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

‘You say you didn’t want anything, but appearances suggest otherwise. You look like you’ve been poured into that top, and as for the jeans …’

Megan dragged down at the rounded high neckline of the shirt she wore today under her business suit, closing her eyes as she still recalled the condemnatory glow in his eyes as his sweeping gesture had encompassed the V-necked black T-shirt—black because she’d thought the colour was slimming—before sliding to the dark denim jeans, the brand and style that all her friends had been wearing without being accused of flaunting anything.

‘What reaction did you expect?’ Megan heard him ask as she focused her attention, not on the condemnation in his eyes, but the nerve in his lean cheek that was clenching and unclenching.

He stabbed his long fingers into the dark waves of his thick hair and released a string of expletives in Spanish, sounding and looking nothing like the quietly authoritative man who had always been kind to her and, even more amazingly, appeared interested in what she was doing, possibly because he had lovely manners.

‘As for getting into a car with a boy who had been drinking …’

His sneering disdain made her see red. ‘He’s not a boy, he’s a lecturer.’

‘Do the university authorities look kindly on their lecturing staff dating their students?’

‘It wasn’t a date, he was just—’

‘I saw what he was just doing, and if you choose to have casual sex it might be a good idea to remember that drunks have a very slender grasp of safe sex!’

The accusation horrified Megan. ‘He wasn’t—’

‘Are you saying he had not been drinking?’

‘No, I’m …’ She shook her head, struggling to equate this cold, cruel critic with the person who had always had a kind word of encouragement for her in the past.

Her miserable silence seemed to incense him further.

‘Have you been drinking also?’ he asked, his hooded gaze suspicious as he studied her face.

At that point a small burst of defiance, long overdue it seemed in retrospect, came to Megan’s aid.

Planting her hands on the curve of her hips, she thrust out her chin, tossed back her hair. ‘If I wanted to have a drink, so what?’ she challenged, her voice husky as she forced the words past the aching emotional lump in her throat.

‘It’s not illegal, you know. I’m over eighteen.’

‘This is not about legality, it is about self-respect.’

Megan, unable to stand there and take the sheer breathtaking unfairness of the cutting condemnation, choked back a sob and yelled, ‘I wasn’t attending an orgy! It was just a few friends, a university thing. Actually, it’s none of your business. You’re not my father.’

Inexplicably, or so it seemed to Megan, he took her response as a tacit admission of guilt.

‘So you have!’ His eyes closed, he let his head fall back, exposing the long line of his brown muscled throat as he inhaled deeply, then slid apparently unwittingly into his native tongue, ending the tirade with a biting, ‘Well? ‘

Well, what? she thought. ‘I had one glass of wine,’ she admitted after a fulminating silence. ‘I said I’d get a taxi, but he offered—’

‘How did you expect the man to react when you look like that? It’s an open invitation to … to …’ The rest of the insult was delivered once more in his native tongue, but this time a crushed Megan definitely got the gist!

‘I said no.’

‘Clearly not loudly enough. He said …’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said you were gagging for it.’

Megan, white-faced, pushed away the images crowded into her head and refocused on the present.

‘I prefer to steer clear of the D-cup she’s-gagging-for-it look.’ As she spoke she saw the flash of shocked recognition in his eyes and wished the words unsaid.

Her intention had always been, should he ever refer to the subject—admittedly unlikely—to shrug it away as though she barely recalled it. The last thing she wanted was Emilio to guess what sort of indelible impression the incident had had on her.

‘You are speaking of that night when that little loser made a pass.’

His retrospective take on the evening drew a laugh from Megan. ‘You mean that innocent victim I led on?’ She bit her lip and thought, Could you sound any more bitter, Megan?

A nerve clenched in his lean cheek.

If it had been anyone else she would have interpreted the look that flashed across his face as discomfiture, but this was Emilio Rios, who did not know the meaning of awkward.

He dragged a hand down his jaw and expelled an irritated-sounding sigh. ‘I was angry that night.’ He had been angry that entire weekend, from the moment she had walked into the room the previous evening smelling like summer and looking like warm, inviting sin, looking as if she were made for him.

