Happy Mother's Day! (15 page)

She studied him covertly through the screen of her halflowered lashes. Tall and lean with broad shoulders and narrow hips, he carried himself with the natural grace of an athlete and the casual arrogance of someone who knew that he was one of the beautiful people whose presence alone stopped conversations.

This was the sort of man that she was on principle unimpressed by.

Too good-looking, too sure of himself, he would have been treated from the moment of his birth as if the universe revolved around him.

Strangely as she watched the beautiful stranger peel the leather gloves off his hands she could summon none of the amused contempt she could normally tap into on these occasions.

Maybe it was the leather boots that ended midcalf that were distracting her.

For some reason Erin couldn’t tear her eyes off the dusty leather. When she did her gaze travelled up bleached, torn denim and long,
long
legs. She watched, conscious of the sound of her own shallow breathing, as he banged the dust off his thighs. Below the rolled-up sleeves of the shirt he wore open the skin of his strong, sinewed forearms was a deep gold meshed by a dusting of fine dark hair.

He stood there, feet slightly apart, and hooked the leather gloves into the waistband of jeans that were fitted enough to reveal the taut musculature of his powerful thighs and give Erin a hot flush. The black T-shirt he wore beneath his unbuttoned shirt was also snug enough to draw attention to his washboard-flat belly.

Her attention was riveted!

Erin knew she was staring but she couldn’t stop. She wanted to move, but her body seemed strangely disconnected from her brain. Her limbs seemed not to belong to her, and inside her chest her heart crashed against her ribcage, almost drowning out the sound of his boots on the cobbles as he walked towards her.

E
RIN
swallowed, knowing that this was one of those scenes that would be etched into her mind for ever.

He stopped a few feet away from her but close enough for her to see the dust ingrained in the fine lines radiating from his eyes, extraordinary eyes, incredibly dark and fringed with equally dark curling lashes.

His expression was inscrutable though the groove above his aquiline nose deepened as he looked down at her. Erin felt a shudder chase its way down her spine. There was something almost cruel about the curve of his sensually moulded lips.

He fired a question at her in a deep voice that had an almost tactile quality.

Erin swallowed and lifted her shoulders helplessly to indicate she had no idea what he was talking about.

She saw something that could have been irritation flicker in his dark eyes as he dragged a hand through his hair, which was pitch-black and sheared off at collar level. It was riverstraight and she imagined that under the dust it was silky.

Erin could feel her fingertips literally tingling, a disturbing sensation, as she imagined touching … smoothing those dusky strands.

Appalled by the direction of her out-of-control imagination,
she concluded that she must have been out in the sun too long. She was probably suffering from dehydration, too, having drained her water bottle an hour earlier.

Rubbing a finger across the bridge of her nose, she was relieved to find evidence to back up her theory. Despite the factor thirty she had plastered on earlier, her skin felt tight and tingly.

Well, it stood to reason that it had to be something like that. She was simply not the sort of woman who went around fantasising about running her fingers through strange men’s hair.

Sucking in a deep breath, she adopted an expression that suggested—hopefully—that she was totally immune to tall, romantic-looking figures riding black horses.

‘Do you speak English?’

He wasn’t the sort of man she would have turned to for help, but she was in no position to be picky.

Actually he was the sort of man that any women with half a brain would cross the street to avoid, though they probably wouldn’t, she conceded, recognising the weakness of her own sex when it came to men like this one.

‘Eng-lish?’ she said, enunciating each syllable slowly in the vain hope of seeing some spark of recognition in his spectacular eyes.

There was none; he just stood there looking as though he’d stepped out of a western.

‘I’m lost,’ she said, stabbing a finger at her chest. His eyes followed the action.

‘Do you … I need to get to … I’m looking for … damn.!’ she muttered, dropping down on her knees and removing the stones she had used to pin the map to the cobbles while she studied it. Anchoring a hank of wayward hair off her face with one arm, she stood up wielding the creased map in the other.

‘Map …’ she said, waving it at him.

