Happy Mother's Day! - By Sharon Kendrick Page 0,64

‘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