by Kim Lawrence
He lifted the phone to his ear. ‘Yes, Philip, I am here. Yes, she did say bottom.’
Five minutes later Emilio let himself into the bathroom.
Megan was standing at the mirror above the washbasin using some unladylike language as the slide she was trying to secure her hair with at the nape of her neck slithered along the silky strands onto the floor.
She picked it up and continued with her task, deciding to ignore his smouldering presence. A good idea in theory, but not actually easy to follow through with when the presence you were ignoring consisted of six feet five inches of solid bone, muscle and potent masculinity.
The sexual charge of his presence scorched its way across the room towards her. It would have been easier to ignore walking into a brick wall.
She was almost relieved when he broke the charged silence and spoke.
‘At least you didn’t lock the door.’
But she had unfortunately got dressed. He wondered if the pink things were still on underneath; he had every intention of finding out.
Megan slung him a dark look over her shoulder and was annoyed to see that he looked insultingly at ease with his broad shoulders propped casually against the wall. He didn’t even have the decency to look defensive.
‘Only because there isn’t a lock.’ Tongue caught between her teeth, her expression one of fierce determination, she finally managed to get the wretched slide to stay put.
With a little grunt of triumph she spun around chin high to face him, her expression a study of haughty disdain as she said, ‘You could have knocked.’
The suggestion made him laugh. ‘I think not.’
‘Because the normal rules that govern society don’t apply to Emilio Rios.’
Instead of responding to her sneering provocation, Emilio, a distracted expression in his dark eyes, produced a seemingly unconnected comment. ‘The nape of your neck is very sexy—did you know that?’
Megan, hating herself for responding to the throaty comment, gave an indifferent sniff and lifted a protective hand to the area under discussion.
‘We’re not talking about my neck.’ But he was still staring at it.
‘I was.’ He blinked and gave his head a shake as if to clear it. ‘Look, I’m sorry to keep you waiting.’
‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ she rebutted, her amber eyes flashing with antagonism. ‘I wasn’t waiting.’
Emilio acknowledged her cranky response with the sardonic elevation of one winged brow and continued as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘But explaining your presence to your brother required some—’
‘Tact?’
‘Patience.’
Of which Emilio had rapidly run out.
Rather than placating Philip, he had found himself delivering a few home truths. He had pointed out that the show of concern for his sister’s welfare, as touching as it was, had kicked in pretty late in the day, and for the record he did not need to be told that Megan was not like the girls he normally dated. As for what she was doing in his apartment, he had left Philip in no doubt that it was none of his damned business.
‘You should have mentioned I wasn’t meant to tell him we had sex.’
His brows lifted. ‘Did you?’ he asked, sounding more interested than alarmed.
Megan picked up the hairbrush she’d just been using from the glass vanity unit above the basin and dropped it into her open holdall. ‘It’s not something I’m likely to boast about.’
The muscles around his angular jaw tightened, but she ignored the warning signs.
‘I don’t like to broadcast my mistakes. God knows why—’
‘You slept with me? You gave me your innocence? We both know why, Megan.’
Megan’s eyes fell from his. This was somewhere she could not go—not now, not if she wanted to cling to what shreds of dignity she retained.
‘I doubt,’ she muttered, ‘Philip expected you to go as far as have sex with me to help him with his love life. God!’ she exclaimed, her voice aching with disgust. ‘Did this have anything to do with me?’ she asked, banging her chest palm flat against her heaving chest.
‘Oh, no, I was thinking about your brother the entire time we were making love,’ he drawled. Shaking his head, he dragged a hand across his dark hair and ejaculated, ‘Madre di Dios!’ He regarded her with an expression of utter incredulity. ‘What are you talking about, woman?’
‘I’m talking about spiking any chance Philip has with Rosanna and making Rosanna jealous.’ She could see from his point of view it was a win-win situation.
‘Leaving aside the why would I want either of these things to happen, how exactly would sleeping with you achieve them?’ Emilio levered his broad shoulders from the wall and took a step towards her, shrugging off his relaxed façade.
‘It’s glaringly obvious,’ she contended.
Emilio was, Megan realised as their eyes connected in the mirror, pretty mad.
‘Are you denying he asked you to intercede on his behalf with Rosanna?’ Megan took a blind step backwards, reluctant to admit, even to herself, that she was daunted by the anger glinting in Emilio’s eyes.
‘Why would I deny anything? Are you denying you begged me to have sex with you?’
Megan compressed her lips and glared at him. ‘It’s always nice to be considered a charity case.’
‘I’ve always considered you more of a challenge. By the way, Philip also extended an invitation to dinner. I refused on both our behalves.’
‘I don’t need you to do anything on my behalf! ‘
He adopted an expression of innocent enquiry as he countered, ‘You wish to go to dinner with Rosanna and Philip?’
‘He didn’t really invite us, did he?’
‘No.’
Megan gave a frustrated snort and spun away from him, causing her hair to break free again. With a sharp cry of frustration she dropped to her knees, but Emilio was faster than her; his long fingers closed around the errant item a second before she reached it.
