and the skirt of her tight black-satin cocktail dress was riding up to mid-thigh, showing the lacy tops of her stockings. But it was too late. As if in slow motion, she watched Alejandro stop.
Turn.
Look at her.
And then look away, without the slightest flicker of interest or recognition.
‘Yes?’
He was talking to Matt, his eyebrows raised slightly.
‘Someone wants you,’ grinned Matt, setting her down on her feet. Tamsin ducked her head. Her blood felt like it had been diluted with five parts of vodka as misery churned inside her, mixing uneasily with wild relief. He didn’t recognise her. Of course he didn’t—her hair had been darker then, and longer. She’d been younger.
And she’d meant absolutely nothing to him.
It was fine. It was good. The humiliation of facing him again if he’d remembered that night would have been terminally appalling. Some in-built instinct for self-preservation told her not to look up, not to meet the eyes of the man who had blown her world to smithereens and walked away without a scratch, to keep her head down.
Oh, God. Her self-preservation instinct hadn’t reckoned on the effect of looking at the length of his bare, muscular thighs.
‘Really?’ he said in a quiet, steel-edged voice. ‘And what could Lady Tamsin Calthorpe possibly want with me?’
Adrenalin scorched through her like wildfire, and she felt her head jerk backwards. Towering above her, he was smiling slightly, but the expression in his eyes was as cold and bleak as the North Sea.
She raised her chin and forced herself to meet his gaze. So he did remember. And he had the nerve to look at her as if she was the one who had done something wrong. Like what, for example—not being attractive enough? Pressing her lips together, she pushed back the questions she had asked herself a million times since that awful night at Harcourt and simply said, ‘Not you. The shirt. Could you take it off, please?’
Looking up into his face was like torment. She should have been used to it—she’d seen it in her dreams often enough in the last six years—but even the most vivid of them hadn’t done justice to the brutal beauty of him as he stood only a foot away. Bruised and bloodied, he was every inch the conquering Barbarian.
‘Oh, dear,’ he drawled. ‘What’s it been—five years? And clearly nothing’s changed.’
Oh, Lord; his voice. The melodic Spanish lilt that he’d all but lost growing up in England was stronger again now. Unfortunately.
Tamsin swallowed. ‘Six,’ she snapped, and instantly wanted to bite out her tongue for giving him the satisfaction of knowing that she cared enough to remember. ‘Anyway, I don’t know what you mean. From where I’m standing, plenty has changed.’
Like I’m not naïve enough any more to think that the face of an angel and the body of a living god make a shallow, callous bastard into a hero. She didn’t say the words, but just thinking them, and remembering what he’d done, made the strength seep back into her trembling body.
‘Really?’ He nodded slowly, reaching out a strong, tanned hand and smoothing it over the wing of pale-gold hair that fell over one eye. ‘Well, there’s this, of course, but I’m not talking about superficial things. It’s what’s underneath that I’m more interested in.’ Guilty, humiliating heat flared in the pit of her stomach as his gaze flickered over her, taking in the black-satin cocktail dress beneath the huge overcoat, and the muddied skyscraper shoes that clearly said she hadn’t been home last night. ‘I’m sure that line about taking the shirt off usually enjoys a very high success rate, especially since your daddy is now so high up in the RFU, but that cuts absolutely no ice with me these days. I’m out of all that—’ He broke off, and laughed. ‘Though, of course, I don’t have to tell you that, do I?’
She would not melt. She would not succumb to his voice or his touch, or his questions, or anything. Looking over his right shoulder at the red cross of St George painted on the wall of the tunnel, she affected a tone of deep boredom.
‘Whatever. I just want the shirt back, please.’
Wordlessly, as if he were weighing up what to do next, Alejandro took a step towards her, closing the gap between them. The other players were filing past them and the tunnel echoed with their shouts and the clatter of their studs on the floor, but the noise seemed to be coming from miles away. Tamsin felt her flimsy façade slipping. The physical reality of his closeness was acting on her senses like a drug, giving her a painfully heightened awareness of his broad, sculpted chest beneath the tightly fitting shirt, the scent of damp grass and mud that clung to him, and its undertone of raw masculinity.
‘I’m sure you do,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I’m sure the last thing your father wants is to see me back in an England shirt. After all, he tried hard enough to get me out of one six years ago.’
‘Yes, well, you have to agree that the Barbarians strip is much more appropriate, Alejandro. Given that you behave like one.’
A lazy smile pulled the corners of his sexy, swollen mouth. With a nonchalant lift of his shoulders, he turned and began to walk away from her, his massive shoulders filling the narrow space. He called the shots here, and he knew it.
‘Wait!’
Fury welled inside her and she ran after him, suddenly finding that without the distraction of his closeness she could think clearly again, and fuelled by a renewed sense of urgency to reclaim the shirt. Slipping past him, she placed herself defiantly in the doorway of the visitors’ changing room, blocking his way.
‘The shirt, Alejandro.’
She saw the dangerous gleam in the depths of his tiger’s eyes, and for a split second wondered if he was going to push her out of the way. Given the relative size of them, he’d hardly have to try, but something in him seemed to prevent him. If she didn’t know any better she’d think it was some sense of inherent chivalry, but that would be ridiculous, because she knew better than anyone that there wasn’t an atom of decency in the whole of Alejandro D’Arienzo’s magnificent body.
He stood back, raising both his hands as if in surrender, but his face bore a look of subdued triumph.
‘OK—go on, then. Take it.’
She cast a furtive look around. The tunnel was emptier now, but there were still officials, a few cameramen and journalists hovering outside the press room. ‘Me? Take it off you? Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t.
Alejandro gave a small shrug and dropped his hands. ‘I think we both know that you can, because you’ve done it before. But if you don’t want to…’ He came towards her and she found herself automatically stepping aside. ‘Obviously it’s not that important.’
‘It is.’
She spoke through gritted teeth, trying to keep back the scream of frustration and fury that was gathering in her chest. Alejandro’s hand was on the door and she reached out and grabbed his arm.
It was as if she’d touched a bolt of lightning. White-hot tongues of electricity sizzled up her arm and exploded inside her, simply from the contact of his body beneath the shirt. How come in six years
