he had been carrying.

One lean hand reached out and snatched at the single rolled banknote still
lying there.  He opened it up and read the message carefully printed on it.

'"Help.  We're in the container" ," he said out loud.

"I took the labels off the tins and tore them up and wrote on them first,"
she explained.

"Then I pushed them through the biggest air hole Then I had to blow to make
them move.  I'm hoping that some of them made it down onto the ground, or
that there's enough of a draught out there to take them off the roof.  If
anyone comes in they might no-rice them.  That was when I thought of seeing
what you had in your wallet--' " Had being the operative word.  " Rico
studied her with intent, narrowed dark eyes.

"Sorry ... but a rolled-up twenty-pound note is far more likely to be noticed
than a torn piece of label off a tin," she pointed out.

"S pounds pence."  Still staring at her, he pushed long fingers somewhat
unsteadily through his luxuriant hair and handed her the final note.  Bella
got back on the chair and posted it up into the world outside their prison.

"I should have thought of this..."  he murmured tautly, gravely.

"You think you have the monopoly on ideas around here?"  She laughed wryly.

"It's a far-out hope that someone 
will innocently walk in here, pick up one
of those notes and release us--' " But not impossible.  It's a clever idea.  "

"Not if the ground out there is already littered or covered with debris, but
who knows?"  Oddly embarrassed by his level of scrutiny, she turned away.

"What do you want for breakfast?"

"I think I owe you breakfast.  You let me sleep for hours."  He caught her
wrist to examine her watch and groaned in disbelief.

"It' s after twelve.."  almost lunchtime!  Why didn't you wake me?  "

"Relax.  I did a lot of poker-bashing on and off."  Bella flexed aching
muscles, but she was horrendously conscious of those cool fingers still
anchored to the tender inner skin of her wrist.

"You slept through it.  You needed the rest.  I think whatever drug they used
on us was still pretty much in both our systems until we could sleep it off.
Where did you find that poker anyway?"

"Stuffed behind the stove--an oversight on their part."  His oddly
abbreviated speech was matched by the blatant intensity of his continuing
appraisal.  His lashes dipped, showing only a glimmer of a pure, glinting
gold, and he breathed in almost jerkily.

Her mouth ran dry, her heartbeat accelerating in a sudden, alarming surge.
The atmosphere was thick with explosive tension.  It had come out of nowhere
and inexplicably, although her brain screamed at her to move away, her feet
were welded to the floor in front of him.  She couldn't take her eyes off
him.  A pulse-beat of awareness vibrated between them.  It was so powerful
that it drained her of self-will.

"I've been thinking," she said in a rather high-pitched voice, fighting for
concentration, desperate to break the silence.  "It's more likely that we're
in a warehouse than a barn.  This container wasn't plumbed in with water just
for us.  Those fitments in there have been in situ for years.  This 
place
has been used maybe as an office ... or some sort of permanent site hut, I
reckon... What do you think?"  By the time she reached the end of that
question she was spitting out words so fast that they ran into each other.

He wasn't listening.  He muttered something rough and yet soft in Spanish,
and just as suddenly reached for her.  As possessed by that terrifying strong
need to physically connect as he was, Bella made no demur.  Lost in the
slumbrous demand of his golden gaze, she was mindless.  He took her mouth
with a hunger that burned like flames of fire over her unprotected skin.

And yet she craved that fire, needed that fire as she needed oxygen to live.
Her hands gripped his broad shoulders, loving the heat of his flesh through
the fine shirt.  She pushed against him as he crushed her to him, her breasts
flattened to the hard wall of his chest, already heavy with a sensitivity and
an anticipation which he alone had taught her to feel.  Her body remembered
him with every newly awakened sense.

His mouth on hers was a source of unbearable pleasure.  She was inflamed by
it, driven with incredible speed to a pitch of desire strong enough to make
her legs tremble and offer only the most fragile support.  Every stab of his
tongue intensified the drowning excitement that was fast claiming her.  She
kissed him back with an intensity of response that utterly controlled her,
her hands sliding under his unbuttoned shirt, smoothing wonderingly over the
flexing muscles of the satin-smooth skin of his back.

He dragged his lips from hers with a fevered imprecation and looked down at
her, his breathing roughly audible.  Hot golden eyes raked her flushed,
vibrant face, and he set her free with an abruptness that felt like an
amputation.  Bella was less able to pull back from the extraordinary power he
could exert over her.  Every time it happened it was a revelation, and,
instead of it strengthening her resistance, she found herself further
weakened by the repetition.


Rico lounged back against the edge of the table, tension screaming from
every poised angle of him.  He appraised her with fiercely narrowed eyes, his
sensual mouth compressed in a hard line.

He looked like a pirate, his jaw-line obscured by a blue shadow of dark
stubble.  Her own skin was tingling from that abrasive contact.

She raised a shaky hand to her reddened lips, feeling as though she had been
branded, feeling as though she would never, ever be the same again.

"I can keep my hands off you," he asserted with almost ferocious bite.

No, you can't and the knowledge is killing you.  Bella read in his clear eyes
the frustration, the anger he couldn't hide.  This was a male accustomed to
calling every shot, staying in control, never leaping before he looked.  She
remembered the tidiness of his desk and the incredulity with which he had
emerged from the cluttered chaos of the interior of the Skoda that first
night.  Rico was one of those very organised and disciplined individuals who
very rarely made an uncalculated move.  " and she threw him off balance and
he didn't like that one bit more than she did.  " This will not happen
again," he drawled flatly.

"I know ... you don't want to seem like a snob but I'm really not your type,"
she remarked brittlely.

"And you're not my type either.  Let's leave it at that."

His teeth clenched.

"I am not a snob!"

"You just like to think that everyone's your equal from the safe cocoon of
your bloody great limousine?  Now you know that you don't think that, Rico.
You're rich and you're successful and you probably come from a rich,
priveleged family.  You have power and financial clout.  You probably get a
lot of respect and an equal amount of grovelling flattery and servility.
You're bound to have a good opinion of yourself.  And you definitely don't
expect to be attracted to an Essex girl who writes illiterate prose!"


 Basta .  enough!  " he slashed back at her rawly.

"How can you talk like this?"

"And that bothers you even more, doesn't it?  People don't say stuff like
that right out where you come from."  Bella treated him to a grim little
smile, her beautiful face cynically set, masking the pain she was feeling.

"But what the hell...?  I'm not about to change myself for your benefit!"

"You don't know what you're talking about."  He sent her a glittering glance
that was alight with impatience and anger.  "I drew back because I had no
other choice.  I cannot protect you.  Even if you are on the Pill you have no
supply with you.  I could get you pregnant, and that is a risk that neither
of us can want!"

The blood drained from her face, leaving her pale, and then abruptly her skin
flamed again with a stupid embarrassment she couldn't help.

Hurriedly she turned away from him, shaken that he could reason so coolly
about an unlikely possibility, the mere mention of which infuriated her.  Did
no woman ever say no to Rico da Silva?  Did he think he was irresistible?
Did he really imagine that she would have been foolish enough to let matters
proceed to the point where the risk of pregnancy could have become a
consideration?

"It wasn't going to go that far, believe me!"

"I wish I had your confidence--' " All I did was let you kiss me, for
heaven's sake!  That doesn't mean I was about to jump into bed with you!  "
she hissed, slamming into the fridge, unwilling to look at him because she
was so outraged by his assumption that she was easily available should he
choose to exert sufficient persuasion.

"Keep quiet.  Talking about it doesn't help," he breathed in a sudden, savage
undertone that brutally ruptured the heavy silence, sentencing her to nervous
paralysis.

"I ache to have you ... Santa Maria, I am in torment.  I want to rip 
your
clothes off and fall on you like an animal, and in all my adult life I have
never been so challenged to retain control and consider consequences!"

Bella straightened and slowly turned.  Rico glowered back at her, the raw
reality of what he was telling her etched in the ferocious set of his dark,
startlingly handsome features.

"And if you did not want me the problem would not be t.  here.  I would never
touch a woman without her consent," he continued forcefully.

"But every time you look at me I see the same hunger in you."

'[.  "

"Do not deny it," he cut in grimly.

"And that we should be distracted by such primitive instincts when our very
lives are at risk outrages my intelligence!"

"It's the fact that we're trapped here," she muttered, shattered by his
candour, devastated by the manner in which he was still looking at her, and
shamefully lost in a colourful image of him ripping her clothes off and her
liking it.  Dear God, what was happening to her?

What was happening to them both?

"No dig as disparates!"

"In English?"

"Don't talk rubbish."  He flashed her an exasperated glance, his beautifully
shaped mouth twisting.

"I felt exactly the same way in my office.  Why do you think I was so
determined to take you to the police?"

"I had to be punished for attracting you?  Are you a sadist or something?"

"Since I met you I have been crazy!"  he raked back at her in a sudden
explosion of raw, passionate resentment.

"I don't know myself any more!"

Swinging on his heel, he strode through the beaded curtain.  A second later
she heard the fiery assault of the poker on the container doors and couldn't
help smiling to herself.  Rico was as disconcerted by the attraction between
them 
 as she was.  That made her feel less threatened and more in control.
Neither of them wanted anything to happen.  Between them they ought to be
capable of behaving like civilised adults and observing proper boundaries in
spite of this horribly intimate and suffocating prison.

But, dear heaven, when he threw off the ice-cool front and let the tiger
roar, she thought distractedly, Rico was quite shockingly volatile--yet
another trait she ran a mile from in men.  Only then did it cross her mind
that she found the same trait astonishingly, paradoxically attractive when
Rico revealed it.  The sheer elemental physicality and passion which he
suppressed and controlled with cold intellect fascinated her.

She made sandwiches for lunch--no sense in letting the bread go stale.  Rico
sank down on the other side of the table, his every graceful movement
catching her attention.  She averted her eyes to her glass of milk.

"Do you have a family out there worrying about you?"

she asked abruptly.

"My parents are dead.  I have an older sister, who's married with a family,
but she lives in Spain."

"I imagine the police will have carried the news that far by now."

Bella sighed.

Rico seemed to hesitate.

"Si..."

He reverted to his own language only when tense.  No doubt he was disturbed
by the idea of his sister's current state of terror on his behalf.  "Are you
close?"

 "Yes."

Bella was determined to keep on talking.  Maybe conversation would keep
other, far more dangerous undertones at bay.

"You're Spanish, aren't you?"

"My father was Portuguese but my mother was Spanish.

I grew up in Andalusia.  "

"Rich?"

"Rich," he conceded almost apologetically.  Involuntarily she glanced up and
collided with a positively dazzling half-smile that gave her a seductive
glimpse of another Rico entirely--a Rico with a sense of humour and
considerable charm.  That smile made her feel curiously light-headed.

"What were your parents like?  Distant?"

"Not at all."  He looked surprised by the suggestion.

"We were a happy family but I was born late in their lives.  My father died
when I was a teenager, my mother a couple of years ago--' " So what age are
you?  "

"Thirty-two ... far too old for you," he murmured in unwelcome addition.

"Look, we're not going to talk about things like that!"  Bella snapped,
emerald-green eyes flashing reproach and reproof.

"You're an... Aquarius ... right?"

Rico frowned.

"Ah ... astrology.  St'."

"We should avoid each other like the plague," she told him morosely.

"It's a combustible combination."

"I do not require a horoscope to know that, gatita," he returned with dark
satire.

"So tell me about your background."

"Forget it.  It would give you indigestion."

"I would like to know.  Who were your parents?"

Bella stiffened.  Of course he didn't mean 'who' in the worldly sense.

He certainly wouldn't be expecting to hear a name that he might recognise.
She lifted her vibrant head, her sultry mouth compressing.

"My father was Ivan Sinclair."

His winged ebony brows drew together in unconcealed surprise.

"The artist?"

"My mother was one of his models.  They had an affair.  I was the result."
She wondered why she had told him something that she usually kept very much
to herself.

His dark visage was set in uninformative lines.

"There was no marriage?"

"Ivan didn't believe in marriage.  He visited Cleo on and off for a while
after I was born but that eventually ground 
to a halt," she admitted.

"I didn't see him again until I was thirteen.  And my mother initiated that
meeting.  She wanted him to take charge of me... It was a really stupid
idea..."

The silence stretched and then Rico murmured,

"What happened?"

"Nothing much."  With a jerky shrug she got up and began to clear the table.

"He was furious at being put on the spot.  He accused her of trying to
blackmail him, even tried to say I wasn't his... He was quite pathetic
actually.  He was no hero."

"He had a lot of talent."

"But, let's face it, he was much better known as a drunk and a womaniser."
Bella stated the obvious for him.

"Scarcely a suitable guardian for a thirteen-year-old.  Why did your mother
even consider such an arrangement?"

She turned back to him, her beautiful face strong and her expression clear.

"She had a lover who didn't want a kid hanging around," she said bluntly.

"But her visit to Ivan wasn't a total disapPointment.

He coughed up some cash to get rid of us; she bought a new van and dumped me
with my grandfather instead.  "

An ebony brow quirked.

"A new van?"

"My mother was a traveller.  She wasn't born to the life, but then few are."
Bella sighed.

"She left home when she was eighteen.  She was a hippie.  Gramps said she was
wild.  He threw her out after an argument and then regretted it, but he
didn't see her again until she showed up with me twenty-odd years later.  She
was only involved with Ivan for a couple of years and then she met some guy
with a lorry and took to the road--' " For how long .  until you were
thirteen?  "

She nodded.

"But you must have settled somewhere at some stage?"

 "Never for longer than a month."   "What about your education?"

She smiled.

"I started that at thirteen."


"It must have been an appalling life."  Rico frowned at her, his
consternation palpable.

"I didn't know anything else.  Sometimes it was fun."  But her expressive
eyes shadowed.  She was thinking of the hunger and the cold and the wet, the
lack of hygiene and privacy, the raw hostility of their reception everywhere
they went.  Travellers were not welcome visitors in any locality.

"Time I bashed the poker," she announced abruptly, suddenly bewildered and
alarmed by the extent to which she had allowed him to draw her out.  She
never told people about that old life if she could help it, and could not
understand why she had revealed so much to him.  It was none of his business.

She strode down to the container doors and lifted the poker.  She had only
struck the metal a few times when another sound broke through in startling,
shattering response--a series of sharp, zinging thuds.

The poker fell from her nerveless fingers.  She spun round, heard Rico behind
her, then they were suddenly plunged into darkness and he was dragging her
down on the bed.

"Keep quiet," he urged in a raw breath of warning.

"But--' Had he gone crazy?  Someone was out there--someone who could open
those doors and set them free!

"Those were bullets."  Rico's hands framed her cheekbones in the darkness and
she fell back, sick and weak with terror.


CHAPTER FIVE

THERE was a loud thud up on the roof.  Bella shivered violently as she heard
the unmistakable sound of feet walking up and down above them.

Nausea filled her stomach.  Somebody laughed.  There was a roaring in her
eardrums.  Her heart threatened to burst from her ribcage.  For just a little
while she had managed to close out the fear but now it was back with a
vengeance.

Rico rolled over, pinning her body almost protectively beneath his.

She could feel the splintering tension coursing through him and abruptly she
closed her arms around him, needing that reassuring contact with every fibre
of her being.  She felt so small, so frighteningly powerless.  They were
caught like rats in a trap, wholly at the mercy of their captors.

Her breath rasped in her aching throat as there was another thud, then
nothing.  The silence dragged past on leaden feet until it seemed to thunder
in her straining ears.  "He's gone," Rico grated.

"How do you know?  He could be standing out th-there just waiting for us to
make more noise ... and then he might come in!"  she gasped strickenly.

"I doubt it.  I suspect he was only checking on us ... but for the moment we
keep quiet."

"Bastard," Bella mumbled, still shaking like a leaf in a high wind, her face
buried in the hollow between his shoulder and his throat.

Her nostrils flared on the warm, musky scent of him, already so reassuringly
familiar.

"You imagine you're coping and then ... then they take that away and remind
you how it really is!"

"The ransom will be paid, no questions asked--' 
" But maybe the police won't
allow that!  " " The police are unlikely to be actively involved at this
stage.  "

"What?"  In the darkness her dazed eyes flew wide.  Rico shifted and switched
on the light where it sat on the chair by the bed.

"My bank will pay up.  The police will stand back at this early stage.  That
is standard procedure.  Publicity could be our death warrant.  Scared
kidnappers get more dangerous..."

Bella met his shimmering gold eyes, absorbed the wry, apologetic curve of his
mouth as he released her from his weight and coiled back from her.  He had
allowed her to believe that the police were out there searching for them
because that had appeared to keep up her spirits.

"Oh, God..."  she whispered shakily as reality sank in.

"Lo siento, gatita ... I'm sorry."

"I guess if that's the best approach..."

"At the highest level the police will certainly have been informed of the
kidnapping," Rico asserted.

"But I would imagine that at this point they are merely waiting to see how
the situation develops."

"And if what you euphemistically call " the situation" develops into tragedy,
then they'll be more actively involved!"  Bella could not resist saying.

His jaw-line clenched.

"Don't talk like that!"

"You want me to maintain a positive outlook when we're stuck here like
sitting ducks inside a metal tomb with some maniac taking pot-shots at us for
fun?"  A shrill, hysterical edge had entered her voice.

"Every occurrence increases our knowledge of the environment outside," Rico
intoned, staring her down with icy night-dark eyes.

"I beg your pardon?"  she said incredulously.

"We're wasting time and energy with that poker," he imparted with grim
emphasis.

"He would not have fired that 
 gun at this hour of the day had there been
the remotest chance of anyone hearing the gunshots."

"Oh ... Rico ... that is so comforting to know!"  she spat back in helpless
disbelief.

"I do not think that our lives are in any immediate danger," he grated.

"You also thought that our kidnappers might be out of the country!"

"Por Dios ... pull yourself together!  This far you have acted with
commendable courage."

Bella could feel her control unravelling as fast and as inescapably as a
cotton reel of thread thrown down a steep hill.

"Not quite what you expected from me, I gather.  Well, I'd appreciate it more
if you showed a little human sensitivity, instead of acting like Mr Macho all
the time.."  even when we're in the middle of a nightmare!  " Her voice rose
steeply on the last words, fractured by the sob choking her throat.

"I don't think you'd appreciate it if I was sitting here paralysed with fear!"

The sobs she was frantically struggling to suppress overcame her.  She bowed
her head, ashamed of the weakness, and wrapped her arms round herself.  Tears
streamed down her cheeks.  He touched her damp chin with a not quite steady
forefinger and then, with a muttered, vicious imprecation, reached for her,
un peeling her arms and hauling her close.

She needed that contact.  She needed that warmth.  She needed him.

Caught up in the charge of an explosive surge of feeling, she pressed her
mouth feverishly to the angular curve of his stub bled jaw-line.

She felt him tense but there was an unstoppable flood of emotion suddenly
churning about inside her.  Her hands slid up, her fingers shyly splaying
across his blunt cheekbones in a wondering caress.  As she held him she
looked at him with darkened green eyes full of new self-knowledge and 
a kind
of helpless joy that was insanity, but which she couldn't help.  Her feelings
were so intense that they consumed her.

"I don't trust myself this close," Rico breathed roughly.  "Trust your
instincts," she whispered, and she dropped her hands, then hesitated in a
momentary agony of uncertainty before her fingers found the buttons on her
jacket and began to release them.

"Bella..."

Her pale skin burned under the golden flare of his arrested gaze, but the
driving need to give, to share, was far more powerful than the fleeting
recall of her own sexual inexperience.

"This is just you and me," she reasoned in a breath of sound as the jacket
slid off her shoulders, her slender form quivering with sudden awareness of
her own daring.

"And this is what I want."

Every poised inch of his lithe, powerful length exuded the raw force of his
tension.  Bella looked bravely back at him, still clothed, but naked to the
world as she had never before allowed herself to be.  It was a risk she had
to take, a leap of faith, and even though she knew that she might regret her
own unquestioning generosity she also knew that she would regret it for the
rest of her life if she simply hid behind her own insecurities.

"S(..."  He moved with an abruptness then that shattered her--reaching for
her, dragging her into his arms, every restraint overpowered by the hunger
which blazed in incandescent gold from his fierce gaze.

"No regrets?"

He wanted a passport to freedom before he even touched her.  Pain trammelled
through her.  She might have turned away then, devast/ted by the reality of
how little he offered and too proud to take on such terms, but he closed his
mouth in devouring passion over hers and the ability to be rational was
violently torn from her.

He invaded the moist interior of her mouth, his probing 
 tongue a raw,
masculine imitation of an infinitely more intimate penetration.  She
trembled, every physical sense leaping into automatic response.  Control was
wrested from her without remorse.  He unleashed the turbulent force of his
desire on her and she drowned mindlessly in the tidal wave of her own shock.
It was no slow, gentle seduction which took account of her innocence.

"You're a witch, querida..."  Rico groaned.

"I am no saint to resist such enticement."

"Enticement'?  Some faint shred of reasoning absorbed the word, shrank from
it.  But he took her mouth again, made love to it, enveloped her in the
staggering surge of her own helpless excitement.  He lifted his dark head and
she opened her heavy eyes.  He had bared her breasts.

The pale mounds rose in shameless supplication to his heated appraisal.

"You are so beautiful."  He cupped her sensitive flesh with firm hands, his
smouldering golden scrutiny raking over her as a flush of pink crept up over
her cheekbones.

He bent his head.  She watched him, shameless in the grip of her own
anticipation and yet so afraid that in some sense she might not meet his
expectations.

The tip of his tongue skidded down the valley between her breasts before
circling the engorged thrust of one pink nipple.  She gasped, her lashes
sweeping down, her back arching.  Thought was suspended.

The erotic tug of his mouth on the sensitised buds was unbearably erotic.
Her hands rose of their own volition and speared into his hair, caressing
him, holding him to her as the sweet torment of her own arousal plunged her
into ever deeper response.  In all her life she had never dreamt that such
pleasure existed.

She was so hot that she couldn't stay still.  His fingers smoothed over the
quivering tautness of her stomach and located the tangle of cuffs at the
junction of her thighs.  Her whole body jerked, out of control.  Her breath
rasped dry in her throat, her thighs parting in a spasm of intolerable 
need.
He laughed softly and covered her mouth again, teasing this time, nibbling
and tormenting with devastating expertise.

Instinctively she moved against him, her hips rising.  He explored the damp,
silken warmth at the very heart of her, every expert caress making her sob
with the crazed heat of that intimate pleasure.  Lost in the depths of an
extraordinary passion, she was at the peak of an intense excitement, tortured
by the desperate ache of un fulfilment

He shifted over her then, ravishing her swollen lips one more time, and then,
abruptly, he drew her up to him with impatient hands and plunged inside her.
She hadn't expected the pain that tore at her as he entered her.  Her shocked
eyes flew wide and she bit her tongue so hard that she tasted blood in her
mouth.

"Madre de Dios!"  Shattered golden eyes held hers, and then his teeth
clenched as the momentum of his own desire made him drive deeper still, his
swollen shaft forging a path through the tender tissue that had sought to
deny him.  "That hurts!"

Bella panted.

