CHAPTER TWO

      “DO YOU really want me to tell you? Or shall I surprise you?”

      Vidal heard the aroused tone of his voice, felt his body hardening even more, had no control over it at all.

      What was happening to him? What was he doing?

      Instead of gulping down some coffee and heading for the plane he should have boarded an hour ago, he was waxing poetic, all but pouncing on the woman. A woman whose name he didn’t even know. A woman who might even be engaged or married.

      His eyes darted to her hands—those supple, skilled fingers, made for taking lingeringly into his mouth...

      Whoa. Focus, Vidal.

      No rings. Good. Great.

      But why great? Why should that matter? In an hour he’d leave, never see her again. And, anyway, she’d said she was a surgeon. That probably explained the absence of rings. She wasn’t wearing any kind of jewelry at all. And she should—she should wear sapphires, like her eyes—and nothing else, with just his leg thrown over hers for cover...

      What was wrong with him? He didn’t pursue women. Never. Not even in his mind. In fact, he’d turned dodging them into an art. So what was he doing, standing there like a hormone-ridden adolescent, panting over this—this...vision?

      Vision? The woman wasn’t even beautiful!

      No, just the answer to his every taste and fantasy.

      “So, will you tell me? Or will you just stand there and hyperventilate?” The vision was also all but laughing her head off at his eagerness. He should mind. He didn’t.

      He gazed into her disarming eyes and something warm and soft spread in his gut. Let her make fun of him if it would keep them radiating that wicked innocence, make that exquisite head tilt, letting that burnished carmine hair riot over those full...

      That’s it. He’d gone over the edge. Right into mental breakdown.

      He’d thought he’d been suffering from clinical depression. But no depression manifested as uncontrollable lust and a desire to make a fool of oneself. Maybe manic depression?

      Oh, whatever. It was worth it. She was worth it.

      “I am far from back to normal.” He pitched his voice lower, throwing himself into this weirdness of wanting to be open, needing to communicate. “And right now I’m wiped out. I forgot how exhausting CPR can be. If it wasn’t for you taking over ventilation, I think I would have passed out. So I could say that’s why I’m hyperventilating. But I won’t. It’s you. You leave me breathless.” He reached out, ran his thumb over the elegant line of her nose, tracing the soft freckles’ pattern. She let him, her eyes turning turquoise with... equal eagerness?

      “And you’ll leave me in suspense? Oh, the torture!” she gasped in perfect damsel-in-distress mode, her lament both intentionally silly and provocative.

      Her teasing tickled his all but forgotten sense of humor. Madre de Dios, she was inviting his intimacy—and what an invitation. Heat rose inside him, took him over.

      “Want to know what’s torture?” He placed his arms on both sides of her, bore down on her. Her fresh scent deluged him, mock-distressed lips just a breath away. She only deserved that he devour them. His eyes moved from her lips to her eyes, explicit with his desire. Then he voiced it. “Another minute without tasting you.”

      Her eyes flickered, her lips opened on a tiny gasp. Then her breath rushed out, scorching his cheek. Would she back off?

      She didn’t.

      Purpose settled in her bewitching eyes. Those smoldering, exuberant, piercingly intelligent eyes. Eyes to drown gratefully in. But was that challenge, too? Conviction that he’d back off?

      Not on her life. Or his. He was out of control, and loving it. Only one thing mattered: showing her how much she affected him. Taking this to the next level, right now. He wanted this to continue, wherever it took him. Wanted to connect with her, bind her somehow, so he’d find her again when he returned.

      He sat down on the couch beside her, his hands reaching for her, stinging with the need to make contact with her. Her eyes shot wider before her lids fell, obscuring her reaction. Her head was a perfect fit cradled in his large palm, angled for his deliberate approach. Her heat rose to meet his, igniting him.

      It had been too long. Forgotten—no, unknown. That blast of awareness, that gnawing anticipation. He was still alive after all.

      His other hand dipped in the curve of her waist. Dios—that steep, firm curve. She gasped. He drew her closer until her breasts brushed his chest. Her every nerve seemed to tremble and buzz under hands that felt like electrodes of a monitor, tapping into her reactions, recording them. Turbulent, anxious, feverish. Or were those his sensations, doubling back up his awareness pathways?

      His eyes scanned for signs of apprehension, rejection. None. She was nervous, yes, but willing, impatient for him. As he was for her, for those lips.

      At the last second, he remembered. His lips landed on her velvet cheek instead. “You got enough of my resistant strains today,” he murmured against her flesh, burying his hunger in a trail all the way down to her pulse, settling there and feasting. Dios, this was hot, powerful—unprecedented. She lurched, panting as hard as he was. It was the same way with her. “Querida...”

      “Cassandra, there you are!”

      The voice drowned his whisper, snapped their surroundings back. He turned vexed eyes around, saw a brunette walking up to them.

      “Thought you must be going crazy, looking for this. Apparently not.” The woman held up a handbag, but her eyes were on him. He almost groaned at the familiar combination of extreme female interest and curiosity. “A woman gave it to me. She’d seen us together earlier, said you’d left it behind in the cafeteria when you ran to the emergency. She’d also seen you...rushing here. Sorry I mucked it up a bit. I had to produce something to prove to the guards it’s yours.”

      Vidal still heard the woman talking, yet made no sense of anything any more. The name ‘Cassandra’ was sinking into his mind like a megaton depth charge. Then it exploded.

      Cassandra.

      She was a Cassandra? As in Cassandra St James?

      No. No. Dios, no! You can’t be this cruel.

      Thoughts screeched, frantic for a way out, until something started burning inside his head.

      It had to be someone else. The world was full of Cassandras.

      Si, ciertamente. Full of Cassandras who were American, surgeons, redheads and in Madrid Airport at the same time Cassandra St James was.

      And God didn’t have anything to do with any of this. He had only himself to blame. He had felt something cataclysmic brewing the moment he’d seen her. Felt it and disregarded it. Chose to mis-interpret it even.

      But this—this was far worse than anything his morbid imagination could have conjured up.

      It was her.

      Arthur’s daughter. Arthur’s daughter.