Hot Summer Flings: A Spanish Awakening / The Italian Next Door... / Interview with the Daredevil. Nicola Marsh

was taken unawares by the level of anger he was forced to suppress as he prompted coldly, ‘You were saying.’

      Maybe he hadn’t suppressed it all because Philip looked wary as he responded. ‘Dad took Megan in when her mum died, but at the end of the day she was …’

      ‘The maid’s daughter.’

      ‘I don’t think that way,’ Philip protested, flushing. ‘But Dad does. And her mum was the housekeeper before she got herself pregnant.’

      Emilio schooled his expression into neutrality. He had no idea why the sordid story made him so furious. It wasn’t as if such things had not occurred in his own family. The only difference being that no member of his family would have ever acknowledged the child of such an unequal union, even if she had been left alone after the death of her mother.

      To give Armstrong his due he had recognised his responsibilities even if it had taken twelve years for him to do.

      He could only imagine what it had been like for a child brought up in what, according to Philip, had been a pretty tough housing estate in an industrial town to be removed into a totally foreign environment among people she did not know.

      People who did not value the gift they had been given.

      Megan’s glance moved from his long fingers drumming an impatient tattoo on the steering wheel to his profile. The taut lines of his face suggested Emilio wasn’t very happy, the tension was rolling off him in waves.

      ‘I hate driving in heavy traffic too. You can’t wonder that road rage happens.’

      Her soft contralto voice dragged Emilio free of his dark reflections. He turned his head and felt something squeeze tight in his chest as he read the sympathy in her face and all his submerged protective instincts rose to the surface.

      ‘I do not feel rage towards the road.’ Just every person who has ever hurt you. ‘But you still carry on working for him?’

      The abrupt and seemingly unconnected angry addition made her start slightly and blink in confusion.

      ‘Dad?’

      He nodded abruptly.

      ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ No longer an impression—the anger he was projecting was very real.

      ‘So you don’t mind that by your own admission he tries to manipulate you.’

      ‘Manipulate is a strong word,’ she retorted with manufactured optimism in face of his bewildering level of disapproval.

      Not strong enough in Emilio’s view for a father who had no interest in his daughter’s potential being fulfilled, just her usefulness to him. Did she realise that he had no intention of ever letting go of the golden carrot he dangled?

      ‘If he will not sack you, why worry?’ More to the point, why carry on working for the guy?

      ‘There are worse things than being sacked,’ she retorted.

      ‘Such as?’ he asked, reminding himself that what went on between Armstrong and his daughter was none of his business.

      ‘What is this—twenty questions?’ she asked crankily. ‘If you must know he’ll make an example of me.’ She could hear him now: Just because you’re my daughter, Megan. ‘Something suitably humiliating, a public dressing-down, a demotion, at least on paper.’

      Her job description and salary might change, but Megan, who knew despite her father’s complaints that she was good at what she did, doubted her workload would alter.

      ‘But as I’m going to be a good girl and refuse your very tempting offer of breakfast,’ she said, masking the disturbing truth with sarcasm, ‘it’s kind of academic. And don’t pretend to be disappointed. Admit it—you can think of better ways to spend your days than showing me around the tourist sights.’

      ‘I can think of better ways to spend my day,’ he admitted, looking at her lips and thinking about several of them; all involved a bed and none featured clothes.

      She had never imagined any different, so the anticlimax she felt at his admission was totally irrational.

      The lights changed and, while Megan was considering the subtle but important difference between brutal honesty and plain bad manners, Emilio drew away.

      At least he had finally dropped the subject. Megan was gazing out through the passenger window, beginning to loosen up slightly when he said something that tipped her over into heart-racing panic … as she found it preferable to designate the erratic thud of her heart as it climbed its way into her throat.

      ‘And are you always a good girl, Megan?’

      It could have been an innocent question, but not when it was delivered in a throaty drawl that came direct from an erotic fantasy. Not hers—she didn’t do fantasies, erotic or otherwise. She was a girl very founded in reality—a girl who right now was shaking.

       Did he like his girls bad?

      It was bad she had thought the question; at least she had not said it.

      She stared at him feeling as though she had slipped into some sort of trance. This conversation, the entire morning, it was all so surreal. She inhaled deeply, getting an unsettling dose of the male fragrance he used along with the sustaining oxygen. God, Megan, get a grip, girl, or failing that get out of this car!

      ‘Always,’ she confirmed in a cold little voice—shame about the tremor.

      A disturbing smile tugged the corners of his mobile mouth as his glance dropped to the hands clenched in her lap. ‘Good girls don’t bite their fingernails.’

      Unable to stop herself, she slid her hands under her thighs to hide the shameful condition of her fingernails. ‘I don’t …’ She bit off the futile denial and lifted her chin, turning her defiant golden stare on the hands curved lightly around the steering wheel.

      Strong hands, hands that were good to look at, much like the rest of him, she suspected. Her amber eyes were glazing as she stared fixedly at his long, tapering brown fingers and nails that were, of course, not bitten, but neatly trimmed. In her head she saw those long brown fingers, dark as they slid over pale flesh.

      She clenched her jaw and pushed the image away.

      ‘I bite my nails—so what? I suppose you think that it’s an external manifestation of some sort of unresolved conflict. Well, think again—it’s just a habit.’ And one that Megan now intended to cure herself of for good. She had intended to before, but this time she really would.

      ‘I just thought you might be hungry,’ he returned mildly.

      ‘I’m always hungry,’ she admitted without thinking.

      The wistful note in her voice drew a smile from Emilio. ‘Then that settles it.’

      His response drew Megan’s attention to his face. ‘Settles what?’

      ‘I don’t recall you being this belligerent. Low sugar levels?’

      The confident assertion drew a snort from Megan. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my sugar levels.’ It was a great pity the same could not be said of her hormone levels, which had been running riotously out of control since Emilio had appeared.

      Since he’d kissed her.

      The memory she had tried so hard to suppress rushed over her. It was like walking headlong into a solid wall of heat. It stole her breath, her skin prickled hotly, low in her pelvis things tightened. Megan shuddered, her eyes darkening as she remembered the moment his tongue had stabbed deep into her mouth, the abrasive contact making her melt.

      Eyes glazed and misty, she half lifted a hand to her lips, then, catching his dark stare, let it fall away.

      She took some comfort from the realisation that she was not likely to be the only female whom he had this effect on.

      Don’t