With a sharp intake of breath he stilled, and long fingers knotted painfully
into her tumbled hair.

"I didn't know!"

She saw the anger and the shock etching his bronzed features into rigidity
and she could not bear the sight.  If he turned from her now he would never
come back to her again.  She knew that as clearly as though he had spoken and
she fought it with her instincts, reaching up, touching his sensual mouth
with the soft promise of hers, refusing to let him go.

"Rico..."

And it was done.  In the circle of her arms he trembled, far less in control
than he had sought to pretend.  His rigidity broke, his body surging against
hers again in a rhythm as old and as relentless as time.  With a stifled
groan of earthy satisfaction he completed his possession of that place which
had once been hers alone.


LYNNE GRAHAM 79 The pain had gone as though it had never been.

Renewed heat flooded her as he thrust into her again, fast and deep, his
hands sinking beneath her hips to press back her thighs.  She gasped as he
moved inside her and enforced the pace to a level of shattering, driving
intensity.  Her heartbeat thundered, her pulses madly accelerated.  She was
con trolled, dominated, excited to a pitch beyond her belief.  When she went
over the edge into the tumultuous, shuddering pleasure of release she cried
out his name as if it were a talisman in the swirling darkness that blocked
out everything else in the world.

Except his withdrawal.  It could not block out that.  Within seconds of that
climax Rico dragged himself free of her arms.  The shock of that abrupt
severance was immense.  Bella opened dazed eyes and focused on him.

"What's wrong?"

"Qu pasa?

"What's wrong?"  Rico sliced the repetition back at her with stinging
derision.

"You dare to ask me what's wrong?"

It was like a bucket of cold water on sunburn.  Bella sat up, every lingering
and pleasurable sensation stolen from her.  With a shaking hand she drew the
blanket over her.  But Rico stood there, unashamedly naked, every taut line
of his magnificently masculine body exuding fury.

She had never felt more agonisingly confused.  She would not have given
herself Without love.  And with the people she loved Bella was a giver of
unparalleled generosity.  She asked for nothing in return.

But did she love him?

"I don't know what's wrong."  She couldn't yet think straight and opted for
honesty, searching his hard, dark features with a pain concealed by the veil
of her lashes.

"What's your game?  What do you want from me?  What was that sweet little
seduction scene angled at?"  he demanded with raw hostility.

"Had I known I was to be the first I would not have touched you!"


need.  He laughed softly and covered her mouth again, teasing this time,
nibbling and tormenting with devastating expertise.

Instinctively she moved against him, her hips rising.  He explored the damp,
silken warmth at the very heart of her, every expert caress making her sob
with the crazed heat of that intimate pleasure.  Lost in the depths of an
extraordinary passion, she was at the peak of an intense excitement, tortured
by the desperate ache of un fulfilment

He shifted over her then, ravishing her swollen lips one more time, and then,
abruptly, he drew her up to him with impatient hands and plunged inside her.
She hadn't expected the pain that tore at her as he entered her.  Her shocked
eyes flew wide and she bit her tongue so hard that she tasted blood in her
mouth.

"Madre de Dios!"  Shattered golden eyes held hers, and then his teeth
clenched as the momentum of his own desire made him drive deeper still, his
swollen shaft forging a path through the tender tissue that had sought to
deny him.  "That hurts!"

Bella panted.

With a sharp intake of breath he stilled, and long fingers knotted painfully
into her tumbled hair.

"I didn't know!"

She saw the anger and the shock etching his bronzed features into rigidity
and she could not bear the sight.  If he turned from her now he would never
come back to her again.  She knew that as clearly as though he had spoken and
she fought it with her instincts, reaching up, touching his sensual mouth
with the soft promise of hers, refusing to let him go.

"Rico..."

And it was done.  In the circle of her arms he trembled, far less in control
than he had sought to pretend.  His rigidity broke, his body surging against
hers again in a rhythm as old and as relentless as time.  With a stifled
groan of earthy satisfaction he completed his possession of that place which
had once been hers alone.


Renewed heat flooded her as he thrust into her again, fast and deep, his
hands sinking beneath her hips to press back her thighs.  She gasped as he
moved inside her and enforced the pace to a level of shattering, driving
intensity.  Her heartbeat thundered, her pulses madly accelerated.  She was
con trolled, dominated, excited to a pitch beyond her belief.  When she went
over the edge into the tumultuous, shuddering pleasure of release she cried
out his name as if it were a talisman in the swirling darkness that blocked
out everything else in the world.

Except his withdrawal.  It could not block out that.  Within seconds of that
climax Rico dragged himself free of her arms.  The shock of that abrupt
severance was immense.  Bella opened dazed eyes and focused on him.

"What's wrong?"

"Qug pasa?

"What's wrong?"  Rico sliced the repetition back at her with stinging
derision.

"You dare to ask me what's wrong?"

It was like a bucket of cold water on sunburn.  Bella sat up, every lingering
and pleasurable sensation stolen from her.  With a shaking hand she drew the
blanket over her.  But Rico stood there, unashamedly naked, every taut line
of his magnificently masculine body exuding fury.

She had never felt more agonisingly confused.  She would not have given
herself Without love.  And with the people she loved Bella was a giver of
unparalleled generosity.  She asked for nothing in return.

But did she love him?

"I don't know what's wrong."  She couldn't yet think straight and opted for
honesty, searching his hard, dark features with a pain concealed by the veil
of her lashes.

"What's your game?  What do you want from me?  What was that sweet little
seduction scene angled at?"  he demanded with raw hostility.

"Had I known I was to be the first I would not have touched you!"


"I think that was my choice to make," Bella muttered, lowering her head, the
sting of tears furiously blinked back.

"Por Dios ... it was certainly not mine!  I believed I was making love to an
equal partner.  I do not sleep with virgins,"

he said darkly, with a positively vicious bite.

"I told you I was--' " But you were aware that I did not believe you.  If
there's one thing you don't look it's innocent!  " he condemned.  " And
innocent in thought and deed you're not.  Tell me now.  " what is this likely
to cost me?"

"C-cost you?"  she repeated blankly.

"The honey trap and then the price," he drawled with chilling menace.

"I've been down that path before.  This scenario has a deeply sordid
familiarity for me.  If you're the fertile type I expect I'll be supporting
you for the next decade and a half at the very least!"

Every icy word fell like a whiplash on her exposed back.  Bella was appalled.
He had made love to her with incredible passion, and now he was rejecting
both that passion and her with a brutality that paralysed her.

"Rico...?"

"I warn you now ... I will not marry you," he imparted with icy emphasis.

"I will never marry again."

Again?  He had already been married?  Even in the midst of her turmoil Bella
was struck by that unexpected revelation.

"So, if you are cherishing some pitiful fantasy of Cinderella catching her
prince, let me assure you that even a pregnancy wouldn't persuade me to make
that ultimate sacrifice!"

Bella sucked in badly needed air to fill her seemingly squashed lungs.  She
studied her tightly clenched hands.  "You're not my prince, Rico.  Relax,"
she whispered painfully.  "Learn to enjoy life as the toad who didn't deserve
to be kissed and transformed.  This particular Cinderella doesn't believe in
fairy tales."

He expelled his breath in an audible hiss.  She sensed that 
 whatever he had
expected from her it hadn't been that.  In that sense they were equal.  She
had been thrown violently off balance by his accusations.  Where she had
given, he saw deliberate enticement.  Where she had expected nothing, he
demanded to know the cost.  It was impossible to believe that mere minutes
ago they had been as intimately close as a man and a woman could be.  For
when Bella had trustingly dropped all her de fences Rico had raised his with a
savage hostility which took her breath away.  And her pride revolted against
the image he had formed of her.  "Why, then?

Why did you give yourself to me?  "

In a sudden movement Bella scrabbled for her clothes where they lay about the
bed.  A deep, sustaining anger made her hands tremble.  Well, you lived and
you learnt.  There was no surer truth, it seemed.  She had been a fool to
expose herself to such an extent to a male who understood her about as well
as he might understand an alien being.

Where emotions were concerned she was dealing with a male so impenetrably
thick that he ought to be locked up for his own safety, she thought
furiously.  "Bella...?"  he pressed harshly.

"I wanted you!  Lust... what else?"  Magnificent green eyes flashing, she
shot him a look of vibrant derision, unperturbed by his sudden stillness and
the freezing of his strong features.

"There was no hidden agenda."

He stared at her, forbidding dark eyes, fringed by lush ebony lashes, nailed
to her with mesmeric intensity.  His sensual mouth compressed into a cold,
hard line.

"I thought that might shut you up."  Bella let loose a not quite steady laugh
as she pulled on her jacket and rummaged beneath the blanket to haul up her
skirt.

"Lust is OK for you but not for me, right?  Did you think I was about to
delicately beat about the bush like your fancy lady-friends?"  she hissed.

"Or did you fondly imagine thatI was going to tell you I had fallen madly in
love with you and just couldn't help myself Get real, Rico!"


With that final, ringing statement Bella sprang out of bed and strode
through the beaded curtain.  She turned on the water full force at the sink
and leant back against the door, trembling on legs that briefly didn't feel
strong enough to keep her upright.  Love grabs you by the throat when you
least expect it and rips the heart out of you, she thought sickly.  I don't
want this .  I don't need these feelings!

Stripping off, she began to wash the scent of him off her body with slow
deliberation.  It had been a mistake and she wasn't too proud to admit to
mistakes.  Sometimes you played and you lost.  Sometimes you made a fool of
yourself.  That was life.  But as long as you hung on to your pride and your
integrity you would recover.  That was life too.

A knock sounded on the door.  Bella said something very rude and was then
ashamed of herself.  The use of bad language was childishly offensive.  But,
for the first time in a lot of years, her thoughts and emotions were in real
chaos.  She hurt.  The shock of that pain sliced through her, sharp, piercing
and inescapable.  She had only to think of the manner in which she had thrown
herself at him and she felt sick with humiliation.

Rico and she didn't fit, didn't suit in any way.  They lived in different
worlds.  Had fate been kind they would never even have met.

They didn't have a thing in common.  Rico was an ambitious, ruthless, fully
paid-up member of the workaholic financial fraternity.  He didn't have a
creative bone in his body.

For heaven's sake, this was a guy who wore pinstriped suits, kept his desk
tidy, thought of precautions against pregnancy in the midst of stormy
passion!  He maintained a rigorous leash on every spontaneous impulse.  Her
virginity had not been a gift, it had been a threat to him!  How could she
possibly think that she had fallen in love with someone like that?  She
studied herself, wide-eyed, in the mirror, searching for signs of incipient
insanity.


 Where had her intelligence gone over the past hour?  Of course it wasn't
love!  Their imprisonment had twisted and confused her emotional responses,
magnifying them into something they were not.  When those bullets had hit the
container she had been terrified and Rico had been protective.  The release
from that terrible tension had sent her emotions into overload.  He had
offered her comfort and warmth and she had been so grateful for his presence
and in such mental turmoil that she had wildly misinterpreted her own
feelings.

Really, Bella .  is that why you recklessly gave away the virginity you were
saving for your future husband?  She paled, crushing that inner voice.  But
right through her teens Bella had been indoctrinated by her grandfather's
moral standards.  It had been an education.  Cleo had had an 'anything goes'
outlook on the morality front.  But her lifestyle hadn't made her happy.

Bitterly aware of that reality, Bella had decided that the field of sexual
experimentation was not for her.  If she loved someone and he loved her, and
a future together was on the cards, that would have been different.  But
passion without love.  That had been the biggest 'do not' in Bella's rule
book And she had just broken that rule.

Received her just deserts in record time too, she acknowledged on another
wave of pain.

Rico had illuminated another light when she emerged.  What had happened to
conservation?  she wondered nastily.  But then she saw him standing in the
shadows by the curtain and her ability to be sharp and critical momentarily
deserted her.  She was assailed by a blinding urge to rush back into his arms
and that terrified her.  It was as though there were two people inside
her--one trying to be sensible, one racing out of control on an emotional
roller coaster.  What the heck was the matter with her?  Rico looked as
dangerous as a prowling predator and she had already found out the hard way
that she bled when he clawed.


"I believe that I have misjudged you," he conceded in his silky, accented
drawl which trickled down her sensitive spinal column like the caress of rich
velvet.

"Forget it.  I already have."  But her nervous antenna went on to instant red
alert.

The level of physical awareness splintering through the atmosphere between
them shattered her.  Instead of fading with satiation, as she had naively
assumed they would, the sexual vibrations had merely intensified.  Bella went
into restive retreat.  She turned away to the fridge, her skin heating, her
brain suddenly a wasteland awash with a devastating wave of unbelievably
unwelcome erotic imagery.  Her body ached and burned with the memory of that
wild passion.

"Lust works for me as well," Rico murmured in a purring undertone.

Her lashes fluttered.  She froze halfway into the fridge, certain that he
couldn't have said that.

"I don't want to talk about it," she mumbled, intimate recollection having
vanquished her de fences

"Don't be coy, gatita.  It doesn't suit you."

Her cheeks burning fierily, Bella straightened.

"Look, I made a mistake, and not one I intend to repeat..."  She had forced
herself to look at him and her voice trailed away as she registered that his
attention was no longer directed at her.

Reaching for the light, Rico took an abrupt stride forward and held it above
the stove, his glittering gaze fixed on some point above her.

"Infierno.t' he breathed.

Dazedly Bella watched him set aside the light at speed and reach up to touch
the surface of the roof round the metal flue of the chimney.

"What is it?"  she demanded.  "Get me the poker!"

"But?"  -- Meeting the whiplash effect of his impatience, Bella moved to
oblige.

Grasping the poker, he swung it up against the roof.  A 
piece of something
like plaster or cement broke away and fell to the floor.

"What are you doing?"  she gasped.

But as he struck the roof again and more debris flew down, sending up a cloud
of dust which made her cough, she realised exactly what he was doing.  When
the flue for the stove had been put in a hole had naturally been cut and, for
simplicity's sake, not a circular one.  A rectangle of metal had been
removed.  She could dimly see the edges exposed and her momentary excitement
faded.

"They welded it back in after cutting it to take the flue."

 "That isn't steel!"   Rico gritted.

"And it's only spot-welded.  It'll come out!"

With punishing force he rammed the poker up against the insert, which buckled
under the blow.  Her heart in her mouth, Bella watched him batter it until it
came loose, and then plant two powerful hands round the flue.  The upper
section lifted away and dim light filtered in.  With a powerful push Rico
rammed the section upwards, slamming it out onto the roof to clear the
aperture he had exposed.

Bella's fingernails, which had been biting into her palms, bit even harder.
Acid tears hit the back of her eyes as she looked up.

"It isn't big enough to take either of us!"

Rico surveyed her with raw determination.

"With a little help from me it'll take you," he asserted.

Awkwardly she climbed up onto the top of the stove and raised her head
through the aperture, her eyes flying up and down and around the rafters, the
sheet-iron roof above the resting hulk of an old tractor lying in the corner.

"We're in a barn," she whispered.

"Santa Maria!"  Rico slashed from below her in raw disbelief.  "You're not up
there to see the scenery!"

Before she could react a pair of hands closed round her thighs and forced her
upwards, not even giving her time to hunch her shoulders.

Her collision with the edges of the rough metal hurt and she uttered a
stifled shriek to which he paid no attention at all.  He simply lifted her
again, and 
this time she automatically curved her shoulders in and she went
through, snaking out her hands to brace herself in amazement on the roof.
With his help she hauled herself through the rest of the way.

"Now get me out of here!"  Rico urged from below, as if he was afraid that
she might go off and paint her nails or something and forget about him.

Her heart thudding like a wild creature's, perspiration beading her upper
lip, she lowered herself down off the roof, hitting the rough ground below
hard enough to jar her ankle-bones painfully.  In a stumbling run she raced
round to the doors.  If they were locked---dear God, if they were locked.
For the next few frantic minutes it crossed her mind more than once that they
might as well have been as she pushed and hauled and thrust with all her
might, sweat rolling off her as she struggled to drive back the bolts, and
all the time Rico was shouting at her from inside.

"Shut up!"  she screamed, pausing to get her breath back.  It took her
another ten minutes and he didn't shut up.  As the bolts finally gave that
final, necessary inch Bella slumped back winded on the dirty ground, as wrung
out as a limp dish rag.  Rico strode out and the first thing he did, which
she found quite inconceivable, was to close the doors again and force the
bolts back with an ease that made her hate him.

With a powerful hand he hauled her upright and dragged her towards the
rickety barn doors.

"Suppose they are out there?"  she hissed.

Rico, his dark features alight with savage determination, shot her a
silencing glance.  He pushed the barn door back slowly and she tried to duck
under his arm to see what was beyond.  Rain was lashing down in sheets
outside.

"Come on ... skulking here isn't going to get us anywhere," he asserted.

She sidled out after him, paradoxically appalled by the 
 emptiness she saw
all around them.  A derelict stone cottage lay off to one side, and in every
other direction all she could see was the rough moorland edging the muddy
track that ran down the hill.  There was no sign of life anywhere.  "Now
what?"

The wind and the rain made a truly ghastly combination as they raced down the
lane.  Rico hauled her relentlessly in his wake and she forced herself
onward, fearfully aware that they were not safe until they could transport
themselves some distance from their prison.  They reached a road, not a very
wide one--the sort of road which might see a vehicle maybe once a day, she
thought hysterically.

"I'm so cold," she gasped, soaked to the skin and shivering.

"Moving will keep you warm."  Shimmering dark eyes appraised her.  His mouth
tightened.  He wrenched off his jacket and held it out to her.

Bella gave him a startled glance before she dug her numbed arms into the
sleeves.

"Now you'll freeze," she muttered guiltily.

"The subtle difference between a creep and a gentle-man--the creep stays
warm," he drawled from between clenched teeth.

"We have to find shelter.  It'll be dark soon."

The road twisted and curved downhill for what felt like miles, and at the
foot of that hill met yet another narrow road.  Without any other options
they kept on heading down.  The rain slackened off but both of them were so
wet that it made little difference.  When they finally rounded a corner and
saw a dim light at the top of a rough track Bella thought it was a mirage.
Every muscle in her body ached by that stage and her steps were clumsy and
wildly uncoordinated.  Even speaking was too much of an effort.  She stopped,
staggering like a drunk.

Rico put a strong arm around her and propelled her towards the track.

Later she couldn't recall climbing that final hill.  A dog circled them,
barking fit to wake the dead.  A 
light went on, blinding her, and she came
to a halt and swayed.

"Come on," Rico pressed, and he was already almost carrying her.

She tried--she really did try--but in all her life she had never been so
tired.  Her legs simply folded beneath her, her head swimming, and she sank
down into the thick, welcoming darkness behind her eyelids without a murmur.

"Wake up..."

Bella surfaced, cocooned in wonderful warmth, a fleecy blanket against her
cheek.  Her eyes opened and focused on the logs crackling in the grate
several feet from her, and then landed on Rico, who had crouched down to
block her view of the fire.  She searched his starkly handsome features with
softened green eyes.  A helpless smile curved her lips.

"You look wonderful."  Her voice was slurred, sounding as though it was
coming from miles away, and with immense effort she freed a hand from the
blanket and reached out to him, curving her palm against his blue-shadowed
jaw-line.

"But you need a shave."

"Much as gracias, querida mia."  She connected with his brilliant golden eyes
and her heart turned right over.  He caught her hand in his and pressed his
mouth almost reverentially to the centre of her palm.

"You scared me," he muttered roughly.

He sprang upright again and moved out of her view.  It was still too much of
an effort to turn her head.  She heard another voice, female, elderly,
somewhere behind her.  Rico said something about a phone, and the lady
was-talking nineteen to the dozen about food and hot baths and him needing to
change out of his clothes right this minute, stressing the fact with the kind
of gentle but steely authority which reminded Bella very much of one of her
former schoolteachers.

She drifted off again then, curiously uninterested in her 
 unfamiliar
surroundings, content merely with the warmth and the feeling of security.
Time had no meaning until Rico reappeared.  He bent down and swept her up off
the sofa.  "You can have a bath now that you have warmed up sufficiently," he
informed her.

That struck Bella as hilariously funny.  She giggled.

"By the sound of it you're feeling better."  An elderly woman with a stern
but smiling face looked down at her where she lay nestled in perfect
relaxation against Rico's broad chest.

"Some day you'll be able to tell your grandchildren that you almost died of
exposure on your honeymoon.  That should provoke a few interesting questions."

"Honeymoon?"  Bella whispered blankly as Rico carried her up a flight of
stairs.

He set her down on a chair in a large, old-fashioned bathroom and peeled her
out of the blanket.  She was dismayed to discover that she was wearing not a
stitch of clothing, but before she could react to the startling discovery he
had lifted her up and settled her down into a massive Victorian bath filled
with deliciously hot water.  "Honeymoon?"  she said again.

"I thought it best not to tell the truth.  I said that we had got lost and
our car had broken down.  Mrs Warwick is a widow living alone.

This is a remote place.  I wished to minimise any fears she might have
about opening her doors so generously and trustingly to complete strangers who
look far from respectable.  " As he talked he was stripping off his clothes.

Bella's cheeks warmed to a temperature that had little to do with the bath
water.  Smooth brown shoulders gave way to a muscular torso sprinkled with
curling black hair that arrowed down into an intriguingly silky furrow over
his flat stomach and then.  Embarrassed, she glanced away, but still she saw
him before her--the lean, angular hips, the long, powerful thighs, the
sleeping promise of his manhood in a nest of ebony curls.


"You were wearing a ring on your right hand.  When I was undressing you
downstairs I slid it onto your wedding finger."

Belatedly she noticed the ring.

"It was my grandmother's."

"Move over..."

"Rico!"  Bella twisted her head round and skidded forward towards the taps in
a rush, water sloshing noisily everywhere as he simply stepped into the bath
behind her.

"Lord, you're cold!"  she gasped, all of a quiver as a pair of long, icy
thighs closed round her hips from behind.

"Sorry, I should've thought.  I'll get out!"

As she began to get up he reached for her and pulled her back, bringing her
down on top of him, anchoring both arms round her.  Above her head he laughed
sonorously as she went-from rigid to trembling and back again.

"You have so much to learn, gatita mia.  I shall enjoy teaching you."

Bella squinted frantically down at the hands firmly cupping the pouting
thrust of her breasts and blushed.  Beneath his palms she could feel her
nipples swelling and tightening in shameless, instantaneous response.

"Rico...?"

"I have informed my chief executive, Kenway, of our whereabouts.  I also
spoke to the police.  Thanks to Mrs Warwick, I was able to give the exact
location of the barn," he imparted with sudden harshness.

"They will stake it out and wait until those bastards come back to check on
us again.  They will walk into a trap just as we did in that car park.  The
police will be waiting for them."

The icy chill in his voice made her shiver.  All Bella had thought about was
freedom--the luxury of the fire and the bath, the wonderful release from fear
to safety.  Her world had not yet expanded beyond those things.  The
intensity of her relief and her continuing exhaustion had combined to blunt
and blur her reasoning powers.  Rico, she noted, was not similarly affected.
He was already grimly anticipating their kidnappers' capture and punishment.


"Had they asked for a ransom?"

