A Spanish Awakening

by Kim Lawrence

‘Rios here.’

  Megan slanted an angry glare at his face and held out her hand.

  ‘Ah, Charles. Yes, she is here with me now,’ Emilio said, ignoring her silent demand, and continued to speak, responding to what her father was saying, his voice oozing almost as much insincerity as his mocking gaze.

  ‘No, don’t worry, I will take care of her. No need, it is not a problem, Charles.’ A taunting grin in place on his lean face, Emilio turned to evade the hand that tried to snatch the phone from him. He waved an admonishing finger at her face and directed a wolfish smile at her indignant face as he raised his voice and said, ‘It is a total pleasure and no trouble at all. Yes, and Megan sends her love.’

  Love was not the emotion stamped on Megan’s face when she attracted the attention of several people within earshot as she yelled, ‘No, I don’t!’

  Finally able to grab the phone, Megan snatched it from his hand and lifted it to her own ear, struggling to regain some semblance of control. ‘Dad?’ she said. ‘I don’t need to bother Mr Rios, I’m—I’m … He’s gone,’ she said, directing an accusing look up at Emilio’s dark face.

  ‘Your father is a busy man.’

  ‘My father is—’ Megan bit back the unflattering reading of her father’s character and glared up at Emilio.

  ‘He can relax now he knows you have someone to look after you.’

  ‘I don’t need anyone to look after me, and my father knows it. He just wants me to be nice to you because you have contacts that he …’ Realising belatedly the extreme indiscretion of her goaded retort, she closed her lips firmly over further tactless disclosures.

  Emilio’s lips thinned as his nostrils flared in distaste. Who needed an enemy when you had a father like Charles Armstrong? A man who had never really grasped the fact that a father’s duty to his children was to protect and shield.

  Armstrong used anyone, including members of his own family, if it gave him an advantage.

  ‘Just how nice does he expect you to be to me?’

  Megan responded to the comment as if it had been a slap, catching her breath and drawing back. The subsequent blast of fury that sizzled along her nerve endings blinded Megan to the sympathy in Emilio’s dark eyes.

  She lifted her chin and glared up at him. ‘My father does not ask me to have sex with men who can be useful to him.’

  ‘Though he’d not be likely to kick up a fuss if you decided to.’

  ‘I have sex with men because I want to.’

  So far she had not wanted to, but Megan saw no reason to share this information with Emilio Rios; even if she had, she doubted he would have believed her.

  Ironic, really—the world thought she was a bit of an iceberg, a reputation she found it comfortable to hide behind, but Emilio Rios thought she was some sort of sex-mad tart.

  Two years ago her initial gratitude at being rescued from a situation that had escalated dangerously out of control had changed to wretched misery when he had looked at her with contempt and treated her to a blighting lecture on the dangers of leading men on.

  Acting as though she were some sort of sexual predator!

  Sexual predator!

  At that point Megan hadn’t even had a real boyfriend. The man Emilio had rescued her from had not been her date. He was a lecturer, quite old to her mind, and she had treated his kind offer of a lift home from the graduation party, when the boy who had promised her an early lift home had become drunk and incapable, as just that—kind.

  How was she meant to have known that he had been drinking too? She hadn’t had a clue until he had put his foot down through the village, then, after making her extremely uncomfortable with comments loaded with sexual innuendo, instead of taking her to the house where her father was hosting a party for his business partner—all the family were under orders to attend—he’d pulled up on the long tree-lined drive leading up to the house and tried to kiss her.

  During the rather undignified tussle that had followed Megan had tried to remain calm, but she had been close to panic when the door had been dragged open to reveal Emilio.

  Her relief had been short-lived.

  ‘So how about me?’

  She looked at him blankly as she pushed away the memory of that night. ‘How about you what? ‘

  Emilio arched a sardonic brow. ‘Do you want to have sex with me?’

  Heat flashed through Megan. She was insulted, she told herself, not excited. She hung on to her temper with difficulty and pretended to consider his insolent question. ‘You got a spare million?’ Word was he had several.

