A Spanish Awakening
KIM LAWRENCE
Twenty-four-hour seduction… In the chaos of an airport strike, Madrid’s most sought-after bachelor Emilio Rios stumbles across old flame Megan Armstrong. In the past he bowed to duty and married the ‘right’ woman – leaving the less sophisticated Megan on the sidelines.Staying away from Megan has been the hardest thing Emilio’s ever done, but now that he’s free he isn’t going to waste a single minute! He’s got twenty-four hours – plenty of time for a full seduction…One Night In… A night with these men is never enough!
‘You know what they say, querida, never say never.’
His sideways glance caught her heaving bosom. ‘You gave every appearance of enjoying yourself when you kissed me.’ Her response had delighted him.
‘That was not a kiss.’
‘It was not?’
Megan chewed fretfully at her full lip and stared stubbornly out of the window. ‘It was … a reflex,’ she retorted in a driven voice.
‘Indeed? I can only say that you have the best … reflexes of any woman I have ever come across.’
ONE NIGHT IN…
Let Modern™ Romance whisk you away on the jet-set trip of a lifetime!
From the heat of the desert to the cosmopolitan flair of Madrid, from sultry Brazil to opulent London, seduction is a language that knows no bounds! Real heroes know that sometimes actions speak louder than words …
Meet the lucky heroines who discover this first-hand in these dramatic stories of one night of incredible passion, and wherever it leads…
One Night In… A night with these men is never enough!
About the Author
KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in rural Anglesey. She runs two miles daily and finds this an excellent opportunity to unwind and seek inspiration for her writing! It also helps her keep up with her husband, two active sons, and the various stray animals which have adopted them. Always a fanatical consumer of fiction, she is now equally enthusiastic about writing. She loves a happy ending!
A SPANISH
AWAKENING
KIM LAWRENCE
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
EMILIO swallowed his coffee, grimacing at the taste. It had gone cold. Knotting his silk tie with one hand, he finished up the coffee and headed out of the door. A quick glance at his watch confirmed that with luck and good traffic he could make it to the airport to meet Rosanna’s flight and still be at his desk by ten—a very late start for him, but being the boss did have certain privileges.
There were people who considered his life was one long privilege.
Some went further, like the actress he had been meant to escort to a premiere the previous night. She had called him selfish—quite loudly.
Emilio had received the insult with a philosophical smile. Her good opinion meant nothing to him. They had not even slept together yet and he doubted now they would, even though she had rung back later, clearly regretting her outburst, to apologise.
Her efforts to ingratiate herself had left him as unmoved as her earlier tantrum. He actually thought she might have a point—maybe he was selfish. The possibility did not unduly bother him. Was selfishness not the upside of being single and not in a serious relationship?
Upside? Were there any downsides to being in a position where one did not have to consider the wishes of other people? Emilio could not think of any.
In the past he had done his duty and pleased others, namely his father. That unquestioning compliance had resulted in a failed marriage entered into when he was too young, stupid and arrogant to believe he could fail at anything.
On paper his father had been right. He and Rosanna had been the perfect couple, they had a lot in common, they came from the same world, and, most importantly from his father’s point of view, his bride had been good breeding stock from a family who could trace their bloodline back almost as far as his own family.
Emilio slid into the driving seat of his car, his lips twisting into a bitter smile of recollection as he fastened his seat belt.
Luis Rios had been incoherent with outrage when the marriage he had promoted had failed. He had used every threat and bullying tactic in his considerable arsenal and had become frustrated when he saw none made any impression on his son.
His fury had turned to scornful contempt when Emilio had introduced the topic of love, suggesting mildly that the absence of it might be a possible reason for the short life span of the doomed marriage.
The irony in his voice had sailed—predictably—directly over his father’s head.
‘Love?’ his parent had snorted contemptuously. ‘Is that what this is about? Since when were you a romantic? ‘
The question had, Emilio conceded, been legitimate. It was true that his own attitude towards the hype around romantic love had always been at best condescending, at worst contemptuous.
He had continued to feel that way right up to the moment he had found out the hard way that love was not an invention of overactive imaginations, that it was possible to look at a woman and know with every fibre of your being that she was meant to be yours.
The instant was indelibly seared into Emilio’s memory, every individual detail of her breathless late arrival midway through the boring dinner carrying the scent of the warm summer night into the stuffy room with her.
His heart had literally stopped, which was crazy when you considered how many times he had seen her walk into a room previously, but in that moment it had been as if he were seeing her for the first time.
Wary of sliding into self-pitying mode, jaw clenched, Emilio pushed away the image of her face allowing the far less pleasing image of his father’s face to fill the space it left. He no longer attempted to fill the empty space in his heart; he lived with it.
You didn’t lose her, he reminded himself. She was never yours. Because the fact was it was all about timing and his had stunk.
He crunched the gears, wincing at the sound as he heard his father say, ‘If you want love, take a mistress. Take several.’ His father had sounded astonished that such an obvious solution had not occurred to his son.
Emilio could still remember looking at the man who had fathered him and feeling not even filial duty—there had never been affection—but coruscating revulsion that burnt through his veins like acid.
The idea of putting anyone through the humiliation his father had inflicted on his mother had filled Emilio with deep repugnance. Emilio might have entered into a marriage of convenience, but he had always intended to be faithful.
‘Like you did, Papa?’ It had been a tremendous struggle to keep his voice level, but he had not struggled to disguise the anger and disgust he felt.
The older man had been the first to look away, but during that long moment their eyes had met a profound change had taken place in the relationship between father and son.
Luis Rios had never attempted to carry through with any of his threats to disown him, but Emilio would not have cared if he had. Part of him would have relished the challenge of building a life away from the financial empire his great-grandfather had begun and each successive generation had built upon.
It had been shortly after this event that his father had stopped taking any active part in the business, retiring to the stud where he bred racehorses, leaving Emilio free to put in place wide-ranging changes with no opposition. Changes that meant the global financial downturn had left the Rios brand virtually untouched and the envy of many rivals. People had begun to speak enviously of the Rios luck.
That luck appeared to be working in his favour as he drove into what appeared to be the only vacant parking space a full ten minutes before his ex-wife’s flight was due in.
Emilio walked towards the terminal building feeling glad as he passed by a group of vociferous placard-carrying air-traffic controllers that he was not here to catch a flight. The building was filled with anxious and, to varying degrees, angry people who clearly were.
He spared a sympathetic thought for them before his thoughts turned to the reason for his presence. He sighed, wishing he shared Philip’s apparent belief that one word from him would somehow magically remove any obstacle in his friend’s path to romantic fulfillment. Still, some of the things his friend had said had made it seem that there were things that had been left unsaid.
Emilio had not seen Philip Armstrong for almost a year, so it had been a surprise to see his old friend walk into his office yesterday.
Emilio gave a sardonic smile—it had not been the last!