"S and the agreed arrangements will continue so that they do not become
suspicious.  Kenway has been in constant touch with Hector Barsay on your
behalf.  He will inform him of your release--' " How did they know who I was?
" A yawn was creeping up on her.  She was lying naked in a bath with a man
and she was ready to fall asleep, so complete was her relaxation.  She
couldn't believe it.

"My chauffeur knew your address," he reminded her.  "Had he not, the police
might have suspected that you had something to do with the kidnapping."

The?  " It barely penetrated.  Her eyelids felt as if someone had attached
weights to them, but she wasn't so far gone that she was not aware that
Rico's lean, hard length was reacting far more energetically to her
proximity.  But she didn't tense, only smiled sleepily.  There was something
so wonderfully reassuring about being that close to Rico.

"You're falling asleep," he groaned with more than a hint of incredulity.

She wanted to remind him that she had been up since half past four in the
morning, battering doors, posting 'help' notes through the container roof,
while he had slept until noon, but she couldn't find the energy.  And he
seemed to understand for he sat up and pulled her with him, and a minute
later she was wrapped in a fleecy towel.  Like a child she stood there, dead
on her feet, while he patted her dry and pulled something over her head--
something crisp and cotton and clean-smelling.

And then she was sinking into a warm bed without even caring how she had got
there, sighing with pleasure as' every limb relaxed.  Voices spoke over her
head.  The smell of food briefly flared her nostrils but even that couldn't
push back the sleep enclosing her.

In the darkness, a long time later, Bella shifted against a warm, hard body
and curved instinctively closer, her hand 
splaying over a hair-roughened
chest, her cheek resting against a smooth shoulder.

"Rico," she breathed sleepily in instant recognition combined with instant
contentment, and she would have drifted away again had he not tangled a hand
in the mane of her tumbled hair, tipped her mouth up and kissed her.

It was like coming alive when you thought you were dead.  Every skin-cell
suddenly flamed into red-hot life, a kind of frantic, feverish hunger
possessing her.  Her response was so intense that it swallowed her alive.

"Rico..."  She gasped again as he pinned her to the mattress beneath him and
kissed her breathless, his mouth, hard, hungry, hot, exciting her beyond
bearing.

He freed her and wrenched the nightdress off.  In the darkness there was no
warning before his mouth closed round the engorged bud of one swelling
breast.  The sensation hit her with stunning effect.  Her neck extended in an
arch, a stifled moan torn from her when she felt the erotic brush of his
teeth and his tongue as he pulled on her taut nipples.  And there was no time
for anything, not a single thought, nothing but the raw, driving intensity of
need screaming through her veins.

His lips skimmed a tormenting path over the quivering muscles of her belly,
his hands parting her thighs, and then he was doing something .  something so
intimate that she tensed in sudden alarm before the power of simple sensation
tore her every inhibition away.

And then she was lost again in a hot, swirling fire, conscious of nothing but
the incredible, torturous excitement roaring mindlessly out of her control as
he employed the same technique on the most sensitive flesh of all.

She was at screaming-point when he moved over her, every shred of physical
awareness cent red on the ache of emptiness between her thighs.  And then he
thrust into her and she moaned and arched in one taut movement, her body 

clenching on a pleasure so intense that she was utterly possessed by it.  Her
fingers raked down his back in reaction and her teeth nipped at the strong
brown column of his throat in instinctive revenge for the ragged laugh he
gave vent to.

After that there was nothing but the long, pulsing drive for satisfaction.
It went on and on and on.  She hit the heights fast, unable to rein back the
flood of release, but he didn't stop.  She had barely hit ground level again
before the frantic climb back up began, and in all her life she had never
felt so controlled, never dreamt she could enjoy that reality so much.  And
when the second climax whooshed up inside her she was wiped out.

He shuddered above her, every muscle clenching taut, and she put her arms
round him, happiness flooding through her like a rejuvenating drug.  There
was only one thought in her mind as she sank back into sleep.  She would
never let go of him again.


CHAPTER SIX

"SOME more tea, Mrs da Silva?"

Out of the corner of her eye Bella noticed Rico tense just as he had the last
time their hostess had addressed her as his wife.

"Please call me Bella," she said tightly, politely refusing the offer of a
refill for her cup.

Rico had wakened her when he was already dressed.  That had been her first
shock.  Shaven, his shirt immaculately clean--thanks, no doubt, to Mrs
Warwick's ministrations--his tie reinstated and his exquisitely expensive
suit pressed and only a little limp from yesterday's soaking, this was not
Rico as she remembered him during their captivity--it was Rico the
intimidating international financier she had faced at the bank.

"A car will pick us up at eight.  We will make our statements to the police
as soon as possible," he had murmured smoothly before leaving her alone to
rise and dress.

Her attention had fallen on the nightgown which had been discarded on the
carpet the night before, and suddenly Bella had felt as though she was dying
inside.  How could she have made love with him again?

The fevered, driving passion of the night haunted her now.  He had a bruise
from her teeth a halfqnch above his collar and it seemed to scream at her
like a badge of public shame every time she looked at him.

In the dark he was one hundred per cent sexual predator and she was one
hundred per cent victim of her own wanton nature.  Recalling that she had
been all over him like a rash afterwards only intensified her sense of
humiliation.  There was a new distance between them and it wasn't coming from
her side of the fence.  Rico had an aloof quality that 
he hadn't had the
night before.  It had been there from the first moment she'd set eyes on him
again.

And she understood, wished she didn't, wished she were wrong, but knew she
was right.  The real world was about to reclaim them again.

Their time together in that container had been time outside the real world.
Now they were back to being the people they really were.  He was Rico da
Silva, rich, influential financier .  and she was Bella Jennings, an
illegitimate waitress who wanted to be an artist but who might never make the
grade.  The gulf was enormous and Rico had been the first to recall it.

Her inner turmoil was so intense that it threatened to swallow her alive.
Suddenly she was wallowing in terrifying confusion, not knowing what she
felt, not knowing what she thought.  Involuntarily she collided with the dark
density of Rico's flashing gaze and her heart stopped beating altogether.
Was it possible that he was enduring the same conflict?

But then she watched him smoothly turn his dark head and speak calmly to Mrs
Warwick, and her heart beat again and sank simultaneously.

Rico was in control.  Rico knew exactly what he was thinking and feeling.
Confusion and Rico da Silva were not a credible combination.

Why had he made love to her again last night?  Why had he pounced and moved
in when she had been half-asleep, her every defence mechanism at rest?

P for predator, P for passionate, P for prey.  Her stomach heaved.  He was a
very virile male.  When he wanted sex he was used to taking it.

She had just been a willing female body in the bed and, as he had once
reminded her, he was not a corpse, devoid of all sexual response.  And if he
was now wishing that he hadn't bothered, she had no doubt that he had the
cold will to ensure that she didn't form any silly ideas about their possibly
having embarked on a continuing relationship.

The four-wheel drive that picked them up arrived early, 
hastening their
departure from the farmhouse.  Two men were seated in front.  They hadn't
even reached the end of the lane before she realised that they were policemen
driving an unmarked car--a chief superintendent and an inspector, no less.
The taut questions came flying within seconds.

Every time a question came in her direction Rico stepped in to answer it for
her.  In another mood, in another situation and with other companions, Bella
would have roundly objected.  But right now she felt detached from
everything, everybody.  Rico and the police included.  " and she didn't
care--she really didn't care--if sitting there in silence, letting him do the
talking for her, made her look like the dumbest cluck of all time.

Her mind had already leapt forward to the parting of the ways ahead.

Her thoughts stayed there, frozen in intense shock at the image of
forthcoming loss and departure that unexpectedly tore at her.

"Miss Jennings?"  a voice said loudly.

Dredged from her inner conflict, Bella jerked and flinched, and found herself
staring wordlessly at the older man in the passenger seat, who had turned
round and was studying her intently.

"Sorry, I--' A hand suddenly closed tightly round hers where it lay clenched
on the seat.

"Bella's still in shock," Rico delivered with chilling bite, and 'leave her
alone' was writ large in his assertion.

Shaken by that hand on hers and that cold intonation, Bella saw the senior
policeman's gaze drop and linger on their linked hands, and abruptly a tide
of burning colour flushed her cheeks.

"I'm fine," she said tremulously, shielding her eyes with her lashes.

"We do require some form of statement from Miss Jennings.  Of course, I
understand what a devastating experience this must have been."  Even so,
there was the merest edge of wry amusement in the older man's voice and 
she
knew then that he knew that, whatever their relationship might have been
before they had ended up in that container, it was now one of intimacy, and
that stifled her natural effervescence even more.

She did not want anyone else to be aware of what she could barely deal with
herself.  She snaked her fingers free of Rico's, denying herself that warmth
although every treacherous sense longed to maintain it.

There was a town not many miles from the farmhouse, complete with police
station.  They were practically smuggled into the building through a rear
entrance.

"Can't hold the Press off much longer, though," the chief superintendent
sighed.

"The Press?"  Bella gasped.

"They'll be down on us like vultures the minute they know we're free," Rico
drawled flatly.

"They could blow the whole bloody show," the inspector chipped in bitterly as
they were hustled into a small, bare interviewing room which made Bella feel
more claustrophobic than she had ever felt in the container.

"The Press know about us?"  she whispered dazedly.  "We have their agreement
to hold off on printing a word, but now ... well, let's say there's a risk of
a leak before we get a proper chance at catching those b-blighters."  He
selected the word grimly.

"Miss Jennings will be staying at my estate," Rico volunteered without any
expression at all.

"My staff are trustworthy."

"Her story has got to be worth a quarter of a mill flat, even at a
conservative estimate," the inspector muttered with cold cynicism.

"I

hope you know what you're doing.  "

She heard the senior policeman's slight intake of breath, knew the inspector
was all at sea as to what he had said wrong.  And several lowering
realisations hit Bella very hard all at once.  The police already knew all
about her--her background, the accident through which she had met 
Rico, her
un arguable poverty.  Even as a victim she been investigated, possibly just
to make sure that she was indeed a victim.  Rico's remark in the bath the
previous night--about her being a suspect--returned to haunt her.

And clearly in the inspector's biased view she was exactly the kind of woman
who was likely to jump on some tabloid bandwagon and tell all for a price.

"Bella's not going to talk."

Glancing up, she met Rico's brilliant golden gaze, aimed 'at her like a
stranglehold and a gag.  That look spoke not of faith but of threat.  If you
talk I'll personally throttle you, that look said.  Her cup of humiliation
ran right over there and then.  She looked away, her facial muscles locking
tight, an acrid sting burning her eyelids.

"O ye of little faith', she reflected, in more pain than she could have
believed possible and sick to the heart from it.

Did he really think that he was in danger of wakin some morning soon to a
kiss-and-tell revelation about their lovemaking in captivity?

Her stomach churned.  After all they had gone through together he still
distrusted her.  So maybe she wasn't a whore, but she could still be a greedy
little gold-digger, it seemed!  And this was the male that every hateful
instinct urged her to cling to and stay with?

That was when she knew it was over between them--absolutely, finally and
conclusively over, regardless of what she did or did not feel for Rico da
Silva.

"Of course she's not about to talk."  The older policeman patted her Shoulder
in reassurance as he tactfully angled her down into a chair, and she had the
bitter pleasure of appreciating that a man who had met her only an hour ago
already knew and understood more about her than Rico did.

She answered questions like an automaton.  Inside herself she just wanted to
die behind her forced smiles, but torture wouldn't have wrung an ounce of her
true feelings from her.  Pride.  Thank the Lord it was there for her when
most needed it.  Rico watched her like a hawk throughout, 
 as if he were
programmed to probe that uncharacteristic complete emotional withdrawal of
hers.  But she really didn't credit him with that much sensitivity.

The noisy clatter of rotor blades stole through her self-imposed inner wall,
her darkened green eyes briefly revealing her turmoil as she frowned.

"Mr da Silva's helicopter landing in the car park," the chief super revealed.

"I'll take you wherever you want to go, Miss Jennings.  I'm heading back to
London."

"Bella's coming with me," Rico murmured drily without a single shade of doubt.

Without looking at him, so grateful to the older man that she could have
grabbed his hand and kissed it, Bella sprang upright.

"Thanks, but I have friends I can go to ... friends I want to be with," she
muttered abruptly.

"Perhaps you could leave us alone for a moment?"  Rico suggested smoothly to
their companions.

"I'll be waiting outside," the chief super told her, with a wry smile.  And
then the door closed, sealing them into the privacy which she would have done
any craven thing to avoid, but which her intelligence told her had to be
faced.

"What the hell are you playing at?"  Rico enquired harshly.

"Of course you're coming with me!"

She had to force herself to look at him again.  She had to know, before she
walked away, that she was making the only possible decision.  " and yet she
already knew that, and loathed herself for being weak enough to require,
further proof.

"I'm not going to talk to the Press," she said stiffly.

The faintest hint of dark colour accentuated the angular slant of his hard
cheekbones.  His hooded dark eyes were nailed to her, however, without any
perceptible emotion at all.  He made no comment on her reassurance.  His
sensual mouth twisted.

"I want you to come with me."

"Why?  The party's over ... don't you think?"  Behind her mocking grin she
felt like somebody handing a murderer a knife.


"But I don't mind if the band plays on ... for a while," he murmured, coolly
careful to conclude with that candour.

He had used the knife without compunction.  It was sex, nothing else.

That was all he wanted--a temporary affair in the privacy of his home, with
the added security of knowing that she couldn't talk to the Press while he
was around.  Neat, tidy, every necessity covered, sexual and otherwise.  " so
much Rico's stamp that she wanted to shout and scream and claw him.

But she didn't.  She used her talons to hang on like grim death to her pride
instead.

"I don't think so."  Turning, unable to meet his sharp appraisal any longer,
she began moving towards the door.

"You're as hot for me as I am for you, gatita ... and I won't make you a
better offer," he warned with silken insolence.

Her spine stiffened.  She spun back, unable to let that go unchallenged.

"So what?  You think that matters to me?"  she demanded shakily.

"I want you in my bed."  The admission might have been wrenched by force from
him.  His strong face was hard and taut, his eyes as dark as black ice,
biting into her almost accusingly.

Bella gave vent to an edgy laugh.

"I'm sure you've got no shortage of willing replacements!"

"And what if you're pregnant?"

Bella paled but her magnificent eyes flashed at him.  "Highly unlikely it
was the wrong time," she told him brittlely as she made for the door again,
really desperate this time to escape.

"Then allow me."  He reached the door ahead of her and swung it wide.

"Look after yourself," he murmured drily as she preceded him into the
corridor.  And then he was gone, striding past her in the direction of the
rear exit.

On cotton-wool legs she wandered down to the window and stood there, watching
him walk out and spring into the 
waiting helicopter.  Well, that was that,
she told herself.  The feeling that she had been cut in half without an
anaesthetic would wear off.  She was not, could not be, in love with a creep
like that.

Fear had somehow made her emotions centre on him.  She had become
disgustingly dependent, weak and vulnerable, but now that the whole ghastly
experience was over she would swiftly recover and return to normal.  "A
self-contained bastard, isn't he?"

Her head flipped round, her every feeling exposed.  And the chief super
placed a supportive arm round her and wafted her out to his car.  He asked
her where she wanted to go and then handed her a box of tissues.  Sorry, he
had four adult daughters, he told her ruefully; couldn't help reading her
like a book.  He had seen her paintings, he told her.  Fabulous, out of this
world, he added almost shyly.  Was there the slightest chance that she would
sell one?

And that cracked her shell as nothing else could have done.  The tears
flooded out, and she got dug into the tissues with the agonised
acknowledgement that this stranger, this kind, clever man whom she barely
knew, knew so much more about her than the arrogant, hateful swine she had
stupidly, recklessly gone to bed with!

It was a long drive down to Liz's country cottage.  With Liz she knew she was
always welcome and she knew that Liz would keep her mouth shut.  And she even
knew where her friend kept her spare key--under the second tub of pansies to
the left of the back door.  The policeman was appalled, but to her he didn't
feel like a policeman any more.

He had become Maurice during the drive.

"I'll stay until your friend gets home," he told her.

"I want to be on my own."

He studied her and then sighed.

"If he asks where?"  -- "No!"  she interrupted, with helpless force.

TII keep you in touch with developments," he asserted, and took his leave
with a touching reluctance to leave her alone.


Liz wouldn't be back until far later than she had admitted to him.

This was her night with the art club.  She dined in town those nights and
went straight to the college for her class.  Liz was an accountant, several
years Bella's senior, who painted great, vibrant canvases of the flowers she
loved and enjoyed a lucrative sideline from their sales.  She joked that her
clients would be unnerved by that flamboyant side to her nature and only ever
signed her creations with her initials.

Gramps had enrolled Bella in the art club long before she'd attended art
college at seventeen.  She had been the youngest in the class and had had no
training whatsoever, but from her first visit the instructor had been excited
by what he'd called her 'raw talent'.

More worded than pleased by his enthusiasm, her grandfather had got in touch
with Hector through the medium of one of Cleo's fleeting visits.  It had been
Hector who had advised them on what art college and which course, Hector who
had taken charge of her artistic development.

She made a dive for Liz's phone, suddenly desperate to hear Hector's
querulous but familiar voice.

"I was worried sick when those nosy policemen landed on the doorstep,"

he complained furiously, making her smile.

"And I don't want any blasted reporters following them!"

"I'll stay here until the fuss blows over.  I'll ring the restaurant and tell
them I'm sick," she muttered, speaking her thoughts out loud on the subject
of her job.

"That Griff character has been calling too.  Give him a ring," Hector advised
irritably, and then added as an afterthought, "You didn't damage your hands,
did you?"

"Just my heart."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Never mind.  I'll keep in touch."

"Phone calls cost a fortune," he reminded her in dismay.


 The Royal Mail is expensive but considerably cheaper in comparison.  "

She came off the phone and laughed until she cried.  Through her tears she
picked up Liz's sketch-pad and began to draw, her agile fingers moving at
speed over the paper.  Only when she registered what she was drawing did she
stop.  With a choking sensation in her throat she looked down sickly at the
slashing lines of Rico's impassive face as she had last seen him.

She threw the pad aside, in more turmoil than ever.  She would work through
this, get her feet pinned back down hard to ground level and gather her
common sense if it killed her!  After all, a week ago she hadn't even known
Rico da Silva walked the same earth.  But he didn't, she reflected with
sudden fierce anger; he didn't walk the same earth at all.

"I feel like an idiot ... a total, absolute idiot!"  Griff complained for the
third time.

"Every one of my partners is sniggering behind his hands.  So what did happen
in that blasted container between the two of you?  I have a right to know I'
" The same way I have the right to know who was with you the night of my
birthday?  " As soon as she said it she regretted it.  Griff was very
handsome but suddenly, betrayed by his fair skin, he looked like a guilty
beetroot that had been stabbed unexpectedly in the back by a pickle fork.

"Well, I ... I don't know what you're talking about!  I was working that
night."

He lied so badly that she was embarrassed for him.  Why was he being so
possessive all of a sudden?  Why was it that even an unfaithful man suddenly
hung on like grim death when he sensed that you were ready to break it off.
9 It crossed her mind that Rico hadn't hung on .  Rico had been off like an
Olympic sprinter.  Only good manners had made him let her out of the door in
front of him.


 N

"OK."  Griff heaved a constricted sigh.

"Guilty ... but was only a flirtation... I was tempted, that's all.  Unforgi'
able, I know, on your birthday--' " Don't you think that date was
subconsciously chosen hurt most?  "

He looked blankly back at her.  She was too clever for him, could practically
tell him what he was about to s before he parted his lips, and whatever had
been bet we them had evaporated entirely on her side.  She decided lei him
off the hook.

"Look, it doesn't matter, does it.9 We're finished.  Go, friends still, I
hope," she stressed gently.

"But that's a Griff."

"I didn't sleep with her!"  He startled her by surgi: across Liz's tiny
lounge with an amount of emotion s would never have expected from a male
usually so cc and controlled.

"And I'm sorry, I'll never do it again," swore, grasping both her hands.

He had slept with that other woman.  She could tell, it was not her place,
after what had happened with Rk to stand in pious judgement.

"Let's go out to dinner somewhere very public," he urg tautly.

"You have to come out of hiding some time.  l Silva's " no comment" is
beginning to fall pretty hard, my ears!  You're my girlfriend, for God's
sake, but all t[ trash in the tabloids and your disappearance is giving eve
one the idea ... well, that you've got something to ashamed of!"

Liz walked into the tiny bedroom where she was changiJ "You're going out with
him?"

"It seems that I owe it to him to help him save face w his colleagues in the
office."

"He never said that, surely?"

"I don't think he even realises that that is what he sa I'll pack.

It's time I went home anyway.  " A rueful sin 
curved Bella's lips.

"Thanks for having me, but I've go face the music sooner or later.  Not that
I'm expectin be mobbed.  I'm old news since our kidnappers were caul There
won't be much interest now until the case reac court," she pointed out.

"Don't you believe it... You've got a price on your h whether you like it or
not!  And the longer you keep qu about your ordeal," Liz said grimly, 'the
more outrage become the tabloid fantasies.  You'd be better off issuinl
statement.  "

Bella sat silently in Griff's BMW as it transported l back to London.

The more questions he asked about R the tenser she became.  Why the heck
couldn't he just take the hint and shut up?

It had been three weeks since she had been dropped the chief superintendent
at her friend's cottage.  Hector packed a case for her and Liz had collected
it covertly from his back door, because the Press had been encamped at front
continuously during those first days after her captc arrest.  She had twice
been collected and smuggled into central London police station where the
evidence again their kidnappers was being carefully stockpiled.  But all t
was over, bar the court case.

Only now did she wonder if it would ever be over.  The Press had ferreted into
her past and published everything her colourful parentage, her cursory
education, her artis talent.  It seemed to her that everyone she had ever known
in life had talked about her to the tabloids--Gramps' neig hours, fellow
students at the college, her tutor, former be friends--bitter and otherwise.

"Frigid', had said one; 'wil, had said another.  I'M STILL I4 LOVE WITH HER,
h screamed the headline given by an ex she barely recall from six months ago.

She didn't recognize the femme fatale the tabloids h depicted her as.

Her every piece of privacy had been ripp from her resistant body.  She had
been invaded, raped 
print and twisted into something she was not, and as far
as she could see there was not a damn thing she could do about it!

"Here?"  Bella gasped when she realised where Griff was planning that they
should dine.

"You'll be broke for six months I' " Will you keep your voice down?  " he
hissed at her, paling to the same shade as his brand-new dinner jacket.

"I can well afford to splash out occasionally."

Only he had never splashed out for her benefit before.  Griff might have
earned a very healthy crust as a partner in a busy legal firm but he was
careful with his cash.  Was he celebrating something--a more than usually
lucrative divorce?

The head waiter looked at her with recognition.  She threw her slim shoulders
back and smoothed her elbow-high black gloves up her arms.

Her figure-hugging black velvet dress could mercifully hold its own in any
company.  A seventies designer original, the colour spectacular against her
wealth of vibrant Titian hair and creamy skin, its deceptively simPle cut
made the most of her lithe, female shape and fabulous legs.

