Hot Nights with a Spaniard: Bedded for the Spaniard's Pleasure / Spanish Aristocrat, Forced Bride / Spanish Magnate, Red-Hot Revenge

Not exactly helpful advice when even now Cairo could feel the antagonism between Rafe and herself burning beneath the surface of this polite exchange.

Not that Rafe looked particularly concerned by it. In fact, he looked altogether too disturbingly handsome in faded denims and an open-necked, short-sleeved shirt the same shade of blue as his eyes, the dampness of his hair brushed back from those hard, aristocratically chiselled features inherited from his Spanish father.

Cairo had chosen her own dress for this evening with care, knowing she would need all her self-confidence to face Rafe again after that heated exchange in the kitchen. She had also swept her hair up and secured it loosely on her crown, leaving her neck and shoulders bare, her face already lightly tanned and requiring only a peach gloss applied to her lips.

The lips that still felt tinglingly sensitive and slightly bruised from the force of Rafe’s kiss!

‘Mummy said to say hello, Uncle Rafe,’ Daisy told him happily.

‘Did she, now?’ he drawled.

‘Yes.’ The little girl nodded. ‘And she hopes you do well at the film festival.’

‘That’s very thoughtful of her,’ Rafe accepted dryly—he had a few things he intended saying personally to Margo once Daisy was safely tucked up in bed! ‘Can your aunty Cairo make a salad, do you think?’ he teased gently as he stood up to turn the steaks on the barbecue.

Daisy gave a giggle. ‘Aunty Cairo cooked omelettes last night.’

‘Did she now?’ Rafe quirked dark, mocking brows. ‘She’s obviously a woman of many talents!’ he added with a taunting sideways glance at ‘Aunty Cairo’.

Daisy seemed completely unaware of the intended insult to her aunt, singing quietly to herself as she began to lay the table outside for the three of them.

But Cairo certainly wasn’t, the narrow-eyed glare she gave Rafe letting him know in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t amused.

Rafe returned Cairo’s look for several long seconds, his smile derisive, before he turned his full attention to cooking the steaks. The problem was that Cairo was just too beautiful for him—or any other man!—to look at for too long without wanting to take her to bed.

Which was something that was never going to happen ever again, Rafe told himself grimly, in spite of the fact that he had enjoyed kissing her earlier. No, he’d more than enjoyed it—he had been wanting to repeat the experience ever since.

Eight years, dammit—and within hours of seeing her again Rafe’s body ached with the desire that had been aroused earlier and remained unfulfilled!

‘How is Margo, really?’ he asked once Daisy had gone into the kitchen to collect the cutlery.

Cairo shrugged those delectably bare shoulders. ‘She believes that the specialist is thinking of admitting her to the clinic tomorrow if her blood pressure hasn’t gone down by then.’

Rafe could hear the underlying concern in Cairo’s voice. ‘She wasn’t ill like this with Daisy, was she?’

‘Not as far as I’m aware, no.’ Cairo frowned. ‘I haven’t spent a great deal of time in England the last few years, Rafe,’ she explained sharply as he raised questioning brows.

His lip curled scornfully. ‘Too busy making a name for yourself in Hollywood, I expect.’

‘That’s where Lionel lived, Rafe,’ she said defensively as she heard the censure in his tone. ‘And where he worked. It was only natural that I should mainly work there, too.’

Really, this man seemed to think that everything she did, everything she said, was suspect—especially if it allowed him to make some cutting comment about it!

‘I seem to remember that you once said your main love was the stage,’ he said huskily. ‘I even talked of moving to England for a while so that I could be with you when you accepted the part you had been offered in The Graduate.’

Cairo gave a pained frown. Yes, Rafe had talked of staying temporarily in England. But that had been before he’d become bored with their relationship and had an affair with another woman!

Her mouth tightened. ‘So you could be with me and all those other adoring females panting at your bedroom door!’ she dismissed scathingly. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Rafe,’ she added, standing up abruptly, ‘I need to go and make the salad.’

Dinner hadn’t exactly been a relaxed meal, Cairo acknowledged ruefully as they cleared everything away a couple of hours later. Thankfully Daisy, reassured after her earlier chat on the telephone with her mother, was back to her normal, talkative self, and her chatter had filled in the silence that had existed between Rafe and Cairo. The two of them had barely addressed a word directly to one another—’could you please pass the salt?’ really didn’t count as conversation!

