the tourist sights.’
‘I can think of better ways to spend my day,’ he admitted, looking at her lips and thinking about several of them; all involved a bed and none featured clothes.
She had never imagined any different, so the anticlimax she felt at his admission was totally irrational.
The lights changed and, while Megan was considering the subtle but important difference between brutal honesty and plain bad manners, Emilio drew away.
At least he had finally dropped the subject. Megan was gazing out through the passenger window, beginning to loosen up slightly when he said something that tipped her over into heart-racing panic … as she found it preferable to designate the erratic thud of her heart as it climbed its way into her throat.
‘And are you always a good girl, Megan?’
It could have been an innocent question, but not when it was delivered in a throaty drawl that came direct from an erotic fantasy. Not hers—she didn’t do fantasies, erotic or otherwise. She was a girl very founded in reality—a girl who right now was shaking.
Did he like his girls bad?
It was bad she had thought the question; at least she had not said it.
She stared at him feeling as though she had slipped into some sort of trance. This conversation, the entire morning, it was all so surreal. She inhaled deeply, getting an unsettling dose of the male fragrance he used along with the sustaining oxygen. God, Megan, get a grip, girl, or failing that get out of this car!
‘Always,’ she confirmed in a cold little voice—shame about the tremor.
A disturbing smile tugged the corners of his mobile mouth as his glance dropped to the hands clenched in her lap. ‘Good girls don’t bite their fingernails.’
Unable to stop herself, she slid her hands under her thighs to hide the shameful condition of her fingernails. ‘I don’t …’ She bit off the futile denial and lifted her chin, turning her defiant golden stare on the hands curved lightly around the steering wheel.
Strong hands, hands that were good to look at, much like the rest of him, she suspected. Her amber eyes were glazing as she stared fixedly at his long, tapering brown fingers and nails that were, of course, not bitten, but neatly trimmed. In her head she saw those long brown fingers, dark as they slid over pale flesh.
She clenched her jaw and pushed the image away.
‘I bite my nails—so what? I suppose you think that it’s an external manifestation of some sort of unresolved conflict. Well, think again—it’s just a habit.’ And one that Megan now intended to cure herself of for good. She had intended to before, but this time she really would.
‘I just thought you might be hungry,’ he returned mildly.
‘I’m always hungry,’ she admitted without thinking.
The wistful note in her voice drew a smile from Emilio. ‘Then that settles it.’
His response drew Megan’s attention to his face. ‘Settles what?’
‘I don’t recall you being this belligerent. Low sugar levels?’
The confident assertion drew a snort from Megan. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my sugar levels.’ It was a great pity the same could not be said of her hormone levels, which had been running riotously out of control since Emilio had appeared.
Since he’d kissed her.
The memory she had tried so hard to suppress rushed over her. It was like walking headlong into a solid wall of heat. It stole her breath, her skin prickled hotly, low in her pelvis things tightened. Megan shuddered, her eyes darkening as she remembered the moment his tongue had stabbed deep into her mouth, the abrasive contact making her melt.
Eyes glazed and misty, she half lifted a hand to her lips, then, catching his dark stare, let it fall away.
She took some comfort from the realisation that she was not likely to be the only female whom he had this effect on.
Don’t start thinking you’re anything special, Megan. You’re creased, cranky and the last person in the world he wants to be lumbered with.
So why didn’t he dump you in an airport hotel?
She was too warm in her linen jacket, air conditioning or not. Her covetous gaze moved resentfully up from his gleaming shoes. She had not got very far before her resentment fell away, and the emotion that replaced it tightened like a fist in her chest—she might not be special, but Emilio was!
There was a ribbon of colour across his cheekbones accenting the sharp, sybaritic curve as their stares briefly connected.
The challenge in his made her heart beat faster as she let her lashes fall in a protective mesh over her eyes.
‘All right, you can buy me breakfast, but nowhere too posh. I look scruffy.’ What could be the harm eating in a public place? And it might be nice to see a part of Madrid that was not her hotel room.
‘I had thought we’d go Dutch, but …’
Despite herself, Megan found herself laughing.
MEGAN lagged a little behind as she followed Emilio into the building. They had crossed the foyer and entered a lift before her preoccupied brain made a fairly obvious leap.
‘This is not a restaurant.’
As she spoke the glass doors closed with a silent swish and the elevator rose silently. Megan, who was not fond of heights, did not take the opportunity to look down into the greenery-filled atrium below.
‘Smart and beautiful.’
Very beautiful, but not obvious, he mused, studying her face. She had classic English-rose beauty, her face a perfect heart shape, her pale complexion flawless. It was the sort of face that might not leap out of a crowd, but great, actually fantastic, bones and once you started looking you found you couldn’t stop.
Or is that just me?
She was about as far removed from the plastic production-line beauty that most of the females he encountered boasted, but then she had what cosmetic enhancement and beauticians could not give. Megan had class; quiet, understated class.
Unaware of his scrutiny, Megan slung him a dark look, smoothed her hair and tried to slow her rapid, shallow, audible inhalations as the elevator came to a smooth halt. She was uneasily aware that vertigo only explained part of her breathing difficulties.
‘Annoying and sarcastic,’ she countered, directing what she hoped was a cool, calm look up at him. ‘What is this place, Emilio?’ And why wasn’t the damned door opening? she wondered, sliding a stressed look at the button on the wall behind him.
She wasn’t claustrophobic and the space was far from cramped, but if the door didn’t open soon she wasn’t sure how long she could resist the strong impulse
