A Spanish Awakening (15 page)

Instead she had discovered that she was the problem.

‘What an amazing relief. I thought for one awful moment that I was lumbered with the sort of woman who checks her man’s emails and text messages.’

‘I wouldn’t— I—’ Her wide indignant gaze flew to his face and she stopped. ‘You’re not serious.’ Of course he wasn’t serious—he’d called himself
her man.

He gave a crooked smile. ‘You think …?’

Her eyes fell from his. ‘Have you spoken to your father? Is he still angry?’

‘Probably.’ He gave an uninterested shrug. ‘My father is generally unhappy about something or other.’

Realising that he was downplaying the situation out of consideration for her feelings, Megan covered his hand with hers. ‘It’s all right, Emilio,’ she soothed, producing a bright brittle smile to prove the point. ‘It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.’

She stopped, a fractured sigh escaping her parted lips as he covered her hand, sandwiching it heavily between the two of his.

‘It is something that you will not hear again!’ he growled.

Ribbons of feverish colour appeared along her cheekbones as she gave a little laugh and stopped trying to tug her hand free. ‘He’s right, I am … a … b—’

Emilio cut across her in a voice that vibrated with outrage. ‘Do not say it!’

Megan winced at the volume. ‘All right,’ she said, taken aback by the intensity of his response. ‘But you have to remember your father is of a different generation. Things like that matter to him—’

‘It is not a matter of age, it is a matter of ignorance. You will not make excuses for him.’

‘All right,’ she soothed. ‘I won’t. Can I have my hand back?’

‘No.’

His brooding expression as he stared at her intensified the dark fallen-angel look and made her hopelessly receptive heart skip several beats.

‘You will ignore anything you heard my father say,’ he instructed grimly. There was menace in his expression as he scanned her face, exuding offended masculine aggression. ‘How dare he? ‘

It was becoming clear to Megan that this was more about Emilio’s relationship with his father than her. She wondered how the older man could not realise that issuing edicts to a man like Emilio was the equivalent of waving a red rag to a bull!

Emilio was the sort of person who would not give an inch if pushed, even if it was against his best interests. He was just too stubborn for his own good.

‘I thought you might react this way. That’s why I left.’

He arched an interrogative brow. ‘What way would that be?’

He had no idea what was going on in her head, but he seriously doubted that she was about to say, You were blind to everything except the compelling need to find me and bind me to you.

She didn’t.

‘Admit it, Emilio, if you hadn’t been determined to prove to your father that he has no control over you, you wouldn’t
have hared off after me this way. But, point proved—do you think you could take me back to the airport?’

Emilio vented a harsh laugh and dragged a hand through his hair. ‘The way your mind works is a continual source of fascination to me.’ Not to mention frustration. ‘So if we follow your logic, if my father had told me to marry you I would have shown you the door to prove a point? ‘

‘I’m not saying you’d go that far, but—’ She stopped, her throat drying as he leaned in towards her.

His eyes were trained on her mouth as he said softly, ‘I think you will find that there is no limit to how far I would go to protect what is mine.’

‘You don’t think your father would really disinherit you, would he?’

A sound of frustrated incredulity whistled through his clenched white teeth as he drew back. ‘I am not talking about money! My father’s threats mean nothing to me. He said he would disinherit me when I got divorced and my response was then what it would be now—I said, “Fine, go ahead.”‘

‘You called his bluff.’ A risky policy, but then Emilio was a born risk taker.

‘Blackmail only works if you care about the thing that is being threatened.’ His broad shoulders lifted in a shrug. ‘I enjoy what I do, and I’m good at it, but if it vanished tomorrow and I had to start again I would not lose any sleep. My father, however, who is enjoying his retirement, has some very expensive hobbies—I am very good at making money and he enjoys spending it.’

‘So he wouldn’t disinherit you.’ Megan gave a sigh. ‘Well, thank God for that, but if necessary I’ll speak to him myself and explain there’s no chance of us … you know, of me polluting the Rios gene pool or anything.’

Aware that her laugh had a hollow, unconvincing sound,
she struggled to inject more conviction into her voice as she added, ‘That it was just, you know …’

‘No, I do not
you know.
Perhaps you would like to tell me
you know.’