Their table was right in the very centre of the crowded dining room.

"Are we celebrating something?"  Bella whispered, maddeningly conscious of
heads turning in their direction.  Surely not all these beautiful people read
the same rubbishy tabloids?

"I hope so."  Griff gave her a wide, self-satisfied smile as their menus
arrived and he ordered wine in execrable French.

"I don't drink," she reminded him.

He leant almost confidingly closer.

"I believe you'll break that rule tonight."

Just as she was on the brink of questioning the peculiarity of his behaviour,
Bella's attention was stolen.  Griff could have stood up and stripped and she
wouldn't have 
 noticed.  Rico da Silva was in the act of taking a seat at a
table about fifteen feet away.  She froze, her heartbeat slowing to a dulled
thud as if she was being forced to witness a disaster.  And, inside herself,
indeed she was.  For three endless weeks Bella had rationalised away every
single feeling that Rico had inspired in her.  She had blamed fear,
propinquity, hysteria and her own repressed sexuality.  She had lost weight,
endured sleepless nights and stubbornly considered herself cured of emotions
that she refused to rate higher than the level of an adolescent infatuation.

But at the same second as her shocked gaze located him and everyone else in
the room vanished from her awareness, her so-called cure came apart at the
seams.  A hunger so intense that it was agonising clawed at her.  Her
mesmerised eyes roved from his dark head to the soles of his hand-made shoes
and back up again.  Worst of all; she couldn't stop herself from doing it.

"Your wine..."  Griff prodded her fingers with the glass at the same instant
as Rico's dark, restive gaze landed on her.  Bella watched his hard, bronzed
face tauten with something that looked very much like savage disbelief, and
hurriedly she tore her dazed scrutiny from him.

She fumbled for the wine and drank the whole glass down in one go.

"I do realise that you haven't indulged before," Griff reproved, 'but one is
supposed to enjoy the bouquet.  " The waiter was already refilling her glass.
" Now.  " Griff dealt her an expectant look.

"Now what?"

Belatedly she noticed the ring glittering in the palm which he was extending
to her.

"What do you want me to do with that?"  she muttered helplessly.

"I am asking you to marry me," he told her smugly, reaching for her hand.

"You're what?"

Everything happened at once.  A camera flash went off 
somewhere near by.
The head waiter looked shattered.  A man in a dinner jacket, clasping a
camera, raced past.  "Thanks mate!"  he tossed back, apparently at Griff, as
he headed for the exit fast.

"I'm sure you won't mind if we join you."  Open-mouthed, Bella stared
incredulously as Rico, appearing out of nowhere, cooly pulled out one of the
two vacant chairs at their table for the exquisite blonde who was hovering
with an air of unease beside him.

"Sophie Ingram, this is Bella.  Bella, meet Sophie.  Since we are the cynosure
for every eye in the room, we might as well join up, es ver dad

"Es ver dad nothing!"  Bella hissed, recovering her tongue.  "I do not wish
to share a table with you.  You're butting in where you are not wanted--' "
Bella, please," Griff intervened in a shocked whisper.  " If you whisper at
Bella you'll make her shout," Rico murmured flatly, sinking down into the
seat beside her and signalling to the hovering head waiter with an imperious
movement of one hand.

"Now, you are Griff Atherton... Does she accidentally call you Biff from time
to time?  I ask because when we first met it took Bella four attempts to even
recall my name."

"Shut up!"  she bit out from between clenched teeth.

"Bella, please," Griff said again.

"Mr da Silva and Miss Ingram are very welcome."

"Of course we're welcome," Rico drawled with lancing satire, shooting Griff a
look of unconcealed derision.

Bella reached for her glass and drained it for a second time all in one go.

"I'm very sorry about this," Sophie murmured, openly studying the engagement
ring still lying on the linen cloth in front of Bella.

"Wedding bells..."  Rico laughed sardonically.

"If you don't shut up and back off," Bella spat in a shaking undertone,

"I'm going to hit you with that bottle!"


 That would be a first.  " Incandescent golden eyes challenged her, his
strong mouth twisting.

"Another first.  But not one half as enjoyable as the last we shared."

"Excuse me."  It took immense restraint but Bella shakily reached for her bag
and rose from the table.

She reached the cloackroom only seconds before Sophie.  She spun from the
sink her green eyes swimming with tears.  The blonde gave her a wry glance.

"If I could do to Rico what you can do, I wouldn't be crying over it."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Bella said in a stifled voice.

"You're so young."  Sophie sighed, studying her averted profile.

"I

came to bitch but I can't.  It isn't your fault he's about to dump me--he
never stays with anyone longer than a couple of months.  I'm past my sell-by
date and frankly I've had enough.  Rico has been like a stranger since the
kidnapping--' "Has he?"  Bella looked up, all damp eyes and helpless
curiosity.

"He's all yours."  Sophie was extracting several items from her beautiful
beaded bag.

"The card that opens the city apartment, the keys for the main house on the
Winterwood estate and the keys for the Porsche.  He told me to keep it ...
but I don't think I earned that size of payoff."

"I don't want them!"  Bella exclaimed in horror as the items were thrust into
her hand.

"You're planning to marry Biff or whatever his name is?"

"Well, no, but--' " Save Rico the trouble of getting extras cut," Sophie
said very drily.

"You've got it all wrong--' " Good luck.  You'll need it.  He's anti-love,
anti-commitment and anti-marriage.  Sensational divorces leave scars," she
murmured tightly, turning to the door.

"It's just 
a pity that Rico doesn't appreciate that he's not the only one
ever to have been hurt!"

Bella was left holding the keys.  Sophie had shattered her.  She was one very
strong lady .  one very generous lady.  After all, had it once occurred to
Bella whilst in that container that she was playing around with another
woman's man?  Not once.  Maybe she hadn't wanted to recall seeing Rico with
Sophie that very first night, emerging from that hotel, climbing into the
Bugatti.  Suddenly Bella, who prided herself on her principles, saw that she
had sacrificed more than one with Rico, and whether it was fair or otherwise
she hated him for reducing her to that level.

Head high, she walked back to the table, as beautiful and as remote as a
moving statue.  Without looking once at Rico, she dropped the keys and the
card in front of him.

"I want to go home, Griff."

"Hasta la vista, gatita," Rico drawled smoothly.


CHAPTER SEVEN

It HAD taken quite some time for Griff to unload her paintings and
possessions from the BMW.  He was in an astonishingly good mood.  Rico had
known the way to Griff's heart.  He had promised to recommend him to one of
his friends, who was currently enduring the horrors of a broken marriage.

"And once I get those kinds of people coming to me for advice," Griff bored
on,

"I'll be offered a senior partnership."

"Marvellous."  Had he always been this boring, this predictable?  She felt
awful even thinking that, but couldn't wait to escape.

"It could bring our wedding forward by a year or two--' " Say that again?  "
she practically whispered.

Griff gravely outlined his agenda for their future--a three-year engagement,
her discovery as an artist to facilitate the expense, marriage only when they
had left no stone of possible incompatibility unturned and explored.  It was
so very sensible that she wanted to tear her hair out, for this was a man
whom a few short weeks ago she had believed she would marry, should he ask.

Without warning she belatedly recalled the photographer who had shouted his
thanks to Griff before he'd taken off.  "Why did that man with the camera
thank you?"

Griff frowned.

"I told him we would be there."

"You did what?  Were you also aware that Rico would be there?"

"It's his favourite watering-hole, I understand, and I was delighted when he
showed up and joined us.  It was unfortunate that his date chose to take off
early, but there'll be 
no more undesirable publicity once our engagement is
announced in print, complete with photo," Griff pointed out with pride, blind
to the gathering rage and disbelief in Bella's face, he was so patently
pleased with himself.  "But I didn't say yes!"  she hissed.

He took a step back, flinching from her venom.

"The answer is no.  I don't want to marry you.  Not only are you unfaithful,
you are stingy.  You pocketed the ring again... You just couldn't bring
yourself to part with it!"  she reminded him witheringly.

"How dare you call me stingy?"

"And you can take that announcement right back out of the paper again,
because I'd sooner starve than be married to a stingy, manipulative man who
is more concerned with his image at the office than with me!"  Thrusting him
bodily out of the dingy hall, Bella slammed the door on him before he had the
chance to snap his dropped jaw closed again.

She perched on the step one up from the bottom of the stairs.  She was
waiting for Rico.  He would come.  She knew it in her bones.  And she was all
shaken up just thinking about it.  A man who bought women the same way he
bought his shirts.  Sophie had ripped the scales from her stupid eyes.
Anti-love, anti-commitment and anti-marriage.  How could she have fallen in
love with a man like that?

For it was love.  She could no longer lie to herself.  Seeing Rico again
tonight had torn her apart but it had also made her face the truth.  She had
fallen violently in love with a man who bonded with women on an immoral basis
of keys and gifts of expensive cars, a male who might have remarkable staying
power in bed--her cheeks burned--but whose staying power in relationships was
abysmal.  Two months?  Even Bella allowed men to last longer than two months
.  most of the time, she adjusted.  Griff had lasted three, but then he
worked a lot of overtime, she conceded absently.

And what about the sensational divorce?  She should have 
 asked Liz about
Rico's failed marriage.  It was strange that there had been no mention of it
in the papers.  Liz was a walking encyclopaedia on celebrity lives and
scandals.  But then maybe Liz hadn't known, or maybe Liz had just been too
good a friend to mention Rico when Bella had gone to such ridiculous lengths
to avoid referring to him herself.  Poor Liz.  She must have used super glue
to keep her lips sealed on all the questions she'd been dying to ask!

The mechanical Edwardian doorbell shrilled and made her jump.  She unlocked
the door.

"You should have a chain on," Rico grated, striding in.  "Why is this place
in total darkness?"

"Hector doesn't like electricity bills!"

Thrusting arrogantly past her, Rico skimmed a hand along the wall, and
abruptly the great chandelier above blazed into light.  Bella had never seen
it illuminated before and she stared up, wondering how it would look without
the cobwebs.  There was a strangled moan from the landing above.

"Switch that off!"  Hector urged in horror.

"Are you trying to rain me?  Have you any idea how many watts that burns?"

"Switch it off, for heaven's sake ... before he has a heart attack!"

Rico stared up at the thin figure wrapped in the ragged wool robe and mounted
the stairs.

"Mr Barsay ... I am Rico da Silva."  He extended a lean hand with awesome
cool.

Hector pressed his hand to his palpitating chest instead.  "Switch off that
light!"  he pleaded.

Tll pay for it," Rico drawled smoothly, tugging out his wallet and extracting
a crisp note.

"I'm reduced to a shuddering wreck by darkness after my experience in that
container.

My nerves couldn't stand the strain.  "

"Bella has candles--' " Not enough.  " Rico pressed the note apologetically
into Hector's trembling hand.

"And I do understand what a struggle it is for you to survive in this house."


There was no subject dearer to Hector's heart.  He managed a brave smile
while surreptitiously pocketing the money.

"Hector!"  Bella moaned in embarrassment.

"Women don't understand these things," Rico sighed.

"I don't like visitors," Hector snorted.

"But you can stay."  And off he went.

Bella raced upstairs.

"Where do you hang out?"  Rico enquired, shooting an incredulous glance over
the peeling walls and general air of decay surrounding him.

"In the attic with the bats?  No wonder you're off the wall, gatita.  He's as
nutty as a fruitcake."

"How dare you?"  she said, her teeth gritted.

"He can't help being poor--' " Poor?  " Rico burst out laughing.

"He could buy and sell everyone else in this street!  He has a solid-gold
investment portfolio that keeps on raking in the cash year after year."

"I don't believe you--' " He has just about everyone fooled but I checked
him out.   Hector Barsay is stinking rich and he never parts with a penny if
he can help it.   Charities know not to knock on this door.   "

"You've mixed him up with someone else ... you must have done!"

"Where's your lair?"

Stiff-backed, she mounted the second flight of stairs ahead of him and
reluctantly pushed open the door.  He reached for the light switch.

"There's no bulb," she said with pleasure, and then abruptly she recalled her
paintings and spun round.

"We'll go downstairs."

"I wouldn't dream of it.  I've always wanted to see a starving artist's
garret.  Where's the flea-ridden straw pallet and the mousetraps?"  he
enquired, lifting the solid-silver candelabra by her bed and using the
matches sitting beside it.

"Madre de Dios..."  he breathed, surveying the bare room 
 with an emotion
akin to incredulous fascination.

"You will think you have entered paradise when I take you home with me!"

"You're not taking me anywhere, Rico."  She folded her arms.  In the
flickering light from the candles he was a dark silhouette in bronze and
black--lithe and sleek and as graceful as a jungle cat.  Her mouth went dry.

"Even if you can't paint anything other than blobs in primary colours I'll be
your patron," Rico said smoothly.  "And you deserve that I say that to you.
I've learnt more about you in the papers than you ever deigned to tell me."
She flushed.

"And that should tell you something--' " That you like to dramatise .  that
you like to play games?  " He shot the demand at her in fast, fluent French.
" You may not attach too much importance to spelling but you speak French,
German, Italian and Russian like a native, I believe.  "

She tensed even more, her mouth tightening.

"You shouldn't believe everything you read---' " Do you or don't you?  " he
raked at her in German.  " OK .  OK .  guilty as charged!  "

"You described yourself to me as a waitress--' " I'm not ashamed of being a
waitress--' "But you could have been a rocket scientist if you'd wanted to
be!  Your teachers said you were brilliant--' " A slight exaggeration--' "But
bone-idle academically and fixated on art ... and I have this awful suspicion
that you can't paint for peanuts," Rico bit out harshly.

"Hector's the father you never had and you would very much like to walk in
your lousy father's footsteps I' Bella had turned white.  She hadn't expected
such a forceful attack as this.  Rico was so angry.  Why?  Did he think that
she had made a fool of him?  Was she supposed to have reeled off a boastful
list of her abilities for his benefit?

"Clever clogs', the other kids had whispered nastily 
behind her back when
she had been at school.  Bella had learnt the hard way that it was easier to
be average than gifted.

"Biff thinks you're as thick as the proverbial plank; can't understand why
the papers are making up so many ridiculous lies,"

Rico derided.

"His name is Griff and he does not think I'm thick--' '" Exquisite on the
eye, dizzy as a dodo," he told me cheerfully.  He would run a mile if he knew
that you were capable of out-thinking, out-guessing and out-plotting his
every move I' Bella compressed her lips.

"What are you doing here?"

"You were waiting for me," he reminded her smoothly, surveying her with
smouldering golden eyes that burned wherever they touched.

"When I saw you in that restaurant I wanted to put my hands round your throat
and squeeze hard.  Where the hell have you been for the past three weeks?
Why the hell did Chief Superintendent Nazenby treat me like a convicted
criminal who was dangerous to women and refuse to divulge your whereabouts?"

Bella went pink and managed a jerky shrug.

"It didn't occur to me that you'd ask."

"This is not Biff you are talking to ... this is Rico," he growled, moving
forward, his handsome face as hard as iron.

"And I can scent female deviousness a mile away.  I offended your pride at
the police station, and you removed yourself from my radius to let me learn
to appreciate you in your absence.  Then magically you reappeared in my
favourite restaurant with another man--a man all primed and ready to propose
holy matrimony with me as an audience!"

"You conceited jerk!"  Bella slung at him in disbelief.  "You actually think
I would sink to that level to try and trap you?"

"St'..."  He threw her a seething look of condemnation.

"I might respect you more if you simply admitted how calculating you are!"


 How did you get through the front door with an ego that size?  "

"My apologies if I did not rise to your expectation of me throwing a jealous
scene!  I am not the jealous type."

"I'll believe you ... thousands wouldn't," she responded sweetly, recognising
with a kind of savage pleasure that he had indeed been jealous, and ready to
thank him even more sweetly for bringing it to her notice.

"You were rude to me, rude to poor Sophie, and rude to Griff, although it
probably went over his head.  I don't know what I did to earn that... And as
for Sophie, my heart went out to her--' " What heart?  " Rico slashed back
viciously.

"Por Dios ... to see you sitting there holding hands with him!  You got
exactly the reaction you expected--' " I didn't know you would be there!  "
But she knew that she was talking to a brick wall.  Rico was convinced that
she had set him up.  Griff had set them both up, but Rico would not believe
that.  Why?  Because Griff had been so polite that Rico had written him off
as a lame brain.  But Griff would never have risked offending someone as
powerful and rich as Rico da Silva.

"I want to see these famous paintings, not one of which has ever been sold,"
Rico derided, heading for the pile of canvases stacked along the entire
length of the spacious room, 'but which Nazenby considers works of pure
genius.  Infierno!  He probably couldn't tell an old master from a Picasso!  "

"No!"  Bella planted herself squarely in his path.

"And what happened to your terror of the police force?  I did everything
within my power to support you at that police station,"

Rico reminded her rawly, setting her out of his path with one imperious hand.

"And now Nazenby talks about you as though you're part of his family!"

"Face that container and you can face anything.  I'd kept up the fear out of
habit... No, Rico!"

"I want to see them.  You live with Hector Barsay and, 
unless old age has
mellowed him, you have to be accustomed to criticism."

"Why is it so important for you to see them?"  she wailed in distress.

"Why is it so important for you to prevent meS' " They're private,"

she muttered tightly.

"An artist whose every work is private--how thought-provoking," he drawled
nastily, flipping back the first canvas.  .

"Hector says I'm not ready to be shown yet.  He thinks my interpretation
needs a lot more work ... more maturity," she proffered unsteadily, voicing
her supposed flaws in advance.

The silence went on and on.  She clutched her hands together, as nervous as
someone watching her children jaywalking across an accident black spot.  Rico
shone the candelabra on about half a dozen, slowly moving from one to the
next.  Nothing could be read from the taut lines of his dark features.
Expelling his breath, he straightened, but he was still studying an oil of
children playing in the mud round a lorry.

"You paint your childhood," he breathed tautly.

"Not all the time."

"Hector is not only a miser, he's a liar.  He wants to hold onto you, es ver
dad His own discovery.  He can't let you go.  He hid away from that world out
there years ago, and if he encourages you to exhibit he knows he'll lose
you!"  Rico sent her a shimmering glance, his expressive mouth compressed
into a strangely bloodless line.

"You have extraordinary talent and you cannot possibly require someone like
me to tell you that."

"You like them?"

He set the candelabra back by the bed and stood there, watching her with
hooded dark eyes.

"I'm in shock and you know it.  Why are you working as a waitress?"


 It pays the rent.  I paint in daylight, work at night.  I get fabulous
tips--' "I can imagine."

"The hours suit me."

"Biff told me you were a catering supervisor, not a waitress--'
Spontaneously, Bella laughed.

"He would say that!"

 "With me you'll be what you are--an artist--' Bella stilled.

"I won't be with you, Rico.  Never again," she swore shakily.

"No more games, gatita mia."  He strolled fluidly across the bare boards.
Even the way he moved, the effortless grace of that lithe, powerful body,
shook her to her very depths.  He took out his wallet and extracted a cheque.
"Where did you get this money?"

When Liz had collected her clothes she had also collected the one valuable
possession Bella had--a small oil of her mother, painted by her father.  Liz
had taken it to a top art gallery and sold it for her.  She would have made
more at auction but she had been desperate to dissolve what she'd seen as her
last tie to Rico and settle the debt.  The canvas had fetched enough to cover
the repairs to the Bugatti and the Skoda.

"That's my business."

"What did you do?"  he asked, indulgently amused.

"Tell Hector you were about to be dragged off to prison?"

"It was my debt.  I paid it without anyone else's assistance," she stressed
proudly.

"I don't want it.  In fact, I refuse to accept it."  Rico tore the cheque in
two and let the pieces fall like a statement of intent between them.

Tll just have to get another one.  " In bewilderment she stared at him.

"That was your money--' " Lovers don't have debts between them," he purred
lazily.  " And if you hadn't smashed up the Bugatti I would 
 N

never have met you.  In retrospect it seems a very small price to pay for the
amount of pleasure you've given me.  "

Feeling the atmosphere thicken, Bella took a jerky step in retreat.

"Less than a month ago you were going to take me to the police--' " No.  I
changed my mind in the lift on the way down to the car park .  I was taking
you home instead," Rico drawled with rueful amusement.

"I wouldn't have gone!  And would you really have done that to Sophie?"

A winged brow elevated.

"What would it have had to do with her?"

Bella threw him a look of distaste.

"She was living with you at the time ... or did you think I hadn't worked
that out yet?"

"Sophie had keys for convenience.  She never lived with me.  I haven't shared
a roof with a woman in the past decade.  Live-in relationships can get very
messy and possessive--' " And with a two-month limit on your interest it
really wouldn't be worth the effort?  "

"You're talking to me about track records?"  Rico threw back his dark head
and laughed with a forbidding lack of humour.

"What about yours?"

"Mine?"

"You are one flighty lady if one half of what I read is true, gatita mia."

"I am not flighty--' " No .  I'll clip your wings, chain you to the bed when
I'm out, take you with me when I go abroad, employ only ugly old men.  " He
watched her with mesmeric intensity and then he smiled--a brilliant smile of
unconcealed triumph.  " Then again, I'm really not that worded.  Out of all
those men I was the only one you slept with, es ver dad

Outraged by the blazing confidence with which he surveyed her, she said,

"That wasn't how you felt at the time."  i 
"I'd never made love to a virgin
before.  You took me by storm."  Rico spread his smooth brown hands with
expressive amusement.

"I had to escape to fully appreciate what an enormous compliment it was to be
selected out of a cast of thousands to make the grade."

"I think it's time you left."

"Only if you come home with me.  Don't bother packing.  I'll send someone
over to clear this place tomorrow."

Her nails cut purple crescents into her palms.

"Are you asking me to live with you?"  she whispered tightly.

He winced.

"Do you have to be so precise?  I suggest we spend a month together and take
it from there."

"You said live-in relationships get messy and possessive," Bella reminded him
doggedly.

"That is a risk I'm prepared to take--' " Briefly," she inserted, thinking of
the month he had designated.  Not much of a risk at all.

'--to have you in my bed again," he completed shortly.  " And that is all you
want?  "

A spasm of raw impatience flashed across his set features.  "The generation
gapes ver dad Have you ever heard of subtlety?

Infierno .  what the hell am I doing here?  "

"When you only came to insult me?  I'm wondering too."

He glowered at her in disbelief.

"How have I insulted you?"

Bella was starting to shake with rage and reaction, much of which, she
acknowledged, stemmed from bitter disappointment.  "You offer me a month's
trial in your bed as if you're some sultan talking to a little harem slave
and you don't think that's an insult?"  she spat with unashamed contempt.

Rico merely shrugged and looked levelly back at her.  "What have you got to
lose--Biff and the ring he put back in his pocket?"  he mocked.

"Maybe..."

"I won't ever offer you a ring, gatita mia.  If that is your 
goal, settle
for your tame little solicitor and suburbia," advised, his lip curling.

Inside herself she ached.  Had she had the faintest sin pi cion that Rico
cared for her, she might have settled the month's trial in the hope that it
might develop into: something more.  That awareness shamed her.  How rules
did you break before you began to hate Every rule she broke as far as Rico
was concerned shavedl away her self-respect, and without her pride she would
be weak.  She was an all-or-nothing person.

