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 waking up 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 policemen 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 she 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 peroeptible 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.’ Taming, 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,’ be warned with sicken 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!