A Spanish Awakening (6 page)

‘It … it h-hasn’t opened,’ she stuttered, staring at the closed door.

She heard him curse, the low savage imprecation loud in the confined space as he banged the heel of his hand on the control panel. ‘Why on earth didn’t you say that you suffer from claustrophobia?’ he demanded, scanning her pale classic profile.

‘I don’t,’ she protested, too slow-witted to accept this perfect excuse to explain her odd behaviour.

‘So what’s wrong with you?’ he asked, scepticism mingled with irritation.

Again Megan’s tongue bypassed her brain. ‘You—’ She stopped, then was inspired. ‘I was just surprised you live somewhere like this. I always pictured you living in some sort of ancient mausoleum filled with antiques, a town version of your little place in the country.’

He tipped his dark head in a concessionary nod to the suggestion, and straightened up to his full impressive height as the glass doors of the private elevator silently opened into a very white space. Not that she was actually noticing; she was too busy asking herself why she was here.

Like you don’t know?

Ignoring the sarcastic contribution of the snide voice in her head and the hard knot of illicit excitement low in her belly, Megan fought her way through the mind-fogging confusion in her head.

Sexual attraction, Megan told herself, was a kind of insanity, and should be treated as such. Knowing her weakness, she reasoned, gave her a degree of control.

Her tawny eyes were drawn in the direction of the tall, silent figure watching her. The silence stretched.

The invitation had been for breakfast, she reminded herself, and that was why she was here. She wouldn’t let anything happen again; she would eat and leave. Sure, he
had kissed her in the airport and had appeared not to want to stop, but that had been an act. For Emilio kissing her had not been a big deal.

Only it was to her. It was a very big deal to be kissed by Emilio Rios, but she would have died before she’d confess as much to him.

‘You did not look surprised, you looked …’ He paused, considering the question and, much to her dismay, her mouth.

Unhappy, not just about the way he was staring, but also the idea of him relentlessly pursuing the question to its conclusion, she rushed to fill the developing silence.

‘Oh, all right!’ She sighed, lifting her hair off her neck with her hand as she pursed her lips and evinced a show of reluctance before admitting, ‘You might have been right. I do need feeding.’

For a split second she thought he was going to push, then to her relief Emilio grinned. His smugness, she decided, struggling to drag her stare from the curve of his sensually full lower lip, was infinitely preferable to him guessing the lustful direction of her thoughts.

‘I am always right, and I do possess the sort of home you speak of,’ he admitted, stepping through the door into the white apartment.

M
EGAN
moved to follow Emilio and hesitated, unable to shake the irrational conviction that by stepping over the threshold she would be committing herself to more than breakfast, which she wasn’t, but what if he thought …?

What if he had more planned than breakfast? She had no doubt that he took sex as casually as he did kisses.

How was he to know she didn’t?

She
knew she was here for breakfast, but who was to say he did? He might assume that she knew breakfast was some sort of code for sex.

‘We could do the restaurant option if you prefer. You did say you looked too much of a mess to be seen anywhere … posh,’ Emilio reminded her. ‘I thought you would appreciate the lack of strangers being traumatised by your appearance.’ Strangers did not fit in with his plans for the rest of the day, as he pictured her tangled skein of glossy hair spread out on a pillow.

‘Traumatised …’ she choked. Her flashing golden eyes narrowed in his face. Indignation had carried Megan across the threshold without realising it until the door did the spooky swishy thing behind her, making her jump, and she momentarily transferred her anger to the inanimate object.

‘You afraid that being seen in public with a female who
hasn’t got her surgically enhanced boobs on show will be bad for your reputation?’ she charged scornfully as she glanced downwards, adding, ‘What’s wrong with the way I look?’

It was a question that Megan almost immediately bitterly regretted issuing.

As his gaze drifted downwards Emilio reined in his lust with difficulty.

She stood there rigidly, her heart pounding against her ribcage, her stomach churning as his dark eyes made a slow, insolent journey from the top of her head to her toes, then at an equally leisurely pace made the return trip.

Emilio swallowed, his head jerking backwards fractionally as he snapped himself clear of the sensual fog.

‘You were the one who was unhappy with the way you look.’ At his sides he forcibly unclenched his long fingers.

Time, it seemed, had not lessened the strength of the primal emotions that she had shaken loose in him two years ago. He had wanted her then and he still did.

‘You didn’t have to agree.’

He frowned. ‘Don’t put words into my mouth,’ he said, staring at her lips still swollen from his kiss.

The husky caution brought Megan’s gaze helplessly zeroing in on the area under discussion. She felt her anger slip away as a silent sigh lifted her chest as she shook with the memory of his kiss.

The texture of his warm lips as they moved over her mouth, the lust, slammed through her body making her literally rock back on her heels.

She blinked hard to banish the memory, her control worn paper-thin as she nibbled nervously at her full lower lip, unwittingly riveting his attention to the lush curve.

‘You want me to tell you you’re beautiful?’