He chose a vantage point where he would see Rosanna and allowed his thoughts to drift back over yesterday’s extraordinary conversation.
‘There is a problem.’
It was not a question. A person did not have to be an expert at reading body language to see that there was something wrong in Philip’s world.
‘I’ve never been happier.’
The gloomy reply made Emilio’s lips twitch. ‘It does not show.’
‘I’ve fallen in love, Emilio.’ If anything, the Englishman’s gloom seemed even more pronounced as he explained the source of his great joy.
‘Congratulations.’
Missing the sardonic inflection, Philip produced a dour ‘Thanks.’ Adding, ‘Oh, I don’t expect you to believe it. I’ve often wondered, you know …?’
‘What have you wondered?’ Emilio asked, mystified but not inclined to take umbrage from the underlying antagonism that had crept into the other man’s manner.
‘Why did you ever get married?’ he said bitterly. ‘It’s not as if you were—’
‘In love?’ Emilio suggested without heat. ‘No, I was not. I am presuming you did not come here to discuss my marriage.’
‘Actually, I did, sort of,’ Philip Armstrong conceded. ‘The thing is, Emilio …’
Emilio repressed his impatience.
‘The thing is, I want to get married,’ the Englishman revealed in a rush.
‘That is surely good news?’
‘I want to marry your wife.’
Emilio was famed for his powers of analytical deduction, but he had not seen this one coming!
‘You’re shocked. I knew you would be,’ his old school friend announced with darkly pessimistic gloom.
‘I am surprised,’ Emilio corrected honestly. ‘But if I was shocked, would it matter? Rosanna has not been my wife for quite some time. You do not require my blessing or my permission.’
‘I know, but the thing is I think she feels guilty about finding happiness.’
‘I think you are imagining things,’ Emilio said, wondering if he ought not at some level to feel a little jealous.
He didn’t. He was still fond of Rosanna, but then that had been the problem: he had been fond of Rosanna just as she had been fond of him. It was one of the many things they had in common, and they had both agreed that mutual respect and common interests were a much stronger foundation for a successful marriage than anything as transitory as romantic love.
Madre di Dios, he really had been that stupid!
The marriage had, of course, been doomed, but Emilio had been spared the painful task of telling Rosanna that there was ‘someone else’. He hadn’t needed to agonise over it, she had taken one look at him and known.
Women’s intuition, or had he been that obvious?
What he had not been spared was the overriding sense of guilt—irrational, some might have said, considering his wife had been already unfaithful to him—that and the nasty taste that came with failure in any form.
It had been drummed into Emilio in his cradle that an integral part of being a Rios was not contemplating failure. It was a lesson he had learnt well. Divorce was not just failure, it was public failure, and that had been tougher to take than his wife’s confession she had slept with someone else months after they had exchanged vows.
Emilio had been a lot more tolerant of her weakness than he had his own, and in his eyes the fact he had not been physically unfaithful did not make him any less culpable.
Before issuing the public statement on the divorce they had told their respective families, to prepare them. His father’s reaction had been predictable and Emilio had been able to view his final ranting condemnation with an air of detached distaste that had clearly incensed his parent further.
What had been far less predictable was the viciously hostile response of Rosanna’s family—that had been a genuine shock to him, but not, quite clearly, to her.
It had come out during the heated exchange that unbeknown to him his father had agreed to pay the blue-blooded but broke Carreras family a large sum of money on the marriage and another equally large sum when the first offspring of that union was born.
Under the impression that her attitude had been similar to his own when they had married, he could now see that his bride’s motivation had been less to do with pragmatism and more to do with coercion and parental pressure.
It certainly explained Rosanna’s initial refusal of a divorce when he had floated it. At the time he had been mystified, but now he realised that she was more afraid of being disowned by her money-grabbing family than living a lie.
It was the reason that, though supporting the official line of mutual decision, amicable divorce, blah … blah, Emilio had not made any effort to deny the rumours that had hinted heavily that his infidelity had caused the rift.
It was not totally a lie and it made things easier on Rosanna, as did the sum he paid the Carreras family out of his own funds.
The media, having created the story, had waited, headlines at the ready, confidently anticipating a lover or lovers to surface once they realised their sordid stories were lucrative. Of course none had because the person he had left his wife for remained oblivious to her role in these events.
Any woman seen with him immediately after the divorce would run the risk of being labelled the other woman, but patience in the circumstances was, he had reasoned, if not a virtue, certainly a necessity if he wanted to protect the reputation of the woman he had fallen for.
So he had waited a decent interval, or almost—there were limits to his patience—before he made any move: six months for the divorce to be finalised and six months for the dust to settle. The only minor problem he’d anticipated that day had been his inexperience at courtship; Emilio knew about seduction but he had never wooed a woman.
The dark irony of it almost drew a laugh from him—almost. It was hard to smile at anything related to the day he had had his heart broken and his pride crushed simultaneously.
In hindsight he was now able to appreciate that the injury to his pride had caused the most damage. He was embarrassed that for a short time he had done the predictable bitter and railing-at-fate thing, but he had reined in those emotions, walled them securely up—a man had to put a time limit on such self-indulgences—and got on with his life.
There had been a certain dark irony in Philip’s comment of, ‘If you could fall in love with someone, I’m sure Rosanna could move on.’
‘With anyone in particular?’
‘God, no, anyone would do.’ Emilio’s laughter brought his attention back to his friend’s face. ‘Sorry,’ he said with a self-conscious grimace. ‘I’ve had a sense of humour bypass. It’s just I know we could be happy, but Rosanna—I think she won’t be able to move on until you’re with someone …’
‘I have hardly spent the last two years living the existence of a monk.’
‘I know that and I’m sure most men would envy you,’ Philip admitted. ‘I did. The thing is, Rosanna thinks that underneath you’re not really that shallow, not that I think you’re shallow.’
‘I’m relieved,’ Emilio responded gravely. ‘So you are asking me to fall in love to make your love life easier. I’m sorry, Philip. I would do a lot for you but—’
‘I know. I don’t know what I expected. The thing is I’m pretty desperate.’ The driven expression shining in his blue eyes was a reflection of that desperation. ‘I’d do anything for Rosanna—cut my hair, for starters.’
The comment drew a laugh from Emilio. ‘I am impressed.’
‘I’m serious. It’s time to settle down. No more wandering the world for me. I’m going to get respectable. If Rosanna wants me to, I’d even go and work for Dad, become a suit, swallow the silver spoon and be the son he always wanted me to be.’
‘Would the opportunity arise?’
‘Are you kidding? Dad would love it if I came crawling back with my tail between my legs. He’s built up his empire to hand it over to his heir.’ He grinned and directed a finger at his own chest. ‘Me.’
‘You are hardly an only child.’
Philip conceded this point with a shrug. ‘I suppose if Janie had been interested in the business the fatted calf might not await me, but she never was and it’s not likely she will be, having become the face of that perfume. It’s real spooky to see your little sister staring at you from magazine covers and advertising boards.’