"Since you've been so.  frank I'll match you."  She walked away, working up
the courage to do so, her beautiful deeply troubled, tiny little shivers of
high-wire tension rippling through her.

"I grew up with instability, with mother's love affairs, her broken hearts,
her her humiliations.  I will not live like that.  I saw how treated Sophie
tonight--' " Sophie and I were not lovers.  "

Bella stared at him in shock.

"Sophie acted as my hostess.  We probably would become intimate," he
admitted, 'but then you and I kidnapped and everything changed.  "

"Everything changed'.  Yes, everything had changed for Bella too.

Within the space of less than thirty-six hours the entire course of her life
had been altered.  Bonds had formed, emotions unleashed and her every
desperate attempt to put the clock back had failed.

"It was over before it ever began between Sophie and me.  This evening she
invited herself," Rico revealed grimly.  : "Even so, you didn't give a damn
about her!"  Bella accused, recalling his complete detachment from the other
woman, knowing that there would be a day when she would earn a similar lack
of interest.

"I'm worth more than that."

"You should have kept that in mind, querida ... before you offered yourself
to me.  That was your value, not mine."

Bella flinched as though she had been struck.  She was 
in love with a total,
irredeemable swine.  Cleo's bad taste paled beside this demonstration of raw
masculine arrogance.  She refused to lower herself to the same level.

She thrust her head high.

"I won't do it.  I need more."

"You want marriage."   Rico dealt her a look of supreme derision, but at the
back of that derision lurked a simmering pool of explosive rage.

"I said I wanted you.  I didn't say I was down on my knees and certifiably
insane!"

"I didn't say I wanted marriage!"  she gasped strickenly.  "You don't need
to.  You could spell it out in fireworks above my bank and it would be less
obvious than what I see in your face!"  he bit out with sudden viciousness as
he strode forward and closed hard hands round her forearms before she could
retreat.

"I was right all along.  You had your price all right.  But it's not a price
I would even contemplate, and you have to be bloody naive to imagine that I
would be that desperate!"

"I never mentioned marriage!"

"In the next breath you were about to mention children, no doubt," he scorned.

"Madre de Dios..."

"I love them!"  Bella flung at him, losing her head.

"I also want a large fluffy dog and a cat and a pony for them.  So take
yourself off, Rico!  Go find a bimbo to audition for the honour of sharing
your precious bed!  And if she amuses herself on the side with your gardener
or one of your security men you will only be getting what you deserve!"

"Por Dios ... you may have an IQ higher than my credit rating but you are
unhinged."  Rico swore furiously.

"No normal woman would speak like this to me!"

"I'm ashamed I ever let you touch me.  I'll be scrubbing myself clean for a
month!"  she shouted back.

"How dare you come here into my home and talk to me as if I'm some sort of
glorified whore?  Was I going to get a Porsche as well?"

"Driving lessons," he raked down at her, his dark head 
lowering.

"Putting you behind the wheel of a Porsche would be like putting an arsonist
in a barn!"

"Don't you dare!"  she warned, shaking like a leaf as scent of him washed
over her, as the taut, muscular angles of his hard body met in direct
collision with hers.  "You're gasping for it too."

He kissed her and the world fell away and everything else soared to an
ungovernable height of excitement.  He closed his arms around her so tightly
that she couldn't breathe, but she didn't want to breathe.

Dizzy and disorientated, she clung to him, lost in the devastating plunge
into passion, her heart racing, her pulses throbbing, every muscle taut with
a hunger that dominated and controlled.  Heat surged into her loins, making
her thighs tremble against the aroused thrust of his manhood.  He swept her
up in his arms and then dropped her on the ancient feather mattress from a
height.

"You're a pushover, querida."  He stared down at her, his hard-boned features
grim and derisive.

"And you will crawl for that month's trial before I am finished with you!"
he stated chillingly.

"Push off, you bastard!"  Bella shrieked, her voice cracking.

"And you will stop using language like that," he hissed in outrage.

"If you want me to treat you like a lady, talk like one!"

"You wouldn't recognise a lady if you fell over one!"  she sobbed, out of
control with rage and self-loathing.

"I hate you, Rico!"

The door closed.  She thumped the pillow with clenched fists.  She hadn't
buckled.  She had been tempted but she hadn't buckled, hadn't surrendered.
Why then didn't she feel better?  Why had the sound of that door closing
filled her with dread?  But she knew why, didn't she?  He had left her alone
again and, for a charged instant, she didn't believe that she could bear the
emptiness that stretched ahead without him.


CHAPTER EIGHT

'"A COMPLETE gentleman" ," the journalist repeated woodenly, disappointment
emanating from her in waves.  It might have been an exclusive interview but
the content was not of the salacious variety guaranteed to titillate.  "
Absolutely," Bella stressed.

The woman coughed.

"I understand there was only one bed--' " Mr da Silva slept on the floor.  "

"Mr?  You mean you didn't even get on first-name terms?"

"I think of him as Mr da Silva," Bella muttered.

The brunette sighed.

"He's so gorgeous... He looks so... sexy."

"Looks can be deceptive."

"He sounds about as exciting as cold porridge."

"He did take his jacket off and give it to me to keep me warm when we were
escaping!"  Bella rushed to assert, fearful that she had overdone her efforts
to silence press speculation.

Hector was sitting in the kitchen over a cup of tea.

"The paparazzi will vanish tomorrow when that interview is published," Bella
told him with forced cheer.

"The phone will stop ringing and the doorstep will be clear again.  Our lives
will return to normal."

"You should never talk to journalists.  They twist things," he warned her.


Bella cleared her throat and surveyed him "Rico said you were stinking
rich..."

Hector choked on his tea.  She had to bang him on the back.  It was five
minutes before he stopped spluttering.  "Absolute rubbish!"  he swore weakly.

"But maybe you have a few savings ... just for a day?"

He looked distinctly cornered and shifty.

"It's " And maybe you could afford to put on a few li and then.  If you have
a fall in the dark at your age," pointed out gently, 'it could be serious.
Gramps was the same after his tumble down the stairs.  The shock an awful lot
out of him.  And then there's the Hector.  They're a fire hazard."

"I'll think it over," he muttered, looking grey at the pictures she had
painted.

"You're not thinking of out, are you?"

"Where on earth would I go?"  she laughed, seeing fear.

Hector sighed.

"I meant to say to you last night but I asleep... I used to know da Silva's
father, Jolo.  He had tremendous art collection.  Old money, of course.  the
son made such an idiot of himself, but then young people do..."

Bella frowned at him and then sat down "You're talking about Rico?"

"I was living in Spain then.  Must be easily ten years he mused.

"His divorce case was plastered all over newspapers out there.  He had
married some totally able female.  She was an actress or some such thing.
had a string of lovers.  There was a young child as well--' :!  " A child?  "
she broke in helplessly.

"It wasn't his child.  I remember feeling very 
the family, and particularly
for the boy, having all that dirty washing dragged out.  Ghastly."  Hector
shook his head expressively, shooting her a troubled glance.

"Not an experience I should think he came through unscathed.  These days he
seems to have more of a reputation as a womaniser."

Bella was shaken by what Hector had told her.  A failed marriage she was
already aware of but this was something else entirely.

"The Press went over my life with a fine-tooth comb ... how come they didn't
pick up on his marriage?"

"It happened in a different country.  He's just been lucky."

She lay in bed that night mulling the bare facts over.  By the sound of it
Rico had been badly burnt.  And at what age--twenty-one?  He couldn't have
been much older.  The same age as she was now.  But Rico might well have been
far more vulnerable.  Growing up in a rich, privileged and happy family did
not necessarily prepare you very well for the darker side of life and the
people who used and abused you.

In fact money had probably made him more of a target.

He had told her so much but she just hadn't been listening carefully enough.
That very first day, when he had quite unreasonably accused her of flaunting
herself and trading on her looks, he had also called his attraction to her 'a
sick craving'.  Right from the outset Rico had fought to deny that
attraction.  Heavens, did she remind him of his ex-wife?  She recalled his
preoccupation with the possibility of consequences.  "The honey trap and then
the price'... Had it been a shotgun Wedding?

Whatever the circumstances, Rico had been betrayed and humiliated, and just
thinking about that made Bella's heart go out to him.  She was a soft touch.
She couldn't help it.  Her fury with him from the night before evaporated.
For all she knew the suggestion that she live withhirn for a 
month--an
invitation that he had denied ever offering to any other woman--had been a
courageous stab at what had felt like a mega-commitment on his part.

On the other hand, it could equally well have been a deeply basic indication
of how highly he valued the sexual passion they had shared.  Beneath those
beautifully tailored suits lurked one very passionate male, no matter how
hard he tried to hide it.  And he did have a sense of humour.  Anyone who
could handle Hector without batting an eyelash deserved applause.

He wasn't remotely intimidated by her intelligence either and even in a rage
he had been capable of eating his own words and admiring her paintings.  He
even fitted Gramps' yardstick of eligibility--good education, stable family
background, steady employment.  And she loved him.  It was a shame that he
had gone ballistic when she'd mentioned the large fluffy dog, the cat and the
pony.  Rico did not want children.  Still, you couldn't have everything.

And right at this moment you have nothing, she reminded herself in
exasperation.

Griff rang her mid-morning the next clay.

"Bella ... it would have been kinder to hit the guy with the bottle in the
restaurant!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Your exclusive interview ... priceless, absolutely priceless.  Let's do
lunch tomorrow.  You really should be wearing my ring.  It was too late to
stop the announcement and I know you didn't mean what you said,"

he asserted.

Bella dropped the phone as though she had been burnt.  Half an hour later she
was standing in a news agent s, learning that Hector had spoken truly when
he'd said that you shouldn't talk to journalists.

Rico had been labelled as a boring stuffed shirt, a male so inflated with his
own importance that he hadn't even allowed her to call him by his Christian
name, the implication being that he was a raging snob.  There wasn't even a
mention of his taking his jacket off .  probably because it might have made
him sound human.

Bella cringed, cursing her own stupidity.  She checked her watch.  She had
agreed to work a rare lunchtime shift at the restaurant.  In her break she
would get on the phone and apologise to him.  It had never crossed her mind
that anyone could turn their ordeal into sheer comedy, or that so unjust a
picture might be drawn.  If she had been able to choose a fellow victim out
of a million names, she would have chosen Rico every time.  She could have
wept.

Gaston's was choked to the gills with customers.  Serious foodies ate there,
studying the yard-long menu with blissful intensity.  Bella was loaded with
empty plates when she noticed a curious lull in the level of quiet
conversation.  She turned her head, saw Rico and simply froze.

"What were you paid for that character assassination?"  he blazed at her down
the length of the entire dining room.

Her staggered gaze clung to him.  The tiger had escaped again.  Rico in a
rage.  He strode across the floor in two long, lithe strides, indifferent to
the turning heads, the buzz of conjecture.

"How much?"

he breathed in a tone that quivered with fierce emotion.

There was a look of savage betrayal in his brilliant dark eyes.  She couldn't
bear it.  It cut her to pieces.  She forgot she was holding the plates.  They
dropped with an almighty crash.  She barely noticed.

"Nothing..."

"You hate me that much?"  he shot at her from between clenched teeth.

"No ... no," she whispered, on the brink of tears, appalled 
that he had
taken it so badly, making the worst possible interpretation of that foolish
interview.

"I do not appreciate being lampooned in print.  It was a pack of lies!"  he
condemned with raw distaste.

"All I was trying to do was get rid of the reporters ... they were upsetting
Hector," Bella muttered frantically.

"And regrettably we're everywhere you look," a wry voice added from a nearby
table in what just might have been a friendly warning.

Exhaling his breath in a sudden hiss, Rico surveyed her, his dark gaze
chillingly cold.  In the space of a moment he had switched from seething rage
to black ice, his strong face clenched hard, his mouth twisting.

"I had you taped from the beginning.  No pay, no play.."  es ver dad he
murmured in a derisive undertone.

She had never played poker but she caught his drift.  cheeks burned.

Her lashes swept up on her anguished eyes.  "It's not like that..."

"It's over," Rico drawled with lethal finality, and swung away.

Every skin-cell in her body vibrating with raw Bella watched him stride
towards the exit.  And she that if she let him go she would never see him
again.  nervous paralysis gave.  Tearing the chintzy apron round her waist,
she flung her hovering boss a ogy and took off after Rico.

He was already climbing into the limousine waiting the kerb.  As she raced
across the pavement he stilled and straightened, one lean hand planted on the
door.  dark eyes hit her in near physical assault.

"What now?"  demanded "I'll play ... I mean--' gritting her teeth, cursing
her skin as it heated, she sealed her lips again and sucked oxygen '--I'll
move in with you."


His gaze narrowed, sliced even deeper into hers, tension tautening his set
features.

"You surprise me--' " Well, you'd better not surprise me," she warned
fiercely.  " You'd better treat me right!  "

Sudden vibrant amusement banished his stasis.  He reached for her in one
supple movement and pulled her to him, his hands splaying across the swell of
her hips as he looked down at her.

"You won't regret it, I promise you," he assured her huskily.

"If you don't shift this car you're going to get a ticket," she muttered, her
heartbeat thundering in her ears as her gaze collided dizzily with his
smouldering golden eyes.

But he lowered his head to hers, one hand skimming up her back to wind into
her tumbling hair.  Their lips met slowly, almost hesitantly, and she
trembled, the amount of emotion she was holding back flooding through her in
powerful waves.  With a ragged groan he forced her closer and took her mouth
with a sudden, explosive hunger that made the ground fall away beneath her
feet.  Her hands closed round him convulsively, holding him to her.  And she
knew then that when the time came to walk away it would rip her apart.

The limo got a ticket before it rejoined the slow-moving traffic.

Bella looked at Rico, every pulse still racing, her heart pounding.

It was the first time in her life that she had made a decision that already
felt like a foregone conclusion.

A part of her feared the devastating strength of what he could make her feel.
Reason hadn't powered her change of heart.  She had reacted on instinct and
she was still in shock because of it.  He had walked away from her.  It had
cut her in two, forced her into compromise.  But she was painfully aware that
she was entering the relationship with needs and expectations that Rico might
not be able to meet.


"I'm flying to Tokyo in the morning for a three-day conference.  You can
come with me," he murmured smoothly.

And Rico might also have needs and expectations that she might not be able to
meet, Bella registered abruptly.  She wasn't some little bimho, ready to drop
everything to become a twenty-four-hour handmaiden, programmed to serve with
a smile and satisfy every masculine demand.  "I'll be working--' " Por Dios.
" he gritted in disbelief.

"Waiting tables?"

"After the number of plates I broke and my departure at the busiest hour of
the day, you can forget that," she said ruefully.

"No.  I'll concentrate on my painting for a while."

 "Then you can come to Tokyo," he asserted forcefully.

"And what am I going to do with myself all day while you do whatever you do
at the conference?"

"Shop," he retorted impatiently.

"I am not that heavily into shopping, Rico."

"Naturally I will be paying the bills."

"When I said that I would move in with you I somehow missed out on the fact
that you planned to pay me for my services."  Bella shot him a furious look.

"I am not going to be a kept woman!"

Rico treated her to a fulminating stare, visibly hanging onto his temper.

"I was not aware that I used that designation."

"You didn't need to," she said tightly.

"Basta ... so I go alone!  Leave it there!"  he ground out with raw bite,
patently dissatisfied and ant agonised by her response.

He just doesn't know any better, she told herself painfully.  He was
accustomed to having his own way with her sex.  Sophie hadn't been offered a
Porsche for acting as his hostess alone.  He might not have slept with her
but it had been a pay-off.  She hadn't earned it, the blonde had said

bluntly.  Bella's nostrils flared with distaste.  If Rico knew what was good
for him, he would keep the financial aspect out of their relationship.  Bella
might not be rich but she considered herself his equal on every other level.

"Where are we going?"  she asked abruptly.

"My estate ... I'm taking you home with me."  Rico's mouth compressed.

"Don't tell me ... you have an objection to that as well?"

"If you want to rescue a stray, try Battersea Dog's Home I' " What the hell
is the matter with you?  " he suddenly exploded.

"I just don't like being taken over as if I'm some sort of cypher!"

She swallowed hard, feeling the dismaying sting of tears in her eyes.

"Look... this--' " Maybe now that you appreciate that the dog, the cat and
the pony will be neither required nor appropriate you're having second
thoughts!  " he grated in a tense undertone.

"I seriously doubt that I'll be with you long enough for it to become a
pressing problem!"  Bella was angered and embarrassed at having her own words
thrown back in her face.

He went rigid, his jaw-line squaring.

"Don't miscalculate and make it one."

Bella paled.

"I wouldn't do something like that!"  She was shocked by the suggestion that
he thought she might.

Abruptly Rico muttered an imprecation and released his breath.

"How can I even say that to you after the risks we ran a few weeks ago?"

he murmured drily.

"Let us face facts; we are fortunate indeed that you are not now pregnant."

Bella bent her head, suppressing an urge to tell him that she was only now
expecting the confirmation that their passion was to have no further
consequences.  Why worry him 
unnecessarily?  It wasn't as if she was worried
that that confirmation would not arrive.  It was extremely unlikely that
conception could have taken place at that time of her cycle, she reminded
herself, and it was precisely because of that unlikelihood that she had not
allowed herself to spend the past three weeks anxiously fretting.

"Becoming a father is not one of your ambitions, I take it."

"No, definitely' not on my agenda.  A complication I will happily do
without."  His bronzed face was shuttered, taut.

"How did we get onto this subject?"

"You started it."

"Come here..."  With a slightly twisted smile, he stretched out both hands
and drew her closer.

"If this feels like a big step to you, gatita, it feels just as big to me,"
he confided almost harshly, studying her from beneath thick ebony lashes.

"If I get it wrong sometimes, try to make allowances."

Her tension evaporated.  He hadn't found it easy to make that admission and
she loved him all the more for making it.  Asking her to live with him had
been a very real commitment on his terms, she registered, a relieved feeling
of contentment enclosing her, smoothing over the ragged edges of her nerves.

"You've been trying to take me home with you ever since you met me,"

she whispered.

"With a notable lack of success," Rico murmured thickly, tugging her
relentlessly across the space that still separated them, dark eyes firing
gold.

"But you're very persistent."

"And if I say please...?"

"The world's your oyster," Bella affirmed, barely able to think straight that
close to him.

He linked his arms around her but he tilted his head back, 
narrowly
appraising her.

"You have stars in your eyes, ga-rita.  That worries me."

"You have a fear of being trapped.  That worries me even more."

"Why did you talk to the Press?"  he enquired flatly, ignoring her sally.

"I told you why.  I just wanted to bring it all to an end.  And I thought
that if I made it clear that nothing happened between us they would leave me
alone--' " So you lied.  "

"I could hardly tell the truth!"  But she flushed, her eyes troubled, her
mouth faintly mutinous.

"OK ... I lied."

"Don't ever do it again.  Don't lie to me and don't lie about me,"

Rico told her with level emphasis.

"In fact don't talk about me at all.  What is between us is private."

"I know that!"

"This one time I give you the benefit of the doubt and I forgive you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He surveyed her with cynical dark eyes.

"Bella... I'm not a fool.  I can add two and two.  Less than forty-eight
hours ago you handed me a cheque for a considerable sum of money.  Today the
article appeared.

Obviously you were paid for that interview.  "

She sprang back from him in consternation.

"That money came from the sale of a painting!"

Rico elevated an ebony brow, clearly unimpressed.

"I don't have you on a pedestal, gatita.  So you don't need to worry about
falling off one.  I don't expect perfection but I do expect honesty.  Who
would pay that much for the work of an unknown artist?"

"It wasn't one of my paintings!"  she flared back at him, both angered and
hurt by his lack of trust in her.  She would not even have considered
accepting money for talking 
about him to the Press.

"It was one Ivan did of my mother--' " Qud dices?  " Rico interrupted,
abruptly jerking up out of his lounging position, his attention fully
arrested.

"And, before you ask me why I didn't think of selling it that day I came to
the bank to tell you I had no insurance, I'll tell you why,"

Bella said tightly.

"I forgot about it.  I've had it all my life.  It didn't occur to me until a
few weeks ago that it was a valuable asset which could be sold."

His incandescent golden eyes bored into her.

"You sold a painting of your mother by your father.."  to pay me back?  Are
you crazy?  " he launched at her.

Bella blinked at him in bewilderment.

"What else could I do?"

"Where was it sold?"  he demanded.  "What does that matter?"  "Where?"

She told him.

"If it's already been sold, you'll only have yourself to thank!"  he shot at
her furiously after he had instructed his chauffeur to head for the art
gallery.

"Por Dios ... you don't need to take lessons on how to make me feel bad!"

"I owed you money.  It had to be repaid somehow."

"We were lovers!  What do you think I am?"  he blazed back at her.

"A

debt collector?  "

"You are in banking," she retorted helplessly, infuriated by the reaction she
was receiving.  Selling that painting had been a considerable sacrifice and
she resented the assurance that it had been an unnecessary one.

"And if you think that I was content to believe that just because we had
briefly shared a bed I no longer needed to worry about the fact that I owed
you thousands of pounds you don't know me at all!  I also had to cover the
repairs to Hector's Skoda--' Rico said something incredibly rude about the
Skoda, 
 We don't all slink about in status-symbol cars!"

Bella hissed.

"Why did you tell your driver to go to the art gallery

"If the painting's still there, naturally I will buy it back for you."

"You buy that painting, it's yours," Bella warned him fiercely.

She sat in the car fuming while he was in the art gallery, having flatly
refused to accompany him.  If he hadn't been so damned suspicious and
cynical, he would never have known where she'd got the money from!  A debt
was a debt.  She didn't want it written off.  Maybe the money didn't mean
much to Rico but it was the principle that mattered.

He swung back into the car and he wasn't empty-handed.  He settled the small
canvas on her lap.

"Here ... take Mummy back," he said very drily.

Bella squinted down at Cleo's familiar features.  Her throat ached but she
was stubborn.

"I told you I wouldn't accept it."

"Madre de Dios..."  Rico bit out with raw impatience.

"I

could shake you until your teeth rattle!  "

" What did you pay for it?   "

Grudgingly he told her.

"They saw you coming.  You were ripped off.  It isn't one of Ivan's best."

Rico stabbed a button and the window beside him purred down.

"I'll just chuck it out, then, shall I?"

A lean hand closed with purpose round the frame.  Involuntarily Bella's gaze
clashed with smouldering golden eyes and she gaped.

"You'd do it, wouldn't you?"  Her fingers curved protectively round the
disputed article.

"You drive me crazy sometimes."  He slung her a fulminating glance and buzzed
up the window again.

And sometimes he shook her rigid.  He would have 
thrown it out.  He had
called her bluff and Bella was not accustomed to having her bluff called.
She had finally met her match in temper and tenacity.  For the first time she
was in a relationship where she was not the dominating partner.

"Are you planning to pay me rent?"  Rico enquired smoothly.

"Don't be ridiculous!"

