Erin could feel her fingertips literally tingling, a disturbing sensation, as she imagined touching … smoothing those dusky strands.
Appalled by the direction of her out-of-control imagination, she concluded that she must have been out in the sun too long. She was probably suffering from dehydration, too, having drained her water bottle an hour earlier.
Rubbing a finger across the bridge of her nose, she was relieved to find evidence to back up her theory. Despite the factor thirty she had plastered on earlier, her skin felt tight and tingly.
Well, it stood to reason that it had to be something like that. She was simply not the sort of woman who went around fantasising about running her fingers through strange men’s hair.
Sucking in a deep breath, she adopted an expression that suggested—hopefully—that she was totally immune to tall, romantic-looking figures riding black horses.
‘Do you speak English?’
He wasn’t the sort of man she would have turned to for help, but she was in no position to be picky.
Actually he was the sort of man that any women with half a brain would cross the street to avoid, though they probably wouldn’t, she conceded, recognising the weakness of her own sex when it came to men like this one.
‘Eng-lish?’ she said, enunciating each syllable slowly in the vain hope of seeing some spark of recognition in his spectacular eyes.
There was none; he just stood there looking as though he’d stepped out of a western.
‘I’m lost,’ she said, stabbing a finger at her chest. His eyes followed the action.
‘Do you … I need to get to … I’m looking for … damn.!’ she muttered, dropping down on her knees and removing the stones she had used to pin the map to the cobbles while she studied it. Anchoring a hank of wayward hair off her face with one arm, she stood up wielding the creased map in the other.
‘Map …’ she said, waving it at him.
When he looked back at her and shrugged all Erin’s frustration bubbled to the surface. The stress of the last few hours manifested itself in tears that spilled down her cheeks. With an angry curse of self-disgust she brushed the
m away with the back of her hand.
She took a deep breath and told herself to calm down; if this man couldn’t help her he might be able to direct her to someone who could.
She smiled encouragingly, then tapped a spot she had ringed in red on the map. ‘I need.’ she began, lifting her voice to a bellow.
Then she saw the total lack of comprehension in his face and sighed. ‘I don’t know why I’m shouting. You don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you?’
He looked from her face to the map in her hands and back again, then gave another magnificent shrug.
Erin’s own shoulders sagged. ‘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.