It had been eight years since he had last seen this woman.
Eight long years.
It was a hell of a shock to suddenly find himself face to face with her again after all that time—
A shock?
Dammit, he was still reeling!
If anything, Cairo Vaughn was even more beautiful. Perhaps a little too thin, he allowed with a slight frown, those almost six feet of curves very willowy now. But her hair was still that long tumbling red, and her legs were still long and shapely beneath the black thigh-length T-shirt. Her face was thinner, too, emphasizing the delicate curve of high cheekbones beneath chocolate-brown eyes, her nose small and straight, but her lips were as full and pouting above the stubborn set of her small, pointed chin as they’d ever been.
Although her cheeks were healthily flushed with temper at the moment, those chocolate-brown eyes looking ready to shoot flames! It made her look more like the famous actress she was than the pale woman whose photograph had been on the front page of the newspapers for months during her very public divorce.
It was none of his business, Rafe told himself grimly. Just as Cairo herself was none of his business, either.
‘So where are Margo and Jeff?’ he asked again. He had a few things he would like to say to the other couple concerning the fact that neither of them had warned him that Cairo was going to be here!
‘I told you, they aren’t here,’ Cairo repeated exasperatedly.
Rafe’s eyes narrowed. ‘At all?’
She shook her head. ‘Margo’s doctor has ordered complete bed-rest for the last four weeks of her pregnancy.’
Margo and Jeff weren’t here.
Only Cairo was.
And neither Margo nor Jeff had bothered to let him know that little fact!
What was he supposed to—?
‘Uncle Rafe! Uncle Rafe!’
Rafe just managed to turn in time to catch the small golden-haired bundle dressed in a pink bathing costume as she came hurtling out of the villa and launched herself in his general direction.
Daisy.
Margo and Jeff’s six-year-old daughter.
If Cairo had brought Daisy with her, that probably meant she didn’t have a lover with her, as well. Probably…
‘Mummy said you’d be arriving today!’ Daisy beamed at him excitedly even as he swung her up to hold her in his arms.
To Cairo only one part of Daisy’s statement was relevant. ‘Margo knew you were coming here?’
‘Of course,’ Rafe confirmed as he moved Daisy into the crook of one arm to look across at Cairo with guarded blue eyes.
Cairo could barely breathe. Could barely think.
After the last stressful weeks, months, she had desperately needed to get completely away for a while, to be somewhere where she wasn’t being constantly photographed wherever she went. Which was why she had been only too happy to accept the suggestion her sister Margo had made, when she’d pointed out that as she and Jeff were unable to go on their usual May holiday to the South of France this year, Cairo might like to make use of the villa in their stead.
It had been Cairo’s own idea, with Margo eight months into what was turning out to be a precarious second pregnancy, that as six-year-old Daisy was on half-term holiday anyway, she could take the little girl with her.
It had all gone so smoothly until now, too. None of the press that had hounded Cairo so doggedly the last ten months had been looking for a woman travelling with a little girl of six. Neither had they recognized the actress Cairo Vaughn behind the dark sunglasses and the baseball cap she had worn to hide the fiery length of her hair as she drove onto the train that would take them through the Eurotunnel into France.
It had been a long drive, of course, but the villa, set high in the hills above Grasse, had been a pleasant surprise, a large, sprawling single-storey building that maintained its rusticity at the same time as providing all the amenities they could possibly want, including a huge pool on the lower terrace, and a number of small shops in the local village that would see to their daily needs.
And Daisy had proved a delightful companion, as only a gregarious six-year-old could, as she kept up a constant stream of chatter on the journey here, and then yesterday threw herself into the pool with enthusiasm once they’d finally reached the villa.
In fact, the simplicity of it all had been a wonderful relief to Cairo after so many years of knowing exactly what she would be doing next week, next month, next year!
But never, during any of Cairo’s plans to come to France, had Margo so much as mentioned Rafe Montero. In fact, Cairo hadn’t even known that her sister and brother-in- law were still friends with him.
She gave a puzzled shake of her head. ‘Margo didn’t say anything to me about your coming here.’
‘If it’s any consolation, she didn’t say anything to me about your being here, either,’ Rafe retorted sharply.
‘It isn’t,’ Cairo assured him impatiently. ‘I appreciate that Margo hasn’t been too well recently, but—’
‘Perhaps it might be better if we continued this conversation later,’ Rafe cut in with a pointed glance at Daisy before he turned his blue gaze warningly on Cairo.
A warning Cairo took absolutely no notice of. ‘I really feel we should sort this situation out now, Rafe—’
‘Your feeling is noted, Cairo,’ he acknowledged brusquely.
Noted, and dismissed, Cairo realized indignantly. Had Rafe always been this infuriating? So arrogantly sure of himself and his surroundings that he totally ignored—or just didn’t see or hear!—what anyone else wanted?
Probably, Cairo thought wryly. She had just been too naïve eight years ago, too enthralled by him, too much in love with him, to see it.
Well, she wasn’t now and she wouldn’t let him get away with it.
‘And obviously ignored,’ she snapped. ‘Rafe, I have absolutely no idea what your arrangement was with Margo and Jeff.’ But she certainly intended finding out when she telephoned her sister shortly! ‘But as they’re obviously still in England, there is no way you can expect to continue with your own plans to stay here.’
He quirked dark brows. ‘And just where would you suggest I go instead?’
The hardness in his eyes told her she’d do better to hold back on the reply that she really wanted to make. So instead, Cairo replied, ‘To a hotel, of course.’
‘You really expect me to be able to do that in the week of the Cannes Film Festival?’ he taunted.
‘I— The Cannes Film Festival?’ she repeated slowly.
‘It’s the reason I’m in France at the moment,’ Rafe explained. ‘Work of Art has been put up for several awards.’ He shrugged. ‘As director, I’m expected to make an appearance.’
The Cannes Film Festival, Cairo berated herself in her head. Of course Rafe’s film had been nominated for an award; it had virtually wiped the board at the Oscars earlier in the year.
‘But Cannes is miles away,’ she said stubbornly.
‘So?’
‘So there must be a hotel there where you could stay. It would be much more convenient than being all the way out here, anyway,’ Cairo reasoned firmly.
Rafe’s mouth