"But I sense that money promises to be a bone of contention.  If we were
married would you feel like this?"

"Of course not," she said, and then wished she hadn't.

"Illuminating... Clearly I have to suffer for not offering that band of
gold," he murmured sardonically.

She ignored the crack about the wedding ring, barely trusting herself to
speak.

"Shut up, Rico..."

"Maybe I should," he conceded silkily.

"Maybe this is one of those times when you need to make allowances for me."

Bella was seething.  She gritted her teeth.

"This promises to be a deeply challenging relationship.  I'm used to having
my own way," he volunteered unapologetically.

"Tell me something I don't know."

Silence fell.  She got lost in her own thoughts.  She studied Cleo with far
less judge mental eyes than usual.

"I go with my feelings," her mother had said.  And that was exactly what
Bella was doing with Rico, had done with Rico even in that wretched container
when they'd first made love.  No wonder that emotion-driven surrender had
filled her with turmoil.  Bella always liked to know where she was going.
She liked important things cut and dried.  But now she had a future in front
of her that was a giant unknown.

She surfaced from her introspection as the limousine 
 purred through tall,
electronic gates and up a long, winding drive--the Winterwood estate, she
gathered, scanning the great sweep of landscaped parkland with curious eyes.
In the early summer sunlight of late afternoon the setting was idyllic.

"Do you like the country?"

Bella shrugged a narrow shoulder, struggling not to gape as a vast ancestral
pile in stone swam into view round the next bend.  It was a magnificent
house, designed with all the grace and understated elegance of the eighteenth
century.  The limousine swept up onto the gravel led frontage and even the
soft crunch of the wheels somehow sounded filthy rich.  She moistened
suddenly dry lips, quite overpowered.  What the heck was she doing here with
him?

She was wearing a denim skirt with a carefully frayed hem and a T-shirt.  She
had no make-up on.  Her hair was all mussed--his fault.

And there he was, immaculate as usual, all sleek and sophisticated in a
pearl-grey suit that fitted like a glove and screamed expensive tailoring.
They were the original odd couple.  If she lost him at a party, she would be
thrown out as a gatecrasher.

The chauffeur opened the door.  Bella stepped out, feeling more and more as
though she had stepped into Brideshead Revisited.  And then she saw the rose
beds and grimaced.

"What's wrong?"  He sounded incredibly anxious, as if he was primed to her
every move and change of expression.

"Rico, roses are supposed to riot, not march in lines like soldiers.

That looks like council planting at its worst.  " Then she flushed.

"Sorry, that wasn't very polite of me."

He smiled at her.

"I don't expect you to be polite--' " Thanks for the vote of confidence.  "

"What I meant was..."  he placed an arm around her narrow back 'you just say
what you think.  It's a very unusual trait in the world I move in--' 
"Sure,
you know loads of dreadful people who have tact and good manners!"

"I like your honesty.  It disconcerts me from time to time," he murmured,
'but I find it very attractive.  "

"Why are you being so nice all of a sudden?"  she asked suspiciously.

"This is going to be your home.  I want you to relax here, not behave like a
guest," he asserted.

"I thought'I was only here to visit for a month."  "Bella!"  he grated.

"Sorry, was I being disconcerting?"  She chewed at her lower lip.

"But you know you have to be up front about things like that.  At the end of
the month we put our cards on the table and if it's not working out--' " We
try harder," he slotted in fiercely.

Bella had been about to conclude that she would move out with no hard
feelings .  at least, none that she would show.

An elderly little man in a dark suit was awaiting them below the imposing
pillared entrance.

"Good evening, Mr da Silva ... madam."

Bella very nearly went off into whoops of laughter.  Dear God, he had a
butler, a real live butler!  Her mouth wobbled.  "This is Miss Jennings,
Haversham."

 "Miss Jennings."

"H-Haversham," she acknowledged, her face frozen as she fought back her
giggles.

Rico walked her into a huge, echoing, tiled hall.  She felt like someone on a
National Trust tour--a member of the paying public, programmed to gawp.  She
trembled and reckoned that she was winning until a voice said from behind
them,

"And what time would you like dinner to be served, sir?"

That was it.  Bella went off into gales of laughter.

"Sorry!"


she gasped, bending over and hugging her aching ribs as amusement bubbled
out of her convulsed throat.

"Seven," Rico told his butler in a strained tone.

"Are you going to share this joke?"  he asked as the stately footsteps of
Haversham retreated.

"Definitely not.  You wouldn't appreciate it."  Wiping her damp eyes, Bella
pulled herself together with difficulty.  "Try me."

"I thought butlers died out around half a century ago."

"Haversham came with the house," Rico told her very seriously, as if he was
excusing himself for possessing one of a dying breed.

Bella shook her head, vibrant hair flying like flames round her shoulders.

"Rico ... this is another world for me."

 "And you don't like what you've seen of it?"   She grinned.

"No, I'm fascinated."

"Would you like me to show you around?"

Standing there in the stray patch of sunlight arrowing through a tall
sash-window, he looked so good that she couldn't take her eyes off him.  Six
feet four inches of spectacular masculinity.  Visually she adored every
extravagantly gorgeous inch of him, her heart accelerating like a racing car
screeching round a bend at a hundred-plus miles an hour.  She felt her
breasts stir and swell inside the cups of her bra, helplessly struggled to
fight the electric tension that was wantonly taking her over.

"Bella..."  he murmured unsteadily, his shimmering golden eyes suddenly hotly
pinned to her.

Emboldened by the discovery that he could look helpless too, Bella smiled,
all female.

"Turned very coy all of a sudden, haven't you?"

There was nothing coy about the manner in which he grabbed her, and there was
nothing cool about the manner in which he kissed her breathless halfway up
the fabulous 
staircase.  She wound her arms round his neck and let him carry
her.

She wasn't sure that her own legs were up to the feat.

He kicked the door shut on a wonderfully elegant bedroom, decorated in
eau-de-Nil with accents of pale gold.  He brought her down on the canopied
bed and she laughed again, a slim hand stretching up to flick playfully at an
exquisite hand-made tassel.

"Who did your decorating?"

"My sister, Elena:' " She has style .   but only a sister would have put you
in a room this feminine.   " She kicked off her shoes.

"You look incredibly beautiful," he breathed, his gaze roaming intently over
her as he came down on the bed beside her.

Bella reached out and caught his silk tie, drawing him down to her, drowning
in the slumbrous glow of his eyes.  Their mouths connected, clung, and she
went weak, letting her head fall back again.  He followed her down, pr ising
her lips apart with the tip of his tongue, ravishing the moist interior that
she opened to him with a ragged groan.

She pulled his jacket off, tore at his tie, and as he fought his way out of
his shirt let her palms smooth up over the warm, hard wall of his muscular
chest, her fingertips teasing at the dark whorls of hair in her path.  With
an earthy growl he brushed her hands away, thrust her T-shirt up and found
her breasts.

It was her turn to gasp and quiver as his expert fingers pushed up her bra
and tugged at her engorged nipples.  Her back arched in a blinding wave of
intolerable excitement.

"You have the most exquisite breasts," he breathed, grazing her swollen lower
lip with his teeth.

"So sensitive..."

His dark head swooped and seized a rose-pink bud.  Her blood pressure
rocketed sky-high.  She dug her hands into his hair, driven nearly mindless
with the hot, drugging plea 
sure.  She went out of control without a murmur,
her heart slamming against her ribcage, every nerve-ending raw with sensation.

He ran a hand up the length of one slim thigh, ruthlessly wrenching her skirt
out of his path.  Their mouths met again in a torturously hungry mating, and
she was shaking, trembling, her hips shifting upwards in a primitive rhythm,
all consciousness cent red and driven by the erotic brush of his fingers
skating over the taut triangle of cloth still dividing her from him.

She burned and panted for breath as he tugged the briefs away and discovered
the damp, hot secret of her desire.  Intolerable excitement held her in its
grip.  Suddenly he was pushing her back, shifting over her, unexpectedly
stilling when she was poised with anticipation on the furthest edge, every
nerve ready to scream with frustration.

"Don't stop!"  she gasped.

She felt his hands, roughly impatient on her thighs, and then, with a
suddenness that stole her breath away, he thrust into her hard and deeply.
An ecstatic cry escaped her, wanton in the depth of need it expressed.  She
stretched up, kissing his throat, licking the salt from his skin, adoring
him.  But he pushed her back, arching over her like a primitive god,
demanding absolute control, thrusting harder and faster, filling her again
and again with the driving force of his manhood.  The tension exploded inside
her and she jerked like a doll under him, her teeth clenching, a wild,
excited cry torn from her as the waves of violent pleasure engulfed her.

Lying shattered and winded in the circle of his arms, listening to the ragged
edge of his breathing, she was conscious of a surge of love so intense that
it hurt.  She rubbed her cheek sensuously against his sweat-dampened shoulder.

"Dios ... we didn't even get our clothes off."  Rico 
stretched luxuriantly
against her.

"I planned a romantic dinner, champagne--' She wrinkled her nose.

"Predictable."

"Life is not very predictable around you," he conceded lazily, and withdrew
from her.

Belatedly she understood that pause before he'd possessed her.  He had been
protecting her.  Birth control.  She brushed a hand abstractedly over her
breasts, conscious of a slight ache that was' new to her experience.  It had
translated into an intense sensitivity when he'd touched her.  She tensed,
the sudden memory of a pregnant friend complaining about the soreness of her
breasts flying through her head, jolting her.  No, next door to impossible,
she christened the fear which followed.  Any day now she would know that she
was all right.  With determination she pushed the concern back out of her
mind.

Without warning, strong hands settled beneath her as Rico scooped her up into
his arms.

"Why so serious?"  he murmured curiously.

"Me ... serious?"  Bella forced a laugh, emerald-green eyes fastening on him,
cold fear burrowing up momentarily inside her.

"I was miles away."

"I want you here," he told her, setting her down in the beautiful en suite
bathroom and peeling her T-shirt off.  She reddened.

"I can take my own clothes off."  "I want to take them off."

"You think I'm a doll or something?"

"It's an excuse to keep my hands on you," he breathed.  "And right now I
would settle for any excuse."

Her gaze colliding with lustrous dark eyes, she stretched up and linked her
hands round his strong brown throat.  She felt dizzy with happiness, and
generous.

"You don't need an excuse," she whispered with all the natural warmth that
lay at the core of her temperament.


"Tomorrow will come too soon.  Tokyo..."  Rico murmured.  "I'll send Kenway
in my place--just this once."

And then he covered her mouth with erotic precision, his hands buried in her
hair.  It was a long time before they made it into the shower.


CHAPTER NINE

"THEY belong to my sister.  They should fit."

Bella surveyed the riding gear with concealed amusement.  "I could wear my
jeans."

"You'll feel more comfortable in these.  Jeans can be very constricting,"
Rico informed her.

"You're planning for me to look impressive round your stables?"  She looked
at him with mockery.

"I intend to teach you how to ride."

Of course, far be it from Rico to ask if she could already ride.  He
specialised in making assumptions.  But then it was encouraging that he
should want her to share a pastime which he obviously enjoyed.

Obediently sliding into the borrowed outfit, she watched him out of the
corner of her eye and wondered where the past two days had gone.

Time was already slipping through her fingers like sand.

They hadn't made it down for dinner that first night.  They had picnicked
like starving adolescents at the kitchen table in the early hours.  The next
morning she had insisted on going up to London to see Hector and supervise
the removal of her possessions.  She had wanted to leave her paintings behind
but that had provoked an argument, so she had given way.  Rico had already
had a room cleared for her to use a studio.  Filled with natural light, it
was an artist's dream, and if there was such a thing as inspiration, she
reflected wryly, Winterwood would surely provide it.

Although not according to Hector.  Bella's cheeks as she recalled his
reaction to her chosen change of abode.  He had been shocked, unhappy and
dismayed.  In all 
ness, what other response could she have expected?  Hector
was of a different generation.  But seeing his disappointment in her had
upset her.

"If he cared about you he'd want to marry you," he had told her sternly, and
she had bitten her lip and refused to argue.  Only time would tell whether
Rico cared or not.

"Come closer."  Rico beckoned with an imperious hand.

"Horses sense fear.  It makes them nervous."

"You think I'm afraid?"

"Why else would you be standing so far back?"  Arrogantly he took her hand
and showed her how to become acquainted with the velvet-nosed bay mare that
was shuffling restively on the cobbles while a groom saddled her up.

"Sheba's a little fresh.  I'll put you on her in the paddock ... on a leading
rein."

"Gosh ... it looks a long way up," Bella twittered, striving to look Scared.

"I'll be with you.  You'll be fine.  Dios ... I told him I wouldn't be
riding," he bit out impatiently, only then noticing that the other groom had
already tacked up the glossy grey stallion on the other side of the yard.

And I told him you would be, she thought.  Grasping Sheba's reins, Bella
planted a foot in the stirrup and mounted up in one smooth movement.

Halfway across the yard Rico swung back.

"Bella!"  he yelled, clearly thinking that she was being recklessly daring to
impress.

"Last one over the fence is a wimp!"  she called over her shoulder.

Sheba was fresh all right.  Given her head, she took off like a bullet out of
a gun, racing for the fence.  Bella gloried in the wind tearing at her hair
and the speed.  It was over a year since she had been on a horse.  She heard
the thunder of pursuit and grinned.  Next time Rico would ask whether 
or not
she could do something before he told her she was going to learn.

Sheba sailed over the fence like a champion and galloped across the rolling
parkland.  Rico's stallion thundered past and was reined in on a rise beside
a clump of massive oak trees.  Sheba was slowing down by then.  Bella let her
trot the last hundred yards.

Two long strides carried Rico to her side as she slid down off the mare's
back.

"Sorry ... but I couldn't resist it."  Her spontaneous smile lit up her whole
face as she turned to him.

Her smile lurched and died as Rico closed angry hands round her forearms.

"Don't ever get on one of my horses again without a hard hat!"  he seethed
down at her.

"I never wear a hat."

"You will... If you don't, you don't ride," he spelt out flatly, pale beneath
his golden skin.

"And only an idiot would jump a fence like that on a strange mount!"

"Or an idiot who asked the groom first how she performed.  He told me she
jumped like she was on springs."  Bella looked up at him, into still grim
dark eyes, and groaned.

"I gave you a fright.  I'm sorry."

"Where did you learn to ride?"

"Well, not in a paddock on a leading rein."  She threw herself down on the
lush grass and turned her face into the sunlight.

"Cleo had friends we sometimes stayed with.  They had horses.  I was crazy
about them.  And Gramps kept stables-' " Stables?  "

"Boarding, riding lessons, all that sort of stuff."  She linked her hands
round her raised knees and stared down the rolling slope into the distance.

"The business went bust when I was nineteen.  He broke a hip while I was at
college.  He could've asked me to come home but he didn't.  By the 
time I
realised how bad things were the bank was calling in his loan.

All he needed was a little more time but they pushed him to the wall.  "

"I gather you tried to persuade the bank otherwise."

"A waste of my breath."  Bella grimaced.

"And when the horses had to be sold Gramps just gave up.  He didn't own the
stables.  He had to move out into a council house in the village.  It killed
him."

"Why do you blame yourself?."

Bella tensed, unprepared for someone saying out loud what she had often
thought.

"I could've stopped it happening."

"How?"

"I could've run the place for him until he got back on his feet."

"But he obviously didn't want you to drop out of college, gatita.  And what
business experience did you have?  Why blame yourself when you lost your home
as well?"

"Fiddlesticks," she said, with a wry curve to her expressive mouth.

"A little tub of an elderly Shetland pony called Fiddlesticks.  I was more
upset about him being sold.  Silly really--I mean, he was only a pet.  I was
far too big to ride him."

Rico tugged her back against his chest.

"Dios ... loath as I am to admit it when you have been showing off, you're a
terrific rider."

His breath stirred her hair, the familiar scent of him blissfully enveloping
her.

She felt at peace in Rico's arms and that worried her.  At peace was the last
thing she ought to have felt around him.  This was an interlude for him.  It
wouldn't last.  He didn't even want it to last.

He wanted a passionate affair and an open door to freedom at the end of it.
No strings, no complications, no recriminations.  He had made that
resoundingly clear.


She felt mean and she acted accordingly.

"Tell me about your ex-wife."

The strong muscles in his arms drew taut.

"What do you want to know?"

"Her name ... that would be a start."

"Margarita."

"And then maybe you could tell me why you're so bitter," she dared.

"I am not bitter."

"Do I remind you of her?"

"Not at all.  She was small, black-haired, blue-eyed."  "Beautiful?"

"Stunning."

"You could ease up on the superlatives if you like," she told him.

"So how did you meet?"

"A nightclub.  She was an actress but I had no idea how ambitious she was.
In fact I never really knew her at all," he admitted flatly.

"I

was twenty, she was two years older.  I didn't know the difference between
love and sexual obsession.  At that age everything feels so intense.  When
she told me she was pregnant I married her.  "

"Yes," she whispered softly.

"Once he was born, Margarita dropped any pretence of wishing to be a mother
and went back to the film world," he said drily.

"I tried very hard to make the marriage work.  Everyone had told me I was
making a mistake.  I was determined to prove them wrong ... and I trusted her.

"Even when I found her in bed with another man I didn't realise that he was
one of many.  She would have slept with anyone capable of furthering her
career.  She was drunk that night.  She told me how many others there had
been.  The next morning she moved out and moved in with her producer.  I
instigated the divorce..."

"What else could you have done?"  Bella leant her head 
back against him,
understanding all that he had left unsaid.  He had been used, kicked in the
teeth and dumped.  She waited for him to mention the little boy again,
realised that he hadn't even referred to him by name, and also that he had
not told her that that child had not been his.

"Margarita made it a battle, and she revelled in the publicity until it
turned on her," he drawled.

"Her career no-se dived after the divorce.  Nobody came out of it happy."

Had he still been in love with his ex-wife?  His grim intonation suggested
regret to Bella.  Regret for what?  She wanted to probe deeper but resisted
the temptation.  She knew that she would drag it all out of him eventually.
But now, she sensed, was not the time.

"But I learnt a lot from Margarita," Rico murmured with satire.

Nothing good, Bella thought.  He didn't trust women.  He was always looking
for ulterior motives.  He didn't believe in permanence.  And marriage for him
had been a destructive trap from which he had gained nothing.  But one truth
he had spoken.  He had said that he wasn't bitter and on that count she
believed him.  He had come to terms with that part of his past.

Why, then, did she sense that there was a whole lot missing from what he was
telling her?  He had glossed over the subject of the child.  But then he
wasn't that fussed about kids anyway, was he?  In a marriage as bad as that,
and as short-lived, it might well have been a relief not to be linked to his
ex-wife by a tie as unbreakable as that of a child.  "What did you learn?"

He settled back on the lush meadow grass and looked down at her, scanning her
vibrant face with glittering dark eyes.

"That I don't have to get married to enjoy myself.  That what we have here,
now, is far more exciting than being welded together by an empty contract
full of promises destined to be broken.  If we stay together it will be a
free and uncomplicated choice--' " Nothing's that uncomplicated.  "

"Trust me ... I trust you," he breathed, lowering his dark head.

"I

know you took a risk on me.  I know this wasn't your dream.  This has to be
the first time in my life that a woman hasn't wanted anything from me but
myself.  "

"And I'm only after your body, so you can feel safe."  With an appreciative
grin he slid a hard thigh between hers, pinning her in place, studying her
slumbrously from beneath the thick veil of his black lashes.

"When you look at me like that you fill me with uncontrollable lust, gatita
mia."

"But then that doesn't take much," she muttered, dizzily drowning in his
intent gaze as he shifted fluidly against her, letting her feel the hard
thrust of his arousal.

Bella was down at the stable yard one morning when she was told that a visitor
was waiting to see her.  Returning to the house, she stilled in the doorway
of her studio, taut with disbelief at the sight of a complete stranger calmly
leafing through her paintings.

"What are you doing?"  she demanded sharply.

"Who are you?"

The man straightened, seemingly unaware of his offence, and crossed the room.
He extended a polite hand.

"Dai Matheison ... Rico asked me to pay you a visit next time I was in the
area."

Rico had asked him?  Bella's face froze.

"The Matheison Gallery, right?"  she murmured, mentioning the prestigious
gallery with distinct coolness.

"Try not to hold it against me."  Shrewd blue eyes read her taut facial
muscles.

"Rico didn't tell me you were coming."  She wanted to leap up and down with
sheer rage and embarrassment.  How 
dared Rico humiliate her like this?
Unknown artists did not receive personal visits from the owner of the
Matheison Gallery.

"Between you, me and the gate post," Dai Matheison said drily,

"I

didn't want to.  But if what I have so far managed to see is a sample of your
work Rico did us both a favour.  I'm doing an exhibition in late September.
I'm willing to include you if you're interested.  "

Her teeth gritted.

"Thank you but I don't thi---' " Rico may be a friend, but don't insult me by
assuming that I would issue such an invitation on that basis alone," he cut
in smoothly.

"If I didn't think you were worthy of my gallery's reputation, Miss Jennings,
God Himself would not persuade me otherwise."

Bella reddened, sharply disconcerted.

"I--'

He handed her a card.

"Call me if you're interested and don't leave it too late.  I need an answer
soon."

"Mr Matheison, I'm sorry--' " Not half as sorry as I am.  " He smiled with
rueful amusement.  " I was looking forward to shooting Rico down in flames.
But after what I've seen here I shall have to grit my teeth and say, Thank
you for the tip.  You're even more talented than he said you were.  "

He was gone before she could gather her wits again.  In one explosive stride
she reached the nearest phone and dialled Rico's private number.

"Did you remember to call the caterers?"  he asked straight off, reminding
her about the party he was planning to hold in a fortnight's time.

"Yes.  Dai Matheison has just been here!"  There was a moment of silence.
"And?"  he responded calmly.

"And nothing, Rico!  How dare you do that to me?"

"I have other contacts."


"Stuff your bloody contacts!"  she hissed.

"If you know, he's willing to show me, but that's not the point--' " That was
exactly the point," Rico interrupted with un hidden satisfaction.

"You had no right to interfere."

"You and your giant insecurity complex were likely to avoid the issue into
the next century," he informed her.

"So I took care of it for you."

His lack of remorse only inflamed her more.  In all her life she had rarely
felt so mortified as Rico had made her feel.

"You humiliated me," she condemned shakily.

"And if you can't see that, then there's not a lot of hope for us!"

"Be brief, Bella," he sighed, refusing to take her seriously.  "I have two
diplomats waiting to see me."

"I make my own breaks.  I don't need you to pull the strings for me.

Dai Matheison didn't want to come here.  He thought he was coming to see your
little bimbo's etchings--' "Now he knows differently," Rico returned with
exasperated unconcern.

"Tell me, is there a point to this howling melodrama?  You should be grateful
I had that amount of faith in you.  I told you I'd be your patron--' " You
just can't accept what I give!  " she accused in stark distress.

"You're not happy unless you think you're paying for what I do in bed!"

"Bella, no man in his right mind would pay for this.  I'll call you from
Edinburgh."  The assurance was icy cold.  The phone went dead.