Megan was unable to control her instinctive reaction as she pulled her hand back from his with the caution normally reserved for contact with white-hot metal.
Fully expecting him to make some sarcastic comment, she was relieved but cautious when, squatting back on his heels, Emilio held his open palm out to her.
‘Pretty,’ he said, running the pad of his thumb over the antique tortoiseshell hair ornament.
Her relief evaporated when his dark lashes lifted from the razor-sharp angle of his high cheekbones. The expression in his deep-set dark eyes as he subjected her hair to an equally intense study sent a convulsive shudder up her spine.
Megan arranged her features in a prim expression, inhaling deeply to clear the fuzzy feeling in her head, and said, ‘I like it.’ Thinking, But not as much as I like your mouth.
The corners of his mouth curved upwards into a smile, but as his glance continued to move across the soft brown waves that surrounded her face it faded. ‘But not as pretty as this.’
He stretched his hand towards her and every instinct of self-preservation she possessed screamed, Do not let him touch you!
But other, stronger instincts won out. They always would. Like it or not, the fact was he owned her body.
His long fingers barely brushed the skin of her forehead as he pushed a shiny strand from her eyes but the electric charge that zigzagged through her body felt like a lightning bolt.
‘I prefer your hair loose,’ he admitted, thinking of how it had looked spread out on the pillow around her flushed face. Thinking of burying his face in it, recalling the sensation of the silky strands brushing against his skin as she bent over his body.
Feeling his control slipping, Emilio banished the line of thought but could not resist touching her hair one more time.
Megan flinched away. ‘Well, that’s it, then,’ she cried, reaching out and snatching the hair slide from his open palm.
She rose jerkily to her feet and stared at it for a moment before slinging it wil
dly over her shoulder. She was close to tears and not sure who she blamed for this situation most—Emilio or herself.
So she hadn’t known about Rosanna and Philip. She had known he’d kissed her at the airport for Rosanna’s benefit, and she’d come with him anyway, knowing no matter how hard she had tried to pretend otherwise exactly where it was going.
But having it spelled out to her by Philip was a different matter. ‘I will never tie my hair back again,’ she declared, striving for ironic mockery and delivering instead something a lot closer to frenzied panic, possibly because the husky addition of, ‘because I live to please you,’ was uncomfortably close to the truth.
‘Are you going to tell me what I’ve done to upset you?’
The quiet words sent a fresh flash of anger through Megan.
‘Let me think …’ she said, adopting a mystified expression as she pressed a finger to the suggestion of a cleft in her firm, rounded chin. ‘Could it be something to do with the fact I don’t much like being used? How do you think I felt having my brother thank me for playing along with your brilliant idea? He called me a good sport! ‘
His lips sketched a quick smile. ‘Yes, that sounds like Philip.’
She searched his face. ‘Don’t you feel even slightly guilty?’
‘What exactly should I feel guilty about, Megan?’ His feral smile flashed, sexual and dangerous.
‘You are utterly unbelievable!’ she breathed, his indolent pose incensing her further. The man was totally and completely shameless, she decided, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘The fact that you can even ask that,’ she said in a voice that quavered with anger.
‘Philip thinks you’re a great guy.’ She shook her head, gave a bitter laugh and regarded Emilio in disgust.
Emilio folded his arms across his chest and studied her flushed, vivid little face, his expression softening as he watched her blink back tears from her glowing eyes.
Not for the first time he cursed the inconvenient timing of Philip’s call. ‘And you do not? ‘
‘Me?’ she said, sweeping the make-up she had used earlier to make herself look good for him into her open bag with her forearm.
‘You do not think I’m a … great guy?’
She glared at him, felt the helpless longing roll through her and snarled, ‘I think you’re a selfish, manipulative rat!’
‘Don’t hold back now, say what you think,’ he drawled with deceptive affability.
‘Like you care what I think. You,’ she accused, ‘don’t care what anyone thinks about you.’
It had been true.
It still was to a degree. The good opinion of others had never mattered to Emilio. He did not need people to love him.
He still didn’t need people’s approval or love—just one person’s.
‘But for the record I think you’re cold, calculating and callous.’
His dark eyes glinted dangerously. ‘Great alliteration,’ he admired. ‘But don’t stop there when it’s just getting interesting. How exactly am I …’ he paused and selected an insult at random ‘.calculating?’
‘You went to the airport to meet Rosanna.’ Pretending to be Philip’s friend and all the time intending to stab him in the back. ‘And you kissed me!’
‘True, but as I didn’t know you would be there you can’t really call my actions calculating. Now opportunistic.?’ He shrugged his impressive shoulders, causing the powerful muscles in his chest to bunch beneath his satiny skin.
‘You know exactly what I mean!’ she snarled.
He directed a narrow-eyed considering look at her angry face.
The prolonged scrutiny began to make Megan feel uncomfortable and her scowl deepened in direct proportion to those feelings of discomfort. If I’m not careful, she reflected grimly, I’ll be the one apologising!
Not that she expected for one minute that Emilio would apologise, but he could at least have the guts to acknowledge he’d done something wrong.
‘I doubt very much if you know what you mean, but I have to say a pout actually looks pretty good on you.’