Rafe excused himself to make a telephone call while Cairo put Daisy to bed, delaying as long as she possibly could in her niece’s bedroom before rejoining Rafe on the terrace. She finally came outside to find him watching the last rays of sunset gleaming redly in the rapidly darkening sky, dozens of lights on in the houses dotted in the valley below.

Cairo stood hesitantly in the doorway, not altogether comfortable with the air of intimacy that surrounded him.

‘Sit down, Cairo,’ he ordered without turning.

She gasped. ‘How did you—?’

‘Your perfume,’ he elaborated as he turned to look at her. ‘Stop hovering over there in the doorway, Cairo, and come and sit down.’

Her eyes widened indignantly at his autocratic tone. ‘You always were arrogant, Rafe. I’m sure that as a director you wield a lot of authority, but I can assure you—’

‘For God’s sake, sit down, Cairo!’ He turned to look at her, blue eyes glittering brightly in the semi-darkness. ‘I want to talk to you about Margo,’ he added impatiently as she remained unmoving in the doorway.

‘Oh. Fine.’ She moved to sit in the chair furthest away from his own. ‘That’s who you were talking to on the telephone just now?’

‘It’s good to know that all those years of marriage to Lionel Bond didn’t completely dull your intelligence!’

‘Rafe—’

‘Will you just shut up and listen for once, Cairo?’ He stood up to move restlessly to the edge of the terrace. ‘I spoke to Jeff, as it happens. Apparently Margo, for obvious reasons, was deliberately keeping the situation light when she spoke to you and Daisy earlier.’ His expression was grim. ‘They’re concerned about the baby now, as well as Margo, and the doctor’s intention is to admit her tomorrow and perform a Caesarian section.’

Cairo stood up abruptly. ‘I’ll make arrangements for myself and Daisy to return home immediately—’

‘That’s the last thing Jeff wants you to do!’ Rafe turned to her swiftly. ‘Cairo, he has no idea how the operation is going to turn out, for either Margo or the baby, and the last thing he wants is for Daisy to go back to England and get caught up in the middle of that uncertainty. Even if the operation is a success, Margo and the baby will have to stay in hospital for several days, so there’ll be plenty of time then for you to arrange to get back for her homecoming.’

‘Even if the operation is a success’ was the only thing in Rafe’s last statement that registered with Cairo….

She swallowed hard. ‘Is there— What do they think the chances are of them both being okay?’

Rafe wasn’t enjoying this conversation at all. He knew that the two sisters, having lost both parents in a car accident ten years ago, had remained emotionally close, even though they had lived on different continents for years. It was because of the sisters’ closeness that Rafe had got to know Margo and Jeff in the first place….

‘Cairo—’

‘Just answer me, will you, please, Rafe?’ she said tautly, her eyes gleaming brightly with unshed tears, her hands clenched at her sides as she faced him tensely.

Under other circumstances—with any other woman—Rafe knew he would have taken her in his arms and comforted her. But after what had happened between the two of them earlier, Rafe didn’t dare touch Cairo again!

Instead he remained where he was, several feet away, his expression remote. ‘Jeff believes there’s a good chance that both Margo and the baby will be fine—’

‘Thank God!’ Cairo breathed her relief, some of the tension relaxing in her shoulders. ‘But …?’ she added shrewdly, as if she sensed that Rafe hadn’t told her everything Jeff had said.

Rafe grimaced at her perception. ‘He also asked if the two of us would remain here with Daisy until he knows exactly what’s happening.’ And if Cairo thought he was any happier about that request than she was, then she was completely mistaken! ‘The idea being that, between the two of us, we keep Daisy so busy, at least over the next couple of days, that she doesn’t have too much time to telephone or think too much about what’s going on at home.’

Cairo blinked. ‘Jeff wants the two of us to stay on here together?’ she repeated incredulously.

Rafe’s mouth tightened at her tone. ‘I can be civilized about this if you can, Cairo.’

As far as Cairo was concerned it wasn’t a question of either of them being ‘civilized’. She had been hoping, once Daisy was in bed, that she and Rafe could finally have a sensible conversation about one of them leaving. Preferably Rafe. And preferably this evening!

But Jeff’s request had quashed that idea and instead her brother-in-law was asking her to stay on here with Rafe. Well, obviously not just with Rafe—if Daisy weren’t here, then Jeff wouldn’t have needed to make the request in the first place.

