Megan was not prepared to let him off the hook just yet. ‘I think, Megan, that you—’
She held up her hand. ‘Don’t bother, I know what you think about me. You made yourself quite clear at the time, practically telling me I was a little tart who was a danger to the moral well-being of the entire male population for a hundred-mile radius.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t say anything like that.’ Their eyes connected and he shrugged, admitting, ‘All right, I might have given that impression, but that was only because …’
‘Because you were disgusted by my slutty clothes. Well, as a matter of fact, they weren’t. They were perfectly ordinary things for—’
‘Jeans, very tight, and the clingy black top. It kept slipping off your shoulder—your bra strap was pink,’ he recited. His dark eyes drifted towards her mouth as he continued to catalogue. ‘Your lipstick was pink too. It was smeared.’ He swallowed convulsively before adding in the same flat, colourless tone, ‘And your lip was bleeding.’
Until he’d seen the blood he had been holding it together quite well. All right, not well as such, but he had been keeping his more primitive instincts in check. But those tiny beads of red on her skin had made something snap inside him.
Megan’s jaw dropped. ‘You still remember.’ And in detail. Even she didn’t remember what colour her lipstick had been that night. Her ensemble appeared to have been so truly awful that it had imprinted itself on the memory of a man who had perfect taste.
Actually he had perfect everything, she thought, concentrating on her resentment that rose in direct proportion to the perfection, rather than the liquid rush of excitement low in her belly.
Her legs were jelly, inside her bra her breasts chafed painfully against the lace. Stop acting like you don’t have a choice, she told herself. There’s always a choice.
Her moment of rebellion lasted as long as it took for her gaze to wander back to his mouth.
She struggled against a wave of lust. It was insane, she thought, running the tip of her tongue across the curve of her dry lips, but when it came to being a total pushover that theoretical choice was just that—theoretical.
The way Emilio made her feel was one thing in her life that she had no choice about!
She was stuck with loving the way he looked. Loving the way he sounded, the way he smelt, the way he moved … Actually love was perhaps the wrong word to accurately convey the visceral intensity and power of the effect he had on her.
On the other hand, maybe love was exactly the right word.
Megan’s pupils dilated with shocked rejection as she pushed away the dangerous thought and narrowed her wandering focus to one little triangle of olive-toned tanned skin at the base of his throat. Even that tiny section of skin set in motion a stream of erotic conjecture.
This was so unfair. What chance did she have? Linen didn’t dare crease on him. In a fair world it ought to be illegal for any man to be this good-looking.
Conscious that the silence had lengthened, she dragged her thoughts away from the steamy place they were in danger of returning to and angled a hostile stare up at his face.
‘Have you got a photographic memory or something?’ Was the embarrassing moment never going to be allowed to die?
‘No, I do not, but I have excellent recall for some things.’ The weekend he had realised that he had been a blind fool had lingered in his mind.
‘I didn’t look that bad. Did I?’ She bit her lip, hating the fact she sounded as if she was asking for his approval.
And you’re not?
The question made him blink. ‘Bad …?’ Emilio ejaculated hoarsely.
He shook his head. The rest of the world looked at Megan and saw an incredibly beautiful woman, but what, he wondered grimly, did she see when she looked in the mirror?
Had that boyfriend of hers been too busy admiring himself in the mirror to make her see she was stunning? His opinion of the man, never high, now zoomed to below zero. As for that family of hers, he brooded darkly, they had a hell of a lot to answer for!
On his visits to the Armstrong household over the span of several years, Emilio had been forced on numerous occasions to remind himself it was not his business as he watched the attempts of Philip’s little sister, not to win approval or praise from her family, but simply to be noticed.
Doomed attempts, obviously it went without saying. The Armstrongs were a loud, egocentric bunch too busy with their own lives to show any interest in anything else, especially the new and painfully unsure member of the family.
‘There’s no need to yell,’ Megan bellowed, then looked shocked. She was not in the habit of raising her voice, as much as the last hour belied that fact.
From the expression on his dark face she had the strong feeling that Emilio was equally unaccustomed to being yelled at.
On another occasion his astounded expression might have amused her, but at that moment she felt as though she might never laugh again.
Emilio swore under his breath, the muscles along his strong jaw tightening as his scorching dark gaze swept across the features turned up to him. Being furious with her was not reducing the level of his painful arousal. If anything it was feeding the desire that licked through his veins like a forest fire, out of control—did he want to control it?
Emilio shifted his weight in a futile effort to ease the pain in his groin. This was not a moment for deep analysis. He could barely string a sequence of intelligible words together, let alone indulge in self-analysis of the complex mixture of emotions that he was struggling with.
Megan, her head tilted to one side, watched through the veil of her lashes as he dragged a shapely brown hand through the ebony strands of his gleaming dark head. Her level of fascination with his fingers, the size, elegance, strength and shape of his hands, was beginning to escape her control.
What control? asked the ironic inner voice in her head.
‘Por Dios, there is every need to shout,’ he contended, studying her flushed face with an air of scowling disbelief as he fought to subdue the protective feelings that surfaced when he saw the reflection of whatever inner battle she was fighting shining in her eyes.
It was easier to focus on his anger.
He knew she was feeling the erotic charge that hung heavily in the air between them. How could she not? It almost had a physical presence.
Why was she fighting it? Why couldn’t she just relax and let it happen? His jaw clenched in frustration. It was as if she couldn’t get past the fact he’d been the one to rescue her from an unpleasant and potentially dangerous situation.
Was it because he’d seen her vulnerable? Did that not mesh with the cool, controlled image she obviously wanted to project?
He dragged a hand down his jaw and decided it was useless to try and figure out her reasoning because, quite clearly, there was none.
