A situation that had, unfortunately, become echoed in real life!
‘I try not to dwell on past mistakes,’ she dismissed in a deliberately offhand tone of voice.
‘It was damn cold on the beach that night, wasn’t it?’ he said, ignoring her supposed lack of interest in the topic.
Until they’d found the ideal way to keep warm, yes….
‘Rafe—’
‘Life seemed a lot simpler then, too,’ he continued wistfully as if she hadn’t spoken.
Her eyes widened. ‘Simpler?’
He nodded. ‘There was just you and me—’
‘And Pamela,’ Cairo put in dryly. ‘Let’s not forget the beautiful and rapacious Pamela, shall we?’
Rafe’s mouth tightened. ‘I forgot about her years ago.’
Cairo gave a derisive smile. ‘How convenient to have such an—accommodating memory!’
His eyes narrowed and his voice turned positively icy. ‘Pamela meant nothing to me.’
‘Has any woman ever meant anything to you, Rafe?’ Cairo enquired hotly.
How could he sit and claim Pamela had meant nothing to him?
The other woman had been naked in his hotel room that day, her hair all tousled, that look—that look of sleepy satisfaction on her face the result of Rafe’s lovemaking that Cairo had seen so often on her own face when she’d looked in the mirror.
His gaze became hooded now. ‘Just the one,’ he murmured, his meaning obvious as he steadily held her gaze.
‘Oh, please!’ Cairo muttered in disgust as she stood up and moved away from him. ‘I’m not that naïve twenty-year-old any more, Rafe. So don’t even think about trying your seduction routine on me again—’
‘It isn’t a routine, dammit—’
‘Of course it is!’ She turned on him angrily. ‘You sailed into Douglas Bay that day looking like a Spanish pirate captaining his ship and completely swept me and every other woman on the island off their feet!’
Cairo could remember it as if it were yesterday, standing at the window of her hotel room, watching as the three-masted sailing ship came round the headland and anchored in the bay, a small launch leaving the ship minutes later, the man at the wheel—looking every inch that Spanish pirate!—clearly the darkly handsome Rafe Montero.
Cairo had lost her heart to Rafe’s dark and rugged wildness before she was even introduced to him an hour later.
And she wasn’t going to fall for it again.
Ever.
‘I’m going for a swim,’ she told Rafe abruptly as she took off her T-shirt before peeling her skirt down over her hips and legs and revealing that she wore a brief white bikini beneath.
Rafe stood and watched Cairo as she ran down the golden sand to wade thigh-deep in the water before diving smoothly beneath its surface, his hands clenching at his sides as he appreciated how the white of her bikini emphasised the golden tan of her skin. Smooth, silky skin he could still feel against the palms of his hands.
Cairo was right; she was no longer a naïve twenty-year-old. Just as he was no longer twenty-nine and bowled off his feet by her beauty the moment he was introduced to her.
But a part of him wished that he were….
CHAPTER SIX
‘I THINK you’re being absolutely ridiculous, Rafe,’ Cairo told him coolly as she hung their wet costumes and towels on the line strung between two trees at the back of the villa. Daisy was inside watching a cartoon channel on the television.
They had all showered and changed since returning an hour ago, Cairo now wearing a loose cream-coloured blouse over fitted jeans, the dampness of her long hair twisted into a knot and secured at her crown, her face completely bare of make-up.
She looked about eighteen, Rafe decided impatiently. Although that in no way stopped her being so damned stubborn he wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled!
His gaze narrowed on her warningly. ‘If you won’t agree to come down to Cannes with me this evening, then I’m not going, either,’ he repeated evenly.
‘Scrap my previous statement—your behaviour is positively juvenile!’ Cairo glared at him. ‘I won’t if you won’t,’ she mocked as she reached for another of the towels and began to hang it on the line. ‘You have to go to Cannes this evening, Rafe—I don’t!’
‘I don’t have to go anywhere until I’ve managed to find out the identity of the man who spoke to Daisy at lunchtime,’ Rafe assured her just as stubbornly.
Rafe had called several people he knew in the newspaper business, but as yet none of them had been offered a story about himself and Cairo. They would call him back when, or if, they did.
Admittedly his own temper was slightly frayed around the edges after those memories earlier of their time together on the Isle of Man. But Cairo’s adamant refusal to even think about reconsidering her decision not to go down to Cannes with him tonight was only increasing Rafe’s frustration, which was already exacerbated by a sexual tension that was becoming more unbearable by the minute.
She sighed. ‘So much for your “couple of phone calls”.’
‘If he’s a reporter, then we’ll know by tomorrow morning, anyway,’ Rafe pointed out. ‘I only said if he’s a reporter, Cairo,’ he said as she gave a pained groan.
She shook her head. ‘We both know that he is. Do you think he has photographs, too?’
‘If he’s any good at his job then, yes, of course he has photographs.’ There was no point in even attempting to lie, Rafe knew, when tomorrow morning’s newspapers would tell their own story, no doubt including wild speculation about their relationship.
He could see it now, photographs of himself and Cairo shopping for food, of them walking through Grasse with Daisy, of the three of them laughing together as they sat down at the table in the square outside the restaurant.
All very cosily domestic.
Deceptively so.
Anyone who had ever listened to a single conversation between himself and Cairo would know differently—they couldn’t even discuss the weather without getting into an argument about it!
‘I don’t see anything in the least funny about this situation, Rafe!’ Cairo snapped as she saw his rueful smile. ‘The reason I’m annoyed is pretty obvious after the publicity following my divorce from Lionel.’ She grimaced. ‘But I’m sure there must be someone in your own life who isn’t going to be amused, either, by photographs of the two of us together.’
Cairo hadn’t spent long, boring hours in her trailer waiting to be called on set for months now—that was the only time she flicked through the glossy magazines that contained those sorts of gossipy articles—so she had no idea whether or not Rafe was involved with anyone at the moment. But he probably was….
His mouth twisted mockingly. ‘I doubt any of my family will be concerned.’
Cairo sighed. ‘I wasn’t talking about your family and you know it.’
Rafe had occasionally talked about his family when they were together. Of his Spanish father who had visited America as a student and fallen in love with the blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughter of a Texas rancher, the two of them marrying once they finished college, and now working that ranch in Texas themselves, along with Rafe’s younger brother, Pedro, and his wife and young family.
Rafe grinned. ‘I’m well aware of that, Cairo,’ he drawled. ‘And, no, I very much doubt that photographs of you and