When he looked back at her and shrugged all Erin’s frustration bubbled to the surface. The stress of the last few hours manifested itself in tears that spilled down her cheeks. With an angry curse of self-disgust she brushed them away with the back of her hand.

She took a deep breath and told herself to calm down; if this man couldn’t help her he might be able to direct her to someone who could.

She smiled encouragingly, then tapped a spot she had ringed in red on the map. ‘I need.’ she began, lifting her voice to a bellow.

Then she saw the total lack of comprehension in his face and sighed. ‘I don’t know why I’m shouting. You don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you?’

He looked from her face to the map in her hands and back again, then gave another magnificent shrug.

Erin’s own shoulders sagged. ‘Why did you have to be beautiful and stupid? I know several women who would give a lot for your eyelashes. I know several who would give even more for you; there’s a very high demand for handsome hunks. I prefer the sensitive types myself, but they tend to be gay.’

His expression didn’t alter, though his lips did quiver faintly. Erin gave a guilty sigh.

‘Sorry, about this, but while I’m talking I can’t panic and if I stop you might go away and I’ll be alone again. And the not speaking English, I wasn’t serious, it doesn’t make you stupid. It would just have been a lot more convenient.

‘This is all my fault anyway. I don’t know
why
I thought I liked cycling.’ She cast a look of loathing in the direction of the discarded bike. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if I was saddle sore for a month,’ she observed, rubbing a hand over her behind and wincing. ‘But the thing is I had to get away from
the people I’m on holiday with. I’ve saved all year for this holiday, but they count carb units at meal times and think local colour is spending the night in a smoke-filled nightclub.’ She gave a laugh.

‘When you say it like that it doesn’t sound so awful, does it? You know, I think the problem is that I’m not very tolerant.’ She laughed again and began to fold the map into a more manageable size. ‘I know you couldn’t care less even if you could understand a word I was saying, but thank you for listening.’

‘Any time.’

Her gaze flew upwards and the map fell from her lax grasp. Like the natural fault in a smooth raw silk his deep, cultured voice held an intriguing husk and only the lightest trace of an accent.

‘You speak English!’ Her initial relief almost immediately morphed into anger. It washed over her in waves as she glared at the impossibly handsome stranger. Her cheeks flamed in mortified horror as she recalled what she had said to him.

He tilted his dark head in acknowledgement and she paled.

God, I called him beautiful!

‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place instead of letting me babble on?’
And make a total and absolute idiot of myself.

‘I didn’t think it was polite to interrupt and once you were in full flow it would have been difficult.’

Erin chose to rise above the provocation, she fixed him with a glare that would have made lesser men wilt and said icily. ‘I won’t keep you.’

He grinned, displaying a set of even white teeth, and Erin decided the cowboy analogy had been wrong—he was a pirate.

‘Don’t you think under the circumstances it might be wiser to just suck it in?’

‘Suck it in?’ she echoed, looking at him in astonishment.

‘I’m sure you’re entirely self-sufficient in your own neck
of the woods.’ He looked at her eyes narrowed, and speculated. ‘London?’

‘No.’

‘Well, wherever it is. This isn’t it, cara,’ he drawled.

The casual endearment caused a spark of anger to flare in her eyes but, more worryingly and fortunately less visible, a quivering liquid heat to unfurl low in her abdomen.

‘This is my home territory. You need help and I,’ he revealed with an eloquent shrug, ‘am it, if you are prepared to put up with my lack of sensitivity.’

‘I’m used to insensitive men,’ she promised. ‘Though none who are quite as sneaky and low as you. And I don’t need the cavalry.’ She angled a glance towards the horse who stood waiting for his master. ‘But if you wouldn’t mind telling me exactly where I am I’d be grateful,’ she conceded.

One darkly delineated brow lifted to a satirical angle, mockery shone in his expressive eyes.

‘If I did would you be any the wiser?’

‘Spare me the display of male superiority,’ she begged, rolling her eyes. ‘In my experience men who go down the “poor little woman couldn’t find her way out of a paper bag” route have issues with self-esteem. I am
not
a female stereotype.’