Emilio dismissed the elder of the Armstrong sisters with a shake of his head. ‘I was thinking of Megan.’
The sight of a familiar figure snapped him back to the present, catching his gaze as he scanned the busy concourse searching for his ex-wife.
He had thought of Megan and now she was here!
Despite the fact she appeared to have dropped a couple of dress sizes—a circumstance he did not totally approve of—and acquired a fashionable gloss to match the new poise in her manner, he knew Megan Armstrong immediately.
Of course he knew her. Emilio, not a man given to exaggeration, believed totally he could have located her blindfolded in a room of a thousand beautiful Englishwomen!
It was enough, he reflected, to make a man believe in fate. Of course, Emilio did not believe in signs or cosmic forces, but he did believe in following his instincts.
If he followed his at that moment it might get them both arrested. A smile that did not soften the predatory glow in his eyes flickered across his face as he thought, It might be worth it.
CHAPTER TWO
‘BUT I need you here tonight!’
Megan was not surprised to hear the aggrieved note tinged with truculence in her boss’s voice.
Charlie Armstrong had not made his millions by allowing little things like air-traffic controllers’ strikes to stand in his way and he expected his staff to display an equally robust response to such obstacles to his wishes, even when that member of staff was his daughter.
Actually, especially when that employee was his daughter!
‘Sorry, Dad.’
‘What use is sorry to me? I need—’
‘But it looks like I’m stuck here,’ Megan inserted, her calm, unruffled tone affording a stark contrast to her father’s haranguing bellow. ‘I’ll book into a hotel here and catch the first flight out tomorrow,’ she promised.
‘And when will that be?’
Megan glanced at the slightly scratched face of the watch that encircled her slim wrist. Not an expensive item but as far as Megan was concerned utterly invaluable, it had belonged to her mother, who had died when she was twelve.
‘It’s a twenty-four-hour strike so 9:00 a.m. tomorrow is the earliest flight.’
‘Nine! No, that is simply not acceptable!’
‘Acceptable or not, Dad, short of sprouting wings I’m grounded, and before you suggest it, the trains and cross-channel ferries are booked up.’
‘By people with foresight.’
Megan resisted the impulse to retort by people who were returning home after the international football tournament, knowing that an excuse, legitimate or not, would not soothe her father when he was in this mood.
She let him vent his displeasure loudly for another few minutes, responding with the occasional monosyllabic murmur of agreement when appropriate while she allowed herself to be carried along by the seething mass of bodies, fellow stranded travellers who were all heading in the same direction, towards the exit.
Getting a taxi was going to be a nightmare. Megan mentally prepared herself for a long wait. Maybe she should simply camp out in the airport overnight?
‘And don’t expect me to fork out for fancy hotels. Being my daughter doesn’t mean you can take advantage of the situation. I expect the same level of commitment from you that I would expect from any of my—’
As she tuned out the lecture she had heard many times before Megan’s attention strayed around the crowded space heaving with a cross-section of humanity.
The air left her lungs in a fractured gasp as recognition jolted through her body with the fizz of an electric shock. ‘Oh, my God!’ she breathed, pressing a hand to her heaving chest.
‘What? What is it?’
Megan squeezed her eyes shut, but still saw the face that had caused her to haemorrhage the composure that had become her trademark.
It was not a face that was easy to banish!
She took a deep breath, looking up in guilty acknowledgement towards the young man who had nearly tripped over her when she had come to a dead halt without warning. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘No problems,’ said the backpacker, losing his air of irritation and producing an engaging smile as he took in her slim figure, gleaming, glossy brown hair and English-rose heart-shaped face. ‘Do you want a hand with that bag? ‘
Megan, who was already drifting away, didn’t register the offer as she glanced back towards the door through which she had seen the tall figure framed, her emotions a mixture of heart-thudding excitement and trepidation.
It was empty.
Had she imagined it? Her glance swung to left and right, moving over the swathe of heads. Emilio Rios was not the sort of man who blended into a crowd.
‘What is it, Megan? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing, Dad, I’m fine,’ she lied, well aware that her reaction to someone who bore a fleeting similarity to someone who probably had forgotten she existed had been, to put it mildly, way over the top.
‘Well, you don’t sound fine!’
It was mortifying. In a matter of seconds she had regressed to the cringingly naïve and self-conscious twenty-one-year-old she had been the last time she had seen him. If her feet had not been nailed to the floor she would have turned and run, exactly the way she had eventually done on that occasion.
Now how crazy was that?
She had not seen the man for almost two years and he had probably forgotten both her and the rather embarrassing circumstances of their last meeting.
All the same, she was glad she had only imagined him.
Megan took evasive action to avoid a baggage trolley being wheeled straight at her before replying to her father’s comment. ‘It was nothing. I just thought I saw someone, that’s all. Look, I’ll have to go now. I’ll ring you later when I’ve booked in somewhere.’
‘Saw who?’
Megan took a deep breath and swallowed, the name emerging huskily from her dry throat. ‘Emilio Rios.’
‘Emilio!’
‘Or someone who looked like him.’ This was Madrid. There were a lot of dark, dramatically handsome men; some were even several inches over six feet. Why assume that man she had seen for a split second had been him? It could have been anyone.
The realisation made some of the tension leave her shoulders.
‘No, it could be him, you know,’ her father mused. ‘He has an office in Madrid.’
It would have been harder to mention a capital where there was not a building bearing the Rios name. Emilio was accounted by some in the financial world to be a genius, by others to be incredibly lucky.
In Megan’s opinion, to be as successful as he was he had to be both, with the added essential ingredient of utter ruthlessness thrown in!
The tension back with bells on, Megan heard her father add, ‘The Rios family estate is nearby, magnificent old place.’ The awe in the voice of a man who lived in a stately pile with more rooms than Megan had ever counted suggested the Rios Estate really was something out of the ordinary.
‘Well, if he was here he’s gone now,’ she said as much for her own benefit as her dad’s.
‘I stayed there once when Luis and I were negotiating a deal. My God, that man was slippery. Did you ever meet Emilio’s father?’
‘I thought he was a bit of a snob, actually.’
‘No, not a snob,’ her father disagreed, sounding irritated by her outspoken appraisal. ‘Just very old-school and immensely proud of his family heritage, and who can blame him? They can trace their history back centuries. You know, this Madrid stopover of yours might not be such a bad thing after all.’
Deeply distrustful of the thoughtful note in her father’s voice, Megan frowned and said warily, ‘You think so?’
‘I’ll ring Emilio.’
A loud announcement on the speaker system drowned out Megan’s wailed protest of, ‘Oh, God, no, don’t do that!’
‘I’ve lost touch since Luis retired. This could be the perfect opportunity to reconnect, and I’m sure Emilio could arrange accommodation for you.’
