Hot Nights with a Spaniard: Bedded for the Spaniard's Pleasure / Spanish Aristocrat, Forced Bride / Spanish Magnate, Red-Hot Revenge

His mouth twisted wryly. ‘It’s just one reporter, Cairo—’

‘Who will no doubt quickly be followed by others!’ she pointed out, her voice rising with her agitation. ‘Daisy and I were doing just fine before you arrived.’

‘Sure you were,’ Rafe said sarcastically.

‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’

Rafe’s gaze ran over her with slow deliberation. ‘Daisy is a great kid, but you—you’re too thin, Cairo. You have dark circles under your eyes because you don’t sleep properly. You’re as nervy as hell.’ He heaved a disgusted sigh. ‘I wouldn’t call that “doing just fine”, would you?’

‘I believe I’ve already told you before that when I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it—’

‘No, Cairo, you’ll get it whether you want it or not,’ he told her forcefully as he dropped down onto the sand beside her to take her chin in his grasp and turn her face towards his. ‘What happened to the Cairo Vaughn I knew and loved?’

‘Loved, Rafe?’ She laughed incredulously. ‘You don’t even know the meaning of the word!’ Her gaze was challenging.

Rafe continued to look at her wordlessly for several seconds before abruptly releasing her, knowing he wasn’t going to reach her this way. If there was any of the old Cairo left to reach …

Cairo glared at him with frustrated anger. Rafe hadn’t loved her. If he had loved her, then she wouldn’t have gone to his hotel suite that day eight years ago and found a naked woman in his bed!

‘This beach is slightly different from the one we once walked on together at midnight, isn’t it?’ he said huskily now.

Cairo eyed him warily, not quite sure how to reply to that comment.

She knew exactly which beach Rafe was referring to, of course. Just as she clearly remembered what had happened at the end of that walk. She was just surprised that Rafe remembered it, too, after all this time….

‘I seem to remember I ruined a pair of perfectly good shoes walking across the pebbles and rocks,’ she said coolly.

‘It was worth it,’ Rafe murmured softly.

Yes, it had been, but—

‘Have you ever been back there?’ Rafe asked, quirking up one eyebrow to signal his interest.

‘To the Isle of Man?’

She had only vaguely even heard of the Isle of Man, a small island located between England and Ireland, before she had been there on location during the filming of A Love For All Time. The island’s old-fashioned quaintness had been a perfect spot for the post-war love story, in which Rafe had had the role of male lead and Cairo had had the supporting actress role to Pamela Raines’s female lead.

A situation that had, unfortunately, become echoed in real life!

‘I try not to dwell on past mistakes,’ she dismissed in a deliberately offhand tone of voice.

‘It was damn cold on the beach that night, wasn’t it?’ he said, ignoring her supposed lack of interest in the topic.

Until they’d found the ideal way to keep warm, yes….

‘Rafe—’

‘Life seemed a lot simpler then, too,’ he continued wistfully as if she hadn’t spoken.

Her eyes widened. ‘Simpler?’

He nodded. ‘There was just you and me—’

‘And Pamela,’ Cairo put in dryly. ‘Let’s not forget the beautiful and rapacious Pamela, shall we?’

Rafe’s mouth tightened. ‘I forgot about her years ago.’

Cairo gave a derisive smile. ‘How convenient to have such an—accommodating memory!’

His eyes narrowed and his voice turned positively icy. ‘Pamela meant nothing to me.’

‘Has any woman ever meant anything to you, Rafe?’ Cairo enquired hotly.

How could he sit and claim Pamela had meant nothing to him?

The other woman had been naked in his hotel room that day, her hair all tousled, that look—that look of sleepy satisfaction on her face the result of Rafe’s lovemaking that Cairo had seen so often on her own face when she’d looked in the mirror.

His gaze became hooded now. ‘Just the one,’ he murmured, his meaning obvious as he steadily held her gaze.

‘Oh, please!’ Cairo muttered in disgust as she stood up and moved away from him. ‘I’m not that naïve twenty-year-old any more, Rafe. So don’t even think about trying your seduction routine on me again—’

‘It isn’t a routine, dammit—’

‘Of course it is!’ She turned on him angrily. ‘You sailed into Douglas Bay that day looking like a Spanish pirate captaining his ship and completely swept me and every other woman on the island off their feet!’

Cairo could remember it as if it were yesterday, standing at the window of her hotel room, watching as the three-masted sailing ship came round the headland and anchored in the bay, a small launch leaving the ship minutes later, the man at the wheel—looking every inch that Spanish pirate!—clearly the darkly handsome Rafe Montero.

Cairo had lost her heart to Rafe’s dark and rugged wildness before she was even introduced to him an hour later.

And she wasn’t going to fall for it again.

Ever.

‘I’m going for a swim,’ she told Rafe abruptly as she took off her T-shirt before peeling her skirt down over her hips and legs and revealing that she wore a brief white bikini beneath.

Rafe stood and watched Cairo as she ran down the golden sand to wade thigh-deep in the water before diving smoothly beneath its surface, his hands clenching at his sides as he appreciated how the white of her bikini emphasised the golden tan of her skin. Smooth, silky skin he could still feel against the palms of his hands.

Cairo was right; she was no longer a naïve twenty-year-old. Just as he was no longer twenty-nine and bowled off his feet by her beauty the moment he was introduced to her.

But a part of him wished that he were….

CHAPTER SIX

‘I THINK you’re being absolutely ridiculous, Rafe,’ Cairo told him coolly as she hung their wet costumes and towels on the line strung between two trees at the back of the villa. Daisy was inside watching a cartoon channel on the television.

They had all showered and changed since returning an hour ago, Cairo now wearing a loose cream-coloured blouse over fitted jeans, the dampness of her long hair twisted into a knot and secured at her crown, her face completely bare of make-up.

She looked about eighteen, Rafe decided impatiently. Although that in no way stopped her being so damned stubborn he wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled!