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

least. Instead she somehow ended up with her fingers curled over his and stayed there for an awkward heart-thudding moment.

      ‘They were my mum’s.’

      Her eyes dropped from his uncomfortably perceptive gaze a moment before they filled with emotional tears. The earrings were one of a handful of physical reminders she had of her mother, along with her watch and the creased and grainy snapshot of herself as a baby held in her mother’s arms she carried in her wallet.

      ‘They match your eyes. Did your mother have golden eyes too?’ His voice flowed over her like honey.

      She was startled by the question; the eyes in question flew to his. He wasn’t really interested, she told herself. This little byplay was presumably for Rosanna’s benefit—like the kisses.

      ‘Yes, she did. I … I look like her.’

      ‘Then she must have been a very beautiful woman.’

      Megan felt her heart give a traitorous thud and forced herself to look away. He looked genuine but he was about as sincere as a politician running for re-election; she would be a fool if she lost sight of that fact.

      Twisting her earring, she turned to the older woman. ‘Look, it was nice to see you again but I’m running late.’

      ‘Of course, and it was very nice to see you too, Megan,’ she said warmly. ‘Philip often speaks of you.’

      ‘You speak to Philip? ‘

      A look of consternation crossed the older woman’s face. ‘I, well—’

      Emilio cut across her. ‘I hate to interrupt, ladies, but—’ he tapped the face of the watch on his wrist and angled a significant look at Megan ‘—this is why we are running late. You talk too much.’ Grabbing her arm, he dropped a kiss on Rosanna’s cheek and headed for the exit, virtually dragging Megan along with him.

      She angled an angry look up at his lean face. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

      ‘I am rescuing you from an awkward situation.’

      Megan loosed an incredulous hoot as they emerged in the fresh air. She pulled away from him and stood, hands on hips, glaring at him.

      ‘An awkward situation of your making.’

      He flashed a grin and held out an arm towards her. ‘The car is this way.’

      Megan didn’t move. ‘Goodbye.’

      He studied her face for a moment before sighing. ‘Look, we can—’

      ‘Do this the hard way or the easy way,’ she slotted in.

      ‘Tempting, but no, I was going to say we can stand here debating this, but in the end you will accept a lift because the alternative is a very long wait.’ He nodded towards the long queues beside the empty taxi ranks. ‘And you are, I am led to believe, a practical woman not given to cutting off her very pretty nose to spite her beautiful face.

      ‘Besides, I promised your father I would take care of you.’

      ‘And you are a man of your word?’

      ‘It hurts me you doubt it.’ The silence stretched as he watched her struggle. ‘Of course, if for some reason you are afraid to get in a car with me …?’

      Her chin went up. ‘Of course I’m not afraid,’ she scoffed.

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