He quirked dark brows. ‘Which would be never—right?’
‘Right!’
‘I’m just interested, Cairo. Relocating yourself to London after your separation doesn’t exactly seem like a good career move, does it?’ Rafe’s gaze was fixed on her face.
‘Mind your own damned business!’
‘Fine.’ He released her abruptly to hold his hands up as he stepped away from her.
Cairo glared at him for several more seconds before giving an abrupt nod. ‘If you’ll excuse me …’
‘Running away, Cairo?’ Rafe taunted her as she turned away.
Cairo paused to look back at him, her chin raised stubbornly high. ‘I believe you said earlier that you would enjoy a glass of white wine …?’
His brows rose. ‘And you’re about to go and get me one?’
‘If it means I get to spend a little less time in your unpleasant company, yes!’ she bit out. ‘But, of course, if you’ve changed your mind—’
‘You should know by now that once my mind is made up about something—or someone—then it rarely changes,’ he said pointedly.
‘Luckily, neither does mine,’ she came back just as pointedly.
They continued to look at each other for several long, tense seconds, a battle of wills that was totally matched in intensity, with neither of them willing to back down.
It had always been like this between them, Rafe recalled ruefully. Cairo might only have been a twenty-year-old actress just starting out in her career eight years ago, but even then she’d had a definite mind of her own, had known exactly what she wanted and how to get it. And eight years ago, she had decided she wanted to become the wife of multi-millionaire movie producer Lionel Bond and unashamedly used her relationship with Rafe as a stepping stone to achieving that goal.
He moved to lie back on the lounger as he looked out over the terraces of orange trees that surrounded the pool. ‘White wine sounds good,’ he said curtly.
He felt Cairo continue to look at him frowningly for several more seconds before she turned sharply on her heel and continued up the steps to the villa.
Rafe waited until he was sure she had left before turning to look at her, his hands clenching at his sides as he watched that red hair cascading wildly down a back that seemed endless and almost sensuously feline, a bottom smoothly curving in the black bikini, and legs that were long and shapely.
Dammit, even after all this time, after all that had happened between them, Cairo was still one of the most seductively beautiful women Rafe had ever laid eyes—or hands—on.
Not a comfortable realization for a man who made a point of never becoming involved with a woman. Not any more!
He looked across at Daisy playing in the pool. ‘Sweetheart, do you want to go inside and get changed now? It’ll be time to eat soon.’
‘Okay, Uncle Rafe.’ Daisy obediently got out of the pool and went inside the villa.
Cairo’s movements were agitated as she collected wine from the fridge and glasses from the cupboard, not forgetting to get some more juice for Daisy, too, in case she fancied a drink.
How dared Rafe even presume to offer her advice?
Rafe had callously broken her heart eight years ago, leaving her completely vulnerable to the face-saving offer of Lionel’s marriage proposal—
Cairo came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the kitchen, her eyes closing as she swayed dizzily.
It was the first time she had ever admitted, even to herself, that Rafe’s actions were the real reason she had married Lionel….
She shook her head as she once again fought back the tears.
No matter what her reasons might or might not have been for marrying Lionel, despite the fact that she hadn’t loved him, she had tried to be a good wife to him, had accompanied him to numerous parties and premieres, always the glamorous and smiling asset. Her work schedule had also been horrendous in recent years, more often than not for Lionel’s own production company.
Yes, she really had tried to be the ‘perfect’ wife to Lionel.
The fact that she had ultimately failed still haunted her….
‘Cairo, exactly what are you doing?’
Cairo was so startled by the harsh sound of Rafe’s voice behind her that she dropped the carton of juice she was holding, staring down as it seemed to fall in slow motion before landing with a very liquid splat on the tiled floor to spray the juice high into the air.
She gasped as most of that cold juice landed on her bare legs, stepping back quickly, only to come up against a hard, immovable object.
Rafe’s body …
Cairo froze as her back came into contact with the searing heat of Rafe’s bare chest and thighs, her spine stiffening as she immediately tried to move away from that contact.
It was too much, Rafe decided grimly. Having an almost naked Cairo pressed against him, her bottom nestled neatly against his hardening thighs, was just too much on top of coming face to face with her again so unexpectedly earlier on.