Megan flushed. ‘Of course not.’

‘I would hardly be the first man to tell you this.’

Emilio had never considered himself a possessive man. He had never been guilty of double standards when it came to the subject of any healthy young woman exploring their sexuality.

It turned out that this enlightened attitude only worked when the woman in question was not Megan.

‘Sure, I stop traffic on a regular basis. So, why are you living here if you have a palace or something, or is this where you bring your …?’ She stopped, the hot colour rushing to her cheeks.

He arched a brow. ‘My …?’

‘Nothing.’

Her mortified mumble drew a grin that lightened some of the tension in his lean face. ‘Relax, this is not a love nest. I am temporarily homeless, while the experts sort out a bad case of dry rot. A man needs somewhere to lay his head and this location is not inconvenient,’ he explained, watching her expression as she completed a slow three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn.

‘I see, you’re slumming it.’ Some slum! The place was a bachelor’s paradise, loft-style living with modern art on white walls, acres of gleaming chrome, leather and high ceilings.

It said nothing to her about the man who lived there.

‘You like it?’

‘I’m sure it’s every boy’s dream to live somewhere like this.’ If this place did not boast every techno gadget on the market she would eat her designer handbag—actually, her very good rip-off handbag.

Emilio responded to the smiling put-down with a lazy grin. The place was no fulfilment of a dream, it was a convenience and nothing more.

‘I have not been called a boy for some time.’

Megan’s superior smile wilted as their glances locked; the breath snagged in her throat.

She was not surprised. There was nothing even vaguely
boyish
about the man standing there. He radiated male arrogance like a force field. He was all man, all hard sinew and muscle. He couldn’t have been harder if he’d been hewn out of granite, but he wasn’t stone, he was flesh. Warm flesh.

The tight knot of desire low in her belly tightened so viciously that she gasped, looking away to hide the desire she felt must be written all over her face.

Emilio was a walking advertisement for masculinity and raw sex. Why was she thinking about sex, raw or otherwise?

Panic suddenly gripped her. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here.’ Her head came up in response to the hand on her shoulder.

‘Yes, you do, Megan.’

Trapped by his dark compelling stare, she swallowed, her cheeks hot as she said in a small voice, ‘You offered me breakfast.’ The pause that followed her statement stretched her nerves to the breaking point.

‘So I did.’

Relieved that he hadn’t suggested her reasons for being here were far less clear-cut or innocent, she tried to resist the pressure of the hand on her shoulder that urged her down into one of the leather upholstered chairs.

‘Relax.’

He needed to stop telling her that—how on earth could she relax?

He loosened his silk tie and slid off his jacket, flexing his shoulders as if to alleviate some unseen tension in the muscles of his neck as he flung it on a sofa. Megan watched
through the inadequate protective screen of her lashes as the action strained the seams of the white shirt he wore.

Her stomach muscles flipped and tightened another disturbing notch in response to the suggestion of restrained power and the faint shadow of body hair visible through the thin fabric.

Was his skin that same deep burnished gold all over?

An image flashed into her head of her fingers moving across the surface. The illusion was strong, so tactile that she had to remind herself it wasn’t real, but the tingle in her fingertips and the surge of liquid heat between her thighs were.

Megan, appalled and ashamed by her sexual awareness of him, sucked in a deep breath as she tried to focus on what he was saying.

‘So what’s the verdict?’

Flustered and embarrassed that he had caught her mentally undressing him and worse, Megan shook her head and echoed warily,
‘Verdict?’

‘On the apartment.’

Megan, barely able to conceal her relief, embraced the far safer subject of the interior design with enthusiasm. ‘Oh! Very tasteful,’ she said, turning her head and seeing, not the room, but the image in her head of Emilio minus his shirt. ‘But I’m not really into the minimalist look,’ she admitted. ‘Or technology.’

‘What are you impressed by?’ He arched a brow. ‘A man who can cook?’

‘You
can cook?’

The shock in her voice drew a laugh from Emilio. ‘I will let you be the judge of that,’ he said, rolling up his sleeves to reveal hair-roughened sinewy forearms.

It was clear that Emilio knew his way around a kitchen. As she watched him Megan found herself wondering
how well he knew his way around other places. Was he equally skilful in the bedroom? she wondered, watching as he whipped the eggs he had cracked into a bowl.

Shocked and ashamed at the direction of her thoughts, she lowered her gaze and wondered what was happening to her.

‘You don’t have to do this, you know. A coffee and a pastry or something would be fine.’

‘I know I don’t have to do this. I want to do this, and coffee and a pastry?’ He snorted scornfully. ‘I hope that is not your idea of a meal.’

‘I don’t have a lot of time for food.’

‘You should make time for the important things in life.’

‘I used to eat out quite a lot at a little place near where I live, but not so much since Josh—’ She gave a sigh. Life was a lot duller and quieter since her flatmate and best friend had decided to do a stint with an aid agency.