Her chest swelled wrathfully. ‘I do not pout!’
His grin was deliberately provocative as he corrected his previous observation. ‘Maybe not pretty good—make that very good.’
Megan sniffed and did not rise to the obvious bait as she regarded him coldly. ‘It’s bad enough you used me to make Rosanna jealous, but Philip doesn’t have a clue you want her back, or at least don’t want him to have her if you can’t.’
‘Have you ever thought of writing novels—I’m thinking fantasy here.’
Megan pointedly ignored his attempt to divert the conversation.
‘He thinks you want him and Rosanna to be happy. He doesn’t have the faintest idea about your hidden agenda.’
‘And you think you do?’
Megan’s last faint but persistent hope that she might have it wrong was extinguished when he didn’t even attempt to deny her accusation.
‘Yet despite that you are here with me.’
‘That situation can change very quickly.’ The retort, she knew, would have carried more weight if she had swept from the room.
So why aren’t you?
‘Philip is right. I would like to see Rosanna happy.’ Whether the man to do this was Philip he was unsure. Emilio hoped so, but at that moment it was his own future happiness that dominated his thoughts and actions.
‘And you think getting back with you would make her happy.’
‘Being with me never made Rosanna happy.’ And Emilio blamed himself for not realising it earlier. ‘And that went doubly once she realised that I was in l—’
‘Realised you were sleeping your way through the female population of Europe!’ she interrupted shrilly.
A nerve clenched in his lean cheek before he flashed a quick sardonic smile as he drawled, ‘Not what I was about to say.’
Too angry to register the ironic inflection in his voice, Megan sneered. ‘I suppose you’re going to promise to be faithful to her.’
Emilio inhaled, his dark eyes flashing. ‘You have finished?’
As she met his level stare Megan felt an irrational flicker of guilt. He was the one who should be feeling guilty, she reminded herself, and nothing she had said was not the truth.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
‘I WAS never unfaithful.’
‘Sure you weren’t …’ Megan’s voice died away as her eyes reconnected with Emilio’s level stare. A flicker of confusion crossed her face that changed to astonishment as she gasped. ‘You’re serious!’
He dipped his head in curt acknowledgement.
‘So if there weren’t other women, why did you split up?’
Emilio studied her face for a long, thoughtful moment before he responded. Was it unreasonable, he wondered, to expect her to not think the worst of him, to allow for the possibility he might be the good guy, or at least attempting to be, just once?
‘While I find it fascinating to be viewed as some sort of evil genius hatching diabolical plans and bending people to my will—’ he drawled.
‘Oh, no, you’re one of life’s innocents!’ And he hadn’t answered her question.
‘No, Megan, that is you. Do you really imagine for one moment I kissed you at the airport because I wanted to make my ex-wife jealous, or help out your brother? I didn’t plan on seeing you there any more than you planned to kiss me back. We did what we did because, Dios, do I have to spell it out? We have just spent the day in bed having the most incredible sex of my life!’
Clearly it was only a figure of speech, but even as she counselled herself not to take him too literally Megan had to snatch in a breath and grab the shelf beside her as her knees began to wobble, the excitement surging like a tide through her, and all the time painfully conscious of the excitement unfurling, hot and liquid, low in her pelvis.
‘It may have been the only sex of your life,’ he conceded, his lips twisting into a self-condemnatory smile—not only did he not regret thi
s amazing discovery, he felt a knee-jerk rush of primal, possessive satisfaction as he thought about being Megan’s first, her only lover.
Did that make him a total bastard?
‘But you can’t tell me that it—I—didn’t move your world a little too.’
Megan stared back at him and shook her head mutely. She knew that today had changed her and her life for ever; she knew now what it was like to love a man, and even though Emilio wasn’t talking about love he was right about one thing: her world had moved. Actually it had tilted on its axis.
His chin tilted to an arrogant, challenging angle. ‘You can’t look at me without wanting to rip off my clothes.’ His liquid eyes darkened as they meshed with hers. ‘You tremble when I touch you.’
It was clear from Emilio’s expression that he was inviting her to respond, but Megan felt the words of denial locked in her emotionally congested throat. If she started speaking she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop.
When it became clear she wasn’t going to rise to the challenge he had thrown, Emilio sighed and dragged a hand down his strong shadowed jaw. ‘You could meet me halfway. But fine … yes, I went to the airport with the intention of speaking to Rosanna, but I did not agree to act as a go-between for Philip. However,’ he conceded, ‘when we spoke yesterday I was concerned. I realised that he had a point. There were issues in our marriage that were perhaps not fully resolved.’
Megan, thinking, Like you being in love with her, did not bother to hide her scepticism. ‘You didn’t do much talking that I saw.’
‘That is because I became distracted.’ His eyes sought and found hers and the anger shining in the dark depths morphed into a potent blend of hunger and sensual appreciation.
Megan, who had no control over the tide of warm colour that washed over her skin, felt her stomach muscles flutter. Her helpless physical response to the sexual message in his eyes did not stop there. She was just glad that he could not see those other, more embarrassing physical responses.