This time she did step back. “Now why would I do that?”
His eyes met hers. “So I can remember the way you look standing here, with the sun in your hair and the smile on your face.”
Something inside Miranda turned hot and liquid. Fascination whispered louder. The man’s dark hair and unshaven face lent him an aura of danger, but he spoke like a poet. He was dressed like a tourist, but held a professional-looking briefcase. His swarthy skin hinted at Mediterranean ancestry, but he wore his loose-fitting black shirt and olive slacks like only an American could. He spoke accented English, but used perfect grammar.
“I should be going,” she said, pulling away before she stepped in too deep.
He reached toward her. “Let me take your picture first.”
Miranda went very still. She looked down at her arm, where his warm fingers curled around her wrist. The sight jarred her, of a blatantly masculine hand on her body. For the past few years, if a stranger so much as brushed against her in a crowd, agents or bodyguards emerged from the shadows, alert and ready.
And Miranda had hated it. She’d hated being watched, monitored, hated being denied a normal life because of her family’s notoriety. She hadn’t asked to be born a Carrington. She didn’t care about politics. She had no interest in carrying on the family legacy.
She’d just wanted to live her life, to laugh and dance and even fall down sometimes, without the whole world watching.
Butterfly, her maternal grandfather had called her. The only butterfly in a family of eagles.
Instinct had her covertly scanning the surrounding area, half expecting to see Hawk Monroe running toward her. But just like before, she found only a dazzling fountain spraying toward the pale blue sky, pigeons, street merchants and tourists.
Slowly, the stranger released her. “Bella? Did I say something wrong?”
Bella. There it was. The first clue to the puzzle. Italian. “No,” she said. “You didn’t say anything wrong.”
“Then why do you look so…nervous?”
That got her. She didn’t want to be nervous. She didn’t want to react with paranoia to the very situations she’d come to Europe to experience. “What makes you think I’m nervous?”
“The way you’re standing, like you’re about to take off running. The fact you’ve yet to let me see your eyes.”
She lifted her chin, smiled. Very slowly, very deliberately, she slid the Euro-chic tortoiseshell sunglasses from her face.
“Should I be nervous?” she challenged.
“That depends upon what makes you nervous,” he answered in that faint but drugging accent. He glanced toward the showy fountain, then around the open-air market, as though looking for something. Then he stepped closer. “If you’re worried that I’m a serial killer, I assure you I am not. This is Portugal, not America. That kind of thing is rare here.”
Laughter broke from her throat. “I don’t think you’re a serial killer.”
He didn’t grin or smile as she expected. Instead, his gaze turned serious. “Don’t let down your guard quite so easily,” he muttered darkly. “Just let me take your picture. That’s all I ask. Here,” he said, reaching for her camera. “What harm can there be? Just one shot.”
The man could no doubt talk her cousin’s four-year-old into surrendering her favorite teddy bear, Miranda thought absently. Intrigued, she decided to play along.
“Just one,” she agreed, uncurling her fingers from the sleek 35mm she’d purchased before leaving the States.
“Back up a little,” he instructed. The camera hid his eyes, but she knew they would be focused and intense.
Odd, Miranda thought, stepping against the seawall. He held her camera in his left hand, but he’d yet to put down his briefcase.
“Perfect,” he murmured. “Now untie the scarf.”
She blinked. “The scarf?”
“Hair like yours is too pretty to confine. Let the wind play with it.”
Heat streaked through her, completely unrelated to the burgeoning warmth of the day. Something about the word play, she knew. And that raspy voice. “I prefer it off my face.”
“Just for the picture,” he coaxed. “Just for me.”
Caution warned her to call the whole thing off, but her newfound sense of freedom refused to be denied. Having a man flirt with her, with no ulterior motive, felt too good. Charmed, she reached for the turquoise scarf she’d purchased from Rosita and pulled the fabric free. The breeze blowing off the ocean instantly sent long strands of blond hair fluttering around her face and tangling over her shoulders.
“Perfect,” the stranger said. “Perfect.”
Miranda fought an odd jolt of self-consciousness, as though she stood before the man completely naked, rather than in an off-the-shoulder crimson shirt and a long, gypsylike skirt she’d purchased from one of the locals. Every nerve ending felt charged and exposed. Her heart strummed low and expectant. The stranger had her posing for him, and she didn’t even know his name.
For the moment, she didn’t care.
Identity had nothing to do with what was scrawled on your birth certificate, but rather, the ideals you carried deep inside. If she asked the stranger his name, he’d ask hers.
She wasn’t ready to taint the moment with either the truth, or a lie.
“What are you waiting for?” He almost seemed to be stalling.
“The sun,” he answered without hesitation. “You’re not a woman for shadows.”
His voice was hoarse, like a man who lived on cigarettes and whisky. No one had ever talked to her like that. No words had ever drifted through her like a feathery caress. She studied him closer, that full mouth and those dark whiskers sprinkled across a strong jaw, the thick neck leading to the kind of chest women dreamed about—
Miranda jerked her gaze back to his neck, where a nasty scar slashed across his throat, a faded testimony to a brutal attack. This man’s raspy voice did not stem from pleasure or vice, but from pain and violence.
“Hurry up,” she said. Well-honed instincts kicked harder. He may not have asked her name, but he’d skillfully pinned her between his big body and the ocean behind her.
“Don’t be so impatient, bella. Some things aren’t meant to be rushed. There can be tremendous reward in lingering.”
The words were soft, but they robbed her of breath like a punch to the gut. Miranda hungered for freedom and adventure, but she also knew when she’d stepped in over her head. She could fend off attackers and wield a knife like a pro, but when it came to playing cat and mouse with outrageously good-looking, mysterious men, her defenses jammed like traffic in gridlock.
Fortunately, her legs didn’t. Pushing away from the seawall, she
