LITMIR.BIZ

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behind them. ‘I’ll just stay here and clear up this sticky juice from the floor, shall I?’

      Cairo turned back to give him a mocking smile. ‘That’s very kind of you, Rafe,’ she accepted lightly. ‘I’m sure you’ll find everything you need in the cupboard under the sink,’ she added.

      His eyes glittered dangerously. ‘Not everything that I need, Cairo,’ he ground out harshly.

      She gave him a censorious frown. ‘Just do your best, hmm?’ she snapped.

      ‘I usually do,’ he stated deliberately.

      Cairo shot him a silencing glare before leaving the kitchen, Daisy’s hand still tucked trustingly in her own.

      CHAPTER THREE

      RAFE had showered, dressed, already had the barbecue alight and ready for cooking the steaks for their dinner, and was sitting on the terrace drinking another glass of white wine by the time Cairo and Daisy rejoined him outside. Daisy looked very cute in her blue corduroy skirt and pink T-shirt, and Cairo looked even better in flat sandals, her tanned legs bare, and a dark green, knee-length, strappy silk dress that clung in all the right places.

      Or—depending on your point of view—all the wrong ones, Rafe allowed wryly as his gaze lingered on the bareness of her tanned shoulders and the tops of her breasts.

      It had been a mistake to kiss Cairo earlier, he acknowledged now. But it was simply the most recent of the many mistakes he had made where she was concerned—allowing himself to fall for her eight years ago having definitely been the worst one of them all….

      His mouth tightened as he raised his gaze to hers. ‘Help yourself to a glass of wine,’ he invited as she moved to sit down at the other end of the marble-topped dining table. ‘How was Margo?’

      ‘Very well,’ Cairo answered distantly as she poured some of the white wine into a second glass—and having absolutely no intention of telling him what her sister’s reply had been when Cairo had challenged her over Rafe’s arrival earlier today.

      ‘Get over yourself!’ had been Margo’s unhelpful comment.

      It wasn’t herself Cairo had to get over—it was Rafe’s mockery of her and her resentment towards him!

      ‘It’s high time the two of you got over that, too,’ had been Margo’s response to that claim.

      Not exactly helpful advice when even now Cairo could feel the antagonism between Rafe and herself burning beneath the surface of this polite exchange.

      Not that Rafe looked particularly concerned by it. In fact, he looked altogether too disturbingly handsome in faded denims and an open-necked, short-sleeved shirt the same shade of blue as his eyes, the dampness of his hair brushed back from those hard, aristocratically chiselled features inherited from his Spanish father.

      Cairo had chosen her own dress for this evening with care, knowing she would need all her self-confidence to face Rafe again after that heated exchange in the kitchen. She had also swept her hair up and secured it loosely on her crown, leaving her neck and shoulders bare, her face already lightly tanned and requiring only a peach gloss applied to her lips.

      The lips that still felt tinglingly sensitive and slightly bruised from the force of Rafe’s kiss!

      ‘Mummy said to say hello, Uncle Rafe,’ Daisy told him happily.

      ‘Did she, now?’ he drawled.

      ‘Yes.’ The little girl nodded. ‘And she hopes you do well at the film festival.’

      ‘That’s very thoughtful of her,’ Rafe accepted dryly—he had a few things he intended saying personally to Margo once Daisy was safely tucked up in bed! ‘Can your aunty Cairo make a salad, do you think?’ he teased gently as he stood up to turn the steaks on the barbecue.

      Daisy gave a giggle. ‘Aunty Cairo cooked omelettes last night.’

      ‘Did she now?’ Rafe quirked dark, mocking brows. ‘She’s obviously a woman of many talents!’ he added with a taunting sideways glance at ‘Aunty Cairo’.

      Daisy seemed completely unaware of the intended insult to her aunt, singing quietly to herself as she began to lay the table outside for the three of them.

      But Cairo certainly wasn’t, the narrow-eyed glare she gave Rafe letting him know in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t amused.

      Rafe returned Cairo’s look for several long seconds, his smile derisive, before he turned his full attention to cooking the steaks. The problem was that Cairo was just too beautiful for him—or any other man!—to look at for too long without wanting to take her to bed.

      Which was something that was never going to happen ever again, Rafe told himself grimly, in spite of the fact that he had enjoyed kissing her earlier. No, he’d more than enjoyed it—he had been wanting to repeat the experience ever since.

      Eight years, dammit—and within hours of seeing her again Rafe’s body ached with the desire that had been aroused earlier and remained unfulfilled!

      ‘How is Margo, really?’ he asked once Daisy had gone into the kitchen to collect the cutlery.

      Cairo shrugged those delectably bare shoulders. ‘She believes that the specialist is thinking of admitting her to the clinic tomorrow if her blood pressure hasn’t gone down by then.’

      Rafe could hear the underlying concern in Cairo’s voice. ‘She wasn’t ill like this with Daisy, was she?’

      ‘Not as far as I’m aware, no.’ Cairo frowned. ‘I haven’t spent a great deal of time in England the last few years, Rafe,’ she explained sharply as he raised questioning brows.

      His lip curled scornfully. ‘Too busy making a name for yourself in Hollywood, I expect.’

      ‘That’s where Lionel lived, Rafe,’ she said defensively as she heard the censure in his tone. ‘And where he worked. It was only natural that I should mainly work there, too.’

      Really, this man seemed to think that everything she did, everything she said, was suspect—especially if it allowed him to make some cutting comment about it!

      ‘I seem to remember that you once said your main love was the stage,’ he said huskily. ‘I even talked of moving to England for a while so that I could be with you when you accepted the part you had been offered in The Graduate.’

      Cairo gave a pained frown. Yes, Rafe had talked of staying temporarily in England. But that had been before he’d become bored with their relationship and had an affair with another woman!

      Her mouth tightened. ‘So you could be with me and all those other adoring females panting at your bedroom door!’ she dismissed scathingly. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Rafe,’ she added, standing up abruptly, ‘I need to go and make the salad.’

      Dinner hadn’t exactly been a relaxed meal, Cairo acknowledged ruefully as they cleared everything away a couple of hours later. Thankfully Daisy, reassured after her earlier chat on the telephone with her mother, was back to her normal, talkative self, and her chatter had filled in the silence that had existed between Rafe and Cairo. The two of them had barely addressed a word directly to one another—’could you please pass the salt?’ really didn’t count as conversation!

      Rafe excused himself to make a telephone call while Cairo put Daisy to bed, delaying as long as she possibly could in her niece’s bedroom before rejoining Rafe on the terrace. She finally came outside to find him watching the last rays of sunset gleaming redly in the rapidly darkening sky, dozens of lights on in the houses dotted in the valley below.

      Cairo stood hesitantly in the doorway, not altogether comfortable with the air of intimacy that surrounded him.

      ‘Sit down, Cairo,’ he ordered without turning.

      She gasped. ‘How did you—?’

      ‘Your

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