He lifted a hand to shade his eyes as he looked at her. ‘Oh, no, you’re not that,’ he agreed cryptically.

Erin supposed this was her cue to ask exactly what he thought she was, but she had no intention of playing his game. Besides, she wasn’t sure that she would like the answer.

She watched as he bent forward to pick up the map. He then smoothed it between his long brown fingers.

His hands, elegant and capable with long, tapering fingers, held a strange fascination for her, and the recognition disturbed her.

He disturbed her.

‘That is where you are meant to be?’ he said, stabbing the red circle with his finger and slinging her an amused look that oozed the sort of male superiority that made Erin’s hackles rise once more.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever taken a wrong turn,’ she snarled sarcastically.

His eyes lifted from the map. ‘We’re not talking one wrong turn here.’ His dry comment confirmed her worst suspicions. ‘You’re meant to be
here,’
he said, tapping his finger against the spot ringed red.

‘I know where I’m
meant
to be—it’s where I
am
I want to know,’ she retorted waspishly.

‘Where you are is not on this map.’

‘You mean it’s too small?’ She had considered the map quite detailed, as far as she could tell marking every tuft of grass.

‘I
mean
you’re ten miles outside the area it covers, and that is a conservative estimate.’

Her face fell in dismay. ‘You’re joking,’ she said, not actually believing it. This man wouldn’t know a joke if he fell over it.

‘I—’

‘Will you just shut up for a sec and let me think?’

From his expression she suspected that he didn’t get told to shut up too often—if ever. Still, she had more important things to worry about than his wounded male Latin pride.

Eyes half closed, her face scrunched in concentration as she considered her options. It didn’t take long because she didn’t see that she had many. Less if you omitted walking.

‘I don’t suppose there is such a thing as a taxi around here?’

He looked amused and dug his hand into his pockets, causing the worn fabric to pull taut against his thighs. ‘You suppose right.’

She heaved a sigh and tried not to stare too obviously at the muscular thighs. ‘Then could you direct me to the nearest phone? I’m sure the hotel will send someone to pick me up.’ It would make serious inroads into the money she had set aside for her stay, but what option did she have?

‘Where are you staying?’

She mentioned the name of the hotel and his brows rose. ‘They pride themselves on being exclusive.’

‘And I’m not—?’ She could not honestly blame him for coming to this conclusion. By no stretch of the imagination did she look like most people’s idea of a well-heeled tourist. ‘Actually, you’re right. The hotel we were meant to stay in closed because of an outbreak of food poisoning—the tour company upgraded us for free.’

‘I’ll take you back.’

The abrupt offer made her stare.
‘You?’
she said, struggling with an intrusive mental image of herself slung over his saddle riding into the lobby of the exclusive and rather stuffy hotel.

‘Do you have a problem with that?’

She had several. ‘I really don’t think your horse would like it.’

‘You’re not wrong,’ he said, bunching the reins in one hand and patting the animal’s flank with the other. ‘Actually I know someone who has transport. He only lives a mile or so up the road.’

‘That’s very kind of you, but—’

‘I don’t do kind, cara.’ He smiled and her stomach took an unscheduled dive.

‘Are you coming?’ He paused, clearly expecting her to fall in step with him.

‘I really don’t … that is … how?’

He interrupted her with a bored-sounding, ‘Is that a yes or a no?’

‘No … yes …’

‘Are you always this indecisive?’ ‘I’m sure someone will come if I wait.’ Her doubtful tone invited him to disagree. But he didn’t.

Erin watched with mingled astonishment and indignation as he slid a booted foot into a stirrup, and spoke a couple of soothing words to his horse before vaulting with lithe grace into the saddle.

‘Well, this is goodbye, then.’

It was only stubborn pride that stopped her begging him not to go. Stubborn pride she had plenty of time to regret during the next twenty minutes.

It took her that long to wheel her bicycle a quarter of a mile up the road where a big rusty truck drew up in a flurry of dust.

