Aware of the way his dark, knowing, heavy-lidded eyes would rest on her, aware of the strong width of his shoulders, the lean, hard-packed lines of his body. The sensual twist of his mouth.
She’d never been so aware of a man in her life. And she didn’t want to be aware of him—didn’t want to feel this panicky, jittery rushing of blood through her veins whenever she saw him, didn’t want to feel the heat flushing through her skin when she realised he was, yet again, looking at her.
Why couldn’t she control her reaction to him? Why—she shut her eyes in despair—was she reacting to him in the first place?
He was the last kind of man she should want to have any interest in! Too rich, too arrogant, too blatant, too—too everything. She hated that type! The type that thought they owned the world and could help themselves to anything in it.
Including all the women they wanted.
And she knew exactly how long he’d keep a woman—a handful of weeks, a month or two at the most. During their brief affair his mistress would be seen everywhere with him, at one glittering event after another, his ‘constant companion’ as the coy vulgarity of the tabloids loved to put it, and then, when he was bored—dumped. The end. Nada.
And he’d be on to the next one.
She’d got a rundown from Susie—uninvited, but that hadn’t stopped her friend from telling her—on just how many women he’d been seen around with in Europe and America in the last year alone. There’d been an opera singer, a model and a tennis ace, just for starters.
All of them had been glamorous, high-profile and astonishingly beautiful women, with fantastic figures and dramatic personalities.
So why is he the slightest bit interested in me? Portia thought bitterly.
Susie echoed her question, but from a quite different angle.
‘Honestly, Portia, you should be flattered he’s keen on you! He can pick and choose, you know!’
‘Well, let him pick and choose someone else, then!’ Portia replied tightly.
Susie looked at her.
‘You know, it would do you good to let him have his wicked way with you.’
Portia stared disbelievingly at her friend.
‘What?’
‘I mean it,’ said Susie doggedly. ‘You need a man, Portia. You haven’t been out with anyone since you and Geoffrey split up.’
Portia’s face had gone rigid. ‘I’ve been out with Simon Masters—’
Susie interrupted her ruthlessly. ‘I mean a real man, not a wet rag! This Diego Saez would be ideal for you!’
‘Ideal? Are you insane?’
‘No, just realistic. Look, I know you were cut up over Geoffrey, but you can’t just shut yourself away for the rest of your life. It’s ridiculous! That’s why someone like Diego Saez would be so good for you. Boy, would he get you cured!’
Portia’s mouth tightened.
‘Thank you—but I don’t consider myself to be in need of a cure.’
‘Just a good, hard man—excuse the expression, but it’s true. Someone who’ll sweep away all those inhibitions and let you rejoin the female sex!’
Portia turned on her icily.
‘Believe me, Susie, when I “rejoin the female sex,” as you so charmingly put it, it will not be with some ruthless Latin Lothario like Diego Saez!’
Susie was unrepentant.
‘Why not?’
‘Why not? Are you mad? Do you seriously think any intelligent woman would want to humiliate herself like that? Be the latest idiotic floozy for Diego Saez to amuse himself with, and then get dumped two weeks later when he goes on to his next glorious conquest? And have everyone laugh at her when he’d dumped her?’