The forced admission made her laugh. ‘I’d never have guessed.’

Even now the memory of his loss of control shook Emilio. He had never before or since come closer to totally losing it. The red haze had consumed him totally.

‘The situation was …’

She angled an interrogative brow as his voice trailed away to a growl.

‘I did not handle the situation well.’

As apologies went it was pretty feeble. ‘Being my brother’s mate did not make you the guardian of my morals and you had no right to judge me!’

‘I did not judge you. I was trying to protect you, Megan.’

‘You made me feel grubby.’ She saw the flash of shock in his eyes and dropped her gaze.

‘That was not my intention.’

Not his intention, but the result nonetheless. ‘It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.’

‘Not so long ago and it clearly does matter,’ he said, feeling intense guilt as he studied her face.

‘Look, let the subject drop. Like I said, it was a long time ago.’

‘My actions were … not acceptable.’

He had been more out of control than he had ever been at any other time in his life.

When the guy had bleated out the clichéd defence and even tried to suggest Megan had not meant no, Emilio had come closer than he even liked to admit to himself to choking the life out of the sleaze.

It had not occurred to him until now that he had vented his frustration on Megan. Frustration that had been building the entire weekend. When he had come back and seen her standing there, the tears on her cheeks, her hair tangled and her mouth bruised from another man’s kisses, all that frustrated sexual hunger and guilt he had been keeping under tight control for the entire weekend had exploded.

‘And then some.’ His remorse seemed genuine, but Megan was not prepared to let him off the hook just yet. ‘I think, Megan, that you—’

She held up her hand. ‘Don’t bother, I know what you think about me. You made yourself quite clear at the time, practically telling me I was a little tart who was a danger to the moral well-being of the entire male population for a hundred-mile radius.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t say anything like that.’ Their eyes connected and he shrugged, admitting, ‘All right, I might have given that impression, but that was only because …’

‘Because you were disgusted by my slutty clothes. Well, as a matter of fact, they weren’t. They were perfectly ordinary things for—’

‘Jeans, very tight, and the clingy black top. It kept slipping off your shoulder—your bra strap was pink,’ he recited. His dark eyes drifted towards her mouth as he continued to catalogue. ‘Your lipstick was pink too. It was smeared.’ He swallowed convulsively before adding in the same flat, colourless tone, ‘And your lip was bleeding.’

Until he’d seen the blood he had been holding it together quite well. All right, not well as such, but he had been keeping his more primitive instincts in check. But those tiny beads of red on her skin had made something snap inside him.

Megan’s jaw dropped. ‘You still remember.’ And in detail. Even she didn’t remember what colour her lipstick had been that night. Her ensemble appeared to have been so truly awful that it had imprinted itself on the memory of a man who had perfect taste.

Actually he had perfect everything, she thought, concentrating on her resentment that rose in direct proportion to the perfection, rather than the liquid rush of excitement low in her belly.

Her legs were jelly, inside her bra her breasts chafed painfully against the lace. Stop acting like you don’t have a choice, she told herself. There’s always a choice.

Her moment of rebellion lasted as long as it took for her gaze to wander back to his mouth.

She struggled against a wave of lust. It was insane, she thought, running the tip of her tongue across the curve of her dry lips, but when it came to being a total pushover that theoretical choice was just that—theoretical.

The way Emilio made her feel was one thing in her life that she had no choice about!

She was stuck with loving the way he looked. Loving the way he sounded, the way he smelt, the way he moved … Actually love was perhaps the wrong word to accurately convey the visceral intensity and power of the effect he had on her.

On the other hand, maybe love was exactly the right word.

Megan’s pupils dilated with shocked rejection as she pushed away the dangerous thought and narrowed her wandering focus to one little triangle of olive-toned tanned skin at the base of his throat. Even that tiny section of skin set in motion a stream of erotic conjecture.

This was so unfair. What chance did she have? Linen didn’t dare crease on him. In a fair world it ought to be illegal for any man to be this good-looking.

Conscious that the silence had lengthened, she dragged her thoughts away from the steamy place they were in danger of returning to and angled a hostile stare up at his face.

