‘As if I’m taking you from behind?’ he supplied helpfully.
Humiliating heat stained her cheeks. ‘Sim,’ she muttered fiercely. ‘With your jacket covering me that way it looks as if I’m wearing nothing from the waist down! It’s…it’s disgusting!’
He plucked the paper from her hand and studied the picture. ‘Hmm, it certainly is…something.’
‘How can you sit there and be so unconcerned about it?’ The picture had been taken with a high-resolution camera but, with the low lighting in the car park, the suggestiveness in the picture could be misinterpreted a thousand ways. None of them complimentary.
‘Relax. We weren’t exactly having sex, were we?’
‘That’s not the point.’ She grabbed the paper back and quickly perused the article accompanying the gratuitous picture, fearing the worst. Sure enough, her father’s political campaign had been called into question, along with an even more unsavoury speculation on her private life.
If this is what they do in public we can only imagine what they do in private…
Her hands shook as she threw the offending paper down. ‘I thought this was a reputable paper.’
‘It is.’
‘Then why would they print something so…offensive?’
‘Perhaps because it’s true. We were kissing in the car park. And you were pushing your delectable backside into my groin as if you couldn’t wait till we got home to do me.’
She surged to her feet, knocking her chair aside. Her whole body was shaking with fury and she could barely grasp the chair to straighten it.
‘We both know I was not!’
‘Do we? I told you those shorts were a bad idea. Do you blame me for getting carried away?’
‘Oh, you’re despicable!’
‘And you’re delicious when you’re angry,’ he replied lazily, picked up the paper and carried on reading.
The urge to drive her fist through the paper into his face made her take another hasty step back.
She abhorred violence. Or at least she had before she’d met Theo Pantelides. Now she wasn’t so sure what she was capable of…
‘Aren’t you going to eat, anjo?’ he asked without taking his eyes off the page.
‘No. I’ve lost my appetite,’ she snapped.
She fled the terrace to the sound of his mocking laughter and raced up to her room, her face flaming and angry humiliation smashing through her chest.
He found her on the beach an hour later. She heard the crunch of his feet in the warm sand and studiously avoided looking up. She carried on sketching the stationary boat anchored about a mile away and ignored him when he settled himself on the flat rock next to her.
He didn’t speak for a few minutes before he let out an irritated breath. ‘The silent treatment doesn’t work for me, Inez.’
She snapped her pad shut and turned to face him. His lips were pinched with displeasure but his eyes were focused, gauging her reaction…almost as if her reaction mattered.
‘Having my sex life sleazily speculated about in the weekend newspaper doesn’t work for me either.’ She blinked to dilute the intense focus and continued. ‘I agree that perhaps those shorts were not the best idea. But I saw the other diners in that restaurant. There were people far more famous than I am. But still the paparazzo followed us into the car park and took our picture.’
Inez thought he tensed but perhaps it was the movement of his body as he reached behind him and produced a plate laden with food. ‘It’s done. Let’s move on.’
She yearned to remain on her high horse, but with her exertions last night, coupled with having eaten less than a whole meal in the last twenty-four hours, it wasn’t surprising when her stomach growled loudly in anticipation.
He shook out a napkin and settled the plate in her lap. ‘Eat up,’ he instructed and picked up her sketchpad. ‘You have an hour before the stylist arrives to address the issue of your wardrobe.’
She froze in the act of reaching for the food. ‘I don’t need a stylist. I can easily go back home and pack up some more clothes.’
‘You’ll not be returning to your father’s house for the next three months. Besides, if your clothes are all in the style of heavy evening gowns or tiny shorts, then you’ll agree the time has come to go a different route?’