He grasped her arms to turn her round to face him, knowing by her sudden gasp, the widening of those dark brown eyes as she looked up at him, that she had read the intent in his eyes.
That she knew Rafe was going to kiss her.
Not gently.
Not searchingly.
Certainly not with the slow sensuality with which they used to kiss.
Rafe was hungry.
Very hungry.
So damned hungry for the taste and feel of Cairo that he wanted to strip those two scraps of material from her body, push her against the wall, and take her where she stood!
He held her gaze with his as his arms moved about her like steel bands, moulding her willowy curves against the lean length of his own body before moving his eyes down to look at the parted softness of her lips.
Cairo had always had the most erotic mouth he had ever seen, her lips full and pouting, slightly moistened now, as if inviting and ready for his kiss.
And he was more than ready to kiss her!
Cairo was held mesmerized by the fierceness of Rafe’s gaze, but her breath stopped completely as his head swooped and his mouth forcefully claimed hers, deeply, fiercely, demanding a response from her rather than asking for one.
A response Cairo was unable to deny him as her lips seemed to part of their own volition. Her arms moved up and her hands clung to those wide, powerful shoulders, Rafe’s skin feeling like steel encased in satin beneath her fingertips.
Heat exploded between them, a fierce, burning heat.
Everywhere were licking flames of complete awareness, of fierce arousal, as her body curved more intimately against Rafe’s and she returned the hunger of his kiss.
It had been so long—too long!—since Cairo had felt so stingingly, vibrantly alive!
Rafe’s hands, his large, evocative hands, moved caressingly across her back as that devouring kiss continued, Rafe’s tongue now thrusting into the moist heat of her mouth, and all the time those hands seeming to burn as they caressed her from hip to breast in restless demand.
Muscles rippled along Rafe’s spine as Cairo touched him there, his silky skin feeling hot, hard, and so wonderful.
Cairo was so lost to reason, so totally aroused, that she offered no protest as she felt Rafe unfastening the single hook at the back of her top before one of his hands moved round unerringly to cup the nakedness of her breast.
Cairo melted completely as the soft pad of his thumb moved caressingly across the thrusting pout of her nipple, rivers of pleasure engulfing her—
‘Uncle Rafe …?’
Cairo barely had time to register Daisy’s presence in the kitchen before Rafe pulled sharply away from her, eyes darkly—briefly—accusing as he thrust Cairo impatiently behind him before turning to face the little girl.
Rafe breathed raggedly. ‘Aunty Cairo and I were just—’
‘It’s okay, Uncle Rafe, Mummy and Daddy kiss each other all the time,’ Daisy told him in that patronizing tone of voice t
hat only a precocious six-year-old could possibly use when talking to an adult. ‘’Course I didn’t know that you and Aunty Cairo kissed, too, but I suppose it’s all right.’ She shrugged.
‘That’s very—adult, of you, Daisy,’ Rafe told her dryly.
‘Grown-ups are always kissing and stuff,’ Daisy assured him with a total lack of interest.
Cairo was hastily dealing with her bikini top—not having as much luck fastening it as Rafe had done unfastening it because her fingers trembled so much!—but even so she was aware of the muscles rippling in Rafe’s back as he suppressed a chuckle at Daisy’s bored dismissal of the scene she had just witnessed.
Cairo certainly didn’t share his humour concerning this totally embarrassing situation. Rafe had only been back in her life a matter of hours and already she was allowing him to kiss her!
Well … no, she hadn’t exactly allowed him to kiss her—being Rafe he had just taken the opportunity to kiss her.
And he wasn’t ‘back in her life’, either—something she intended making very plain to him the next time they were alone together.
So far today Rafe had mocked her, taunted her and insulted her—he certainly wasn’t going to get away with making love to her whenever he felt like it!
Cairo drew in a controlling breath as she stepped out from behind Rafe, her bikini top now firmly back in place. ‘What would you like to do first, Daisy, cook dinner or phone Mummy?’
Daisy’s face instantly brightened. ‘Phone Mummy!’