Throwing herself face down on a sofa, she burst into floods of tears,
shocking herself.  She felt out of control, desperately hurt, desperately
confused.

They had been together for three and a half wonderfully happy weeks.

But sometimes she got scared; sometimes she admitted to herself that
temperamentally she was not cut 
out for a relationship in which she could
not say openly, honestly, I love you.  She guarded her tongue more and more.
It had become harder to keep up the free-and-easy sallies that demanded
nothing, asked for no reassurance, never mentioned the future.  And all of a
sudden Bella knew that she was facing up to the reality of their relationship.

Rico didn't want any more from her.  He wanted her passion, not her love.
She felt like somebody squeezed into a box that was becoming suffocating.
Holding her emotions back didn't come naturally to her.

The longer she held them in, the more dangerous they felt: On the surface
everything was fine but underneath she was always waiting for the ice to
crack and plunge her into the icy water of disaster.

She rubbed absently at her aching breasts and then realised what she was
doing.  What on earth was wrong with the stupid things?  Maybe it was the
weight she was putting on--too many regular meals, too much rich food.  It
was time she went to a doctor.  But look on the bright side, she reflected;
at least you weren't pregnant.  Not that she had had much literal proof to
the contrary, but a few tiny spots of that very light period had released her
from her growing anxiety.

As she sprang upright a wave of dizziness left her lightheaded.

Stress, she decided.  Rico was bad for her nerves.  Stupid of her to start a
row on the phone, though, especially when he wouldn't be coming home until
tomorrow.  But then she had had every right to be angry.  Rico had no right
to ride roughshod over her wishes.  Maybe he was keen to make her more
socially acceptable, she thought bitterly.

His live-in partner, the artist .  no longer an undiscovered talent.

Face it, she conceded abruptly, you're really hurt that he didn't invite you
to Edinburgh.  It was so ridiculous too.  Couldn't she bear him to be out of
her sight for even twenty-four hours?  But whereas three and a half weeks
ago, 
feeling as she did now, she would have cheerfully and spontaneously
invited herself along the same period had reduced her ability to be that
bold.  Being careful was inhibiting.  She snatched up a piece of charcoal and
her sketch-pad and drew a caricature of Rico, complete with grinning bimbo on
his arm, festooned in jewellery that resembled chains.

So they had had a fight.  Fights were not infrequent, she had to' admit.  How
had she ever thought they had nothing in common?  Her mouth twisted.  Both of
them were stubborn, quick-tempered and bossy.  But neither of them was prone
to holding spite.  They were both crazy about horses and they spent an awful
lot of time together without ever getting bored.  It had been like a
honeymoon--two people wrapped up in each other to the exclusion of the rest
of the world.  She would keep that thought to herself.  She was well aware
that he was 'throwing the party to introduce her to his friends.

Late that afternoon Haversham announced a second visitor.  Bella looked up
from the magazine she had been somewhat sleepily studying and was astonished
to see Griff bearing down on her.

"Getting in here is like getting into Fort Knox," he complained grimly.

"And as for getting the phone number ... forget it.  That is highly
confidential information!"

Bella stood up with a frown.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm not here by choice."  He sighed.

"Look, if Hector had had a note of the phone number I wouldn't be here--' "
Hector?  "

"My boss is Hector's solicitor."  He reminded her of the connection through
which they had met.

"I'm afraid the old boy's had a heart attack."

Bella stared at him in mute horror and swayed sickly.  "Steady on."

Griff pushed her back down on the seat she 
had vacated.

"You're really fond of the old buzzard," he muttered in surprise.

"He's not dead but he's not too good from what I understand."

Afterwards Bella could never recall that drive to London with Griff.

She spent the whole journey spinning between awful guilt and simple prayer.
Had it been her decision to live with Rico which had prompted this?  She had
only seen Hector twice since then and he had still been trying to persuade
her to leave Rico.

"He is seventy-eight," the sister in Intensive Care told her quietly.

"If he's still with us in the morning, he has a chance."

"I thought he was only about seventy," Bella mumbled thickly through her
tears.

"You can sit with him for a while.  You're the only person he asked for."

"I'll wait out here," Griff said resignedly.

She had forgotten about him.  Awkwardly she turned to thank him for driving
her to the hospital.

"But don't wait for me.  I won't leave until ... well, until I see how it
goes," she completed tautly.

Hector looked so frail, so shrunken lying in the railed bed.  She covered his
hand with hers, willed him to feel her presence, and sat there, gripped by
the awareness that she had been far closer to Hector than she had ever been
to her grandfather.  Hector had understood her in a way her mother's father
never had.

In the early evening Hector's solicitor, Mr Harvey, arrived.  He gave her the
keys to the house and mentioned, with a cloaked look, that if Hector made it
out of Intensive Care he would be moved to a private room, and then to a
convalescent home.  Those were Hector's wishes as laid down by him in the
event of serious illness.

"He'll hate that."  Bella sighed, refusing to believe that 
Hector would not
live to see those wishes carried out.  "What about his relatives?  Why aren't
they here?"

"Hector didn't want them told," the solicitor admitted.  "But I have informed
them.  They said that they would keep in touch with the situation by phone."

It was a very long night.  Around dawn Hector opened his eyes on Bella and
smiled.  Then, after weakly squeezing her hand, he drifted away again.  She
bought herself breakfast in the cafeteria.

She needed sleep.  Accepting that reality, she caught a bus back to Hector's
house.  She was in the act of wearily climbing the steps when a hand came out
of nowhere and snatched the key from her grasp.  She spun round.

"Rico!"  she gasped in consternation, pressing a hand to her palpitating
heart.

"What a fright you gave me!"

He unlocked the door, pushed it back and thrust her inside.  Slamming it, he
rested back against it and released his breath in a hiss.  His eyes were
slivers of raw gold condemnation in his dark, set face.

"You little bitch," he muttered raggedly.

"I beg your pardon?"  Reeling with exhaustion and shock at his sudden
appearance, Bella slumped down on the stairs and focused on him with dazed
eyes.

"Por qud ... why?"  he slammed at her with un hidden agery.

She could feel the violence in him, coiled up tight' like a cobra ready to
strike.  He was struggling to contain it, on the edge.  Her brain was moving
in slow motion, could not yet comprehend what on earth was the matter with
him.  "Rico ... I--' " Don't try to lie to me!  " he grated with vicious
bite.  " You've been out all night.  You're still wearing the clothes you had
on at breakfast yesterday.  Madre de Dios, I trusted 
you, I actually trusted
you!  But I make one wrong move and you react like a whore--' "A whore?"  She
framed the words with the greatest of difficulty, scrutinising him with wide,
incredulous eyes.

Outraged by her lack of response, Rico reached for her with hard hands and
hauled her uptight.

"You thought I wouldn't find out, es ver dad he seethed down at her in a
blaze of fury, his diction destroyed by the thickness of his accent.

"You would've told me that you came up to see Hector and stayed the night
here.  If I hadn't seen you coming back this morning I wouldn't have known
that you had been with Atherton all night!"

The penny finally dropped with Bella.  Her stomach heaved with nausea.

"The butler talked," she said with heavy irony.

"He told you that I left Winterwood with Griff."

As Rico released her with a vicious burst of Spanish she slumped back down
again, feeling really ill.  That Rico could believe for one second that she
could be that treacherous, that disloyal and that cheap filled her with
shrinking distaste.

When she spoke it was more like talking to herself than to Rico.

"I

meant to phone last night and leave a message for you but I was so upset that
I forgot.  It didn't even occur to me that you would distrust me to this
extent .  that you could.  Dear God.  " Bella groaned, staggering uptight on
a wave of nausea more powerful than any she had yet managed to tide out and
heading blindly for the sanctuary of the downstairs cloakroom,

"I've been sleeping with a stranger... '" I kiss'd thee ere I kill'd thee,"
she mumbled in a daze as she yanked open the door.  '" He was a gentleman on
whom I built An absolute trust.  "

"Othello and Macbeth," Rico growled in incredulous recognition.  His
bewilderment and frustration unconcealed, he simply stood there glowering at
her.  The phone started ringing.  Neither of them paid it any heed.

To the accompaniment of the phone shrilling, Bella just managed to shut the
door before she was horribly sick.  As someone who had always rejoiced in an
iron digestive system, she was shaken by her own bodily weakness.  Afterwards
she clung to the sink and rinsed her mouth out.  At least the phone had
finally stopped.

The door opened.

"Go away," she said thickly.

"The phone," Rico breathed tautly.

"It's some cousin of Hector's.  He wants to know what hospital Hector's in...
He's waiting for an answer."

Bella swallowed hard and gave the answer, then listened dully to him
concluding the call.

"How bad is it?"  Rico murmured even more tautly.

"Dios, you look terrible--' i He was a quick study.  Reasoning had returned,
suggesting the real explanation for her overnight absence.  Bella wished that
the call hadn't come.  She would have left Rico to stew in his own vile
assumptions.  He didn't deserve to be let off the hook this quickly and this
easily.  This was the male she had sacrificed her dreams for, the male she
had burnt her rule book over and where had it got her?

Maybe exactly where she deserved to be.

"Bella, Hector's not...?"

"No, he's still hanging in there."  As she spoke he attempted to curve an arm
round her.  Jerking dizzily away and grabbing hold of the banister, she
gasped,

"Leave me alone!"

Ignoring her demand, Rico closed his arms round her from behind.

"Forgive me," he said tightly.

She was too physically weak to fight him.

"Why can't you just go?

I've been at the hospital all night and I'm not 
in the mood for you or any
of this.  It's probably my fault he's in there in the first place!  " she
completed with a stifled sob, her hand flying up to her wobbling mouth.

"It couldn't possibly be your fault."

"He was upset when I moved in with you!"  she slung at him shakily.

She heard him expel his breath.

"Oh, just go away," she mumbled, barely able to stand, she felt so faint.

"I'm not leaving you like this.  I'll take you back to my apartment--' " I'm
staying here.  "

Rico swept her up into his arms.

"You're not well.  You can't stay here alone.  You should be in bed."

"Someone should be here to answer the phone--' " Not you in the condition
you're in," Rico spelt out.

He carried her out to the limo and there was nothing she could do to prevent
him.  All her concentration was bent on holding back the sick wooziness that
was afflicting her.  She would be all right once she had a couple of hours'
sleep but she could not understand why her body was letting her down so
badly.  Had she caught some bug?  Worse, could she have put Hector at risk by
sitting with him?  She had never felt so drained in her entire life.

When they reached the spacious apartment Bella crawled straight into bed.
She had nothing to wear.  Rico produced a silk pyjama jacket which she donned
in silence.  He said that he had called a doctor--a friend of his in the
private sector--who had consulting rooms just down the street.  Dully she
nodded, relieved to notice that her nausea was beginning to recede.

"Maybe it was something you ate," Rico suggested stiltedly.

She said nothing.


He sank down on the foot of the bed, searching her pinched profile.

"Bella ... we'd had a row," he reminded her in a tense undertone.

"When I heard you'd gone off with Atherton naturally I was disturbed."

"The senior partner in Grill's firm is Hector's solicitor.  He put Griff in
charge of informing me about Hector's heart attack.  Griff had to drive all
the way down to Winterwood because he couldn't find out the phone number."

"How could I have known of that connection?"

"It doesn't matter.  I haven't given you any grounds for thinking that I
would behave like a tart," she muttered tightly.

"I'm not your ex-wife and I won't take the heat her."

"I made a mistake," he acknowledged tautly.  Bella felt horribly confused.
Deep down inside she that she was going to forgive him but somehow she just
couldn't bring herself to tell him that yet.

Loving someone who did not love you was an unrewarding road to humiliation,
she reflected miserably.  distrust had bitten deep, hurting her badly at a
moment when she was already straggling to cope.  With Rico she had no
defensive shell, and part of her deeply resented vulnerability.  She wanted
to make him suffer and she ashamed of that fact.  How could you try to punish
for not loving you?

"Two mistakes," Rico adjusted flatly in the continuin silence.

"I

shouldn't have asked Dai to call.  But it seemed such a waste--all those
fabulous paintings piling up.  I'm proud of what you can do with that brush.
"

His weight left the mattress.  Bella curved her face the pillow, tears
stinging her eyes.  What a bitch she She was in the act of stretching out a
forgiving hand when she heard the door open, the murmur of an unfamili voice.
The doctor had arrived.


He told her to call him George.  He had one of those wonderfully round faces
which instilled good cheer.  Rico had barely left the room when Bella found
herself sitting up and reeling off her symptoms with the subdued irritation
of someone who was rarely ill.  She submitted to an examination and answered
one or two questions which struck her as highly irrelevant when she was
suffering from a stomach disorder.  But no doubt George knew his business
better than she did.

"You're pregnant," he finally delivered very quietly.  Bella changed her mind
about him knowing his business.  "No way," she told him, with a forced laugh
at such an insane diagnosis.

"Bella, I'm a consultant gynaecologist," he returned gently.

"And if I'm wrong I ought to be back in medical school.  First pregnancies in
particular carry unmistakable signs.  You are at least two months pregnant."

"But I had a--' she began jerkily.

He explained that sometimes what he described as a partially suppressed
period could occur.  Bella went into cold shock while he talked to her about
not pushing herself too hard and taking proper rest.

"Don't tell him!"  she begged abruptly.

He reminded her of patient confidentiality and she apologised, so shattered
by what he had told her that she could hardly think straight.  He paused at
the door, clearly troubled by her reaction.

"Bella, Rico's very fond of children.  You should see him with mine,"

he said ruefully.

So Rico liked other people's children.  What did that mean?  Feeling weak,
she lay down again.  Her hand slid down unsteadily to her still flat stomach.
She struggled to accept that there was a baby growing inside her--a baby

conceived weeks ago while she had been convincing herself that no such
conception could take place.

She had been as foolishly naY ve as an uninformed teenager, she realised.
There was no such thing as a fail-safe time to make love.

There was always a risk.  And Rico had ironically been far more concerned by
the possibility than she had been .  probably because it was the very last
thing he wanted to happen.

The door opened.

"George was very cagey," Rico said impatiently.

"It's just a stupid stomach upset--probably that breakfast I ate at the
hospital," Bella volunteered, and forced herself to turn over and meet his
enquiring gaze.

"I'm glad it wasn't anything that could have put Hector at risk of infection.
Now all I want to do is sleep."

Just looking at Rico suddenly tore her heart in two.  She searched his
strong, dark face, read the relief there, and knew she deserved an Oscar for
her performance--but then it was wonderful what fear could do.  It sharpened
the wits and in the short term chose deception over honesty.  She wasn't
ready yet to share such devastating news, was already wondering how she would
ever bring herself to share it.

"I'll go back to the hospital in the afternoon," she added, dropping her head
back down on the pillow as if she were i too exhausted to stay awake.

She closed her eyes, knowing that it would take a miracle for sleep to
overcome her now.  For it was over--she and) Rico--over, finished, destroyed.
Fate had had the last laugh: of all.  Secure in the belief that there was no
question of her being pregnant, Rico had been brutally frank.  A baby was a
complication he did not want.  She told herself that she was lucky to know
his true feelings on the subject.

Who 
could tell how he might have felt forced to react if she had discovered
that she was pregnant a month ago?

Certainly he wouldn't have felt disposed to offer marriage, but he might well
have felt that sensitivity demanded that he conceal just how appalled he was
by the news.  She didn't want pretences like that between them.  Honesty was
always the best policy, but oh, God, how it could hurt sometimes.  She drove
back the pain consuming her, calling herself a coward.

Their affair would have burnt out on his side anyway sooner or later.

Now it would just happen sooner and she would be the one to make the break.
She had no choice.

Just as Cleo had once made Bella welcome--a child unplanned and unsupported by
any man--Bella would do the same for her child.  It was that simple.  But she
felt horribly guilty.  How could she have been so reckless?  Whenever she had
thought of becoming a mother she had always believed that the event would
take place within a stable, loving relationship.

By three in the afternoon Bella was up again under her own steam.

Incredibly she had dozed off.  She showered and changed into the fresh
clothes which she had flung into an overnight bag the previous day at
Winterwood.  Physically she felt much better but inside herself she felt dead.

She had woken up with the knowledge of what she had to do.  Break it off,
finish it .  get it over with!  Hector's illness and her argument with Rico,
which now seemed so pitifully unimportant, had supplied a natural break.
When she came back from the hospital this evening she would tell him.

Since she had assumed that he was back at the bank, it was a shock when Rico
strode out of the drawing room as 
she was heading for the hall.  She froze,
shielding her startled eyes with her lashes.

"You were in the shower when I came to wake you up.  How do you feel?"

"Fine now," she said stiffly.

"I've ordered a light meal for you."

"Thanks, but I'm--' " Bella, be sensible.  " He pressed her into the dining
room where a place for one was already laid at the gleaming table.

"You have to try to eat something.  Hector's fine, by the way.  You don't
need to rush."

His manservant appeared out of nowhere and a beautifully cooked omelette was
slid in front of her.  Her hands trembled as she reached out for the knife
and fork.

"I thought you'd be at the bank," she said once the man had gone.

"I took the afternoon off."

She couldn't eat; she just couldn't eat.  She replaced the cutlery again,
studied the table with anguished eyes and then cleared her throat.

"You remember we decided on seeing how it went for a month?"

she whispered in a rush.  "Well, it's not working for me any more and I think
you must feel--' " Eat before I force-feed you," Rico broke in, as if he were
talking to a difficult child.

Bella stood up and backed away from the table.

"Rico, listen to me,"

she muttered tightly, crossing her arms and turning away from him, unable to
stay still.

"This is nothing to do with those stupid arguments we had.."  please believe
that.  But sometimes a crisis makes you see more clearly--' "You're so blind
right now, gatita," Rico interposed in the same indulgent tone, 'that you'd
fall over your own feet.  Our relationship has nothing to do with Hector's
heart attack.  "


"That isn't what I was going to say!"  she protested, in so much turmoil
that she couldn't even keep her voice steady.  Involuntarily her look clashed
with steady dark eyes and she hurriedly averted her gaze again.

"The point is... The point is," she repeated doggedly, 'that two months ago
we were kidnapped, and in the grip of that trauma sex got involved and--'
"Sex got involved the first time I laid eyes on you," he proffered without
shame.

"The trauma of being kidnapped had nothing to do with it."

Bella ignored that.  She didn't trust herself to look at him, couldn't afford
to be tempted.

"What I realise now is that we sort of became dependent on each other in that
container, and I don't want to be dependent any more.  I want my freedom
back."

"I might be more impressed if you looked me in the face and told me that," he
drawled with derision.

Bella looked up, blocked him out, a terrible pain scything through her.

"It's over.  I'm sorry but that's the way it is."

"You are one lousy liar," Rico said grimly, crossing the room in one long,
menacing stride.

"What the hell is going on here?"

Before he could reach her Bella dived for the door.  In seconds she was out
of the apartment and into the mercifully waiting lift.  She made it out onto
the busy street at speed.  Sobs were tearing at her convulsing throat.  She
dashed her hand across her streaming eyes, devastated by the force of her
emotions.  Then she drew in a deep, slow breath and walked on down the street.


CHAPTER TEN

AN HOUR later Bella was sitting by Hector's bedside with the fixed expression
of someone in shock and striving to hide it.  He had already been moved out
of Intensive Care and into a private room.  But while she had been asleep at
the apartment Rico had visited him.

"Absolute nonsense for you to think my dicky heart had anything to do with
your love life," Hector was telling her in reproof.

"I had an attack three years ago, as you very well know.  As for you and
Rico... well, times have changed and he seems very fond of you--' " Fond of
me?  "

"Why else would he invite me to Winterwood to convalesce?"

He s done what.  she squeaked, shattered by the news.  "I must say I'm really
looking forward to seeing the house again."  He sighed fondly.

"When it belonged to the Cliffords in the fifties I was a regular visitor
there--' " But I thought you were planning on a convalescent home?  "

"Rico told me what that would cost."  Weak as he was, Hector all but
shuddered in recollection.

"How clever... I mean, how conscientious of him to have found out for you,"
she managed with the greatest difficulty.  "But I could look after you at
home if you like."

"Not with that showing at the Matheison Gallery coming up.  I wouldn't dream
of it."

Bella's nails dug into her palms like talons.  Ten minutes with Hector had
sent her from utter despondency to sheer 
rage.  Rico had trussed her up like
a goose ready for the oven!

Perfectly well aware that their relationship was in deep water, he had
ensured that it would be virtually impossible for her to move out.  Hector
was positively looking forward to a break in the country which would cost him
not a penny and where he would be waited on hand and foot.

How could she now announce that she had broken up with Rico?  That was no
longer the news which she had innocently imagined would cheer Hector up.
Indeed, she had the hideous suspicion that Hector, who liked very few people,
had decided to make an exception of Rico.

As he drifted off to sleep he was mumbling about what ingenious ideas Rico
had on the enthralling subject of reducing expenditure and making the most of
a small income.  Fit to be tied, Bella stalked out of the room.

She found Rico standing in the small waiting area at the end of the corridor.
He watched her striding towards him with supreme cool.

"You devious toe-rag!"  she launched at him from ten feet away.

'"A slippery and subtle knave," Rico murmured smoothly.

"Don't you dare quote Shakespeare at me!"  she hissed in fury.

"How could you use an old man like that ... how could you?"

"If you don't lower your voice, I shall treat you exactly as if you were the
child you are choosing to emulate," he drawled in a whiplash tone.

"Now take a deep breath and calm down ... right now."

Her outraged eyes shimmered.  She buttoned her mouth shut, not trusting
herself to speak.  She wanted to slap him and he knew it and he wasn't
impressed.  Flinging her a grim glance, he stood back for her to enter the
waiting lift.


"We'll talk in the car," he told her.

Bella shot into the back seat of the limousine like a ting cat, temper still
blazing through her.

"How dare?"

"Be silent," Rico said sharply.

"You cannot make accusations of that variety and expect to get away with it.
tor Barsay may not be a blood relative but you are very attached to him.
Since he was also a friend of my late father's for many years, I naturally
felt that I should visit him."

Gritting her teeth, she studied her tightly clenched hands.  So far, so good,
but there was no way he could explain himself out of what he had done during
that visit.  "When I saw him earlier you were sulking--' " I do not sulk--'
"You sulk," Rico assured her.

"We had had an but when I went to that hospital I had no idea that when I
returned to the apartment you would announce that our relationship was at an
end."

Bella swallowed hard.  It was a point she had to concede.  "Hector doesn't
want to go to a home where he will be surrounded by strangers.  He also
misses you a great That I should offer him hospitality was a natural
progression from those facts.  At Winterwood he will have every comfort but
he will also have the privacy which is so important to him."

"All right, I'm sorry," Bella muttered from clenched teeth.

"But where does that leave us now?"

"You appear to have already made that decision,"

retorted drily.

"I gather you didn't tell him the truth?"

 "How could I?"   she demanded fiercely.

"Especially when you would have looked a little stupid when I'd told him that
you were staying put."

She looked at him for the first time.

"I beg your pardon?"


Hooded dark eyes rested intently on her.

"You've been crying.  Your nose is still pink."

