‘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 María, 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 there. 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.’
‘I—’
‘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 digas 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. ‘Sí…’
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.’