‘Just sex, casual sex.’ She saw anger flame hot in his eyes and, lifting her chin to a defiant angle, cried, ‘What … what have I said now?’

A pulsing silence followed her question.

Emilio struggled to speak past the knot of anger lodged in his chest. ‘I know about just sex. I have had just sex, you have not.’

‘Great sex, then,’ she admitted in a small voice.

A muscle clenched along his jaw. ‘We made love, Megan.’

She felt his hand tighten over hers until it hurt, but she barely registered the pain. She couldn’t take her eyes off his face and the impossible, incredible things she was seeing in his eyes.

‘I’ve dreamt about making love to you for two years.’

Megan’s stomach took a lurching dive. She stared at him, her head spinning. She was feverishly shaking—literally shaking from head to toe in reaction to this amazing statement.

He lifted the hand under his and, still holding her eyes, raised it to his lips. ‘But the reality,
mi esposa,
was much, much better than dreams.’

The throaty confession sent a shudder through her body.

‘Emilio … I don’t understand …’ I’m the one dreaming, she thought, not allowing herself to believe the possessive, tender glow in his eyes meant what she wanted it to mean.

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ He groaned. ‘You are without exception the most clueless woman it has ever
been my misfortune to fall in love with.’ He stared into her face, drinking in the beauty of her delicate features like a starving man. ‘Actually, the only woman I have ever fallen in love with.’

She started to shake her head. That was wrong; she knew that was wrong. ‘But you loved. You still love. the woman who—’

‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ He framed her face in his big hands. ‘I fell in love with you, Megan. You are that woman.’ The relief of having finally told her after two years’ delay sent a rush of adrenaline through his body.

The low hum of confusion in her head had become a loud buzz. Megan, hardly daring to move, slowly lifted her wary gaze to his face. He was totally still, not an eyelash flickered, not a muscle moved as, deathly pale, he looked back at her with eyes that glittered with a febrile intensity.

‘Me?
’ Was this a joke? If so it was in the worst possible taste. ‘But you left your wife, you—’ She stopped, the moment of comprehension causing the blood to slowly seep from her face until she was parchment pale. ‘That was me?’

‘Is
you,’ he corrected huskily. ‘Why is that so hard for you to believe?’

He dabbed his thumb to the tear running unchecked down her cheek, his smile so tender that more tears welled in her eyes. Her heart felt full enough to explode.

‘But you didn’t like me.’

Her protest was lost in his long, lingering, tender kiss.

Finally Emilio lifted his head, but only fractionally. He stayed close, close enough for their breaths to mingle as they stared in silence at one another.

If I’m dreaming, Megan thought, I definitely don’t want to wake up.

She slid her hands under his leather jacket, pulling herself closer as she pressed her hands flat against his chest, feeling the warmth of his skin through the cotton of the

T-shirt he wore underneath, feeling the heavy, strong, hypnotic thud of his heart through her fingertips.

‘You feel real.’ He felt marvellous.

Emilio smiled and nipped gently at the full curve of her lower lip with his teeth.

‘And you feel delicious,’ he said, sliding a hand under her skirt and along the smooth, silky skin of her outer thigh. Megan caught her breath sharply. ‘You have the most incredible skin.’

Megan felt regret when he removed his hand. If he had decided to make love to her in the back of this limo with only a tinted-glass panel separating them from the driver it would not have crossed her mind to stop him. She would have gone out of her way to assist him!

The realisation came with not a scrap of shame.

‘But, Emilio,’ she said, frowning as she struggled to sort out the puzzles and unanswered questions in her head, ‘I don’t … How … That weekend.’

‘That weekend,’ he said heavily.

‘You snubbed me. You barely spoke to me and then you told me I was a tart!’

‘That weekend I
couldn’t
look at you.’ Dark colour stained his cheekbones as he forced himself to meet her gaze now.
‘Por Dios,
’ he groaned, pulling back from her, his face dark with the remembered pain as he dragged not quite steady hands over his sleek dark hair.

‘I couldn’t even trust myself to be in the same room as you for fear of giving myself away! To make it worse I
knew
that you were attracted to me.’

