Hot Summer Flings: A Spanish Awakening / The Italian Next Door... / Interview with the Daredevil. Nicola Marsh
course he knew her. Emilio, not a man given to exaggeration, believed totally he could have located her blindfolded in a room of a thousand beautiful Englishwomen!
It was enough, he reflected, to make a man believe in fate. Of course, Emilio did not believe in signs or cosmic forces, but he did believe in following his instincts.
If he followed his at that moment it might get them both arrested. A smile that did not soften the predatory glow in his eyes flickered across his face as he thought, It might be worth it.
‘BUT I need you here tonight!’
Megan was not surprised to hear the aggrieved note tinged with truculence in her boss’s voice.
Charlie Armstrong had not made his millions by allowing little things like air-traffic controllers’ strikes to stand in his way and he expected his staff to display an equally robust response to such obstacles to his wishes, even when that member of staff was his daughter.
Actually, especially when that employee was his daughter!
‘Sorry, Dad.’
‘What use is sorry to me? I need—’
‘But it looks like I’m stuck here,’ Megan inserted, her calm, unruffled tone affording a stark contrast to her father’s haranguing bellow. ‘I’ll book into a hotel here and catch the first flight out tomorrow,’ she promised.
‘And when will that be?’
Megan glanced at the slightly scratched face of the watch that encircled her slim wrist. Not an expensive item but as far as Megan was concerned utterly invaluable, it had belonged to her mother, who had died when she was twelve.
‘It’s a twenty-four-hour strike so 9:00 a.m. tomorrow is the earliest flight.’
‘Nine! No, that is simply not acceptable!’
‘Acceptable or not, Dad, short of sprouting wings I’m grounded, and before you suggest it, the trains and cross-channel ferries are booked up.’
‘By people with foresight.’
Megan resisted the impulse to retort by people who were returning home after the international football tournament, knowing that an excuse, legitimate or not, would not soothe her father when he was in this mood.
She let him vent his displeasure loudly for another few minutes, responding with the occasional monosyllabic murmur of agreement when appropriate while she allowed herself to be carried along by the seething mass of bodies, fellow stranded travellers who were all heading in the same direction, towards the exit.
Getting a taxi was going to be a nightmare. Megan mentally prepared herself for a long wait. Maybe she should simply camp out in the airport overnight?
‘And don’t expect me to fork out for fancy hotels. Being my daughter doesn’t mean you can take advantage of the situation. I expect the same level of commitment from you that I would expect from any of my—’
As she tuned out the lecture she had heard many times before Megan’s attention strayed around the crowded space heaving with a cross-section of humanity.
The air left her lungs in a fractured gasp as recognition jolted through her body with the fizz of an electric shock. ‘Oh, my God!’ she breathed, pressing a hand to her heaving chest.
‘What? What is it?’
Megan squeezed her eyes shut, but still saw the face that had caused her to haemorrhage the composure that had become her trademark.
It was not a face that was easy to banish!
She took a deep breath, looking up in guilty acknowledgement towards the young man who had nearly tripped over her when she had come to a dead halt without warning. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘No problems,’ said the backpacker, losing his air of irritation and producing an engaging smile as he took in her slim figure, gleaming, glossy brown hair and English-rose heart-shaped face. ‘Do you want a hand with that bag? ‘
Megan, who was already drifting away, didn’t register the offer as she glanced back towards the door through which she had seen the tall figure framed, her emotions a mixture of heart-thudding excitement and trepidation.
It was empty.
Had she imagined it? Her glance swung to left and right, moving over the swathe of heads. Emilio Rios was not the sort of man who blended into a crowd.
‘What is it, Megan? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing, Dad, I’m fine,’ she lied, well aware that her reaction to someone who bore a fleeting similarity to someone who probably had forgotten she existed had been, to put it mildly, way over the top.
‘Well, you don’t sound fine!’
It was mortifying. In a matter of seconds she had regressed to the cringingly naïve and self-conscious twenty-one-year-old she had been the last time she had seen him. If her feet had not been nailed to the floor she would have turned and run, exactly the way she had eventually done on that occasion.
Now how crazy was that?
She had not seen the man for almost two years and he had probably forgotten both her and the rather embarrassing circumstances of their last meeting.
All the same, she was glad she had only imagined him.
Megan took evasive action to avoid a baggage trolley being wheeled straight at her before replying to her father’s comment. ‘It was nothing. I just thought I saw someone, that’s all. Look, I’ll have to go now. I’ll ring you later when I’ve booked in somewhere.’
‘Saw who?’
Megan took a deep breath and swallowed, the name emerging huskily from her dry throat. ‘Emilio Rios.’
‘Emilio!’
‘Or someone who looked like him.’ This was Madrid. There were a lot of dark, dramatically handsome men; some were even several inches over six feet. Why assume that man she had seen for a split second had been him? It could have been anyone.
The realisation made some of the tension leave her shoulders.
‘No, it could be him, you know,’ her father mused. ‘He has an office in Madrid.’
It would have been harder to mention a capital where there was not a building bearing the Rios name. Emilio was accounted by some in the financial world to be a genius, by others to be incredibly lucky.
In Megan’s opinion, to be as successful as he was he had to be both, with the added essential ingredient of utter ruthlessness thrown in!
The tension back with bells on, Megan heard her father add, ‘The Rios family estate is nearby, magnificent old place.’ The awe in the voice of a man who lived in a stately pile with more rooms than Megan had ever counted suggested the Rios Estate really was something out of the ordinary.
‘Well, if he was here he’s gone now,’ she said as much for her own benefit as her dad’s.
‘I stayed there once when Luis and I were negotiating a deal. My God, that man was slippery. Did you ever meet Emilio’s father?’
‘I thought he was a bit of a snob, actually.’
‘No, not a snob,’ her father disagreed, sounding irritated by her outspoken appraisal. ‘Just very old-school and immensely proud of his family heritage, and who can blame him? They can trace their history back centuries. You know, this Madrid stopover of yours might not be such a bad thing after all.’
Deeply distrustful of the thoughtful note in her father’s voice, Megan frowned and said warily, ‘You think so?’
‘I’ll ring Emilio.’