скачать книгу бесплатно
‘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!
‘No, that is you,’ he countered, watching the play of expressions as they moved across her expressive face. It wasn’t just her hair that had slipped, it was her composed mask too.
‘I’m not obsessed with food.’
Just your mouth and, for that matter, the rest of you!
Switching off the inner commentary, but not before the guilty colour had rushed to her cheeks, Megan dropped her gaze to her hands clasped in her lap.
What was going on? She didn’t have thoughts like this.
‘A person,’ he came back confidently, ‘is only obsessed by what they are deprived of.’
Megan’s head came up. ‘What do you mean by that? I’m not deprived of anything!’ she yelled, her defensive voice bouncing off the high ceiling.
He held up his hands in mock surrender, the sardonic gleam in his dark eyes making her shift uncomfortably in her seat. ‘I’m delighted to hear it, though some people might think the lady protests too much? ‘
Lips pursed, Megan shrugged and did not respond to the gentle taunt. ‘I simply show a bit of self-control where food is concerned.’
Self-control. Emilio’s sloe-dark eyes drifted towards her mouth. Her lips were bare; he remembered the hint of strawberry in the gloss that he had kissed away. Without adornment they were naturally rose- tinted, and amazingly lush, their softness so inviting he struggled to think past the loud buzz in his head and the stab of desire that sliced through him like a knife.
He lifted his gaze, meeting her eyes through the mesh of his eyelashes. ‘Self-control has its place.’ Like in an airport.
The ripple of sensation Emilio’s sinfully seductive throaty purr set in motion passed through her entire body from her scalp to her curling toes.
Megan, her eyes melded to his smouldering stare, endured the moment breathing through the nerve-shredding sensation. It passed, but the aching lump lodged like a chunk of broken glass in her throat remained.
‘I …’ Megan was unable to tear her eyes free of his mesmeric stare, and her voice faded. Her lips continued to move, but nothing emerged but a whispery sigh.
When the sexual tension had been in the background she had been able to pretend it wasn’t there. That was no longer possible. In the space of a heartbeat it had become an almost visible presence, humming like a high-voltage charge in the air between them, swallowing up the oxygen so that she struggled to breathe.
‘Though sometimes it is good to let go.’
Megan, hand pressed to her throat, struggled to catch her breath. She compressed her lips, angry with him for playing games and herself for being such a sucker for his not very subtle tactics, and there was no way in the world it was accidental. Was this some sort of game for him?
‘I really wouldn’t know. I don’t …’
‘What? You never let that lovely hair down and throw caution to the wind? Some men could view a statement like that as a challenge.’
‘Certainly I let my hair down, but only with people I trust.’
‘You think I would take advantage?’ Emilio sighed inwardly. She was right.
The predatory gleam in his dark eyes sent a secret shiver down her spine. ‘I’m really not interested in finding out.’
Her declaration of indifference drew a low chuckle from him. The scarily attractive sound made Megan bite the inside of her cheek.
‘You are probably …’ he mused, studying her with an intent expression that made Megan want to cover her face with her hands.
‘Probably what?’ she snapped when the dramatic pause stretched beyond bearable limits.
‘The worst liar of any woman I have ever met.’
Her eyes flew wide. ‘I am a very good liar!’ she cried, bouncing to her feet.
Megan gave him the evil eye when her unthinking indignant rebuttal drew another throaty chuckle, of the incredibly sexy variety, from him.
‘What’s that on your mouth?’ Emilio asked, no longer looking amused as he got to his feet and reached out towards her face.
Megan reacted to his hand like a striking snake, her heart beating a furious tattoo as she ducked away from his touch.
He raised an eloquent brow in response to her instinctive action as, feeling foolish, Megan slid her eyes from his.
‘What’s what?’ she said, lifting a hand to the corner of her mouth. Her finger came away smeared red. ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ she said dismissively as she fished a tissue from her pocket.
His dark brows twitched into a disapproving straight line above his hawkish nose. ‘It looks more like blood to me.’
Megan rolled her eyes. Talk about overreaction. ‘Why are the Spanish so dramatic?’ she asked, clicking her tongue in irritation as she added, ‘It’s a microscopic speck of blood. If you must know, I bit myself,’ she admitted, wishing something would distract his attention from her mouth. To have his dark-eyed scrutiny trained with unblinking intensity on her lips was sending her nervous system into frantic overdrive.
‘That was not a clever thing to do,’ he mused, leaning in close—too close—and taking the tissue from her hand.
Their fingers brushed before she could take evasive action and then she didn’t want to. A shiver wafted across the sensitised surface of her skin making all the downy hairs stand on end.
Her nostrils flared in response to the scent of his body: warm, musky male smell overlaid with the clean scent of the spicy soap he used.
Struggling against the tide of enervating heat that washed through her, Megan, who was sure her struggle was written across her face in neon, did not make the mistake of meeting his eyes.
Instead she trained her eyes on his strong jaw, close enough to see the dark rash of stubble and the faint white scar that angled upwards in the direction of his cheekbone.