Cairo knew perfectly well it would be Rafe who would be the dominant presence over the next couple of days; it was obvious the two of them couldn’t even be in the same country without arguing.

As indicated by this conversation alone!

But at the same time she recognized that Jeff did have a point; after only a few hours Cairo could see the rapport between Rafe and Daisy, and that being with him had already lightened the little girl’s introspective mood. That those same few hours had been absolute purgatory for Cairo really shouldn’t come into the equation when it was Daisy’s peace of mind they were all concerned about.

Nevertheless …

She frowned. ‘Do you actually have to stay here at the villa for us to do that?’

‘I own it, Cairo!’ Rafe reminded her irritably.

She shrugged. ‘Then maybe I should be the one to move to a hotel—’

‘Will you stop being so childish!’ Rafe interrupted forcefully. ‘Or is it just that you don’t trust yourself to be alone here with me even for a couple of days?’ he jeered.

Her eyes glittered with anger as she instantly responded with all the sarcasm of which she was capable. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Rafe!’

‘Oh, yeah, I forgot.’ His mouth twisted with distaste. ‘You’ve had so many lovers the last few years you were probably looking forward to a break for a few weeks!’

‘I didn’t have any lovers during my marriage!’ Cairo protested vehemently.

He shrugged. ‘That wasn’t what Bond said ten months ago.’

‘He was angry at the time, making things up,’ Cairo defended herself a little shakily.

‘Sure he was—’

‘Don’t use that patronizing tone with me, Rafe!’ she blazed at him. ‘I did not have an affair during my marriage to Lionel!’

Rafe’s brows rose. ‘Aren’t you protesting a little too much, Cairo?’ he taunted softly.

She shook her head. ‘I’m merely trying to explain that Lionel was upset when he made those accusations, because I had left him.’ Her chin rose. ‘Besides, your own numerous relationships over the years haven’t exactly been a well-kept secret!’ she challenged.

As his clandestine relationship eight years ago with his co-star Pamela Raines hadn’t remained the secret he had hoped, either …

‘The difference being that I’m not married,’ he pointed out.

‘No, you’ve never made that commitment, have you, Rafe?’ she scorned.

‘Not if it meant I was ultimately going to end up with an unfaithful wife like you, no,’ he rasped.

‘Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said?’

‘Oh, I listened, Cairo,’ he snarled. ‘I just have great difficulty believing your claim of innocence!’

Cairo swallowed hard. ‘You take delight in insulting me, don’t you, Rafe?’

No, dammit, Rafe didn’t take any delight in talking about the other men Lionel Bond had claimed Cairo had been involved with during their marriage. As far as he was concerned, if the glitter to her marriage had worn off, if Cairo had been unhappy with Bond—and it now appeared that she had been—then she should have just got out, not taken a string of lovers to compensate for that unhappiness.

Rafe’s mouth thinned. ‘Our being here isn’t about you or me, Cairo,’ he growled. ‘This is about a six-year-old little girl that we need to keep distracted so that Jeff can feel free to concentrate on Margo and the baby.’

He was right. Cairo knew he was right. Rafe had just shaken her by talking of the things Lionel had said in anger when she’d told him she was leaving him, accusations he had later privately apologized for. Too late, of course, for the press had already gleefully printed the lies and were not inclined to print a retraction.

It was also disconcerting to realize that Rafe’s affection for her niece was such that he was even willing to stay on here with Cairo when he would obviously rather not. Cairo had never thought of Rafe as being in the least paternal, and yet his obvious feelings for Daisy clearly disproved that….

Again posing the question as to why Rafe had never married and had children of his own. Today had at least shown Cairo that he would make a wonderful father.

It was his role as a faithful husband that would be in question!

‘You’re right,’ she admitted. ‘I’m willing to—to try and put our differences aside, if you are.’

Rafe’s teeth gleamed whitely in the darkness as he gave a humourless smile. ‘Call a truce, you mean?’

‘Call a halt to the insults and accusations, I mean,’ Cairo told him determinedly.

He shrugged. ‘I’ll behave if you will.’

‘Then we’re agreed. For Daisy’s sake, we will try to give every outward appearance of getting on together for at least the next two days.’

Rafe inclined his head in acquiescence. ‘For Daisy’s sake.’

Cairo hesitated in the doorway. ‘And there will be no repeat of—of what happened in the kitchen earlier,’ she added huskily, still not completely reconciled inside herself to how easily—how fiercely!—she had responded when Rafe had taken her in his arms earlier and kissed her.