  His brows lifted. ‘You value yourself highly.’

  Megan flicked the ponytail that lay against her neck and responded with a cool assurance she was about a million miles from feeling. ‘I’m worth it.’

  ‘Then maybe we could work something out. I’m not averse to paying for quality,’ he drawled.

  The sexual tension soared as they stared at one another, neither willing to back down. But before this absurd negotiation went any further a voice cut across the seething silence.

  ‘Emilio?’

  CHAPTER THREE

  MEGAN turned her head. The woman standing there was tiny, barely an inch above five feet. The last time she had seen the petite brunette the older woman had been wearing a ring; today her hand was bare, but nothing else, it seemed, had changed.

  Rosanna Rios was still the most beautiful woman she had ever met. Never a hair out of place, she looked like a porcelain ornament with big brown eyes, a rosebud mouth and delicate nose. She had the sort of delicate fragility that aroused the protective instincts in men.

  ‘I did call, but you were.’ she raised a darkened brow and lifted her enquiring gaze to Emilio as she teased ‘… occupied.’

  Megan felt her stomach muscles tighten as she watched Emilio brush the smooth cheek offered him with his lips.

  ‘I had no idea at all.’ Rosanna turned to smile at Megan, adding with a smile tinged with relief as she turned back to Emilio, ‘I’m glad things are finally working out for you.’

  Megan, puzzling over the soft-voiced aside, waited for Emilio to set the record straight. Instead she heard him ask his ex-wife if she was being met.

  ‘I was.’ Rosanna scanned the crowds, a delicate frown furrowing her smooth brow. ‘But he appears to have been held up.’

  ‘Can we offer you a lift? ‘

  Megan, frowning at the we and the misleading message it sent, watched as Rosanna shook her head. ‘I’ll wait.’

  Emilio shrugged and placed a hand lightly between Megan’s shoulder blades, acting as if he hadn’t noticed when she flinched. ‘If you’re sure?’

  Megan flashed him a ‘what the hell are you up to?’ look, which he responded to by dropping his head to whisper softly in her ear, ‘I’ll meet your price.’

  The mortified colour flew to Megan’s cheeks as she blurted loudly, ‘I wasn’t serious and you know it.’

  ‘You really shouldn’t make offers you don’t intend to follow through with,’ he chided, adding, ‘Sorry, Rosanna, we’re being rude.’

  ‘You’re being rude,’ Megan gritted.

  Rude, and extremely manipulative.

  ‘No apologies necessary. Are you two arriving? Or were you planning a romantic trip?’

  ‘We are not together,’ Megan protested in a belated attempt to set the record straight. The breathlessness of her delivery, due in part to the fingers that had begun to massage the tight area at the back of her neck, did not add weight to her claim.

  The casual intimacy of his action sent a quiver of raw sexual awareness through her body.

  Emilio hooked a thumb under her chin. ‘You’re tense, querida.’ He disapproved with a frown that left his dark eyes warm with concern.

  ‘I can’t imagine why,’ she retorted.

  The ironic retort drew a laugh from Emilio, who allowed the hand that lay against her waist to slide lower to the firm curve of her bottom. ‘Megan was planning to fly home, but it looks like I have her h
ere for a little longer.’

  Rosanna gave a sympathetic grimace. ‘Bad luck.’

  ‘Good luck for me.’

  ‘I was lucky. I arrived on an early flight.’

  ‘How long have you two been …?’

  Megan, aware of Emilio’s eyes on her face, struggled to manufacture an amused smile for the other woman. ‘No, we’re not, that is. He’s joking.’

  Emilio came to her rescue. ‘We are just good friends,’ he said with an ‘if you believe that you’ll believe anything’ smile.

  Rosanna smiled. ‘Of course.’

  ‘No, really we’re …’

  Emilio placed a finger to her lips.

  The contact made her pupils dilate.

  ‘Relax, Megan.’ His deep voice, huskily suggestive of unspoken intimacies, shivered across her oversensitive nerve endings. ‘Rosanna understands, and she is not going to report back to anyone,’ he soothed, lifting a stray hank of hair from her cheek.