‘Y
OU
!’ Erin ejaculated in a voice of loathing as the driver got out.

She would have walked back barefoot before admitting even to herself that she was relieved to see him. She supposed her relief stemmed from the fact it really was better the devil you knew even vaguely than any old devil who happened along in a rusty truck.

‘So no one came along, then?’

She lifted her chin in response to the mockery in his voice. ‘If you traded your horse for that,’ she said, nodding with disdain towards the truck, ‘you were robbed. The only thing stopping that thing falling apart is rust and dirt.’

There was an amused glint in his dark eyes as they swept the length of her dishevelled figure. ‘You’re no oil painting yourself,
cara.’

Erin’s lips tightened as the dull colour ran up under her fair skin. It was always ego-enhancing to have an incrediblelooking man tell you that you looked a wreck.

His narrowed gaze lingered on her flushed face. ‘And that,’ he said, casually flicking her nose with his forefinger, ‘is going to peel.’

Erin started and pressed her hand to her face. Even if his olive-toned skin had been exposed to the sun it wasn’t going to burn, just acquire a deeper glow.

‘I hadn’t planned on getting lost.’ The antagonism died from her flushed face as her dreamily speculative glance drifted to the vee of exposed flesh at the base of his throat.

Was the skin on the rest of his body a similar warm shade? Erin blinked and released a horrified gasp as she realised she had been mentally undressing the man!

Not even sunstroke could excuse that!

‘And I hadn’t planned on running into you, but life,’ he reflected with a sardonic inflection in his deep voice, ‘is full of surprises. Some more pleasing than others.’

He didn’t specify which category she came into, but Erin could only assume that he had other things he’d prefer to be doing rather than offering assistance to an ungrateful tourist with a red nose.

He walked across to the truck and opened the passenger door. ‘Are you getting in?’

Erin’s glance slid from the door to his face. She released a sigh and nodded her head. ‘I suppose I don’t have much choice.’

‘There’s always a choice.’

Which was exactly what the rational voice in her head, which she had been studiously ignoring, had been telling her. It had also told her that relying on instinct when it came to assessing a man’s character was not exactly scientific.

But short of demanding a character reference gut instinct was all she had to go on and she needed to get back to her hotel somehow.

Approaching the truck, she frowned. The cab seemed to be feet off the ground and there were no steps. ‘How am I meant to get up there?’

‘Like this,’ he said, placing both hands around her waist and swinging her off the ground.

Erin let out a startled squeal as she found herself unceremoniously dumped in the passenger seat. She sat there trying to recover her badly dented composure while he picked up her bike and slung it in the open rear of the truck before walking around to the driver’s side and climbing in beside her.

‘You could have been more careful. The people I hired the bike from are going to charge me if—’ She stopped gave a horrified wail and yelled, ‘Wait! My camera!’

It was only his restraining hand on her shoulder that stopped her leaping out again.

‘Be still.’

Despite her distress at the thought of the camera she could not easily afford to replace being ruined, Erin responded to the calm air of command in his voice and leaned back in her seat.

‘Now tell me what is wrong.’

‘My camera is in the pannier on the bike.’

‘Camera?’

She could tell from his expression that he thought she was making a lot of fuss over a few holiday snaps.

‘I’m a photographer and I—’

‘Stay there,’ he said, opening the door.

Erin stuck her head out of the open window and craned her neck while he climbed into the rear of the truck. A few moments later he returned with her precious camera in his hand. ‘Here,’ he said, passing it in to her through the open window before going around to the driver’s side.

Erin turned her head as he climbed in.

‘So you are a photographer?’ He didn’t sound impressed.

She nodded. ‘Nothing grand,’ she said, in case he got the
wrong idea. ‘I do weddings, christenings, family portraits, that sort of thing … bread-and-butter stuff.’

‘So you are not one of that breed who chase celebrities?’

‘God, no, nothing like that. I did think once I might like to do more …’ She heard the wistful enthusiasm in her voice and stopped. ‘Family circumstances keep me close to home.’

