‘You wouldn’t want me to lose my licence, would you?’ Bella fixed enormous green eyes on him in reproach. ‘It took me a lot of years to get that licence. The examiners used to draw lots for me and the one that got the short straw was it! I mean, we all have weaknesses and mine is in the driving department, but this is truly the very worst accident I have ever had and I am going to be much more careful in the future… cross my heart and hope to die—’
‘Or shut up.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ She squinted up at him.
He extended his phone with an air of long-suffering hauteur. ‘Ring your boyfriend to come and pick you up.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding. He’d probably say his car had a flat tyre or something anyway,’ she mused, returning to her frantic clean-up.
‘There must be somebody you can contact!’
‘At four in the morning to take me back to London?’ And pigs might fly, her tone said.
‘I am not giving you a lift!’ he snapped in a whiplash response.
So he had been heading for London too. ‘I wasn’t aware I asked for one,’ she hissed. ‘Now why don’t you just go away and leave me alone?’
‘I am being foolish. No doubt you are accustomed to walking lonely streets at this hour of the night, es verdad? But it is hard for me to forget my natural instinct to behave as a gentleman—’
‘I would have said you forgot it the minute I hit your car… but it’s OK,’ Bella continued sweetly. ‘I didn’t notice. I haven’t got much experience of what you would probably call gentlemen. I cut my teeth on creeps.’
There was a fulminating silence.
‘Make sure you make that call tomorrow.’
Bella scrambled out backwards with her bulging carrier bag, wondering why he was still hovering. Approaching the driver of the tow-truck, she told him to be sure to dump the Skoda at the nearest garage possible. Hopefully that would cut the cost. ‘I can’t pay you now,’ she then said awkwardly. ‘I haven’t got enough money on me.’
‘I will take care of it,’ Rico da Silva announced glacially from behind her.
She grimaced and ignored him to ask the driver what it was going to cost. Her horror was unfeigned. ‘I’m not asking you to fix it!’ she protested in a shattered voice.
‘I said I will pay the bill!’ Rico da Silva blitzed. Her temples were pounding like crazy. She just couldn’t fight any more. Once again she nodded. Anything for a quiet life. She started to walk away. Her feet were killing her.
‘Where are you going?’
‘The bus station.’ She glanced back at him with a frown of incomprehension, well aware that he liked her just about as much as she liked him, wondering why on earth it should matter to him how she intended to get home.
‘Madre de Dios!’ he ground out, skimming a f
urious 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 Hmo… 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 unhidden fascination. ‘Do you always travel… sorry, I forgot!’