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IN the flesh and without the benefit of lighting and make-up and minus the skin-hugging trademark leather trousers Camilla Davenport was even more beautiful than the wisecracking detective she played on the small screen.
Five ten in her bare feet, which she wasn’t—her heels had to be at least four inches—she was dressed in what was probably the latest fashion. It was hard to find fault.
And Maggie tried!
In real life the actress’s eyes were actually bluer, her lips even more incredibly pouty, and her breasts—was it even possible—more perky. And the people who said the camera put on ten pounds were obviously lying.
Was he sleeping with her?
Of course he was sleeping with her.
Maggie felt sick and stupid and plain. A plain, stupid woman throwing up—that would leave a great lasting impression, because obviously she was leaving. It would save him the bother of asking her to go.
‘Camilla, what are you doing here?’
Rafael dragged a not quite steady hand through his dark hair and turned a less than welcoming glare on his ex-lover.
‘And how did you get past Security?’
‘Oh, don’t blame them—nobody told the darlings I am yesterday’s news. Rafe, darling, you look absolutely scrummy…’ She advanced with a purposeful sexy sway and kissed him on the cheek, not from intention, but because he turned his head before she landed the kiss.
She gave a sigh and stroked a red-painted nail down his cheek. ‘As always,’ she said, adding with a pout, ‘you are a spoilsport.’
Rafael issued her a glare of seething impatience and her hand fell away.
‘Oh, all right, look, I can see my timing is absolutely lousy as usual—’ she flashed Maggie a friendly look apparently totally all right to find her lover with another woman ‘—but I was up here to check on the house. I’m thinking of putting in a new pool. I have a little villa just across the valley,’ she explained to Maggie. ‘Rafael makes a very friendly neighbour.’
‘I can imagine,’ Maggie said, trying hard not to, but Camilla’s attention and her fluttering eyelashes had already returned to Rafael.
‘So I thought I’d come and say sorry in person and I am truly…’
Rafael struggled to contain his impatience. ‘For what?’
She widened her eyes in amazement. ‘God, you don’t know! Wow, that’s…awkward.’ She lifted her brows and grimaced in Maggie’s direction. ‘He always reads the papers from cover to cover, doesn’t he? But not today. I guess he was busy.’
Maggie blushed and Camilla gave a husky laugh and said, ‘You’re different.’ Her attention swung back to Rafael. ‘All right, I’ll come clean. You remember that gorgeous weekend we spent on your yacht?’
‘I remember.’
Would anyone notice if she slipped out? Maggie wondered bitterly. Or on second thought she might make a scene, a big, noisy scene, and smash a few things because dignity was not, in her opinion, any substitute for broken crockery.
Different—presumably that translated as not glamorous.
Camilla took a folded newspaper from her bag and spread it on the table. Rafael, oblivious to Maggie’s violent plans, did not even glance at it.
He can’t even take his eyes off the woman, Maggie thought miserably…and who can blame him?
‘That afternoon on the deck when we got… It turns out we weren’t alone. Tragic, I know, and so shocking—there’s absolutely no privacy these days. I think it must have been that speedboat that passed.’
‘Just as you took off your top.’
Maggie closed her eyes and thought, Just kill me now, let me die or, failing that, let me come up with a really good exit line!
‘Timing is everything.’
Rafael walked over to Maggie’s side. She tensed as she felt his fingers massage the tense muscles of her neck. ‘You all right?’
Maggie moved away and, unable to come up with an exit line of any variety, mumbled, ‘No, if you’ll excuse me…’
He moved to block her exit and declared autocratically, ‘No, I won’t. I want you to hear this.’
Tears of anger and humiliation formed in her eyes. Did he want to rub her nose in it for some reason, or was he genuinely unaware of how humiliating this was for her?
Maggie wasn’t sure which explanation was the worst.
‘So why are these photos appearing now, Cami, three months after the event?’
Cami and Rafe? She really wanted to throw up now. A choked sound escaped Maggie’s throat.
‘What’s wrong?’
That he could ask the question spoke volumes about his sheer titanic insensitivity.
‘I always knew there was something missing, now I know what it is…a pet name for you, darling.’
The corners of Rafael’s mouth twitched. ‘I’m sure you’ll think of something, honeybunch.’ He turned back to the other woman and folded his arms across his chest. The levity left his eyes as he snapped coldly, ‘Come clean, Cami.’
‘All right, I can see you’ve guessed—you always do. The studio are meeting this weekend and there have been rumours flying around that they are going to cancel the show. The viewing figures were low, but that was because they killed off my love interest… I always said—’
‘Cami!’
‘All right, all right. I arranged for the photo to be taken as an insurance policy, and it turned out I needed it, and,’ she added, clapping her hands and releasing a squeal of delight, ‘it has worked. The photos are all over the Internet, your name guarantees that, and the studio have been on the phone all morning. They are definitely going to commission a third series and give me a pay hike. Aren’t I brilliant?’
Rafael was at his most dry as he responded, ‘Not the word I would have used.’
Cami gave a wide complacent smile. ‘I knew you wouldn’t be mad if I explained things.’
‘You are a very devious woman, Cami.’
Maggie had struggled to follow the explanation—the American spoke very quickly and her brain was on a go-slow—but if she had got the facts even half right Rafael’s attitude made no sense. The woman had used him and the apparent public appetite for stories about him, and he didn’t even seem mad.