‘I wouldn’t want to trade on our relationship.’
Ignoring the sarcasm of her retort, Charles mused thoughtfully, ‘The Rios family have strong South American connections, connections that could be very useful if the Ortega deal proves viable. Actually, even if it doesn’t there are—’
Shaking her head, Megan cut her father off mid-flow.
‘No.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, no, I will not butter up Emilio Rios for you.’
‘Did I ask you to?’ her father said, sounding suitably bewildered and hurt by the accusation.
‘Emilio Rios was Philip’s friend, not mine. I don’t even like the man.’ Two years ago he had been well on the way to becoming a carbon copy of his aristocratic, aloof father. By now he had probably become equally stuffy and pretentious.
There was nothing like being lauded as a genius to confirm a person’s belief in his own infallibility, and having beautiful women throw themselves at your feet was not exactly going to encourage humility, she reflected sourly.
‘You used to follow him around like a puppy.’
The reminder brought a flush to her cheeks. ‘I’m not twelve, Dad.’ Actually, she had been thirteen when her brother had brought home his college friend, who had been the most beautiful young man she had ever imagined, let alone laid eyes on.
He had been kind.
Later he had been cruel.
‘And anyway, he definitely doesn’t like me.’ This was not a stab in the dark; it was actually an understatement. Two years on the memory of his blighting scorn no longer had the power to make her feel physically sick. Though she was a little way off laughing at it.
‘Don’t be stupid, Megan. Why would he not like you? I doubt if you even registered on his radar back then.’
Is that meant to make me feel better? Megan wondered.
‘I did have hopes he might have fallen for Janie.’
Why not? Megan thought. Everyone else had, or so it had seemed to her when she had watched, with wistful envy, her beautiful half-sister make male jaws drop wherever she went.
‘But I think that marriage of his was a done deal when they were both in their cradles. But that’s over and it’s different now. You’ve turned into quite an attractive young woman. No Janie, obviously.’
Obviously, Megan thought, and her twisted smile was more philosophical than cynical as she said, ‘You mean I lost twenty pounds.’ There was less of her but suddenly she was a lot more visible, at least to male eyes. ‘Look, Dad, I have to— Hold on, Dad,’ she added, turning in response to the pressure of a hand on her shoulder.
The expression of polite enquiry on her face melted into one of wild-eyed panic as she tilted her face up at the man standing at her shoulder.
He was the reason why she was suddenly not being jostled. People did not jostle Emilio Rios. It wasn’t just his physical presence, which was considerable, it was his aura.
‘You!’ Oh, God, how long had he been standing there? The thought that he had been listening made her feel queasy.
Emilio Rios smiled and Megan’s lips parted. She had no control over the tiny sigh of female appreciation that emerged from her throat. Fortunately the level of noise in the place drowned it out.
The smile did not reach his dark eyes, just deepened the fine lines fanning out from the corners, leaving the gleaming depths intent as without a word he framed her face with his big hands.
A myriad emotions swirling in jumbled psychedelic chaos through her head, Megan stood immobile as she felt the warm brush of his breath against the fluttering pulse at the base of her neck, then the downy softness of her cheek as his dark features blurred out of focus as she struggled to escape the magnetic tug of his unblinking stare.
Logic told her this was not happening, but it was. This wasn’t a dream; it was real. Dreams were not hot; he was. Across the inches barely separating them the heat of his body seeped through the fine creased linen of her jacket.
Say something! Do something?
She did neither, but he did.
Emilio bent his head and covered her mouth with his.
Scream, kick him, bite him, said the voice in her head.
Instead she melted into him, her soft body moulding sinuously against the lean, hard length of him. Her lips parted with a silent sigh, not just allowing but inviting the bold, erotic penetration of his tongue.
Need and enervating lust rolled over her, sweeping her along in its wake as she clung to him, her arms sliding around his middle.
The crowds faded, her sense of self faded, all that remained was the taste of him filling her mouth, the texture of his warm lips. The hunger inside her responding with mindless enthusiasm to the erotic probing advances of his tongue.
Then just as abruptly as it had begun it stopped and she was standing there deprived of the heat of his body, shaking and feeling pretty much as if she had just been run over by a truck.
Megan’s hands balled into fists at her sides.
‘Mr Rios,’ she croaked. ‘I was just talking about you.’ She raised the phone that she still held in a white-knuckled grip.
He just kissed you!
Two years had not changed him. He looked perhaps a little leaner, a little harder, the angles and planes of his incredible face perhaps more sharply defined, but essentially he was still the same.
But you’re not that Megan, you’ve moved on, she reminded herself.
He just kissed you.
Emilio stood waiting for his breathing to return to something approximating normal and watched her, fascinated to see denial this close up. Megan was addressing her remarks to some point over his left shoulder and her attractive contralto voice had an audible edge of hysteria. The open neck of her blouse didn’t quite hide the pulse that beat at the base of her throat.
Struggling to control the hunger rampaging through his body, he avoided looking at her mouth, deciding it would not help the painful issue of his arousal, which remained painfully obvious—also painful!
Kissing in public places had some definite disadvantages.
You’ve met a lot of good-looking men, Megan, she told herself. You can look at him and not turn into a gibbering idiot. You do not worship this man from afar. He cannot injure you with an unfair accusation and harsh word. He has no power at all over you any more because he’s just a good-looking man you used to slightly know because he went to school with your brother.
Just a man who made it a struggle to breathe when she looked at him and all that scalp-tingling stuff. Her glance swept downwards as she rubbed her forearms to dispel the goose bumps that in the heat of the terminal building had broken out over her body like a rash.
Face it, Megan, a man like Emilio is never going to be just a man, not with a mouth like that. But that didn’t mean she had to humiliate herself by drooling.
‘I know, I heard you.’
Somewhere above the hum of noise and the pounding of her heart as it struggled to batter its way through her ribcage, Megan was conscious of a voice, a vaguely familiar voice, calling Emilio’s name.
If he heard it he gave no sign, he just continued to stare silently down at her with an expression on his face that she struggled to interpret.
‘You just kissed me.’
He angled a dark brow. ‘I was beginning to think you hadn’t noticed.’
‘I’m ignoring it.’ Or not dealing with it? ‘Like I ignore troublesome, irritating bugs.’
‘So you do not like me?’
The possibility did not appear to have dented his armourplated confidence, she thought, struggling to recover her shredded composure, or at least close her mouth—it was so not a good look.
Relax, she told herself.
It was not like or anything similarly tepid that Emilio felt as his eyes moved across the soft contours of her upturned features. Soft was the right word, he decided, allowing his eyes to briefly drop as far as her visibly heaving bosom before returning to her face, soft and feminine.
The colour of her eyes had always fascinated him, a deep shade of topaz, though at this moment only a rim of that remarkable colour remained around her dilated pupils. Her skin was incredible. Under the spreading dark stain on her smooth cheeks it was milk-pale and totally flawless. Did that milky pallor extend all over?