"Thank you so much for telling me," she mumbled in a wobbly voice, suddenly
feeling tearful again and ready to scream at the hormonal upheaval of
pregnancy.  Of course, that was what was the matter with her.

"We're going back to Winterwood," he informed her.  "I'm going back to
Hector's house."

"I have the keys.  I'm not giving them to you until you calm down."

"I am perfectly calm," Bella bit out furiously.

"Give me those keys!

I don't know what I'm going to do when Hector comes out of hospital but that
has to be a few weeks away and I'll deal with it then!  "

"You're not getting those keys."

"And you call me childish.9' But he didn't answer her.  Her throat was thick
with clogged tears.

Defensively she turned her head away again.  In a sense this was all her own
fault.  Back at the apartment she had not been prepared to face Rico.  She
had not had time to work out what she needed to say to sound convincing.

In short, she had made a mess of telling him that their relationship was
over--so great a mess that he thought that she was simply being pathetically
immature and vindictive over that argument in spite of his apologies.  He did
not believe that she really wanted to break off their affair.

And, since the truth was that she didn't, it really wasn't that surprising
that Rico should think that way.  Walking away from the man she loved
demanded a degree of detachment and acting ability which Bella now
acknowledged she did not possess.  It was going to take lies to convince Rico
that she had meant what she said.  Maybe she ought to tell him that she had
realised yesterday that she still had 
feelings for Griff .  or maybe she
should just tell him the truth.

No, not yet, she decided tautly.  That would be a truth more easily dealt
with when they were no longer together.

As she headed for the stairs in the echoing hall at Win-terwood Rico murmured,

"I expect you to come down to dinner."

Bella almost exploded.  He had tied her up in knots with Hector, forced her
to return to Winterwood and he was withholding the keys to Hector's house.
He had been treating her like a fractious toddler on the brink of a temper
tantrum from the minute she'd walked out of Hector's room!

She spun round.

"Tough!"

"It'll be Haversham's turn to laugh if I have to carry you downstairs," Rico
warned her.

"You wouldn't dare."  But she knew he would, knew she could push him so far
and no further.  Biting her tongue, green eyes blazing, Bella looked back at
him, thwarted.

"Don't wear that figure-hugging black velvet dress," he murmured softly.

"I don't like it."

"I'll wear whatever the hell I want!"

And from the minute Bella got out of the shower she knew it would be that
dress which she put on.  Only, the zip proved oddly reluctant to go up.  When
she finally got it up and turned to look in the mirror she realised why.  Her
breasts now foamed over the straining neckline like overripe fruits.  She
looked down at them in horror and attempted to squash them down again.  It
was a pointless exercise.  Until that moment she really hadn't appreciated
just how much her shape had already changed.

Coming down the staircase in a relentlessly shapeless floral dress which had
been a fashion accident, Bella found herself wondering why Rico had told her
not to wear that 
black dress.  He had only ever seen her in it twice and the
second time, weeks ago, he had told her she looked stunning in it.

He was waiting for her in the drawing room.  Tall, dark and spectacularly
handsome, he surveyed her entrance.  Her heart skipped a beat; her mouth went
dry.  In mute misery she swerved her attention off him again.

"That dress looks like a maternity outfit," he drawled.  Bella flinched and
spilt some of the sherry which Haversham always served her before dinner and
which she had yet to drink.  But, since the same thought about the dress had
occurred to her, she thought nothing of the remark.

She contrived a shrug and said,

"It's comfortable."  "Allow me to get you another drink," Rico said.

"No, I'm not really-- Oh, dinner!"  she exclaimed with relief, rising to her
feet as Haversham appeared.

Since she was really hungry, she was on the second course before it crossed
her mind that it was time to bite the bullet and convince Rico that their
affair was over.  So far the meal had been unusually silent.  And that, now
that she actually thought about it, was strange.  Rico was not, as a rule,
someone who quietly smouldered.

Rico did not suffer in silence, yet, in spite of emitting hostile vibrations
into the steadily thickening atmosphere between them, he had barely opened
his mouth.

"Why are you so quiet?"

He sent her a glimmering smile which made her feel uncomfortable.

"I

wanted to see you eat a decent meal.  "

"Like the condemned man?"  Bella looked across the table at him and steeled
herself.

"I'm afraid I wasn't very honest with you this afternoon..."

He tautened perceptibly.  His narrowed dark eyes rested on her with grim
intensity.  He drained his glass of wine 
and set it down without taking his
attention from her once.  "I am aware of that fact."

For some peculiar reason Bella felt as though the dining-table between them
had just become a bank manager's desk, with her playing the role of debtor
asking for a loan that was about to be refused.

There was just something so cold and businesslike about Rico's attitude.

"Well, I owe you the truth," she told him.

"You do," he agreed.

"I've realised that I still have feelings for Griff," she muttered, and she
didn't need to pretend to feel guilty saying that; she did feel guilty.

The silence stretched like a rubber band pulled to breaking-point.

Then Rico's strong face clenched, his sensual mouth flattening into a
bloodless line.

"To employ your jargon ... tough!"

Bella gave him a dazed look, wildly disconcerted by such a response.

"Why don't you tell me the rest of the truth?"  he invited softly, only there
was something innately menacing about that tone.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Maybe you could tell me why you're not wearing your black dress.., or why
you've sworn off alcohol again?"  Rico invited.

"Or why one of my closest friends can't meet my eyes when I ask him a
perfectly reasonable question?"  Bella had turned pale.

"Or how about why you're developing a bosom worthy of a Playboy cent refold

"How dare you?"  she gasped, unable to dredge anything more riveting from a
brain in the deep freeze of turmoil.  He couldn't possibly have guessed, she
told herself frantically; he couldn't possibly have!

Rico vented a harsh laugh and thrust his plate away.


"You're pregnant ... and all I want to know now is how pregnant?"

In a wave of pain Bella bowed her head.

"George didn't tell me but when you got up out of that bed and told me we
were finished you told me," Rico spelt out.

"I can add two and two.  So tell me, when did this happy event take place?"

"When we were kidnapped--' " So now I discover why you suddenly agreed to
move in with me!  " he shot at her.

"I didn't know until today!"  she protested, shocked that he could think that.

"And with the best will in the world how am I supposed to believe that?"  he
breathed, sounding almost weary.  "Because it's the truth."

"For someone who prides herself on telling the truth, and who gives an
outstanding impression of always delivering it, you tell a lot of lies!"

A sob was trapped in her throat.  Why, oh, why hadn't she had the wit to tell
him this afternoon as soon as she'd found out?  But she knew why.  This was
the very scene she had sought to avoid and it was tearing her apart.  She had
believed that a few weeks or months down the line, when they had already
split up, she would have been able to handle his bitter reaction a lot more
easily.  But in avoiding the issue she had only made Rico more suspicious.

The tip of her tongue stole out to moisten her dry lips.  She lifted her
vibrant head.

"I can't blame you for thinking that, but I just wasn't ready to face this
yet.  I was as shocked as you are and I knew how you would feel--' " Pot
Dios, you have not a clue how I feel!  " he raked back at her.

Bella forced herself to explain why she had assumed that she was not
pregnant, and at that moment did not much 
care whether Rico believed her or
not.  They had both taken that risk two months earlier, and if the first time
their lovemaking had been prompted by her, the second time Rico had been the
guilty party.  The responsibility cut both ways, "And what are your plans
now--a termination?"  he demanded abruptly.

She looked back at him in horror.

"I had to ask," he murmured tautly, and oddly enough her unspoken rejection
of such an option seemed to remove much of the strain stamped into his
bronzed features.

"I was afraid that that was your intention."

"No," she confirmed, decidedly knocked off balance by his reaction because
deep down inside she had been equally afraid that that might have been his
intention.

"I would not have allowed that," Rico added, just in case she hadn't got the
message.

"And I wouldn't have considered it," she asserted tightly.  "We will get
married as soon as possible."

Bella very nearly fell off her chair.  Wide-eyed, she stared back at him,
refusing to' believe that he had simply murmured that statement as if it
almost went without saying that they should now get married, as if any other
response to their predicament was not even to be considered.

Rico dealt her shocked face a look of granite-hard determination un tinged by
any amusement.

"I intend to have full legal rights over this child."

Bella unglued her tongue from the roof of her mouth.  Just minutes ago he had
told her that she didn't have a clue how he felt about her being pregnant.
Now she was tasting the literal truth of that assurance.

"But--' " Let's go into the drawing room," he suggested drily, rising fluidly
from his seat.

"I doubt that either of us is likely to eat any more tonight."

Once there, Bella sank down into an armchair.

"How can 
you talk about marriage?"  she whispered helplessly.

"I

thought you didn't even like children--' "When did I ever say that?"

"You said you had no desire to become a father."

 "Naturally not ... outside marriage," he stressed.

She was shaken by the simplicity of that clarification.  "As it happens, I am
very fond of children," he breathed tautly as he poured himself a brandy.

"But children make you vulnerable.  I had a son once and I lost him again.
It was an experience I did not wish to repeat."

"I'm not sure I understand."  He was talking about the child he had had with
his ex-wife.

"His name was Carlos."  Rico sent her a brooding look, his tension palpable.

"And to this day I do not know whether or not he was my child.  But it really
didn't matter because when he was born I believed he was and I loved him," he
proffered tightly.

"He was the only good thing to come out of a rotten marriage, the only reason
I tried so hard to make the marriage work.

"Margarita didn't give a damn about him.  He was simply the means by which
she married money.  But when it came to the divorce he was also the means by
which she hoped to achieve a very large settlement."

All at once Bella was seeing how wildly off-centre her own assumptions had
been.

"I wish you had told me this sooner."

"When Margarita moved out she took Carlos with her.  She expected me to buy
him back," he muttered harshly, his jaw clenching.

"But she wanted more than I could afford to pay then.  When I didn't pay up
she lost her head and told everyone that he wasn't mine anyway--' " How could
she do that to you?  " Bella whispered.

"The reality was that she didn't know whether he was or not.  I had not been
her only lover at the time of his conception Her claim threw the custody
battle into chaos, causing a delay in the giving of the judge's decision.
Tests had to be carried out.  Carlos remained with Margarita and..."  he
hesitated and gave an almost clumsy shrug '.  one day when she was partying
he fell into a swimming pool and drowned.  "

"Oh, God," Bella mumbled in shock.

"He was eighteen months old," Rico revealed curtly.  "And she wasn't fit to
have the charge of him.  She had had a row with his nanny and sacked her the
day before.  He didn't have a hope in hell."

"I'm so sorry."  She swallowed back the tears that were threatening and
watched the carpet swim instead.  She was appalled by what he had told her.

"And I swore I would never have another child because losing Carlos was the
toughest challenge I have ever had to face."  His facial muscles locked, he
downed his brandy in one.

"But be assured that now you carry my baby inside you everything changes..."

"Yes."  Her head was aching from the tension he had induced.

"We do the very best we can for that baby," he informed her with sudden
savage ferocity.

"And I will not allow you to walk away as Margarita did and take that child
from me!  He or she is as much mine as yours..."  and the sooner you accept
that reality the better!  "

"I don't want to walk away," Bella said thickly just as the door closed.  She
looked up.  Rico had gone.  She flew to her feet and went after him, but by
the time she realised that he had left the house and not just gone into
another room he had already driven off.

She was distraught and yet part of her wanted to kick him for not telling her
about Carlos sooner.  It wasn't her fault that she had made a series of false
suppositions on the 
subject of how he felt about children, it was his.  Yet
she understood why he hadn't told her as well.  Understandably, talking about
that tragedy really upset him.  Dear God, what an evil bitch he had married,
she thought helplessly.

At first she planned to sit up and wait for him and explain how she had
misunderstood.  But then she began to go back over all that Rico had said.
Marriage hadn't been on his agenda because he hadn't wanted to risk having
another child with any woman.  Once bitten, twice shy.

But the fact that a baby was actually on the way had completely altered his
attitude.

And he wasn't worded about losing her, was he?  It was a bitter irony.

Rico was more worded about losing control of the new life in her womb!  No
wonder he had relaxed when he'd realised there was to be no threat of a
termination.  Rico, whether he realised it or not, could not wait to get his
paws on her baby!  He was even prepared to marry her to ensure that he had
greater legal rights!

She went up to bed, deeply shaken and deeply hurt.  She was distressed by
what he had told her about Carlos but never in her entire life had she felt
more rejected.  Regardless of the fact that Rico really seemed to want their
child, he seemed to have pitched their relationship right out the window.
And she just couldn't comprehend why it was happening that way.

He woke her up coming to bed.  It was some Unholy hour of the morning and he
was humming under his breath.  She couldn't believe it.  Her teeth clenched.
And when, ten seconds after he got into bed, a pair of arms reached for her
she presented him with a back as welcoming as Everest in a blizzard.

"I asked you to marry me.  I thought you'd be pleased," he murmured without
any expression at all.


Bella shot upright as if he had stabbed her with a knife.  "Why the hell
would I be pleased?"

"It is what you wanted at the beginning."

"I wised up!"  she screeched.

A lamp was switched on.

"Calm down," he instructed.  "How do you think that baby feels listening to
you scream?"

"It's listening to you too ... being totally, hatefully objectionable!"

she sobbed, her every worst fear about the exact nature of her value to him
now confirmed.

He enclosed her in his arms.  She did her stick of rock impression.

"Bella..."  he said tautly.

"I was under a lot of strain earlier.  I felt incredibly confused.  I was
scared that you were pregnant ... and then scared that you might not be!  But
by the time I was cracking open the champagne with George..."  Bella froze in
absolute disbelief at this revelation of how he had passed his time away from
her '.  I realised how extraordinarily happy I feel about this baby," he
delivered with positive fervour, in the tone of someone who believed that he
was telling her exactly what she wanted to hear.

"You've been celebrating with my doctor?"  Bella enunciated in a voice which
shook.

"Naturally we did not discuss you either medically or personally," Rico
assured her.

"You toad!"  she spat.

Rico dropped his air of insouciance and compressed his lips, his glittering
golden eyes splintering into hers.

"Do you really think he'll still want you when you tell him you're pregnant?"

"Who?"  Bella looked blank.

"Who?"  Rico echoed, cut tingly incredulous.

Comprehension assailed her.  A heady tide of pink washed over her complexion.
Somehow, in all the turmoil 
of the evening, she had forgotten telling him
that lie about Griff.

Since it now seemed pointless to continue it, she muttered,

"I made that up--' " Qud dices?  "

"About Griff ... that was a little white lie--' '" A little white lie"?"
Rico thundered, springing out of bed.

"Madre de Dios ... you tell me you're in love with another man and you call
that " a little white lie"?"

"I had to give you a reason for leaving!"  Bella protested.  "So if you are
not pining for Biff why were you leaving?"  he slung at her with a positively
feral snarl as he began to get dressed.

"Because of the baby."  Bella gave him an 'are you stupid?  " look of angry
reproof.

"I thought you wouldn't want it ... I thought it would be the worst news you
had ever heard--' " And when was I going to hear this news?  " he roared at
her.

"Some time after we'd split up ... when the subject wasn't so emotive."

Rico sent her a glimmering glance of disbelief.

"When it felt less ... personal," she floundered in desperation.

His disbelief was magnified.

"Does that really make sense to you, gatita?"  he enquired gently.

Reluctantly she shook her head.  In retrospect it didn't make sense.

Finding out that she was pregnant had made her panic.  She had not been
thinking clearly about what she was doing.

"I guess I was running away.  I couldn't work up the courage to tell you
something I thought you didn't want to hear."

"And that was my fault?"

Bella shrugged.

"You didn't want to be trapped into marriage again.  That's fine."  She took
a deep breath.

"But I don't want to marry you on that same basis, Rico.  Even though both of
us were reckless--' " I'm never reckless, gatita.  I knew the risk and I
accepted.  it.  I should have known then that there was something special
between us.  "

Bella winced.

"Rico, you would tell me just about anything to persuade me to marry you.  I
can understand that but--' A hand had closed round her arm.  Rico was pulling
her out of bed.

"What 'are you doing?"

 "I want to show you something."   "It's four o'clock in the morning!"

But he wasn't listening to her.  He thrust her robe at her and tossed her
mules across to her.

"Come on."

"Where?"

"You'll see."  Impatiently he propelled her out of the bedroom and downstairs.

When he climbed into the Bugatti outside she hissed, "I'm not dressed!"

"We're not leaving the estate."

He drove down the lane that ran from the stable block out to the fields.  At
the end of it he parked, leaving the headlights on, and walked over to the
fence.  Thoroughly exasperated by now, Bella leapt out and followed.

"Keep your eyes peeled for something vaguely animate that reminds you of a
very tatty, small, moving hearth rug."

A shape ambled out of the darkness, attracted by the light.

"I located him five days ago," Rico murmured.

"He hasn't been very well looked after but the vet says he'll be fine once
he's groomed and fattened ui0."

Bella was already striving to climb the fence, somewhat hampered by her
flowing nightwear.  Rico lifted her over.


 Fiddlesticks," she whispered shakily, and then surged over the grass to the
Shetland pony.

Ten minutes later she was wiping at her eyes, genuinely overcome not just by
the reunion with the little pony she had never thought to see again but by
the fact that Rico had gone to so much trouble to trace him and give him back
to her.

Rico swung her back over the fence.  She slid back into the car, still in a
happy daze.

"I planned to get a dog and a cat to go with him," he murmured very tautly.

"And I was also planning to present the three of them to you before the
party."

"Dog ... cat ... party?"  Bella mumbled in helpless repetition.

"You told me that you loved children and wanted a large fluffy dog, a cat and
a pony for them," Rico reminded her stiffly.

"Well, I was ready to supply them."

She went rigid, understanding finally sinking in.  Rico was telling her that
at least a week ago he had been ready to give her what he believed she
wanted.  And all of a sudden, instead of being touched and pleased by the
gesture, she felt like screaming.  She wanted him to love her, not drag her
out to a field in the middle of the night and offer her a menagerie!

He dug something from his pocket and handed it to her.  "This is a sample of
the invitations I was having printed.  It was going to be an engagement party
... a surprise," he breathed in a harsh undertone.

"I

took a lot for granted, es ver dad

Bella was reading the invitation, her heartbeat accelerating.  Long before
he'd known about the baby Rico had intended to ask her to marry him.  She
sniffed, her eyes stinging.  The fear that he only wanted to marry her
because of their child was for ever vanquished.


 184 PRISONER OV PASSION

Rico released his breath in a hiss in the continuing silence, seeming not to
appreciate that she was stunned by sheer shock.  He drove back to the house
and switched off the engine.

"Until you told me you wanted to leave me I thought you loved me..."

"I do," Bella said distractedly.

"Then why the blazes are you sitting there in silence."

 " he roared at her without warning.

"Sh-shock," she proffered shakily.

He groaned something in Spanish and brushed her hair back from her cheekbone
with a not quite steady hand.

"I was terrified of losing you.  When you said you wanted out I saw my whole
world falling apart.

There was nothing I would not have done to keep you.  And I seemed to have no
hold on you but the baby.  "

"And you were prepared to use that--' " St'.  I never thought that I could
love anyone the way I love you.  "

Bella threw her head back, her green eyes clinging to the blaze of his
possessive golden gaze.

"I fell in love with you in the container."

Rico cursed as he collided with the gears fick in his attempt to drag her
into his arms.  Bella giggled and climbed out of the car, watching him make
it round the bonnet to her in record time.  He swept her up into his arms and
kissed her passionately as he carried her back into the house.

Between kisses he talked all the Way up the stairs.

"When you collapsed outside the farmhouse I was like a man possessed.  I knew
I was in love ... or that I thought I was in love.  But I had no idea that
you felt the same way.  You are so different from every other woman I know.
I was afraid to tell you how I felt in case you laughed..."

"I wouldn't have laughed," Bella whispered, all choked up from realising that
he was vulnerable too.


"I am eleven years older.  I feared that you might become bored with me."

"No chance."

"I couldn't take my eyes off you the first time I saw you.  You didn't even
notice," he complained.

"Rico, try being poor and smashing up a Bugatti.  I was in shock, and then
you started calling the police--' " And you fell asleep in the limo .  as if
I wasn't there!  " " Strikes me your ego needed a little challenge.  " She
dropped her voice an octave and boomed in mocking mimicry, '" I have known
women to take tremendous risks to make my acquaintance.  " What do they
do---abseil down the walls of the bank and kick their way in through the
windows?"  She giggled.

Rico lowered her onto the bed.

"You might as well have done.  You came into my life and turned it
upside-down.  You fascinate me."

"You fascinate me too."  She reached up to him, found his mouth again and
yanked him down to her.

They made love slowly, luxuriating in every sweet sensation.

"Am I allowed to buy you things now?"  he asked afterwards.  "Festoon you
with jewellery?"

"I want a Porsche," Bella said out of sheer badness.

His black lashes dropped over his too expressive eyes, but his sudden tension
said it all for him.

"No problem.  You pass an advanced driving test and I'll buy you one."

"Just you wait," Bella told him.

Bella watched Rico swing their daughter up in his arms as he came through the
hall.  Jenny wrapped her little arms round his throat in a death grip and
hugged him, making excitable dada' sounds.  He had clearly been
affectionately attacked by their wolfhound before he'd even got in the 
door:
there was a large, muddy paw-print on his Bella grinned as he looked up and
their eyes connected Jenny's dark, curly head--smug green into slightly tense
gold.

"You passed...?"

"I passed."

"Congratulations," It sounded rather forced.  He couldn't help it.  The
thought of her in a Porsche, empowered by an advanced driving test or
otherwise, still brought him out in a cold sweat, she assumed.

Having put Jenny down for a nap, she suggested,

"I'll take you for a spin, shall I?"

"You've already bought it?"  Rico breathed, looking tered.

"It's in the garage."

Hector was out for his evening stroll down the drive.  waved.  Rico had
bought his London house for their use renovated it.  The court case which had
put their into prison was thankfully long behind them now Hector had decided
to rent a cottage on the estate.

When he wasn't playing honorary grandpa for benefit, he was fully occupied
with thinking up economies for Rico to make at Winterwood.

And Rico would with that little smile of his and marvel that he had never had
such ideas himself.  It was just one of the reasons why Bella loved him so
much.

Rico peered into the garage with a fixed smile quickly fell away.

"That's a Volvo estate!"

"I never wanted a Porsche.  I'm not that fond of Bella said gently.

"And this is much more practical for a working artist with a child."

"You never wanted a Porsche ... but you made me through all the hoops
pretending you did!"  Rico was 
struggling to look angry, she gathered,
instead of painfully relieved.

She reached for his silk tie and tugged him towards her with all the
provocative ness of a very confident woman.

"I like to keep you on your toes, Mr da Silva."

"Dios m pounds , you are not joking," he growled thickly, crushing her into
his arms and kissing her breathless, passion blazing up between them just as
it always did.

"And fortunately for you I find it irresistible, because, having phoned
Haversham to ascertain your success, at lunchtime I went out and bought you a
Porsche."

Bella's jaw dropped.

"Just think of the mileage Hector is going to get out of conspicuous
consumerism like this!"  Rico suddenly said, laughing.