That made no sense at all unless…unless he was in love with the beautiful actress.
‘Darling, a girl has to watch her back in this business if she doesn’t have a man to do it for her.’
‘Your agent would sell his soul for you, always supposing he ever had one.’
‘Gus is a treasure but he doesn’t do it for free.’ She picked up a croissant from the table. ‘You know, I’m totally starving.’
Rafael put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around. ‘Say goodbye, Cami.’
She gave a philosophical smile. ‘Goodbye…’ She waved over her shoulder to Maggie, who stood like a small statue and watched Rafael steer her through the door.
When he returned a few moments later she was still standing in exactly the same place.
‘Your luggage has arrived,’ he said, setting her cases on the floor.
Maggie expelled a deep shuddering sigh and felt the life return to her body, and the anger and the burning humiliation.
She marched over to him and picked them up. ‘I won’t be unpacking.’
‘Fine. I will buy you new clothes.’
She scrunched up her face in a grimace of loathing. ‘I would prefer to walk around naked!’ she yelled.
‘I can work with that.’
She compressed her full lips into a thin line. ‘I have no interest in being part of your harem!’
He studied her angry face for a moment in silence. ‘Do you not think that perhaps you are overreacting?’ he suggested calmly.
‘Mildly!’
She stood her ground as he walked across to her, though by the time he reached her side her knees were shaking.
‘You’re crying.’
‘Not because I give a damn about your sleazy sex life, I’m mad, that’s all.’
‘You’re jealous.’ The first display of jealousy was his signal to walk, but Rafael could see that this situation was different.
In what way exactly? asked the pedantic voice in his head.
Different required a different approach—not compromise, because he did not do compromise, but an explanation perhaps?
‘You have no cause. Cami and I were lovers…’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Shock, horror, call the press—oh, I forgot,’ she trilled. ‘They already know.’ The world knows and he appears to care less. ‘And save your explanations. I’m just someone you picked up—you don’t owe me any.’
‘Do not speak of yourself in that manner!’ There was a reason he had spent his life facing problems head-on and not manipulating and nice talking his way around them—nice talk didn’t work!
She blinked at the lash of anger in his voice.
‘It’s the truth.’
‘It is a crude version of the truth and you are deliberately trying to provoke me.’ A spasm of impatience tightened his lean face as he snapped, ‘Shut up and listen. Past tense—we were lovers. I do not have a harem, I have one lover in my bed at a time and at the moment it is you.’ And for some reason even though she drove him insane he wanted it to stay that way.
‘You’re not sleeping with anyone else.’
‘I do not make a habit of explaining myself to people.’ So what was he doing now?
‘All right, you may not be sleeping with her, but you wish you were. It’s obvious. You weren’t even angry with her and she used you.’
‘That was always a possibility.’
The calm admission made her stare.
‘Cami is without scruples—charming,’ he conceded, ‘but utterly self-centred.’
‘And good in bed,’ Maggie, slightly mollified by his scathing assessment, inserted with a sniff.
He did not deny it, but no matter how expert a lover he had taken he had always been conscious of an empty, knowing sense of dissatisfaction even after the most satisfactory sex.
The feeling had been absent last night and this morning. Possibly her inexperience added a challenge that he needed?
‘There are a hundred Camis—a thousand. I meet them wherever I go.’ He studied the tear-stained face turned up to his and wondered if he would ever meet a Maggie again.
As she watched him dismiss the actress with a click of his long fingers she wondered if he would dismiss her in the near future in a similar fashion. He almost certainly would and the knowledge gave her a horrid sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
‘Look, I could lock myself away behind high walls and massive security and never have an unflattering photo of me snapped. But I consider the price too high.’
‘But you have a lot of money.’
The observation drew a grim smile from Rafael. ‘It is not a question of cost.’
‘Something only a very rich person would say.’
Rafael ignored her wry interjection and said quietly, ‘I would become a virtual prisoner. Instead I walk the middle ground. I do not actively seek publicity and on occasions I go out of my way to avoid it, but I do not lose sleep over every insane story that appears about me.’
Maggie frowned, considering his words. ‘All right.’
He regarded her warily. ‘I believe you and I might have overreacted slightly.’ Slightly! She had broken out with a bad case of the green monster; the amazing thing was he hadn’t run for the hills.
‘So we can go back to where we were before the interruption?’
The sultry look she flashed him through her lashes sent a pulse of lust through his already aroused body. ‘I think we’d got past the foreplay.’
‘Do not be so impatient,’ he charged, slipping his hands around her waist. It was so tiny that he could almost span it. ‘I am still waiting for you to score me on my kisses.’ He pressed an open-mouth kiss to her neck and her head fell bonelessly back. ‘Be generous,’ he pleaded huskily.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MAGGIE forced her heavy eyelids open. Rafael’s face was so close she could see the gold tips on his lashes and feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek. ‘I’m thinking possibly above average.’
He inclined his dark head fractionally without taking his eyes from hers. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she said, breathing in his warm male musky scent and feeling dizzy—in a good way.
‘You’re a very beautiful woman.’ He slid a hand into her hair and let the silky strands run through his fingers. ‘A sensual woman.’