He watched the muscles in her pale throat contract as she blinked and gave her glossy head a tiny shake and lifted her chin to a defiant angle before opening her eyes. Emilio, identifying the ‘don’t mess with me’ look on her face, felt a buzz in his blood that had been absent for a long time as he silently accepted the challenge.
He would dearly love to mess with her.
Megan was familiar with powerful men and their generally fragile egos. Experience had taught her that great men’s egos responded well to a well-chosen word. She had averted many a potential meltdown with a placatory word, a compliment.
This was a situation she was more than capable of coping with, which begged the question—why wasn’t she? Why was she standing there like an idiot?
Powerful, successful men liked to be told they were wonderful as well as the next person—possibly more, because they took it as their due.
She took a deep breath that eased the tightness in her aching chest, opened her mouth and heard herself say, ‘No. No, I don’t like you at all.’ Not the sop to his ego she had intended.
‘You do not know me, although you think you do.’
Megan’s edginess materialised as hostility as she tilted her chin. ‘Very profound, but actually I don’t want to know you,’ she blurted childishly. ‘And if you kiss me again I will—’
Emilio arched a questioning brow and smiled down into her upturned face. ‘You will what?’ he enquired with interest.
Megan inhaled and thought, Good question. ‘Just don’t!’
Not a threat likely to make him gibber in fear, but it was preferable to the more candid response of, Kiss you back!
She watched his eyes glitter in response to the warning, not with anger, not with amusement, but with something else she could not put a name to. Megan struggled to keep her eyes on his face as the nameless something made her stomach dissolve into a liquid, molten mush.
‘That came from the heart.’
Aware that the organ in question was trying to batter its way through her ribs, she glared at him.
Megan heard his name again and began to turn her head towards the sound, but a long brown finger laid against the curve of her jaw prevented her.
The unexpected contact sent a shudder through her body and dragged a shocked breath from her lungs.
She wanted to slap his hand away.
She wanted to tell him she had no desire to know him.
She wanted to tell him to stop looking at her like that.
‘Stop looking—’
As his mouth covered her own for a second time the strength left Megan’s body in one whoosh. If one hand had not curled like a supportive steel band around her ribcage, dragging her body up against his iron-hard thighs, she would have slid to the ground.
When he released her she was breathing hard as she blinked up at him. ‘I told you not to do that.’
‘What can I say? It’s the challenge and also your mouth. It was made for kissing.’
Taking the phone from her grasp, Emilio lifted it to his ear and, still holding her eyes, spoke into the mouthpiece.
‘Rios here.’
Megan slanted an angry glare at his face and held out her hand.
‘Ah, Charles. Yes, she is here with me now,’ Emilio said, ignoring her silent demand, and continued to speak, responding to what her father was saying, his voice oozing almost as much insincerity as his mocking gaze.
‘No, don’t worry, I will take care of her. No need, it is not a problem, Charles.’ A taunting grin in place on his lean face, Emilio turned to evade the hand that tried to snatch the phone from him. He waved an admonishing finger at her face and directed a wolfish smile at her indignant face as he raised his voice and said, ‘It is a total pleasure and no trouble at all. Yes, and Megan sends her love.’
Love was not the emotion stamped on Megan’s face when she attracted the attention of several people within earshot as she yelled, ‘No, I don’t!’
Finally able to grab the phone, Megan snatched it from his hand and lifted it to her own ear, struggling to regain some semblance of control. ‘Dad?’ she said. ‘I don’t need to bother Mr Rios, I’m—I’m … He’s gone,’ she said, directing an accusing look up at Emilio’s dark face.
‘Your father is a busy man.’
‘My father is—’ Megan bit back the unflattering reading of her father’s character and glared up at Emilio.
‘He can relax now he knows you have someone to look after you.’
‘I don’t need anyone to look after me, and my father knows it. He just wants me to be nice to you because you have contacts that he …’ Realising belatedly the extreme indiscretion of her goaded retort, she closed her lips firmly over further tactless disclosures.
Emilio’s lips thinned as his nostrils flared in distaste. Who needed an enemy when you had a father like Charles Armstrong? A man who had never really grasped the fact that a father’s duty to his children was to protect and shield.
Armstrong used anyone, including members of his own family, if it gave him an advantage.
‘Just how nice does he expect you to be to me?’
Megan responded to the comment as if it had been a slap, catching her breath and drawing back. The subsequent blast of fury that sizzled along her nerve endings blinded Megan to the sympathy in Emilio’s dark eyes.
She lifted her chin and glared up at him. ‘My father does not ask me to have sex with men who can be useful to him.’
‘Though he’d not be likely to kick up a fuss if you decided to.’
‘I have sex with men because I want to.’
So far she had not wanted to, but Megan saw no reason to share this information with Emilio Rios; even if she had, she doubted he would have believed her.
Ironic, really—the world thought she was a bit of an iceberg, a reputation she found it comfortable to hide behind, but Emilio Rios thought she was some sort of sex-mad tart.
Two years ago her initial gratitude at being rescued from a situation that had escalated dangerously out of control had changed to wretched misery when he had looked at her with contempt and treated her to a blighting lecture on the dangers of leading men on.
Acting as though she were some sort of sexual predator!
Sexual predator!
At that point Megan hadn’t even had a real boyfriend. The man Emilio had rescued her from had not been her date. He was a lecturer, quite old to her mind, and she had treated his kind offer of a lift home from the graduation party, when the boy who had promised her an early lift home had become drunk and incapable, as just that—kind.
How was she meant to have known that he had been drinking too? She hadn’t had a clue until he had put his foot down through the village, then, after making her extremely uncomfortable with comments loaded with sexual innuendo, instead of taking her to the house where her father was hosting a party for his business partner—all the family were under orders to attend—he’d pulled up on the long tree-lined drive leading up to the house and tried to kiss her.
During the rather undignified tussle that had followed Megan had tried to remain calm, but she had been close to panic when the door had been dragged open to reveal Emilio.
Her relief had been short-lived.
‘So how about me?’
She looked at him blankly as she pushed away the memory of that night. ‘How about you what? ‘
Emilio arched a sardonic brow. ‘Do you want to have sex with me?’
Heat flashed through Megan. She was insulted, she told herself, not excited. She hung on to her temper with difficulty and pretended to consider his insolent question. ‘You got a spare million?’ Word was he had several.
His brows lifted. ‘You value yourself highly.’
Megan flicked the ponytail that lay against her neck and responded with a cool assurance she was about a million miles from feeling. ‘I’m worth it.’
‘Then maybe we could work something out. I’m not averse to paying for quality,’ he drawled.
The sexual tension soared as they stared at one another, neither willing to back down. But before this absurd negotiation went any further a voice cut across the seething silence.
‘Emilio?’