‘I’m not clever.’ The words came out a husky whisper as she thought, No, I’m insane, as in certifiable.
The flash of insight did nothing to halt the growing fluttering sensation of excitement low in her stomach. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, swallowing hard as her covert glance flickered across the strong angles and planes of his incredible face.
‘But you are a very good cook.’
‘Would you like some more?’
She shook her head. ‘If I ate what I wanted when I wanted I’d be ten pounds heavier,’ she said honestly. ‘And a lot of those pounds would be on my boobs and hips.’
‘And that is a problem?’
The anger sizzled up out of nowhere. Her hands clenched into tight fists, squeezing the blood from her whitened knuckles. She was suddenly so angry she couldn’t breathe.
‘Yes, as men appear to measure a woman’s availability and her morals by the size of her breasts!’ she yelled, pressing her hands flat on her heaving C-cup bosom, still able to see Emilio’s expression when she had turned to him with tearful gratitude, thanking him for saving her.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_a839d89b-3771-5580-b757-727676478760)
TWO years had passed, but Megan could recall the entire scene in painful, mortifying, word-perfect detail that time had not dulled—if anything time had intensified the humiliation.
Ironic, really—if Emilio hadn’t arrived when he had, if instead she had been able to extricate herself from the situation with a few of the dirty tricks that her brother had said no girl should be without, the incident might now have faded to a memory. Maybe she’d even have been able to smile at it.
But the memory hadn’t faded. Instead it had grown in her mind out of all proportion. It had lost none of its ability to tie her stomach into nauseous knots because Emilio had walked in, or, rather, past the parked car. He had flung open the car door with a force that had almost wrenched it from its hinges.
Megan’s initial relief had rapidly morphed into shock mingled with dismayed confusion as she’d registered the expression on Emilio’s lean face. In Megan’s mind her brother’s handsome Spanish friend with his excitingly different background and charming accent had always epitomised urbane, sophisticated charm.
The golden skin drawn tight across the strong bones of his face, raw, brutal fury etched into every plane and angle of the hard lines of his patrician visage, the man with the blazing dark eyes had seemed like a stranger.
He had responded to her escort’s drunken slurred protests with a storm of staccato Spanish before he had literally dragged the man from the car and vanished into the trees with him.
Megan never knew what happened during the five minutes Emilio was gone. But next time their paths had crossed at the university her lecturer had forgotten the ultra-cool image he liked to cultivate and run, gown flapping, in the opposite direction like a scared rabbit.
When Emilio had returned she had already got out of the car and had been relieved to see the explosive fury had vanished. He seemed calm, cold even.
She had gathered her courage in both hands and levelled a wary look at his face, still able to remember his anger, still seeing a stranger when she looked at him. But her dignified thank-you had been genuine, even though she had wished it had been anyone else but Emilio who had rescued her from the mortifying situation.
‘Did you want saving?’
The response bewildered her until she saw his expression.
The scorn and aristocratic disdain etched on his patrician features made her cringe. She felt crushed by his scorn. It was bad enough that the man she had had a secret crush on since she was a kid had witnessed the grubby sordid scene, but that he could think she had wanted … If she could have crawled out of her skin at that moment Megan would have. She stuttered in her eagerness to correct him.
‘No.no, that is, yes, you can’t think that I wanted. Of course I—’
‘You were a fool.’
Unable to deny the scathing denouncement, she shook her head and blinked back tears. Did he think she didn’t know that? Did he think she needed it rubbed in?
As she stood there she silently prayed for the ground to open up and swallow her—maybe even out loud; that part remained a little vague. But it didn’t so she simply had to stand and endure the contemptuous study, nailed to the spot with scorching humiliation, mortified beyond belief as the sweep of his disparaging stare moved from the top of her glossy head to her feet shod in a pair of high-heeled ankle boots.
‘You say you didn’t want anything, but appearances suggest otherwise. You look like you’ve been poured into that top, and as for the jeans …’
Megan dragged down at the rounded high neckline of the shirt she wore today under her business suit, closing her eyes as she still recalled the condemnatory glow in his eyes as his sweeping gesture had encompassed the V-necked black T-shirt—black because she’d thought the colour was slimming—before sliding to the dark denim jeans, the brand and style that all her friends had been wearing without being accused of flaunting anything.
‘What reaction did you expect?’ Megan heard him ask as she focused her attention, not on the condemnation in his eyes, but the nerve in his lean cheek that was clenching and unclenching.
He stabbed his long fingers into the dark waves of his thick hair and released a string of expletives in Spanish, sounding and looking nothing like the quietly authoritative man who had always been kind to her and, even more amazingly, appeared interested in what she was doing, possibly because he had lovely manners.
‘As for getting into a car with a boy who had been drinking …’
His sneering disdain made her see red. ‘He’s not a boy, he’s a lecturer.’
‘Do the university authorities look kindly on their lecturing staff dating their students?’