‘Have you got a photographic memory or something?’ Was the embarrassing moment never going to be allowed to die?

‘No, I do not, but I have excellent recall for some things.’ The weekend he had realised that he had been a blind fool had lingered in his mind.

‘I didn’t look that bad. Did I?’ She bit her lip, hating the fact she sounded as if she was asking for his approval.

And you’re not?

The question made him blink. ‘Bad …?’ Emilio ejaculated hoarsely.

He shook his head. The rest of the world looked at Megan and saw an incredibly beautiful woman, but what, he wondered grimly, did she see when she looked in the mirror?

Had that boyfriend of hers been too busy admiring himself in the mirror to make her see she was stunning? His opinion of the man, never high, now zoomed to below zero. As for that family of hers, he brooded darkly, they had a hell of a lot to answer for!

On his visits to the Armstrong household over the span of several years, Emilio had been forced on numerous occasions to remind himself it was not his business as he watched the attempts of Philip’s little sister, not to win approval or praise from her family, but simply to be noticed.

Doomed attempts, obviously it went without saying. The Armstrongs were a loud, egocentric bunch too busy with their own lives to show any interest in anything else, especially the new and painfully unsure member of the family.

‘There’s no need to yell,’ Megan bellowed, then looked shocked. She was not in the habit of raising her voice, as much as the last hour belied that fact.

From the expression on his dark face she had the strong feeling that Emilio was equally unaccustomed to being yelled at.

On another occasion his astounded expression might have amused her, but at that moment she felt as though she might never laugh again.

Emilio swore under his breath, the muscles along his strong jaw tightening as his scorching dark gaze swept across the features turned up to him. Being furious with her was not reducing the level of his painful arousal. If anything it was feeding the desire that licked through his veins like a forest fire, out of control—did he want to control it?

Emilio shifted his weight in a futile effort to ease the pain in his groin. This was not a moment for deep analysis. He could barely string a sequence of intelligible words together, let alone indulge in self-analysis of the complex mixture of emotions that he was struggling with.

Megan, her head tilted to one side, watched through the veil of her lashes as he dragged a shapely brown hand through the ebony strands of his gleaming dark head. Her level of fascination with his fingers, the size, elegance, strength and shape of his hands, was beginning to escape her control.

What control? asked the ironic inner voice in her head.

‘Por Dios, there is every need to shout,’ he contended, studying her flushed face with an air of scowling disbelief as he fought to subdue the protective feelings that surfaced when he saw the reflection of whatever inner battle she was fighting shining in her eyes.

It was easier to focus on his anger.

He knew she was feeling the erotic charge that hung heavily in the air between them. How could she not? It almost had a physical presence.

Why was she fighting it? Why couldn’t she just relax and let it happen? His jaw clenched in frustration. It was as if she couldn’t get past the fact he’d been the one to rescue her from an unpleasant and potentially dangerous situation.

Was it because he’d seen her vulnerable? Did that not mesh with the cool, controlled image she obviously wanted to project?

He dragged a hand down his jaw and decided it was useless to try and figure out her reasoning because, quite clearly, there was none.

CHAPTER NINE

‘WAS I drunk?’

The simmering hostility in Emilio’s manner as much as the abrupt question made Megan blink. ‘What? ‘

His dark eyes flashed. ‘Was I forcing myself on you? Por Dios, no, I was not! ‘

‘I never—’

‘So at what point did I become the bad guy?’ he demanded, cutting across her.

‘I never—’

‘The fact is you were lucky I was there, but you’re too stubborn to admit it! You are just as stupid now as you were then!’

Megan’s chin went up at the insult. Eyes narrowed, she threw back her head, glaring up at him with simmering hostility. ‘And you are just as arrogant and judgemental.’

A hissing sound of irritation escaped his clenched teeth. ‘Also, do you know,’ he drawled, ‘how incredibly boring this ugly-duckling routine of yours is?’

Megan’s amber eyes lit up like beacons with anger. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry to bore you.’ If she’d been some long-legged lissom beauty with plastic boobs attached to a skeletal clothes-hanger frame he would no doubt make allowances for an IQ in single figures.