‘We’ll go and do it right now,’ Cairo promised, determinedly keeping her gaze averted from Rafe’s as she crossed the kitchen to take the excited Daisy’s hand in her own.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Rafe drawled behind them. ‘I’ll just stay here and clear up this sticky juice from the floor, shall I?’
Cairo turned back to give him a mocking smile. ‘That’s very kind of you, Rafe,’ she accepted lightly. ‘I’m sure you’ll find everything you need in the cupboard under the sink,’ she added.
His eyes glittered dangerously. ‘Not everything that I need, Cairo,’ he ground out harshly.
She gave him a censorious frown. ‘Just do your best, hmm?’ she snapped.
‘I usually do,’ he stated deliberately.
Cairo shot him a silencing glare before leaving the kitchen, Daisy’s hand still tucked trustingly in her own.
CHAPTER THREE
RAFE had showered, dressed, already had the barbecue alight and ready for cooking the steaks for their dinner, and was sitting on the terrace drinking another glass of white wine by the time Cairo and Daisy rejoined him outside. Daisy looked very cute in her blue corduroy skirt and pink T-shirt, and Cairo looked even better in flat sandals, her tanned legs bare, and a dark green, knee-length, strappy silk dress that clung in all the right places.
Or—depending on your point of view—all the wrong ones, Rafe allowed wryly as his gaze lingered on the bareness of her tanned shoulders and the tops of her breasts.
It had been a mistake to kiss Cairo earlier, he acknowledged now. But it was simply the most recent of the many mistakes he had made where she was concerned—allowing himself to fall for her eight years ago having definitely been the worst one of them all….
His mouth tightened as he raised his gaze to hers. ‘Help yourself to a glass of wine,’ he invited as she moved to sit down at the other end of the marble-topped dining table. ‘How was Margo?’
‘Very well,’ Cairo answered distantly as she poured some of the white wine into a second glass—and having absolutely no intention of telling him what her sister’s reply had been when Cairo had challenged her over Rafe’s arrival earlier today.
‘Get over yourself!’ had been Margo’s unhelpful comment.
It wasn’t herself Cairo had to get over—it was Rafe’s mockery of her and her resentment towards him!
‘It’s high time the two of you got over that, too,’ had been Margo’s response to that claim.
Not exactly helpful advice when even now Cairo could feel the antagonism between Rafe and herself burning beneath the surface of this polite exchange.
Not that Rafe looked particularly concerned by it. In fact, he looked altogether too disturbingly handsome in faded denims and an open-necked, short-sleeved shirt the same shade of blue as his eyes, the dampness of his hair brushed back from those hard, aristocratically chiselled features inherited from his Spanish father.
Cairo had chosen her own dress for this evening with care, knowing she would need all her self-confidence to face Rafe again after that heated exchange in the kitchen. She had also swept her hair up and secured it loosely on her crown, leaving her neck and shoulders bare, her face already lightly tanned and requiring only a peach gloss applied to her lips.
The lips that still felt tinglingly sensitive and slightly bruised from the force of Rafe’s kiss!
‘Mummy said to say hello, Uncle Rafe,’ Daisy told him happily.
‘Did she, now?’ he drawled.
‘Yes.’ The little girl nodded. ‘And she hopes you do well at the film festival.’
‘That’s very thoughtful of her,’ Rafe accepted dryly—he had a few things he intended saying personally to Margo once Daisy was safely tucked up in bed! ‘Can your aunty Cairo make a salad, do you think?’ he teased gently as he stood up to turn the steaks on the barbecue.
Daisy gave a giggle. ‘Aunty Cairo cooked omelettes last night.’
‘Did she now?’ Rafe quirked dark, mocking brows. ‘She’s obviously a woman of many talents!’ he added with a taunting sideways glance at ‘Aunty Cairo’.
Daisy seemed completely unaware of the intended insult to her aunt, singing quietly to herself as she began to lay the table outside for the three of them.
But Cairo certainly wasn’t, the narrow-eyed glare she gave Rafe letting him know in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t amused.
Rafe returned Cairo’s look for several long seconds, his smile derisive, before he turned his full attention to cooking the steaks. The problem was that Cairo was just too beautiful for him—or any other man!—to look at for too long without wanting to take her to bed.
