A Rogue And A Pirate. Carole Mortimer

even had the decency to turn up.

      ‘Having trouble?’ drawled an infuriatingly familiar voice.

      Caught standing outside her car, telling it what a useless piece of junk it was, by Rogan McCord, she rounded on him sharply. ‘No, I always talk to my car before driving it,’ she snapped, turning to walk back in the direction of the hotel.

      ‘Really?’ he fell into step beside her. ‘Is that a little like talking to plants?’

      She gave his innocently enquiring face a scathing look, ignoring him as she located the public telephones in the reception area, turning her back on him as she dialled the number of the garage. The call went straight through to the mechanic on call, and she impatiently answered his queries with an obvious lack of knowledge about anything concerning cars except how to drive one. The man promised to come out immediately.

      Caitlin came to a halt as she turned and almost bumped into the man leaning on the wall behind her, his arms folded across his chest, his expression gently mocking. ‘Excuse me,’ she bit out, pointedly moving past him to the lounge area beside the reception desks where she had told the mechanic she would be waiting for him.

      ‘I can see how you would have to talk to your car before attempting to drive it.’ Rogan McCord folded his lean length down into the low beige leather armchair opposite hers. ‘You have a decided lack of respect for their delicate engineering!’

      She looked across at him with frosty blue eyes. ‘I don’t remember asking you to join me.’

      ‘Neither do I,’ he answered cheerfully. ‘But I’ve decided to overlook your lack of manners this time.’

      Her mouth firmed. ‘And I suppose you think it was polite to eavesdrop on my telephone call!’

      He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘I was waiting to use the telephone.’

      ‘Then why didn’t you?’ Her eyes flashed.

      ‘I changed my mind,’ he dismissed tauntingly, eyeing her flushed face with amusement.

      Caitlin gave a disbelieving snort before turning to watch the automatic doors for the arrival of the mechanic. She knew it was too soon for him to arrive yet, but anything was better than looking at Rogan McCord! Why wasn’t he still with the blonde? Maybe she had turned him down too, Caitlin thought with satisfaction.

      ‘I pity the poor devil at the receiving end of that smile,’ he murmured, his eyes narrowed.

      She looked at him with cool blue eyes. ‘Self-pity is so boring, don’t you think?’

      He grinned, those deep slashes grooved into the hardness of his cheeks. ‘Plotting my downfall, were you?’ he drawled.

      ‘To tell you the truth, Mr McCord, I don’t care if I never have to think of you again,’ she told him in a bored voice. ‘I was just musing over your luck in choosing the wrong woman twice in one night.’

      Dark brows rose over sea-green eyes. ‘I didn’t choose you at all, Caity, you were just there.’

      ‘My name is Caitlin,’ she snapped. ‘And I was there because I was meeting someone.’

      ‘Who didn’t turn up,’ he added derisively.

      ‘It does happen,’ she insisted defensively.

      He shook his head. ‘Not to women like you.’

      ‘I wish you would stop saying that!’ She glared. ‘And I am not in the habit of sitting around in bars alone!’

      ‘Of course you aren’t,’ Rogan humoured her.

      Her eyes shot sparks of blue fire at him. ‘Unlike your next choice,’ she said bitchily.

      ‘How could I even see another woman after you?’ he taunted. ‘Miranda was the one to approach me.’

      Caitlin’s scathing retort didn’t pass her lips, her attention distracted by the woman under discussion as she walked past them to the doors in the company of a tall sandy-haired man, the look she shot Rogan wistful to say the least.

      Caitlin turned to the man opposite her with new eyes. He didn’t look as if having a woman approach him was a new experience, rather an accepted one, and to a woman who had never been the one to make the first move with any man it was totally unacceptable to her personal code of behaviour. No matter how attractive she found a man she could never be the first one to show that.

      ‘Don’t look so surprised,’ Rogan derided at her silence. ‘Miranda is a professional.’

      ‘I don’t—— What?’ Her gasped exclamation couldn’t be halted, even though she knew how young and naïve it made her seem. A prostitute? Here?

      Rogan’s mouth twisted in enjoyment of her disbelief. ‘They have to ply their wares somewhere,’ he mocked. ‘And you meet a richer class of client in hotels like this one,’ he added drily.

      ‘The management would never allow it,’ she dismissed, sure he had to be mocking her about the other woman’s profession too. Miranda certainly hadn’t looked like a prostitute. But then did they have to walk around in fish-net tights and snug-fitting clothes to be one? The answer was obviously no, especially in a hotel like this one. ‘I had no idea …’ she frowned.

      Rogan shrugged. ‘I travel around a lot, you soon get to recognise them.’

      Caitlin’s eyes suddenly widened indignantly. ‘You surely didn’t think that I——’

      ‘Of course not.’ His husky laugh taunted her. ‘I told you I can recognise them, but that doesn’t mean I’m ever interested in them. Bought sex isn’t something I’ve ever had to resort to,’ he added without conceit. ‘When it is I’ll consider myself too old to be interested any more. No, I bought the lady a drink and then politely left. She’s only doing her job, after all. As for you, I’ve already told you what I think you are.’

      ‘A bored married socialite looking for excitement in my life,’ she remembered disparagingly.

      He tilted his head at her consideringly. ‘Maybe not a married one,’ he conceded.

      ‘But bored,’ she snapped. ‘A boredom you would have been only too happy to help ease, I suppose?’

      ‘More than happy,’ he acknowledged, his eyes brimming with laughter at her fury.

      ‘How kind of you,’ she said with saccharine sweetness, rising gracefully to her feet, the blue dress shimmering lovingly against her body to rest just below her knees, high sandals the same shade of blue elevating her height a good three inches. ‘But I’m afraid I’ll have to decline your gracious offer,’ she looked pointedly towards the doors where a man who was obviously her awaited mechanic hesitated, the blue overalls stained with grease and oil, although he was self-consciously trying to straighten his hair as he became increasingly aware of the elegance of his surroundings.

      ‘I don’t mind waiting,’ Rogan drawled suggestively.

      She looked down at him coldly. ‘I don’t think you will still be around in a hundred years!’

      ‘Neither will you,’ he reasoned.

      ‘Exactly!’ she said with satisfaction.

      ‘Ouch!’ He gave a pained wince.

      ‘Goodbye, Mr McCord.’ She nodded dismissively, a smile of welcome plastered on her face as she moved to greet the mechanic.

      She took him outside to look at her car, listened for the next five minutes as he poked about under the bonnet talking about things she didn’t even recognise the name of but which he talked about so lovingly she knew he understood what every single part of the engine should be doing—but obviously wasn’t.

      ‘What does it all mean?’ She frowned when he at last straightened, wiping his hands on a cloth from his pocket.

      The