Emilio’s teeth audibly ground in response to her sarcastic insincerity.

‘Of course, if I had known I was expected to entertain you, I’d have made more of an effort—worn a funny nose, perhaps?’ she suggested, pressing the tip of her finger to her small, classically perfect nose.

He gave a hard laugh and watched as her hand fell, revealing the delicate purity of her features only spoiled from being textbook classical by the generosity of her lips. Emilio, his eyes glued to the full, lush curve, did not think it spoiled anything.

It took every ounce of his strength not to grab her and crush her mouth under his. He inhaled sharply through flared nostrils and snarled.

‘Do not be absurd! ‘

His dismissive, plain nasty attitude fed her anger and sense of growing resentment. ‘So I’m assuming for “absurd” read anyone who says anything you don’t like?’

Which couldn’t, she reasoned darkly, be something that happened very often. The problem with Emilio Rios was that people were willing to cross oceans, let alone roads, to avoid antagonising him, and from where she was standing it was easy to see why.

He had not gained the reputation of being a bad man to get on the wrong side of by accident! And he did look pretty magnificent if you liked your dark and moody with an edge of danger.

And she, it turned out, did!

As Megan watched a shaft of sunlight from an angled skylight hit his face. He had no reason to fear the unforgiving light; there were no flaws or shortcomings to be revealed.

He was perfect.

A furrow of concentration appeared between Megan’s feathery brows as her rapt gaze lingered on the hard angles and hollows of his patrician face, the strong, sculpted contours emphasised by the dusting of dark hair sprinkled already over his clean-shaven jaw. She wondered how it would feel against her skin and shivered, unable to tear her rapt gaze from his face.

He was nothing short of breathtaking to look at!

‘You make a great deal of effort to be rude to me, querida. I wonder why?’ he mused.

‘It’s no effort, believe me, and don’t call me that,’ she snapped, her discomfort increased by the casual endearment.

Privately she conceded he did have a point. Where was the diplomacy she was famed for? Winding Emilio up was a bit like getting into a tiger’s cage and throwing sticks at it.

A person had to expect the tiger to leap so the question remained why? A mental image of Emilio falling across her body flashed into Megan’s head, the erotic fantasy so powerful that she could actually feel the weight of his body, the heat of him bearing down on her.

The effort of expelling the erotic intrusion wrenched a soft grunt from her aching throat that drew a quizzical look from Emilio.

Megan decided to avoid tiger analogies for the foreseeable future and took refuge in hostility—again.

‘What can I say? My job entails being pleasant to men who have to be told at regular intervals how marvellous they are. I’m on my own time.’ Her dad might disagree on that detail, but then nothing she had done so far today was going to make him break out in song. ‘I don’t have to play nice.’

A white line of anger appeared around the sensual outline of his sculpted lips as Emilio drew himself up to his full intimidating height.

‘I am not your father,’ he snarled, totally incensed by the implied comparison she made with a man he despised.

Megan, aware she had been appallingly indiscreet, not to mention unprofessional, began to back-pedal furiously. ‘I didn’t mean Dad, just men in a position of power generally,’ she finished lamely.

Emilio ignored her protestations. ‘And I do not,’ he imparted grimly, ‘need my ego stroked.’

How about other parts?

Shocked, not just by the shameless question that popped into her head, but the accompanying images that followed the thought, Megan dropped her gaze from his as she felt the shamed colour fly to her cheeks. She was not the sort of girl who went around mentally undressing men.

‘It’s the effect you have on me,’ she mumbled, struggling to find a plus side to this situation. He couldn’t read her mind, though sometimes when he looked at her she did get the uncomfortable feeling that she had no secrets from him.

‘It was not my intention to …’ His voice faded as she began to nibble nervously at her full lower lip.

The silence stretched way beyond dramatic pause and into nerve-shredding territory until finally Megan could bear it no longer.

‘Not your intention to what?’

Her voice dragged Emilio from the hot place his thoughts had gone. He blinked and met her eyes, still imagining her lips parting to allow his tongue deep inside.

