I remember I once—’
‘Cairo, just stop, will you?’ Rafe cut in forcefully, a dark scowl on his brow.
Her gaze was guarded as she looked up at him, her eyes red and puffy from the tears she had cried, her cheeks blotchy and her nose slightly red for the same reason.
She had never looked more beautiful to Rafe….
After an interminable pause, she finally murmured warily, ‘Unless it’s escaped your notice, Rafe, I have stopped now.’
He gave a rueful smile. ‘I noticed.’
She frowned slightly. ‘And …?’
‘You really do need to eat this evening, so how about we pick up a Chinese takeaway on the way back to your apartment?’ He shrugged. ‘It’s the least I can do after behaving so badly I made you miss dinner,’ he added persuasively as her eyes widened. ‘We can make it a Chinese takeaway for one, if that’s what you would prefer?’ he offered as Cairo continued to look at him suspiciously.
‘If we make it a meal for two, what happens afterwards?’
Rafe’s mouth tightened. ‘Afterwards I’ll leave,’ he said curtly. ‘Hell, Cairo, just because I don’t have someone in my life at the moment doesn’t mean I spend my every waking hour trying to devise ways of getting you into bed!’ he added as she still hesitated.
Well, not his every waking hour … but Rafe had to admit—to himself, at least!—that he hadn’t thought of too much else since arriving at the villa two days ago and finding Cairo there, and it had got even worse since their stormy lovemaking the previous evening.
‘I didn’t imagine that you did,’ she said dryly.
He quirked dark brows. ‘No?’
‘No!’
‘Okay, then,’ Rafe said. ‘So do we get Chinese food for one or two?’
She needed her head examined, Cairo knew, to even be thinking of prolonging this evening with Rafe. And yet she was thinking about it….
No doubt the two of them would end up arguing again before the evening was over. They seemed to do little else nowadays. And yet Cairo still felt a certain reluctance to say a final goodbye to him….
‘Two,’ she decided at last. ‘I’ll probably have cause to regret that, too, but—’
‘You never did know quite when to stop talking,’ Rafe remarked as they began to walk back to the car.
Her eyes narrowed. ‘I’m already starting to regret it—’
‘Please just get in the car, Cairo,’ he instructed as he opened the passenger door for her, having no intention of arguing with her again before they had eaten.
No doubt it would be another matter afterwards!
‘So you’re going back to work, after all? And in the theatre?’ Rafe couldn’t hide his surprise as the two of them sat on the carpeted floor in the sitting-room of Cairo’s apartment using chopsticks to eat the Chinese food directly from the cartons, and finishing off the bottle of red wine Cairo had opened earlier.
Cairo had suggested warming plates and laying the table, but Rafe had vetoed the idea, opting for this less formal way of dining once Cairo had changed into comfortable worn jeans and a green cashmere sweater so that she could sit cross-legged on the floor.
‘I start rehearsals in a little under two weeks and open in three.’ Cairo nodded as she reached over to pick up a prawn.
Rafe found himself watching as she lifted the chopsticks and deftly popped the food into her mouth, her lips bare of gloss—well, they would be, as most of it was still on his shirt!
He had always loved Cairo’s mouth. The fullness of her lips. The way they tilted slightly at the corners. Their pouting softness when he kissed them….
‘I’m really looking forward to it,’ she added, before licking the sauce from those delectable lips.
Rafe dragged his gaze away, aware that it was only the way he was also sitting cross-legged on the carpet that prevented Cairo from seeing his purely physical response to the provocation that was her mouth.
He nodded. ‘I remember you saying years ago that it was your first love. But it’s hard work, and there’s no money in it—’
‘I’m not interested in the money, Rafe.’ Cairo turned to him impatiently. ‘I want the immediacy of the theatre. The audience response as each performance is just slightly different. The adrenalin rush each night just before you step onto the stage for the first time.’ She shook her head, her eyes glowing. ‘There’s nothing quite like it.’
Rafe could see that for Cairo there wasn’t.
His own years of performing off-Broadway, before he was ‘discovered’ by a movie producer, seemed like a lifetime ago, but he did still remember that adrenalin rush.
He was just surprised, that after years of starring in increasingly popular box-office hits—the millions Cairo was paid for each performance increasing as a result—she was actually going back to the gruelling demand of theatre work with very little monetary reward.
‘Maybe I’ll come to your opening night …’ he murmured.
Cairo gave him a sharp glance. ‘What on earth for?’
He tensed. ‘Why not?’
Admittedly this last hour of just sitting on the floor, eating informally and chatting about everything and nothing—mainly nothing, as it was less controversial!—had been very pleasant after the previously fraught forty-eight hours.
But the last thing Cairo needed was to know that Rafe was sitting out in the audience on the first night of her return to the theatre after a break of almost eight years.
What if she was awful?
Making films was totally different from working on stage—no retakes for one thing!—and Cairo was nervous enough already without the added pressure of knowing Rafe was sitting beyond the footlights watching her.
‘I would really rather you didn’t, Rafe.’ She grimaced.
He frowned his irritation. ‘Why the hell not?’ he repeated harshly.
Well, Cairo supposed it would have been too much to expect ‘very pleasant’ to last for too much longer!
She sat back. ‘Why would you want to bother? Just so that you can see me fall flat on my face?’
‘That’s damned unfair, Cairo, and you know it!’ Rafe protested.
‘No, I don’t know it, Rafe.’ Cairo shook her head. ‘We aren’t really even friends any more, so why on earth would you want to come to the theatre to watch me on my opening night?’
His eyes were glacial. ‘Maybe I would just like to wish you well?’
‘A