  A hazy, distracted expression drifted across his face as he rubbed the silky strands between his fingers before tucking them behind her ear.

  Megan swallowed and struggled to maintain a façade of calm while her thudding heart tried to climb its way out of her chest cavity.

  Mesmerised, she stared at him. She did not register the time lapse before he pushed her hair from her face. She was too busy registering unpleasant things like the almost painful clutching of her stomach muscles and the rush of heat that raised her core temperature by several uncomfortable degrees.

  His hand did not fall away. Instead he touched her ear lobe, seeming to notice the amber studs in the gold setting for the first time. His dark, thickly lashed eyes drifted downwards to the hollow of her throat where a pulse fluttered visibly against the tender blue-veined white skin.

  Any residual guilt he might have felt for exploiting the situation had long vanished. It had been a long time coming, but Megan Armstrong was going to be his and he was going to make her forget every man she had ever been with—and, Madre di Dios, he was going to enjoy every second of it!

  His fingertips barely brushed her, but even the suggestion of contact sent a shiver of sensation across the surface of her skin. She was frozen to the spot by a wave of enervating lust that was terrifying in its strength.

  Hating the feeling of being utterly helpless and not in control, Megan hid behind the sweeping half-moon fan of her dark lashes and, like a drowning man clinging to a straw, repeated, You’ll laugh about this later, over and over in her head.

  ‘I like those,’ he said, making her shiver as he touched, not just the earring, but the thin layer of skin behind her ear, and Megan realised it really was an erogenous zone.

  God, I’ve got erogenous zones!

  She met his dark intent gaze and thought, God, I’ve got a problem!

  Her hand came up to push his away—that had been the intention at least. Instead she somehow ended up with her fingers curled over his and stayed there for an awkward heart-thudding moment.

  ‘They were my mum’s.’

  Her eyes dropped from his uncomfortably perceptive gaze a moment before they filled with emotional tears. The earrings were one of a handful of physical reminders she had of her mother, along with her watch and the creased and grainy snapshot of herself as a baby held in her mother’s arms she carried in her wallet.

  ‘They match your eyes. Did your mother have golden eyes too?’ His voice flowed over her like honey.

  She was startled by the question; the eyes in question flew to his. He wasn’t really interested, she told herself. This little byplay was presumably for Rosanna’s benefit—like the kisses.

  ‘Yes, she did. I … I look like her.’

  ‘Then she must have been a very beautiful woman.’

  Megan felt her heart give a traitorous thud and forced herself to look away. He looked genuine but he was about as sincere as a politician running for re-election; she would be a fool if she lost sight of that fact.

  Twisting her earring, she turned to the older woman. ‘Look, it was nice to see you again but I’m running late.’

  ‘Of course, and it was very nice to see you too, Megan,’ she said warmly. ‘Philip often speaks of you.’

  ‘You speak to Philip? ‘

  A look of consternation crossed the older woman’s face. ‘I, well—’

  Emilio cut across her. ‘I hate to interrupt, ladies, but—’ he tapped the face of the watch on his wrist and angled a significant look at Megan ‘—this is why we are running late. You talk too much.’ Grabbing her arm, he dropped a kiss on Rosanna’s cheek and headed for the exit, virtually dragging Megan along with him.

  She angled an angry look up at his lean face. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I am rescuing you from an awkward situation.’

  Megan loosed an incredulous hoot as they emerged in the fresh air. She pulled away from him and stood, hands on hips, glaring at him.

  ‘An awkward situation of your making.’

  He flashed a grin and held out an arm towards her. ‘The car is this way.’

  Megan didn’t move. ‘Goodbye.’

  He studied her face for a moment before sighing. ‘Look, we can—’

  ‘Do this the hard way or the easy way,’ she slotted in.

  ‘Tempting, but no, I was going to say we can stand here debating this, but in the end you will accept a lift because the alternative is a very long wait.’ He nodded towards the long queues beside the empty taxi ranks. ‘And you are, I am led to believe, a practical woman not given to cutting off her very pretty nose to spite her beautiful face.

