‘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 lattes.’
‘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-something 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 another sleepy yawn, Bella sighed. ‘I don’t mind most of the time, although it’s murder on my feet and it’s very boring. Still, it pays the rent—’
‘He charges you rent?’
‘Of course he does… although not very much.’ She yawned again, politely masking her mouth with a slender hand. ‘He tried to claim for me as a housekeeper but the Inland Revenue weren’t impressed. I’m not really very domestic but he wouldn’t like it if I was. It’s kind of hard to explain Hector to people…’