‘Not my intention to—’ He paused again and exhaled slowly.

He could have said lose the thread … lose the plot. Both, to his intense shock, were true. He could sit in a high-powered meeting that went on into the small hours and when others faded, not miss a beat, stay on top of every detail discussed, some buried in a mass of techno babble, yet he looked at Megan’s mouth and his brain was mush.

Emilio chose to fast-forward the conversation. ‘I find your self-deprecating attitude annoying. You are a beautiful woman and, believe it or not, I was trying to help that night, not judging.’

Megan gave a derisive hoot. ‘Sure you weren’t.’ Beautiful? Her stomach muscles did a shimmy as she directed a wary look at his face, waiting for the punchline and telling herself not to start seeing or hearing things that weren’t there.

‘It was not your clothes that night,’ he said abruptly, ‘though they were enough to—’ He inhaled, turning his hand away sharply, providing Megan with a view of the nerve pulsing in his hollow cheek and the cords of tension standing out in his brown throat.

‘Of course, I can see the sense of power you had discovered must have been intoxicating,’ he conceded, struggling to be fair-minded and failing big time as he thought of Megan enjoying her feminine power in the arms of men like that creep he had dragged from the car.

As he remembered the fear in the said creep’s eyes he smiled thinly, not regretting having put it there—at least he knew there would be one less guy supplying willing arms.

She gave a baffled shake of her head, confused as much by his strained manner as his peculiar choice of words. ‘Intoxicating? ‘

‘You’d pretty much been invisible at home all through your adolescence and, I assume, school.’ Recalling the slights and snubs he had witnessed and imagining the ones he had not, Emilio struggled to keep his voice impassive.

‘Thanks.’ Megan finally saw where he was going with this. It was always good to be told you were a needy and pathetic outsider. ‘So you’re suggesting at some point I morphed into an equally pathetic attention seeker with self-esteem issues.’ She wasn’t sure which was worst.

His lips twisted in a spasm of impatience. ‘Don’t spin my words. I’m saying that the tables were turned. You weren’t the one doing the vying. It was not surprising that, after years of being overlooked, being the focus of male attention should go to your head. You wouldn’t be the first person deprived of parental approval to confuse sex with love. Sex is only ever a short-term fix.’

The expression in his eyes when he drew this bleak conclusion made Megan wonder if this was personal.

Was Emilio thinking of the women he had slept with since his marriage collapsed when he spoke of short-term fixes? Was Rosanna the only woman he had ever loved? It was obvious after the airport debacle that, whatever he said, he was not over her.

‘It is hard to recover your self-respect, Megan, once you have lost it.’

‘Is that a polite way of saying you think I’m a tart?’

‘Do not put words in my mouth,’ he responded irritably.

Megan gave a bemused shrug and stared up at him. For a man with the reputation of infallibility, she reflected grimly, when Emilio got it wrong he got it wrong big time!

‘And you got all that from the colour of my lipstick! Amazing, you’re even smarter than they say.’

The muscles around his jaw tightened at her mock admiration. ‘Oh, so I’m meant to believe you didn’t have the faintest idea what you could do to me … a man, looking that way.’

‘Do to a man?’ Her eyes widened. The expression smouldering in his deep-set eyes made her heart kick up several more uncomfortable notches. ‘Me? Sure,’ she drawled, coating her words with protective cynicism as she batted her eyelashes like crazy and struck a provocative pose, hand on hip. ‘It’s such a burden being irresistible. Ouch,’ she yelled, pulling back as his fingers closed like an iron band around her wrist.

The touch was light and the effect on her nervous system totally disproportionate. ‘This habit you have of putting yourself down before someone else does is one you should try to break.’

‘I don’t—’ Emilio watched the flash of recognition in her eyes before they fell from his.

‘That hurts,’ she lied, wincing not in pain but at the breathy sound of her own voice.

Emilio was breathing hard as he brought her hands together and pressed them, palms sealed, between his.

It was a moment before his gaze lifted from their entwined fingers. The blaze of hunger in his eyes as they connected with her own made Megan’s insides dissolve.