No doubt a lot of soul-searching was in order once she reached the privacy of her bedroom!

‘Ah. Now that’s something else, Cairo.’ Rafe folded his arms across the width of his chest as he regarded her with mocking eyes. ‘After all, it may just turn out that you can’t keep your hands off me.’

‘In your dreams, Rafe,’ she scoffed.

‘Maybe. We’ll see, won’t we …’

No, they would not ‘see’, Cairo determined as she stormed off, making her way to her bedroom at the front of the house.

A couple of days, that was all this was going to be. And surely she could avoid finding herself in any compromising situations with Rafe for that short length of time?

CHAPTER FOUR

‘Don’t forget your mobile phone— Cairo, what the hell are you wearing?’

Cairo, about to push her sunglasses up onto the bridge of her nose, instead paused in the movement to look at Rafe over the top of them as he stared at her with a scowl on his face.

She knew it wasn’t the sunglasses he was referring to, or the white T-shirt and skirt she was wearing with flat sandals, so that left …

‘A baseball cap, of course,’ she snapped dismissively as she adjusted the peak of the white cap further down her forehead, her hair gathered up and looped through the fastening at the back to hang down in a loose ponytail. ‘An item of headgear that originated in your mother’s country, I believe,’ she added dryly.

‘So did the Stetson, but that doesn’t mean I’d ever wear one,’ Rafe retorted.

The three of them had spent most of the morning down by the pool until Rafe had suggested a trip out to collect more food supplies from the local supermarket. Daisy had then added her own idea that after they had brought the food back to the villa they could all go down into Grasse and have lunch in one of the many restaurants there before going on to one of the beaches along the coast.

A suggestion Rafe said he was more than happy to go along with, and meaning that Cairo was once again ‘outgunned and outnumbered’!

But that didn’t mean she was willing to go out without the disguise of her baseball cap. ‘I tend to freckle in the direct sun,’ she explained mendaciously.

His mouth quirked. ‘And we mustn’t let a freckle ruin that perfect complexion, must we?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Rafe, why don’t you—’

‘Actually, Uncle Rafe, Aunty Cairo is famous,’ Daisy informed him airily. ‘She wears the hat because she doesn’t want people to recognize— I’m sorry, Uncle Rafe, I didn’t hear what you said …?’

Daisy might not have been able to discern Rafe’s mumbled response, but Cairo certainly had, and she didn’t appreciate his comment of ‘infamous more aptly describes it’!

‘I’m nowhere near as famous as your uncle Rafe, Daisy,’ she assured the little girl lightly even as she shot Rafe a quelling glance before adjusting the sunglasses onto the bridge of her nose.

And completely hiding the expression in those dark brown eyes, Rafe noted—although it wasn’t too difficult to imagine what it was!

‘Come on, Daisy-May.’ He ruffled the little girl’s golden curls. ‘We’ll wait outside in the car while your aunty Cairo finishes putting on her disguise.’

‘Very funny, Rafe,’ Cairo drawled as she fell into step beside them. ‘Make sure you bring a bag out with you later, Daisy—your uncle is something of a sex-symbol, and we may need to beat off his female fans before the day is out,’ she warned her niece conspiratorially.

‘Now who’s being funny?’ Rafe raised dark brows as he opened the back door of the car so that Daisy could climb inside.

Cairo gave him a sweetly mocking smile. ‘I’m only stating the obvious, Rafe,’ she jeered.

Rafe grimaced. ‘A sex-symbol?’

She shrugged narrow shoulders as she moved round to the passenger side of the car. ‘I seem to remember reading somewhere that you were voted the sexiest man in America last year.’

Not a title he was particularly proud of.

As, no doubt, Cairo was well aware!

‘I’m surprised, with all that was going on in your own life this last year, that you could find the time to read about mine, as well,’ he jibed.

The teasing smile faded from her lips. ‘It made a pleas-sant change from some of the other trash that was being printed at the time!’

Rafe quickly moved round the car to where she stood. ‘Cairo—’

‘We really should be going, Rafe,’ she told him brittlely as she opened the car door herself to get inside and close the door firmly behind her.

Leaving Rafe standing in the driveway feeling like a heel. They had called a truce last night, for Daisy’s sake, and for most of the morning he had kept to that truce, as had Cairo. His present lapse was due, he knew, to the fact that he hadn’t slept at all well last night and that lack of sleep was catching up with him.

