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back to the car.
Her eyes narrowed. ‘I’m already starting to regret it—’
‘Please just get in the car, Cairo,’ he instructed as he opened the passenger door for her, having no intention of arguing with her again before they had eaten.
No doubt it would be another matter afterwards!
‘So you’re going back to work, after all? And in the theatre?’ Rafe couldn’t hide his surprise as the two of them sat on the carpeted floor in the sitting-room of Cairo’s apartment using chopsticks to eat the Chinese food directly from the cartons, and finishing off the bottle of red wine Cairo had opened earlier.
Cairo had suggested warming plates and laying the table, but Rafe had vetoed the idea, opting for this less formal way of dining once Cairo had changed into comfortable worn jeans and a green cashmere sweater so that she could sit cross-legged on the floor.
‘I start rehearsals in a little under two weeks and open in three.’ Cairo nodded as she reached over to pick up a prawn.
Rafe found himself watching as she lifted the chopsticks and deftly popped the food into her mouth, her lips bare of gloss—well, they would be, as most of it was still on his shirt!
He had always loved Cairo’s mouth. The fullness of her lips. The way they tilted slightly at the corners. Their pouting softness when he kissed them….
‘I’m really looking forward to it,’ she added, before licking the sauce from those delectable lips.
Rafe dragged his gaze away, aware that it was only the way he was also sitting cross-legged on the carpet that prevented Cairo from seeing his purely physical response to the provocation that was her mouth.
He nodded. ‘I remember you saying years ago that it was your first love. But it’s hard work, and there’s no money in it—’
‘I’m not interested in the money, Rafe.’ Cairo turned to him impatiently. ‘I want the immediacy of the theatre. The audience response as each performance is just slightly different. The adrenalin rush each night just before you step onto the stage for the first time.’ She shook her head, her eyes glowing. ‘There’s nothing quite like it.’
Rafe could see that for Cairo there wasn’t.
His own years of performing off-Broadway, before he was ‘discovered’ by a movie producer, seemed like a lifetime ago, but he did still remember that adrenalin rush.
He was just surprised, that after years of starring in increasingly popular box-office hits—the millions Cairo was paid for each performance increasing as a result—she was actually going back to the gruelling demand of theatre work with very little monetary reward.
‘Maybe I’ll come to your opening night …’ he murmured.
Cairo gave him a sharp glance. ‘What on earth for?’
He tensed. ‘Why not?’
Admittedly this last hour of just sitting on the floor, eating informally and chatting about everything and nothing—mainly nothing, as it was less controversial!—had been very pleasant after the previously fraught forty-eight hours.
But the last thing Cairo needed was to know that Rafe was sitting out in the audience on the first night of her return to the theatre after a break of almost eight years.
What if she was awful?
Making films was totally different from working on stage—no retakes for one thing!—and Cairo was nervous enough already without the added pressure of knowing Rafe was sitting beyond the footlights watching her.
‘I would really rather you didn’t, Rafe.’ She grimaced.
He frowned his irritation. ‘Why the hell not?’ he repeated harshly.
Well, Cairo supposed it would have been too much to expect ‘very pleasant’ to last for too much longer!
She sat back. ‘Why would you want to bother? Just so that you can see me fall flat on my face?’
‘That’s damned unfair, Cairo, and you know it!’ Rafe protested.
‘No, I don’t know it, Rafe.’ Cairo shook her head. ‘We aren’t really even friends any more, so why on earth would you want to come to the theatre to watch me on my opening night?’
His eyes were glacial. ‘Maybe I would just like to wish you well?’
‘A bouquet of flowers would do that, don’t you think?’
No, Rafe didn’t. He found himself annoyed far beyond reason by Cairo’s dismissal of his suggestion. Dammit, he wanted to come to London in three weeks’ time and watch her opening performance!
She looked about eighteen again, sitting there in her tight jeans and that soft green sweater, her face almost bare of make-up, her hair pulled up into a band at her crown, leaving the long arch of her neck vulnerably bare.
Rafe’s anger faded as quickly as it had flared into life. ‘Are yellow roses still your favourite flowers?’ he asked huskily.
Cairo gave him a startled look. ‘I— Yes. Yes, they are.’
His mouth twisted self-derisively. ‘You thought I’d forgotten.’
‘I—’ She broke off to once again moisten the pout of her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘It’s been eight years, Rafe,’ she pointed out.
Eight or eighty, Rafe hadn’t forgotten a single thing about this woman’s likes and dislikes. Either in bed or out of it!
She gave him a teasing smile. ‘A lot of other women have passed through your—’
‘Cairo,’ Rafe bit out warningly.
‘—life, since then,’ she continued ruefully.
Rafe held her gaze with his as he reached over and plucked the chopsticks from her unresisting fingers. ‘And I couldn’t tell you the favourite flower of a single one of them,’ he admitted softly.
Cairo blinked, totally disorientated by the way the atmosphere between them had once again changed from being charged with anger to sexual tension instead.
She shook her head as she nervously moistened her lips—
‘Don’t do that, Cairo!’ Rafe groaned.
‘Don’t do what?’ She was barely breathing as Rafe’s head slowly bent towards hers.
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