to ring the police!’ she slung back, on the brink of another howl. ‘But go ahead! Have me arrested! I don’t care; I’m past caring!’
‘Stop making such a noise,’ he growled. ‘You’re making an exhibition of yourself!’
‘If I want to have hysterics, that’s my business!’ she asserted through her tears. ‘What do you think this is going to do to my insurance?’
There was a short silence.
‘You have insurance?’
‘Of course I have insurance,’ Bella mumbled, making an effort to collect herself and keeping a careful distance from him, since he had already proved that he was the aggressive type.
‘Give me the details and sign a statement admitting fault and you can be on your way,’ he drawled with unhidden relish.
Bella shot him an astonished glance. ‘You mean it?’
‘Sí... five more minutes in your company and I will understand why men murder. Not only that, I will be at the forefront of a campaign to bring in the death penalty for women drivers!’ Rico da Silva intoned between clenched teeth.
Sexist pig. Smearing her non-waterproof mascara over her cheeks as she wiped at her wet face, Bella bit back the temptation to answer in kind. After all, he was going to be civilised. If he had smashed up her Bugatti she probably would have wanted blood too. Prepared to be generous, she still, however, gave a deliberate little rub to her wrist just to let him know that he might not have drawn blood but he might have inflicted bruises.
He planted a sheet of paper on the bonnet and handed her a pen.
‘You write it; I’ll sign it,’ she proffered glumly.
‘I want it to be in your handwriting.’
But he still stood over her and dictated what he wanted her to write. She struggled with the big words he used, her rather basic spelling powers taxed beyond their limits.
‘This is illiterate,’ he remarked in a strained voice.
Bella’s cheeks flamed scarlet. Her itinerant childhood had meant that she had very rarely attended a school. Gramps had changed all that when she had gone to live with him but somehow her spelling had never quite come up to scratch. Laziness and lack of interest, she conceded inwardly, for she possessed a formidable intelligence which she focused solely on the field of art. Spelling came a very poor second.
‘But it’s fine,’ Rico da Silva added abruptly, suddenly folding it and stuffing it into the pocket of his dinner jacket.
Seeing him reach for his phone again, she gabbled the name of her insurance company in a rush.
‘I’m ringing for a tow-truck for the cars,’ he murmured, reading the reanimated fear on her expressive face.
‘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...’
‘Are you in the habit of telling complete strangers the most intimate details of your life?’ Rico da Silva prompted in a tone of driven fascination.
Bella thought about it and then nodded, although she would have disputed his concept of ‘intimate details’. Friends said, ‘I told you so.’ Strangers just listened and volunteered their own experiences. Not that the male standing next to her would. He