‘You have a dependent family?’

‘Not the way you mean,’ she said, thinking that, even had she wanted to, it would have been hard to explain the set-up at home.

Erin had been in her teens before she had realised that other people’s fathers did not regularly leave home. She believed the generic term for men like her father was serial adulterer. Jack Foyle always came back suitably contrite, and was always forgiven. But during his absences her mother would go to pieces and become totally unable to cope.

If she hadn’t always been there to coax her out of the darkened room and her talk of being unable to go on Erin dreaded to think what would have happened.

She was conscious of his dark eyes on her face as she pretended to examine her camera, but he did not press the point. But then, she reflected, why should he? The domestic circumstances of some accident-prone tourist could hardly interest him.

She flickered a sideways glance in his direction as he turned the ignition. His stern profile was quite stunningly perfect. Ironically he had a face that screamed out to be photographed, though whether any film could capture the raw masculinity he exuded was doubtful.

All the same she would have liked to try.

He turned his head and caught her staring and Erin lowered her gaze.

‘There’s water somewhere.’ He banged a lever with his fist and a door dropped down revealing a bottle of water.

Erin’s throat was so dry it hurt and she nodded her thanks. The bottle was ice-cold in her fingers as she lifted it to her mouth and took a long swallow, then with a sigh she rested the cool plastic against her throat.

‘Better?’

She turned her head and nodded, then frowned suspiciously as she realised what he was doing. ‘Why are you turning around?’

‘Because you were going in the wrong direction. Did you really plan to walk all the way back?’

Erin, unwilling to reveal she hadn’t actually had a plan, shrugged. ‘My friends would have come looking for me eventually.’

‘The same friends you had to escape from?’

The reminder that she had used him as a sounding-board to offload all the frustrations made her squirm in her seat and avoid his eyes. ‘When I said that I didn’t think you could understand me.’

‘No, you thought I was beautiful and stupid, but I was forgetting you prefer the
sensitive
types. Do you have one on the scene at the moment?’

Erin, her cheeks burning with embarrassment, glared at him with loathing. ‘I’d tell you what I really think of you, but I’m too polite,’ she choked. ‘Not that you’d know what good manners were if they bit you.’

‘You know,’ he mused, slowing as they approached a hairpin bend in the road, ‘I think you actually like me.’ His dark gaze brushed her face. ‘You’re just in denial.’

Her scornful laugh locked in her throat; his comment was too close to the truth to joke about. ‘I’ll be in a ditch if you don’t keep your eyes on the road.’

‘You want to drive?’

Erin shook her head; actually she wanted to sleep. Her muscles, some she hadn’t known she possessed, ached from the unaccustomed strenuous physical activity. She slapped her cheeks lightly, fighting to shake the creeping exhaustion that weighed her eyelids.

‘If you’re tired take a nap.’

Stifling another yawn, Erin turned her head quickly and found he was studying the road ahead. He really was quite spookily perceptive.

‘I’m not tired,’ she denied brightly.

‘Afraid I’ll take advantage?’

Under the sweep of her lashes her glance lingered on his upper arms where the fabric of his shirt was stretched taut by the strongly defined muscles. She wrapped her arms around herself as a shivery sensation passed through her body. The fact was, if he decided to take advantage there wasn’t a lot she could do about it asleep or awake!

There were some advantages, she reflected, to looking like a survivor in a disaster movie. ‘If you’re trying to make me feel nervous don’t bother … I can take care of myself.’

‘Yes, I can see that. I have been staggered by your resourcefulness.’ His brows lifted. ‘No smart comeback? You must be tired.’

‘I’m fine.’

Despite the claim she lost the battle to stay awake a few minutes later.

A hand on her shoulder woke her. Disorientated, she fought her way back to wakefulness, blinking as the dark features of her rescuer swam into focus.

She shot upright in her seat. ‘I fell asleep … where?’

