Cara despised him. No matter how much he might still desire her and, he suspected, she still desired him, he preferred his women to not loathe the very sound of his name.
And sex between them...nothing good could come of it. It had got him into enough trouble as it was, just as he’d always suspected sex with Cara would—why else had he kept such a distance from her sexually before?
In the world in which he mixed, sex was freely given with no real commitment assumed by anyone. Pepe liked it that way. It saved messy entanglements and even messier goodbyes. Everyone knew where they stood, no one got hurt, and everyone was happy.
‘Well, that’s good to know,’ Cara said sarcastically. ‘Let me guess—now that you don’t need anything from me, there’s no need to pretend any more.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You never desired me before you needed to get hold of my phone.’
‘On the contrary, cucciola mia, I’ve always found you incredibly attractive.’
‘I’m pretty sure you find any woman with a pulse attractive. I’m saying you never desired me in particular.’
‘I did, but I’m terrified of my sister-in-law. She would have tied me naked to a tree if I’d tried anything on with you.’
Despite herself, Cara snickered. Pepe was the cause of all her stress yet somehow he was able to soothe much of it away. The git. ‘I would have loved to have seen that.’
‘Don’t worry—if the baby does turn out to be mine then I’m sure you’ll get your chance when Grace finds out.’
‘There’s no if about it. This baby is yours.’
‘Time will tell.’ A black eyebrow shot up, a quizzical groove appearing in his forehead. ‘If it is my child, will I also have to worry about your angry father beating at my door?’
‘Seeing as he’s not around, that’s the last thing you’ll have to worry about.’
He straightened in his seat, consternation replacing his amusement. ‘Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you’d lost your father too.’
It occurred to her that this was the closest Pepe had come to showing genuine contrition all day.
‘My father isn’t dead,’ she quickly clarified, recalling being told his own father had died over a decade ago.
He looked confused. ‘Then surely he will want to rip my head off and play football with it?’
She couldn’t help the wry smile that formed on her lips, although she experienced the usual sickening churn in her belly she felt whenever she thought of her father. ‘I’m sure there’s a lot of fathers out there who would love nothing more than to cause you actual bodily harm, but I can assure you my dad’s not one of them.’
‘Why not? A father’s job is to look out for his child.’
‘My dad never bothered to read the job description.’ Only years of faux nonchalance on the subject kept the bitterness from her voice, yet the churning increased, a situation not helped by the roils in her belly from the motion of the jet. Talking about her father always made her feel so raw. ‘Believe me, if he were to meet you, the closest he would come to touching you is putting a hand on your shoulder and insisting on buying you a beer.’