  ‘Besides, I promised your father I would take care of you.’

  ‘And you are a man of your word?’

  ‘It hurts me you doubt it.’ The silence stretched as he watched her struggle. ‘Of course, if for some reason you are afraid to get in a car with me …?’

  Her chin went up. ‘Of course I’m not afraid,’ she scoffed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ANGRY that she had allowed herself to be manipulated into accepting this lift—a two-year-old could have seen through his tactics—Megan maintained her tight-lipped, frigid silence until Emilio had negotiated the congested traffic around the airport.

  ‘I think you owe me an apology.’

  ‘You do? For what exactly?’ he said, sounding interested.

  ‘You kissed me.’ Annoyingly, she could not say it without blushing. She just hoped he was too busy avoiding some suicidal cyclists to notice.

  Emilio arched a brow and flashed a quick wolfish grin in her direction. ‘I have not forgotten. You expect me to apologise for kissing you?’

  Megan shook her head. ‘I’ve already forgotten the actual kiss,’ she lied, hoping but not expecting to bruise his ego. ‘I expect you to apologise for using me that way to make your ex jealous.’

  Emilio looked startled by the interpretation. ‘Jealous?’

  ‘And all that effort and it didn’t even work. Face it, Emilio, she didn’t care.’ Possibly, Megan mused bitterly, because Rosanna knew all she had to do was click her pretty fingers and Emilio would come running. ‘I have to admit I’m disappointed.’

  ‘With my kissing?’

  Megan, who had no intention of going there, ignored the interruption. ‘I thought you were supposed to be the great authority on women, a regular Casanova …’

  ‘You seem to take a great interest in my sex life.’

  The taunt brought a flush of colour to her cheeks, but Megan didn’t drop her gaze as she countered, ‘It’s hard to avoid it.’

  He looked momentarily confused before his mouth twisted into a grimace. ‘That damned article. How long is that damned thing going to haunt me?’

  The look of disgust that flashed across his face made her laugh.

  ‘Haunt?’ she said, pretending confusion. ‘I thought it was very flattering. Some of the things she said you did I didn’t know were physically possible. May I give you some advice?’

 
‘If that advice is don’t sleep with women who confide intimate details to tabloids and trashy magazines, don’t waste your breath.’

  Emilio took very little interest in what was written about him, good or bad, but he was actually a long way from feeling the amused indifference his manner suggested, for this particular article had been, not only incredibly tasteless and salacious, but totally untrue.

  He would have won any prosecution he brought against the magazine that published it, but such a course would have inevitably prolonged the public interest. Instead he had bitten the bullet and chosen to remain silent on the subject, waiting for it to go away.

  ‘It wasn’t,’ Megan admitted. ‘But it seems sound advice.’

  ‘Only if you actually did sleep with the woman in question.’

  Something in Emilio’s voice brought her frowning scrutiny to his face. ‘And you didn’t,’ she realised. ‘But she said …?’

  ‘And you believe everything you read in trashy magazines?’ he asked sardonically.

  ‘No.’ she conceded doubtfully.

  ‘Just everything you read about me?’

  Megan aimed a killer look at his profile. The man, she brooded darkly, always had to have the last word.

  ‘That advice—what was it? I would like to hear it, if only to prove to you that I actually have an open mind. So what pearl of wisdom would you like to share with me? ‘

  ‘You want to know? Fine! I’m no expert—’

  Emilio gave a lazy smile. ‘I can feel a but coming on.’

  ‘Do you want to hear what I have to say or not? ‘

  He produced an unrealistically meek expression and mimed a zipping motion across his lips.

  ‘But—it seems to me that kissing someone else is not the best way to win back a wife.’

  There was a long silence before he filled it.

  ‘You really think that is why I kissed you?’ The next time he intended to make his intentions clearer—always easier when you didn’t have several hundred people watching you.

  She arched a brow and adopted an expression of amusement. Inside the laughter was noticeably absent as she said, ‘And you’re trying to tell me you were just overcome with uncontrollable lust when you saw me? ‘