CHAPTER THREE
MEGAN turned her head. The woman standing there was tiny, barely an inch above five feet. The last time she had seen the petite brunette the older woman had been wearing a ring; today her hand was bare, but nothing else, it seemed, had changed.
Rosanna Rios was still the most beautiful woman she had ever met. Never a hair out of place, she looked like a porcelain ornament with big brown eyes, a rosebud mouth and delicate nose. She had the sort of delicate fragility that aroused the protective instincts in men.
‘I did call, but you were.’ she raised a darkened brow and lifted her enquiring gaze to Emilio as she teased ‘… occupied.’
Megan felt her stomach muscles tighten as she watched Emilio brush the smooth cheek offered him with his lips.
‘I had no idea at all.’ Rosanna turned to smile at Megan, adding with a smile tinged with relief as she turned back to Emilio, ‘I’m glad things are finally working out for you.’
Megan, puzzling over the soft-voiced aside, waited for Emilio to set the record straight. Instead she heard him ask his ex-wife if she was being met.
‘I was.’ Rosanna scanned the crowds, a delicate frown furrowing her smooth brow. ‘But he appears to have been held up.’
‘Can we offer you a lift? ‘
Megan, frowning at the we and the misleading message it sent, watched as Rosanna shook her head. ‘I’ll wait.’
Emilio shrugged and placed a hand lightly between Megan’s shoulder blades, acting as if he hadn’t noticed when she flinched. ‘If you’re sure?’
Megan flashed him a ‘what the hell are you up to?’ look, which he responded to by dropping his head to whisper softly in her ear, ‘I’ll meet your price.’
The mortified colour flew to Megan’s cheeks as she blurted loudly, ‘I wasn’t serious and you know it.’
‘You really shouldn’t make offers you don’t intend to follow through with,’ he chided, adding, ‘Sorry, Rosanna, we’re being rude.’
‘You’re being rude,’ Megan gritted.
Rude, and extremely manipulative.
‘No apologies necessary. Are you two arriving? Or were you planning a romantic trip?’
‘We are not together,’ Megan protested in a belated attempt to set the record straight. The breathlessness of her delivery, due in part to the fingers that had begun to massage the tight area at the back of her neck, did not add weight to her claim.
The casual intimacy of his action sent a quiver of raw sexual awareness through her body.
Emilio hooked a thumb under her chin. ‘You’re tense, querida.’ He disapproved with a frown that left his dark eyes warm with concern.
‘I can’t imagine why,’ she retorted.
The ironic retort drew a laugh from Emilio, who allowed the hand that lay against her waist to slide lower to the firm curve of her bottom. ‘Megan was planning to fly home, but it looks like I have her here for a little longer.’
Rosanna gave a sympathetic grimace. ‘Bad luck.’
‘Good luck for me.’
‘I was lucky. I arrived on an early flight.’
‘How long have you two been …?’
Megan, aware of Emilio’s eyes on her face, struggled to manufacture an amused smile for the other woman. ‘No, we’re not, that is. He’s joking.’
Emilio came to her rescue. ‘We are just good friends,’ he said with an ‘if you believe that you’ll believe anything’ smile.
Rosanna smiled. ‘Of course.’
‘No, really we’re …’
Emilio placed a finger to her lips.
The contact made her pupils dilate.
‘Relax, Megan.’ His deep voice, huskily suggestive of unspoken intimacies, shivered across her oversensitive nerve endings. ‘Rosanna understands, and she is not going to report back to anyone,’ he soothed, lifting a stray hank of hair from her cheek.
A hazy, distracted expression drifted across his face as he rubbed the silky strands between his fingers before tucking them behind her ear.
Megan swallowed and struggled to maintain a façade of calm while her thudding heart tried to climb its way out of her chest cavity.
Mesmerised, she stared at him. She did not register the time lapse before he pushed her hair from her face. She was too busy registering unpleasant things like the almost painful clutching of her stomach muscles and the rush of heat that raised her core temperature by several uncomfortable degrees.
His hand did not fall away. Instead he touched her ear lobe, seeming to notice the amber studs in the gold setting for the first time. His dark, thickly lashed eyes drifted downwards to the hollow of her throat where a pulse fluttered visibly against the tender blue-veined white skin.
Any residual guilt he might have felt for exploiting the situation had long vanished. It had been a long time coming, but Megan Armstrong was going to be his and he was going to make her forget every man she had ever been with—and, Madre di Dios, he was going to enjoy every second of it!
His fingertips barely brushed her, but even the suggestion of contact sent a shiver of sensation across the surface of her skin. She was frozen to the spot by a wave of enervating lust that was terrifying in its strength.
Hating the feeling of being utterly helpless and not in control, Megan hid behind the sweeping half-moon fan of her dark lashes and, like a drowning man clinging to a straw, repeated, You’ll laugh about this later, over and over in her head.
‘I like those,’ he said, making her shiver as he touched, not just the earring, but the thin layer of skin behind her ear, and Megan realised it really was an erogenous zone.
God, I’ve got erogenous zones!
She met his dark intent gaze and thought, God, I’ve got a problem!
Her hand came up to push his away—that had been the intention at least. Instead she somehow ended up with her fingers curled over his and stayed there for an awkward heart-thudding moment.
‘They were my mum’s.’
Her eyes dropped from his uncomfortably perceptive gaze a moment before they filled with emotional tears. The earrings were one of a handful of physical reminders she had of her mother, along with her watch and the creased and grainy snapshot of herself as a baby held in her mother’s arms she carried in her wallet.
‘They match your eyes. Did your mother have golden eyes too?’ His voice flowed over her like honey.
She was startled by the question; the eyes in question flew to his. He wasn’t really interested, she told herself. This little byplay was presumably for Rosanna’s benefit—like the kisses.
‘Yes, she did. I … I look like her.’
‘Then she must have been a very beautiful woman.’
Megan felt her heart give a traitorous thud and forced herself to look away. He looked genuine but he was about as sincere as a politician running for re-election; she would be a fool if she lost sight of that fact.
Twisting her earring, she turned to the older woman. ‘Look, it was nice to see you again but I’m running late.’
‘Of course, and it was very nice to see you too, Megan,’ she said warmly. ‘Philip often speaks of you.’
‘You speak to Philip? ‘
A look of consternation crossed the older woman’s face. ‘I, well—’
Emilio cut across her. ‘I hate to interrupt, ladies, but—’ he tapped the face of the watch on his wrist and angled a significant look at Megan ‘—this is why we are running late. You talk too much.’ Grabbing her arm, he dropped a kiss on Rosanna’s cheek and headed for the exit, virtually dragging Megan along with him.
She angled an angry look up at his lean face. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘I am rescuing you from an awkward situation.’
Megan loosed an incredulous hoot as they emerged in the fresh air. She pulled away from him and stood, hands on hips, glaring at him.
‘An awkward situation of your making.’
