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 half-inch 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 unarguable poverty. Even as a victim she had 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.’