Her expression softened as she recalled his embarrassed response when she had said how much she admired his decision to quit his job to work in a Third World country.

Paying his debt to society and easing his conscience, he’d said, before he sat back and drew his fat consultant’s pay cheque.

She jumped, startled by the loud clatter that came from the kitchen area.

‘Sorry, I dropped it,’ Emilio said, putting the stainless-steel implement he had just picked up off the floor into the dishwasher.

A hard light of steely determination shone in his eyes as he began to whip the egg whites. It was his intention that, not only would Megan not smile dreamily when she thought about her ex, she would forget he ever existed!

Megan watched as he beat the hell out of the eggs. The
annoyance on his face seemed pretty out of proportion with the incident to Megan, but then who knew? Maybe he was a bit of a diva in the kitchen.

It was half an hour later when Megan sat back in her seat and gave a sigh as she licked the butter from her fingertips. ‘You can cook. That was delicious.’

‘It was only eggs.’ He dismissed the feather-light creation with a self-deprecating shrug and filled her coffee cup. ‘Wait until you try my pasta al fungi porcini, and my clams have received rave reviews.’

The smile faded from Megan’s face. ‘I’m sure they have.’

His comment was a timely wake-up call.

She’d been in danger of feeling special, but she was sure he made all women feel special. Maybe cooking was a tried and tested part of his seduction technique? Not that Emilio needed to feed a woman to get her into bed, she admitted bleakly.

Emilio studied her expression with a frown. ‘What’s wrong?’

She shook her head and avoided his eyes. ‘Nothing.’

‘Do not lie to me, Megan, or yourself.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ she flared. ‘I’m not lying,’ she contended stubbornly. ‘Thank you for the breakfast, Emilio, but I—’

A whistled sound of irritation escaped his clenched teeth. ‘From where I’m sitting you have a problem. I think you’re in danger of developing a seriously bad relationship with food. Are you feeling guilty because you have eaten?’

She looked at him and thought, I’m feeling guilty because I can’t look at you without thinking of you naked.

‘Of course not. I promise you I do not have an eating disorder.’

‘Not now maybe,’ he conceded. ‘But these things can be insidious.’

‘Food is just not that important to me.’

‘Food is not important to all people,’ he conceded, leaning forward as he planted his forearms on the table. ‘But you are not one of them. Eating is a sensual pleasure. You take pleasure in food because you are a sensual person. Why deprive yourself of this pleasure to fit some stereotypical image? Why fight nature?

‘When it comes to food, the question,’ he contended, ‘is not what time is it, it is are you hungry?’

Megan glared at him in total exasperation. ‘Of course I’m hungry. I’m always hungry!’ she yelled.

Didn’t the stupid man realise that she was fighting nature that had decided in its infinite wisdom that she should be ten pounds heavier? ‘As for eating, when I’m hungry if I ate what I
liked
I’d be …’

Emilio, aware that he had hit a raw nerve or possibly several, turned his chair around, dragged it nearer to hers and straddled it. ‘Less cranky?’

‘Very funny,’ she snapped, unappreciative of his smart retort, a comment that could only be made by a person who had never worried about their weight.

Her eyes skimmed scornfully down his body. Either he had iron discipline or an enviably efficient metabolism.

Even fully clothed it was obvious he didn’t carry an ounce of excess flesh on his lean frame. He was all hard muscle and sinew.

The butterfly kicks that fluttered in the pit of her stomach made her hastily avert her gaze.

‘Do you think I’m a size ten by accident?’

‘I wondered if you had been ill,’ he admitted.

Megan’s jaw dropped as her head turned back towards him. Her amber eyes sparkled with incredulous wrath as she got to her feet.

‘I look ill?’ It was always ego-enhancing to be told you looked wrecked by a man who, in her head, had been the standard of physical perfection she measured his entire sex by since she was a teenager.

Emilio grinned. He was not oblivious to the danger in her voice, but he was not a man who thought it a virtue to play it safe.

In his opinion a rush of adrenaline made life more interesting and reminded a man he was alive. His eyes followed the swish of her free hair as it settled in a glossy frame to her heart-shaped face. Actually, now that he thought about it, there had been precious few adrenaline rushes in his life of late.

When was the last time he’d clashed with anyone? When was the last time anyone had openly disagreed with him?

And it wasn’t just professionally. Even the women in his life censored out any of the contents he might not like before they spoke, never even considering that he might appreciate the challenge of an opinion other than his own.

‘You look a little…
faded.’
His eyes slid to her pink lips and he swallowed. ‘Like a crushed rose.’

The odd note in his deep voice brought Megan’s frowning regard to his face. ‘Rose?’ she echoed, fighting off the crazy rush of pleasure.

He nodded. ‘One who needed a long cool drink or, in this case, breakfast.’

‘You’re obsessed by food!’ she complained, thinking it was better than what she was obsessed by!

It wasn’t even as if she were not a very sexual person;
the contrary was true. It was as if that airport kiss had pressed some off switch to the on position!