He flashed a grin and held out an arm towards her. ‘The car is this way.’
Megan didn’t move. ‘Goodbye.’
He studied her face for a moment before sighing. ‘Look, we can—’
‘Do this the hard way or the easy way,’ she slotted in.
‘Tempting, but no, I was going to say we can stand here debating this, but in the end you will accept a lift because the alternative is a very long wait.’ He nodded towards the long queues beside the empty taxi ranks. ‘And you are, I am led to believe, a practical woman not given to cutting off her very pretty nose to spite her beautiful face.
‘Besides, I promised your father I would take care of you.’
‘And you are a man of your word?’
‘It hurts me you doubt it.’ The silence stretched as he watched her struggle. ‘Of course, if for some reason you are afraid to get in a car with me …?’
Her chin went up. ‘Of course I’m not afraid,’ she scoffed.
CHAPTER FOUR
ANGRY that she had allowed herself to be manipulated into accepting this lift—a two-year-old could have seen through his tactics—Megan maintained her tight-lipped, frigid silence until Emilio had negotiated the congested traffic around the airport.
‘I think you owe me an apology.’
‘You do? For what exactly?’ he said, sounding interested.
‘You kissed me.’ Annoyingly, she could not say it without blushing. She just hoped he was too busy avoiding some suicidal cyclists to notice.
Emilio arched a brow and flashed a quick wolfish grin in her direction. ‘I have not forgotten. You expect me to apologise for kissing you?’
Megan shook her head. ‘I’ve already forgotten the actual kiss,’ she lied, hoping but not expecting to bruise his ego. ‘I expect you to apologise for using me that way to make your ex jealous.’
Emilio looked startled by the interpretation. ‘Jealous?’
‘And all that effort and it didn’t even work. Face it, Emilio, she didn’t care.’ Possibly, Megan mused bitterly, because Rosanna knew all she had to do was click her pretty fingers and Emilio would come running. ‘I have to admit I’m disappointed.’
‘With my kissing?’
Megan, who had no intention of going there, ignored the interruption. ‘I thought you were supposed to be the great authority on women, a regular Casanova …’
‘You seem to take a great interest in my sex life.’
The taunt brought a flush of colour to her cheeks, but Megan didn’t drop her gaze as she countered, ‘It’s hard to avoid it.’
He looked momentarily confused before his mouth twisted into a grimace. ‘That damned article. How long is that damned thing going to haunt me?’
The look of disgust that flashed across his face made her laugh.
‘Haunt?’ she said, pretending confusion. ‘I thought it was very flattering. Some of the things she said you did I didn’t know were physically possible. May I give you some advice?’
‘If that advice is don’t sleep with women who confide intimate details to tabloids and trashy magazines, don’t waste your breath.’
Emilio took very little interest in what was written about him, good or bad, but he was actually a long way from feeling the amused indifference his manner suggested, for this particular article had been, not only incredibly tasteless and salacious, but totally untrue.
He would have won any prosecution he brought against the magazine that published it, but such a course would have inevitably prolonged the public interest. Instead he had bitten the bullet and chosen to remain silent on the subject, waiting for it to go away.
‘It wasn’t,’ Megan admitted. ‘But it seems sound advice.’
‘Only if you actually did sleep with the woman in question.’
Something in Emilio’s voice brought her frowning scrutiny to his face. ‘And you didn’t,’ she realised. ‘But she said …?’
‘And you believe everything you read in trashy magazines?’ he asked sardonically.
‘No.’ she conceded doubtfully.
‘Just everything you read about me?’
Megan aimed a killer look at his profile. The man, she brooded darkly, always had to have the last word.
‘That advice—what was it? I would like to hear it, if only to prove to you that I actually have an open mind. So what pearl of wisdom would you like to share with me? ‘
‘You want to know? Fine! I’m no expert—’
Emilio gave a lazy smile. ‘I can feel a but coming on.’
‘Do you want to hear what I have to say or not? ‘
He produced an unrealistically meek expression and mimed a zipping motion across his lips.
‘But—it seems to me that kissing someone else is not the best way to win back a wife.’
There was a long silence before he filled it.
‘You really think that is why I kissed you?’ The next time he intended to make his intentions clearer—always easier when you didn’t have several hundred people watching you.
She arched a brow and adopted an expression of amusement. Inside the laughter was noticeably absent as she said, ‘And you’re trying to tell me you were just overcome with uncontrollable lust when you saw me? ‘
Not for the first time she wondered what it would be like to be one of those women who did just that to men. Did that make her very shallow?
‘I suppose you know that it was totally pathetic. I should have called Security!’ Instead I kissed you back, which was a really great idea.
‘People kiss in airports.’
‘Not like that!’
‘You did not exactly beat me off with a stick.’ Emilio struggled to concentrate on the road ahead as the memory of her soft curves moulding themselves to his body rose up to torment him.
‘Quite the opposite. Now, why was that, I wonder? ‘
‘I felt sorry for you.’ Pleased with the way the explanation had tripped off her tongue, she added, ‘You know, you really should get a life for real. Rosanna clearly has.’
Actually it wasn’t at all clear. Megan could see that Emilio would be a hard act for any man to follow, even the most self-confident of men.
‘Yes, she has. I believe we will be getting an invite to her wedding any day now.’
‘She’s getting married!’ This information went a long way to explain Emilio’s performance, especially if he was still in love with his ex-wife.
Megan squashed the flash of sympathy she felt for him. It might explain why, but it did not begin to excuse the way he had used her.
‘It is in the cards, though not certain as yet. You sound surprised?’
‘I am.’
Not as surprised as she had been when she had learnt that the couple who had seemed a perfect match on every level were breaking up. Up until the moment that the divorce had been announced Megan had anticipated a dramatic reconciliation, but the Rios divorce, like the break-up, had been low-key and bizarrely amicable based on what they called a mutual decision.
But had that mutual, civilized, still-good-friends routine been a way to save face? The Rios family name came not only with a clearly superb gene pool, she thought, sweeping a covert glance through her lashes at Emilio’s clear-cut patrician profile, but also some far less attractive things.
Things like family tradition and pride. How would divorce have gone down? In many ways the Rios family had not moved on very far from the Dark Ages, and they didn’t do divorce. When it came to pride the Rios family had a lot more than their fair share.
For the first time she found herself wondering just how mutual the divorce had really been. Had it in reality been forced on him?
She flashed a speculative look at Emilio’s profile, wondering if he too had been anticipating a passionate reconciliation?
‘I thought marriage to you would have put her off the institution for life! It’s almost as much of a mystery as why she married you in the first place.’
‘Is it?’ he said, looking at her mouth.
The insolent scrutiny made Megan shift uneasily in her seat. ‘She seems quite sane.’
He continued to stare at her mouth until, unable to bear it a second longer, Megan yelled, ‘Will you keep your eyes on the road?’ They were stopped at a set of lights. ‘And nobody gets married to someone because they are a good kisser, if that’s what you’re implying.’
‘I am relieved you noticed. Actually, my talents extend beyond kissing.’
Megan dragged a hand jerkily down the front of her blouse, growing more agitated by the second. ‘I really don’t want to know!’ she choked, dropping the pretence of an amused façade.
Her directive stemmed the flow of details, but not the flow of visual examples of his talent slipping through her head.
‘I should have waited for a taxi,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘God alone knows why I got in a car with you.’
‘Possibly because you were hoping I’d kiss you again?’
Her slender shoulder lifted in a shrug and she sneered, ‘No audience here, so I feel safe.’
He lifted one shoulder, but admitted modestly, ‘I am not the exhibitionist you appear to think. I actually do some of my best work in private.’
His deep, throaty drawl sent Megan’s imagination into free fall. She gasped as shameful heat flooded the sensitive juncture between her legs. ‘Not with me!’ she retorted as she pressed a button to open the window, pressing it again with a certain amount of desperation when it did not immediately respond.
‘We do have air conditioning, you know.’
Megan stuck her head out of the window and breathed deeply. ‘It’s not working.’ She found it extremely doubtful that a cold shower would have worked for her at that moment.
She was bewildered and alarmed by the ease with which he could arouse her physically. It was bizarre, but the excitement in her veins seemed to grow in direct proportion to the antagonism she felt towards him.
Emilio shifted gears and the powerful monster he drove shot forward, straining at the leash as the traffic began to move once more. He felt some sympathy for the machine’s frustration; his libido was straining at the leash.
‘You know what they say, querida—never say never.’ His sideways glance touched her heaving bosom. ‘You gave every appearance of enjoying yourself when you kissed me.’ Her response had delighted him.
‘That was not a kiss.’
‘It was not? ‘
Megan chewed fretfully at her full lower lip and stared stubbornly out of the window. ‘It was … a reflex,’ she retorted in a driven voice.
‘Indeed. I can only say that you have the best … reflexes of any woman I have ever come across.’
The window beckoned again.
When she pulled her head back in she pushed the mesh of hair from her eyes and observed with a spite that was totally uncharacteristic for her, ‘I should have told Rosanna that, far from being an item—like anyone is going to believe that,’ she inserted with a scornful sniff. ‘I can’t stand the sight of you!’
‘Is it such a good idea to allow this to become personal? ‘
Megan stared at his patrician profile in disbelief. Was the man for real? ‘It already is personal. It got personal the moment you k … k … you kissed me! ‘
‘I too have excellent reflexes.’
Lips compressed, she directed her gaze on her hands clenched primly in her lap, thinking, Do not go there, Megan. ‘I just bet you do,’ she snarled, watching her knuckles blench white.
She flashed him a look of exasperation. ‘Is it so impossible for you to believe that I can’t stand the sight of you?’
‘I believe that your reaction to me is not mild, and neither, for the record, is mine to you.’ Before she could analyse the message within his cryptic utterance he continued,
‘But I was referring to your comment … something along the lines of—“like anyone would believe that.” Why would anyone not believe that we are lovers?’
Megan slung him an irritated look. ‘I have a brain and I like to be exclusive. Also I look nothing like a Barbie doll.’
‘Ouch! So much for sisterly solidarity! You really should not judge by appearances, Megan.’
‘You’re right, I’m the superficial one.’
His grin flashed and her own smile faded. It would be an exaggeration to call the spiky atmosphere warm, but she was conscious that a worrying element of intimacy had developed.
Megan could have done without knowing he could laugh at himself; it made despising him all the more of a struggle. She needed out of this car and fast! God only knew what had possessed her to get in to begin with.
Like you don’t know?
Ignoring the unhelpful contribution of the knowing voice in her head, she cut short the inner dialogue and said, ‘Look, you can drop me at the first hotel we pass, if that’s not a problem?’ If it was a problem she could always jump out of the moving vehicle. It could not be a more painful experience than this conversation.
‘Without feeding you first?’ He shook his dark head in reproach.
‘That really isn’t necessary. I ate breakfast,’ she lied brightly. ‘And it isn’t lunchtime.’ She glanced at her watch and realised it was barely nine-thirty. It felt as though she had been in the car for hours.
His dark brows twitched into a straight line above his hawkish nose. ‘You are very hung up with time,’ he drawled.
‘And you must be a very unique billionaire businessman if you have time to snack and watch the grass grow,’ she retorted tartly.
‘I work, but I am not a slave to routine.’
‘Congratulations on being a free spirit, but I’m still not hungry.’
‘You think your time would be put to better use counting the minutes until the planes start flying again? You’re stuck here—I suggest you make the most of it. Madrid is a beautiful city, though being a native I must admit to some prejudice on the subject,’ he conceded with a fluid shrug. ‘Do you like architecture, history …?’
‘Why—are you offering to be my guide?’ She leaned back in her seat and thought, Gotcha, as she wondered how long it would take him to discover a very full diary.
It might amuse Emilio Rios to buy her breakfast, he might even feel he was obliged to do so because of her manipulative parent’s request to look after her, but spending an entire day with her would definitely not be his idea of an efficient use of his time.
‘Why not?’
The cynical smile playing about her lips vanished. ‘I wasn’t being serious!’ She watched his brows lift in response to the horrified vehemence of her tone and added, ‘And even if I did want to sightsee, by the time I check my emails my dad will have found me one or two things to do,’ she promised, flashing a wry smile.
‘Then don’t check your emails.’
The simple logic made Megan blink as she stared at him as though he were from another planet. ‘You might be your own boss, but I’m not. My dad does not have a great opinion of slackers.’
‘And are you a slacker?’ he wondered, making his interest sound academic.
Megan’s response was not academic, it was indignant. ‘I am not!’
One corner of his mouth lifted and the amusement extended to his dark eyes. ‘You are the boss’s daughter—that must give you a certain amount of latitude.’
‘Being the boss’s daughter means I have to prove I can do more than paint my nails—’ She turned her head, a suspicious frown forming on her smooth brow. ‘Are you trying to wind me up?’
His grin flashed. ‘Yes, the ruffled-feather look suits you.’ His eyes dropped to her emotionally heaving bosom. ‘Realistically, Armstrong isn’t going sack you to prove his egalitarian credentials, is he?’
‘If I didn’t pull my weight he might. But …’ she gave a shrug and conceded ‘.probably not.’
‘Because you’re his daughter.’ He raised a brow in response to her laugh and came to a halt as the second set of lights ahead changed. ‘Not because you’re his daughter? ‘
Her eyes connected with the dark-eyed glance that flickered her way. ‘While I’m working for him, to some extent he still controls my life.’
A small silence followed this unemotional explanation as Megan considered a situation she had been thinking about a lot of late.
‘So if he sacked you he’d lose that power? ‘
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