Erin opened her gritty eyes fully and saw they were driving through the hotel gates. She stifled a yawn and turned to look
at her rescuer; the breath snagged in her throat as his incredible good looks hit her afresh.

She wondered who woke up and saw that face each morning. She knew there had to be someone—this was not a man who slept alone!

Her eyes slid to his left hand.

‘No, I’m not married,’ he said without looking at her.

Maybe not, but he was spookily perceptive.

‘Which makes it all right for you to be interested,
cara.
‘

The guilty colour flew to her cheeks. ‘I’m not interested!’

His smile was insolent and so confident that she could have screamed. ‘Of course you’re not,’ he drawled.

‘My God, you really do think you’re God’s gift!’ she choked in disgust, while privately conceding that he had more justification for thinking it than most men. ‘I’m not looking for a holiday romance.’

‘I’m not offering you one.’

He drew up beside a Mercedes and, switching off the engine, ignored the red-faced doorman who was waving his arms energetically.

‘I think he’s afraid you’ll lower the tone.’

The possibility appeared not to bother her chauffeur. His long, curling lashes brushed the angle of his cheeks as his gaze slid speculatively over her slim figure. ‘I scrub up pretty well,’ he revealed modestly. ‘Maybe I’ll show you some time.’

Erin, conscious of her heart thudding hard behind her breastbone, tried to appear amused by the comment. It wasn’t easy when in her head she was seeing him standing naked under the jets of a shower.

Outside on the forecourt a second uniformed figure had joined the near apoplectic footman. Each appeared to be
urging the other to approach the truck, but neither seemed too eager to do so. Erin welcomed the diversion.

‘I think they,’ she said nodding out the window, ‘are trying to get your attention.’

His dark eyes remained on her face. ‘You have my attention.’

And I so wish I didn’t!

Erin swallowed. A wave of heat enveloped her as their gazes meshed. ‘Lucky me.’

‘As it happens it was lucky for you that I happened by today.’

‘Oh, gosh, yes!’ She felt stupid for realising that, far from flirting with her, he wanted compensating for his time. A mortified flush spread over her skin. ‘Of course I’ll pay you for your time and the petrol. My wallet is in my room—if you’ll just wait I’ll—’

He caught her arm. ‘I’m not sure you could afford me … but, no matter, you can have this one on the house.’

She shook her head, very conscious of his cool fingers on her overheated skin … Her skin wasn’t the only thing overheated; her imagination was working overtime. Was the sexual tension she was feeling real or a figment of that imagination?

‘Look, I’ve taken a big chunk out of your day. I’m sure there were other things that you needed to do and—’

‘You think I need the money.’ The realisation seemed for some reason to amuse him.

Her eyes slid from his.

‘Don’t worry, I’m a modern man, my male pride can take your pity. Tell you what—how about a compromise?’

‘What sort of compromise?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘You buy me dinner.’

‘Dinner!’ Her startled eyes flew to his.

He nodded. ‘Yes, dinner, at a place of my choice. That’s settled, then.’

‘Settled?
I didn’t say yes.’

‘And you didn’t say no. I’ll be in touch about our date.’

‘It’s not a date,’ she protested weakly.

‘Look, I don’t mean to hurry you, but I think I’m about to be thrown out.’ He leaned past her and opened the door. He was so close that she could smell the shampoo he used. She closed her eyes as a rush of hormones made her head spin.

When she opened them his face was still close. Their eyes locked and Erin felt things that were way too complicated to be explained by hormones alone.

‘Yes,’ she whispered in a voice that seemed to be coming from a long way off. ‘Yes, I will buy you dinner.’

Taking her chin in his hand, he brushed his lips against hers. The contact was so soft that she barely felt it, but she melted inside.

‘My name,
cara,
is Francesco, and I’ll be in touch very soon.’ He nudged the door so that it swung open and leaned back in his seat.

Conscious of his eyes, Erin fumbled with her belt and jumped out, her knees trembling as she walked towards the building.

He’s going to forget you exist the moment he drives away,
said the voice in her head.

In retrospect it would have been better that he had.