A Spanish Awakening

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? ‘

Not for the first time she wondered what it would be like to be one of those women who did just that to men. Did that make her very shallow?

‘I suppose you know that it was totally pathetic. I should have called Security!’ Instead I kissed you back, which was a really great idea.

‘People kiss in airports.’

‘Not like that!’

‘You did not exactly beat me off with a stick.’ Emilio struggled to concentrate on the road ahead as the memory of her soft curves moulding themselves to his body rose up to torment him.

‘Quite the opposite. Now, why was that, I wonder? ‘

‘I felt sorry for you.’ Pleased with the way the explanation had tripped off her tongue, she added, ‘You know, you really should get a life for real. Rosanna clearly has.’

Actually it wasn’t at all clear. Megan could see that Emilio would be a hard act for any man to follow, even the most self-confident of men.

‘Yes, she has. I believe we will be getting an invite to her wedding any day now.’

‘She’s getting married!’ This information went a long way to explain Emilio’s performance, especially if he was still in love with his ex-wife.

Megan squashed the flash of sympathy she felt for him. It might explain why, but it did not begin to excuse the way he had used her.

‘It is in the cards, though not certain as yet. You sound surprised?’

‘I am.’

Not as surprised as she had been when she had learnt that the couple who had seemed a perfect match on every level were breaking up. Up until the moment that the divorce had been announced Megan had anticipated a dramatic reconciliation, but the Rios divorce, like the break-up, had been low-key and bizarrely amicable based on what they called a mutual decision.

But had that mutual, civilized, still-good-friends routine been a way to save face? The Rios family name came not only with a clearly superb gene pool, she thought, sweeping a covert glance through her lashes at Emilio’s clear-cut patrician profile, but also some far less attractive things.