Hot Summer Flings: A Spanish Awakening / The Italian Next Door... / Interview with the Daredevil

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? ‘

Megan nodded, turning her head his way as she agreed with this analysis. ‘Exactly.’ It wasn’t until her glance flickered his way and she saw his expression that she realised what she was discussing and more importantly with whom!

Her eyes shot saucer-wide as she gave a dismayed croak. Had she gone mad? She kept her own counsel on certain subjects; she had not even confided her recent half-formed plans to her best friend.

‘So now you know all about my dysfunctional family—not a very fascinating subject, so do you mind if we change it?’

Emilio, who knew a lot more about her family than she suspected, watched the rosy glow wash over her fair skin and his expression hardened as his thoughts drifted back to a specific section of his conversation with Philip that he had brooded angrily over long after his friend had made his farewells the previous day.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘WHY is the idea of Megan being groomed to take over the company a joke?’

Philip grinned, then stopped. ‘You’re serious,’ he realised.

It was a struggle to contain his impatience in the face of the Englishman’s open-mouthed amazement. ‘Why would I not be? It is my understanding that your sister is being groomed to take control one day.’

‘How would you know that? Unless you have been secretly following her progress.’ Philip grinned at his own joke.

‘We have a proactive policy with recruitment. We are always on the lookout for the brightest and the best,’ Emilio explained.

‘You thought of offering Megan a job?’ The possibility appeared to render her brother tongue-tied with amazement.

‘She is exactly the sort of candidate we target.’ Not directly obviously—such preliminary approaches were made through the aegis of an agency.

‘Megan! Our Megan?’

‘She did graduate top of her class.’ Had any of her family actually noticed?

If they had it would be the first time. A quiet member in a family of large and noisy personalities, Megan had perfected the art of fading into the background to such a degree that she seemed startled when someone actually noticed her.

Emilio had felt his anger rise as he recalled how pathetically grateful she’d been when she had been included by her family.

‘Megan always was a bit of a swot,’ Philip recalled with an affectionate grin.

‘The same has been said of me, but I would call it focus. It is a quality I find essential in those working for me.’

‘So you wanted Megan to … Did she refuse you?’

‘I was given to understand through an intermediary that she was not available.’

‘Megan being headhunted—that’s a tough one to get my head around. She’s bright, of course she is … I just never thought …’

‘Well, your father must have if he’s grooming her—’

‘He’s not,’ Philip cut in.

‘How can you be so sure? ‘

‘I know my dad. Oh, he’s probably told her that he will—that would be his style,’ Philip admitted. ‘But let her take over …?’ He shook his head. ‘No way, never in a million years.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, for starters, in case you’ve forgotten, she’s a girl.’

‘I had noticed she is a woman.’

‘Dad can talk the talk when it comes to women in the workplace, but at heart he’s a chauvinist.’

‘You implied that he would not have been unhappy if Janie had shown an interest.’

‘Sure, Janie’s always been his favourite, and she’s—’

Emilio was taken unawares by the level of anger he was forced to suppress as he prompted coldly, ‘You were saying.’

Maybe he hadn’t suppressed it all because Philip looked wary as he responded. ‘Dad took Megan in when her mum died, but at the end of the day she was …’

‘The maid’s daughter.’

‘I don’t think that way,’ Philip protested, flushing. ‘But Dad does. And her mum was the housekeeper before she got herself pregnant.’

Emilio schooled his expression into neutrality. He had no idea why the sordid story made him so furious. It wasn’t as if such things had not occurred in his own family. The only difference being that no member of his family would have ever acknowledged the child of such an unequal union, even if she had been left alone after the death of her mother.

To give Armstrong his due he had recognised his responsibilities even if it had taken twelve years for him to do.

He could only imagine what it had been like for a child brought up in what, according to Philip, had been a pretty tough housing estate in an industrial town to be removed into a totally foreign environment among people she did not know.

People who did not value the gift they had been given.

Megan’s glance moved from his long fingers drumming an impatient tattoo on the steering wheel to his profile. The taut lines of his face suggested Emilio wasn’t very happy, the tension was rolling off him in waves.

‘I hate driving in heavy traffic too. You can’t wonder that road rage happens.’

Her soft contralto voice dragged Emilio free of his dark reflections. He turned his head and felt something squeeze tight in his chest as he read the sympathy in her face and all his submerged protective instincts rose to the surface.

‘I do not feel rage towards the road.’ Just every person who has ever hurt you. ‘But you still carry on working for him?’

The abrupt and seemingly unconnected angry addition made her start slightly and blink in confusion.

‘Dad?’

He nodded abruptly.

‘Why wouldn’t I?’ No longer an impression—the anger he was projecting was very real.

‘So you don’t mind that by your own admission he tries to manipulate you.’