‘I knew it!’ she cried, leaning back in her seat and clapping a hand to her forehead, feeling utterly mortified in
retrospect. ‘I knew you knew. It was awful—you made me feel so … so … When I sat next to you at dinner that first night I couldn’t breathe … I really thought I was having a panic attack or something. There were freesias on the window sill—I can’t smell a freesia now without hyperventilating!’

‘I do not remember flowers, but I do remember you arriving late during dinner looking so …’ Sucking in air through flared nostrils, he sighed and shook his head. ‘It was as if I was seeing you for the first time. You took my breath away.

‘But I fought it. I was not willing to admit even then that such a thing was possible. Love was a fantasy, my life was planned, my work, a wife who made no emotional demands on me. Emotional detachment makes life easy, but I didn’t realise until that night how lonely it can make you too.’

Moved beyond tears by the husky confession, she reached up and touched his cheek lovingly. For this strong, self-contained man to acknowledge, let alone confess, any weakness must, she knew, have taken great courage.

‘And when I caught that loser in the car with you I knew,
I knew,
and I wanted you so much that not touching you was like some sort of— It was sheer torture. It—’

He stopped, his startled expression morphing into one of desire as Megan grabbed his face between her hands and pulled him towards her.

Nose resting against his, she closed her eyes and breathed in his warm male smell, then fitted her mouth to his. For a split second he did not respond to the pressure of her lips, then with a groan he kissed her back with a fierce hunger and bruising urgency that awoke an equal hunger in her.

‘Wow!’ She breathed in shakily when they drew apart.

‘Indeed … wow!’ Emilio echoed, looking almost as shaken as she felt.

Megan turned her head and kissed the hand pressed to her cheek before she held it there. ‘Why didn’t you touch me, Emilio?’

‘I was married.’

‘Of course.’ She blushed that she needed reminding—reminding that Emilio was a man of honour and finding himself in such a situation must have been incredibly difficult. ‘But afterwards, when you were divorced, why on earth didn’t you …?’

He arched a brow.

‘Come and get me,’ she said simply.

‘I did,’ he admitted. ‘After a decent interval passed—the last thing I wanted was anyone calling you the other woman—I came to your flat intending to sweep you off your feet and into my bed.’ One corner of his mouth curled upwards into a self-derisive smile. ‘It never even crossed my mind that you would not be there waiting for me.

‘So I was not prepared for your door to be answered by a half-naked man of more than average good looks who informed me you were in the shower.’

‘Josh!’ she exclaimed.

He nodded. ‘Your gay flatmate, yes, I know this now, but at the time I jumped to the obvious conclusion,’ he admitted. ‘It is never pleasant to feel a fool or have your heart and hopes crushed.

‘I felt—’ His apologetic glance swept across her face. ‘It was totally irrational, I know, but in my mind you had betrayed me. My pride would not allow me to follow my instincts and take you from this man. I told myself you would do the running the next time. Deep down I think I never lost hope there would be a next time.

‘Then when Philip let slip that your lover, or so I thought,
had moved out, I felt. Let’s just say I was not unhappy for your loss. The next day I went to the airport to assure Rosanna that there was no need to feel bad that things hadn’t worked out for me with the woman she knew I had not pursued because we were still married. I spent the journey to the airport thinking of you and suddenly there you were. I was not thinking about Rosanna or anything when I kissed you.

‘I just followed my instincts. If only I had followed my baser instincts when your friend opened the door that day the last year might have been very different.’

The pain and self-recrimination on his face made her tender heart ache. ‘I was jealous of all the skinny, beautiful women I saw you photographed with,’ she confessed. ‘And no matter how hard I dieted I never looked like them.’

‘Por Dios!’
he ejaculated, looking horrified. ‘I would never want you to look like those women. I love your curves. It is as a woman should be—warm and soft. And you will never diet again,’ he announced firmly.

His vehemence made her smile. Her smile faded as she looked into the face she adored and declared with husky sincerity, ‘I really do love you, Emilio.’ Her golden eyes glowed as she ran a loving finger over the roughened curve of his cheek.

‘And I love you.’