But how could he sleep when he knew that Cairo was in another bed just down the hallway? Probably as awake as he was, if for different reasons.

He hadn’t been able to forget how good Cairo had felt when he’d touched her earlier, but Cairo would have been worrying about Margo, something Rafe knew he hadn’t taken too much into consideration during their conversation. But hell, at the time Jeff had just asked him to stay on here and take care of Cairo and Daisy. A request, for Daisy’s sake, Rafe had known he couldn’t refuse.

But that didn’t mean he had to like being here with Cairo.

Any more than Cairo had to like being here with him, perhaps?

‘I’m sorry,’ Rafe muttered as he got in the car beside her and switched on the engine.

Cairo gave him a startled look. ‘What?’

Rafe drew in a sharp breath. ‘I said I’m sorry,’ he repeated more clearly. ‘It was a cheap shot.’

‘Yes, it was,’ she agreed huskily—although an apology was the last thing she had been expecting!

He gave a wry smile. ‘I guess I deserved that.’

‘I guess you did.’ She nodded.

Rafe scowled. ‘Were you always this—opinionated?’

‘Probably not,’ she conceded softly. ‘I guess time changes all of us. And not always for the better.’ She shrugged.

Cairo knew she had changed over the last eight years, that her life with Lionel had brought about subtle if not major differences in her. For instance, she no longer trusted even affection, let alone rakishly attractive men like Rafe Montero!

Rafe gave Cairo several sideways glances as he drove them down into the village, Daisy exclaiming in the back of the car as she pointed out several of her favourite haunts from previous holidays taken here.

At one time, Cairo would have been almost as happy as Daisy was by a trip to the shops and then into town for lunch. But not now, Rafe realized. It wasn’t so much that she had grown cynical as that her emotions were hidden away behind a wall of indifference that seemed almost impenetrable.

Or perhaps she was just bored, Rafe conceded ruefully. After all, this holiday with a six-year-old was probably a bit tame for her after the exotic life she’d led in Hollywood with Lionel Bond.

The sort of life Rafe avoided for the main part.

Oh, he couldn’t escape attending some of the parties or award ceremonies—like the one in Cannes this week. But given a choice Rafe preferred to be at his house on the beach, well away from the falseness and artificiality of the majority of the social scene in Hollywood itself.

But it was a life that Cairo, photographed at numerous glitzy parties over the years, had obviously thoroughly enjoyed.

‘How about we go to St Moritz for lunch instead of Grasse?’ he suggested once they had finished shopping in the local supermarket and were waiting beside the car for Daisy to come back from returning the trolley.

‘St Moritz?’ Cairo echoed guardedly.

He nodded. ‘We can either drive down the coast or get a boat across from—’

‘I know how to get there, Rafe, I’ve been there before,’ she cut in before shaking her head. ‘I just don’t see the appeal for a six-year-old girl.’

Of course she had been there before, Rafe acknowledged self-derisively. No doubt Cairo had been to all the fashionable in-places during her marriage, which meant she probably wouldn’t be interested in a trip to the sophistication of Monte Carlo, either, which was down the coast from Cannes in the opposite direction from St Mortiz.

So much for Rafe’s decision to try to make up for being so awful to her earlier on today.

‘I just thought a twenty-eight-year-old woman might be missing the shops on Rodeo Drive!’ he drawled.

Delicate colour warmed Cairo’s cheeks at the deliberate taunt. Shortly after her arrival in Los Angeles Lionel had opened accounts for her in all the exclusive stores on Rodeo Drive, and Cairo had to admit that for the first few months of their marriage it had been fun to go into any of those shops and buy anything that caught her eye.

But the novelty of shopping, like the gloss of her already failing marriage, had soon worn off, and she had been relieved to get back to work.

‘I don’t miss anything about my life in Los Angeles,’ she told Rafe flatly.

‘Nothing?’ he scorned.

‘Absolutely nothing,’ she echoed coldly.

‘I find that very hard to believe,’ he commented. ‘I seem to recall that never a week went by when your photograph didn’t appear in the newspapers or some glossy magazine as one of the “beautiful people” attending some party or premiere.’

‘Which I hated,’ Cairo told him stiffly. ‘It was Lionel’s way of life, not mine,’ she added as Rafe raised sceptical brows.