An effect that no one had ever had on her before. Not even Enrico, the man who she had once called her fiancé.
Holding herself steady, Flávia spun slowly back around to face the speaker.
And promptly wished she hadn’t.
CHAPTER TWO
THE MAN WAS—her brain faltered, flailing to understand what her eyes were seeing—simply extraordinary.
Last time she’d seen him, he’d been one figure in a sea of faces, every one of them clad in work suits, and yet, to her, he’d stood out. Now, he wore the same impeccable tuxedo as every other man. His hair the same, neat style as every other man. He was well groomed, with intelligent eyes the same blue as roughly three hundred million other human beings in the world. And yet...he wasn’t the same as them.
There was nothing the same about Jacob Cooper, whatsoever. Indeed, far from her memory making more of the man than had ever really been, Flávia now realised, to her horror, that her brain hadn’t nearly recalled quite how magnetic he was.
Flávia couldn’t quite put her finger on it and yet it was there, nonetheless. Maybe it was that he seemed infinitely leaner, taller, more powerful, than any other man she’d ever known. Perhaps it was the way those eyes—as blue as a morpho butterfly—rooted her to the wooden dance floor. And yet simultaneously made her feel as though she was floating a good foot or so above it. Or possibly, it was the fact that the air around her seemed to be heating up, as if flowing right from this stranger’s body straight into hers.
Like nothing she’d ever experienced before.
She eyed the empty champagne glass accusingly. Evidently, the alcohol had allowed her sister’s ridiculous have a little fun instruction to get into her head, and now it was running riot, upending the customarily neatly arranged compartments in her brain.
Vaguely, she recalled that he’d levelled a question at her, although for the life of her she couldn’t remember what that question had been.
Her mind spun, the cogs slipping in their haste.
Ah, something to do with Delgado being a boor.
She really ought to speak, but how could her brain form words when it couldn’t even think straight? Flávia slid a discreet tongue over her teeth, unsticking them from her suddenly parched lips, and forced her vocal cords back into operation. And if her tone was a touch huskier than usual, well, was he really to know? From one lecture?
‘You speak Portuguese?’
‘A little.’
‘That’s unusual.’
He didn’t so much as shrug to give the semblance of it.
‘I made it my business to learn the language when I got the invitation to this summer’s teaching programme and I knew that your man over there was head of the oncology department.’
Interesting.
‘Why do that?’ she couldn’t help but ask. ‘There are so many countries attending these annual summer teaching programmes that the common language is generally English, anyway.’
For a moment she wasn’t sure he was going to answer her. His eyes bored into her and she felt something unfurl from her toes right the way up. Then, suddenly, he spoke.
‘Let’s just say that I make it my business to understand the nature of the people with whom I’ll be working closely over the next few months. I like to know their character and I like to know their mettle.’
He smiled. Or, at least, he bared his teeth into something which could equally have been a smile, or a grimace. And Flávia couldn’t have said why it made her think that she pitied anyone who tried to stir things up with this man.
It also made her more open with him than she might otherwise have intended.
‘Dr Silvio Delgado’s grandfather was one of the founding contributors to this hospital.’ As the man was all too fond of telling people at every opportunity. ‘He believes that gives him an inalienable right to insult whoever he pleases.’
Like calling her ‘jungle woman’ and turning it into an insult.
Then again, was it surprising she was sensitive to it? A childhood of being m
ocked by the other kids—her sister leaping in to fight her battles—had left more of a scar than Flávia would have liked. Yet she suspected, right at this moment, that it was the idea of Jacob Cooper thinking she was a bit...odd that bothered her more than anything that idiot Delgado could ever say.
‘Indeed,’ he offered in a tone so neutral that Flávia couldn’t ascertain anything from it.