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‘Anyway, you didn’t answer my question,’ she said, cutting through his disturbed thoughts. ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’
He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Not at the moment.’
‘Cool.’
‘Cool?’ he repeated.
She smiled brightly. ‘I’m in your debt, remember?’
His mouth dropped open. How many shocks could one woman throw in such a short space of time? ‘I thought you were a virgin?’
Now she pulled a face of disgust. ‘Your mind! It’s filthy! I was going to offer to buy you dinner as a thank you for rescuing me, not offer my body to you.’
He almost laughed with his relief. Clara might be the sexiest woman he’d ever met in his life but as soon as she’d mentioned the word ‘virgin’ he’d taken an automatic mental step back. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘Good. I mean, you’re a sexy man... Has anyone ever told you that?’
Taken aback at her nonchalant delivery, Marcelo could only answer honestly. ‘Yes.’
Her expression turned to one of admiration. ‘No false modesty, even better. But you are a very sexy man and very handsome so I thought it best to check that you don’t have a girlfriend before making the offer of dinner because I would be miffed if you were my boyfriend and you went out for dinner with another woman. So what do you think about dinner? It might have to wait until I get back to the UK and can sort out my bank accounts—King Pig has my purse. Oh, and my passport. Where are we flying to?’
‘Ceres.’
‘Your island?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is there a British embassy?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good. Can you drop me there please? I’ll need to get a new passport issued. Do you know how long that’ll take?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
She shrugged. ‘Never mind. It’ll take as long as it takes. Do you think they’ll let me take Bob in with me?’
‘I have no idea.’
She pouted and blew her cheeks out. ‘Okay, I’m going to have to improvise. But that’s okay.’ She blew her cheeks again then fixed her sparkling eyes back on him. ‘I’ll blag it.’
‘What does blag it mean?’ Educated in England though he’d been and as fluent in the language as he was in his own tongue, blag it was a term he’d never heard before.
‘I’ll just walk in with him and see what happens.’ She nodded vigorously. ‘Okay, that’s the plan sorted. I’ll get my passport sorted, beg for help for a flight home if they can’t sort my banking out on Ceres—if I ask nicely, they might let me give them an IOU, sort Bob out—does your island have animal shelters?’ Her face clouded. ‘Will they let me keep him there while I arrange everything to bring him home with me?’
‘I’m sure arrangements can be made for Bob,’ he assured her, barely keeping up with the thread of her thoughts. Her mind must work at supersonic speed, jumping from thread to thread in the time it took a mere mortal to think about one thing.
She brightened like a switched-on light. ‘Brilliant. So, once I’ve got access to my bank account, can I take you out for dinner as a thank you?’
Let Clara take him out to dinner...? Now that was a decision that did not come easily. On the one hand she was ravishing and sexy and, he had to admit, entertaining. On the other hand she was a virgin. That was a big warning klaxon in his head telling him to not touch, but then it occurred to him that he was a grown man fully capable of accepting a dinner date as a means of gratitude and not as a date-date, and that sharing a meal did not have to mean the inevitability of sharing a bed afterwards.
‘On one condition,’ he told her.
She looked at him expectantly.
‘That you occasionally give your mouth a rest and my ears a break.’
She beamed. ‘Deal.’