Which was something that was never going to happen ever again, Rafe told himself grimly, in spite of the fact that he had enjoyed kissing her earlier. No, he’d more than enjoyed it—he had been wanting to repeat the experience ever since.
Eight years, dammit—and within hours of seeing her again Rafe’s body ached with the desire that had been aroused earlier and remained unfulfilled!
‘How is Margo, really?’ he asked once Daisy had gone into the kitchen to collect the cutlery.
Cairo shrugged those delectably bare shoulders. ‘She believes that the specialist is thinking of admitting her to the clinic tomorrow if her blood pressure hasn’t gone down by then.’
Rafe could hear the underlying concern in Cairo’s voice. ‘She wasn’t ill like this with Daisy, was she?’
‘Not as far as I’m aware, no.’ Cairo frowned. ‘I haven’t spent a great deal of time in England the last few years, Rafe,’ she explained sharply as he raised questioning brows.
His lip curled scornfully. ‘Too busy making a name for yourself in Hollywood, I expect.’
‘That’s where Lionel lived, Rafe,’ she said defensively as she heard the censure in his tone. ‘And where he worked. It was only natural that I should mainly work there, too.’
Really, this man seemed to think that everything she did, everything she said, was suspect—especially if it allowed him to make some cutting comment about it!
‘I seem to remember that you once said your main love was the stage,’ he said huskily. ‘I even talked of moving to England for a while so that I could be with you when you accepted the part you had been offered in The Graduate.’
Cairo gave a pained frown. Yes, Rafe had talked of staying temporarily in England. But that had been before he’d become bored with their relationship and had an affair with another woman!
Her mouth tightened
. ‘So you could be with me and all those other adoring females panting at your bedroom door!’ she dismissed scathingly. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Rafe,’ she added, standing up abruptly, ‘I need to go and make the salad.’
Dinner hadn’t exactly been a relaxed meal, Cairo acknowledged ruefully as they cleared everything away a couple of hours later. Thankfully Daisy, reassured after her earlier chat on the telephone with her mother, was back to her normal, talkative self, and her chatter had filled in the silence that had existed between Rafe and Cairo. The two of them had barely addressed a word directly to one another—’could you please pass the salt?’ really didn’t count as conversation!
Rafe excused himself to make a telephone call while Cairo put Daisy to bed, delaying as long as she possibly could in her niece’s bedroom before rejoining Rafe on the terrace. She finally came outside to find him watching the last rays of sunset gleaming redly in the rapidly darkening sky, dozens of lights on in the houses dotted in the valley below.
Cairo stood hesitantly in the doorway, not altogether comfortable with the air of intimacy that surrounded him.
‘Sit down, Cairo,’ he ordered without turning.
She gasped. ‘How did you—?’
‘Your perfume,’ he elaborated as he turned to look at her. ‘Stop hovering over there in the doorway, Cairo, and come and sit down.’
Her eyes widened indignantly at his autocratic tone. ‘You always were arrogant, Rafe. I’m sure that as a director you wield a lot of authority, but I can assure you—’
‘For God’s sake, sit down, Cairo!’ He turned to look at her, blue eyes glittering brightly in the semi-darkness. ‘I want to talk to you about Margo,’ he added impatiently as she remained unmoving in the doorway.
‘Oh. Fine.’ She moved to sit in the chair furthest away from his own. ‘That’s who you were talking to on the telephone just now?’
‘It’s good to know that all those years of marriage to Lionel Bond didn’t completely dull your intelligence!’
‘Rafe—’
‘Will you just shut up and listen for once, Cairo?’ He stood up to move restlessly to the edge of the terrace. ‘I spoke to Jeff, as it happens. Apparently Margo, for obvious reasons, was deliberately keeping the situation light when she spoke to you and Daisy earlier.’ His expression was grim. ‘They’re concerned about the baby now, as well as Margo, and the doctor’s intention is to admit her tomorrow and perform a Caesarian section.’
Hot Nights with a Spaniard (Mills & Boon M&B) (Mills & Boon Special Releases) Page 3