had been sitting alone at the bar!
The two of them were chatting amiably, Rogan ordering them a drink, his attention turning to Caitlin as he saw her standing in the doorway watching them. He gave her a mocking acknowledgement with his head, laughter in his eyes as Caitlin gave him a fierce glare before turning away.
He must have waited all of ten seconds after her departure before inviting the voluptuous blonde to join him!
She was still fuming at his high-handed conceit when she swung into the low Mercedes, her clutch-bag landing with a thud on the seat beside her. Who did he think he was, trying to pick her up in that way! No man had ever tried to pick her up in a bar before. Or so nearly succeeded!
There had been something about Mr Rogan McCord that was extremely appealing, his rakish charm a challenge, his almost casual confidence in his own attraction doubly so.
But he was also a rake and a flirt, out for a good time with the first woman he felt attracted to.
Or the second! Ten seconds, that was all he had waited before turning his attention to the blonde.
By the time she had finished berating Rogan McCord’s rakish behaviour she had also realised that her car wasn’t going to start.
Damn! Hopeless with anything mechanical, she knew there wasn’t even any point in her looking under the bonnet; it all looked like a mess of wires and nuts to her. She was going to have to call someone out from the garage the family used to service their cars, wait for them to arrive, and then hope that it wasn’t anything too serious. And all because Gayle had thought it would be a good idea if they had a drink together tonight. She had called Gayle a friend to Rogan McCord, but that wasn’t quite true, and she now blamed the other woman for dragging her into town in the first place, especially as she hadn’t even had the decency to turn up.
‘Having trouble?’ drawled an infuriatingly familiar voice.
Caught standing outside her car, telling it what a useless piece of junk it was, by Rogan McCord, she rounded on him sharply. ‘No, I always talk to my car before driving it,’ she snapped, turning to walk back in the direction of the hotel.
‘Really?’ he fell into step beside her. ‘Is that a little like talking to plants?’
She gave his innocently enquiring face a scathing look, ignoring him as she located the public telephones in the reception area, turning her back on him as she dialled the number of the garage. The call went straight through to the mechanic on call, and she impatiently answered his queries with an obvious lack of knowledge about anything concerning cars except how to drive one. The man promised to come out immediately.
Caitlin came to a halt as she turned and almost bumped into the man leaning on the wall behind her, his arms folded across his chest, his expression gently mocking. ‘Excuse me,’ she bit out, pointedly moving past him to the lounge area beside the reception desks where she had told the mechanic she would be waiting for him.
‘I can see how you would have to talk to your car before attempting to drive it.’ Rogan McCord folded his lean length down into the low beige leather armchair opposite hers. ‘You have a decided lack of respect for their delicate engineering!’
She looked across at him with frosty blue eyes. ‘I don’t remember asking you to join me.’
‘Neither do I,’ he answered cheerfully. ‘But I’ve decided to overlook your lack of manners this time.’
Her mouth firmed. ‘And I suppose you think it was polite to eavesdrop on my telephone call!’
He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘I was waiting to use the telephone.’
‘Then why didn’t you?’ Her eyes flashed.
‘I changed my mind,’ he dismissed tauntingly, eyeing her flushed face with amusement.
Caitlin gave a disbelieving snort before turning to watch the automatic doors for the arrival of the mechanic. She knew it was too soon for him to arrive yet, but anything was better than looking at Rogan McCord! Why wasn’t he still with the blonde? Maybe she had turned him down too, Caitlin thought with satisfaction.
‘I pity the poor devil at the receiving end of that smile,’ he murmured, his eyes narrowed.
She looked at him with cool blue eyes. ‘Self-pity is so boring, don’t you think?’
He grinned, those deep slashes grooved into the hardness of his cheeks. ‘Plotting my downfall, were you?’ he drawled.
‘To tell you the truth, Mr McCord, I don’t care if I never have to think of you again,’ she told him in a bored voice. ‘I was just musing over your luck in choosing the wrong woman twice in one night.’
Dark brows rose over sea-green eyes. ‘I didn’t choose you at all, Caity, you were just there.’
‘My name is Caitlin,’ she snapped. ‘And I was there because I was meeting someone.’
‘Who didn’t turn up,’ he added derisively.
‘It does happen,’ she insisted defensively.
He shook his head. ‘Not to women like you.’
‘I wish you would stop saying that!’ She glared. ‘And I am not in the habit of sitting around in bars alone!’
‘Of course you aren’t,’ Rogan humoured her.
Her eyes shot sparks of blue fire at him. ‘Unlike your next choice,’ she said bitchily.
‘How could I even see another woman after you?’ he taunted. ‘Miranda was the one to approach me.’
Caitlin’s scathing retort didn’t pass her lips, her attention distracted by the woman under discussion as she walked past them to the doors in the company of a tall sandy-haired man, the look she shot Rogan wistful to say the least.
Caitlin turned to the man opposite her with new eyes. He didn’t look as if having a woman approach him was a new experience, rather an accepted one, and to a woman who had never been the one to make the first move with any man it was totally unacceptable to her personal code of behaviour. No matter how attractive she found a man she could never be the first one to show that.
‘Don’t look so surprised,’ Rogan derided at her silence. ‘Miranda is a professional.’
‘I don’t—— What?’ Her gasped exclamation couldn’t be halted, even though she knew how young and naïve it made her seem. A prostitute? Here?
Rogan’s mouth twisted in enjoyment of her disbelief. ‘They have to ply their wares somewhere,’ he mocked. ‘And you meet a richer class of client in hotels like this one,’ he added drily.
‘The management would never allow it,’ she dismissed, sure he had to be mocking her about the other woman’s profession too. Miranda certainly hadn’t looked like a prostitute. But then did they have to walk around in fish-net tights and snug-fitting clothes to be one? The answer was obviously no, especially in a hotel like this one. ‘I had no idea …’ she frowned.
Rogan shrugged. ‘I travel around a lot, you soon get to recognise them.’
