by Marinelli, Carol; Hayward, Jennifer; Stephens, Susan; Anderson, Natalie
Heat seared his belly. “It was an omission,” he said curtly, “not a mistruth.”
“It was juvenile, ill thought-out and ill advised. Although Monika,” she added, voice dripping with sarcasm, “was quick to point out there was some deeper lesson you were all supposed to be learning. What was yours…revenge is sweet?”
“Maybe it was that you are sweet, angel, as I seem to have acquired a high-maintenance fiancée along the way.”
She made a sound at the back of her throat. Fixed her gaze on his. “And to think I was considering being intimate with you again. Trusting you, when life is just a joke to you.”
“I assure you,” he returned in a dangerously low voice, “I take all of this very seriously. I’ve done nothing but since our impetuous night in bed together landed us in this unfortunate…situation. It was an expensive move for both of us, querida, and the costs keep rising.”
Her sapphire eyes snapped with fury. She put her nose in the air and began a conversation with a judge sitting across the table. He slid his sunglasses back on, muttering a curse beneath his breath. No way was he letting her derail them again—destroy what they’d begun building. This was ending now.
He laced his fingers through hers as they left the lunch and headed for the show jumping ring to watch Natalia ride in her junior class. Cecily tugged on his hand. “We don’t need to be joined at the hip.”
“Yes we do,” he replied evenly. “There are photographers everywhere. Now is not the time to regret your impulsive behavior, meu carinho.”
Her chin came up. “And I expect you do?”
“In this moment, sí.” He flashed her a blinding smile as a photographer pointed a camera at them.
Her smile slipped as Natalia bounded up to them, wearing cream colored breeches and a red riding jacket. “Will you walk the course with me?” she asked Cecily, breathlessly. “I always get so nervous before a class I want to upend my stomach.”
His fiancée dropped his hand and gave him a victorious look. “Sure. Jump on Sappho and show me her stride.”
* * *
Cecily walked the course with Natalia, focusing on the technical aspect of the test ahead of the young rider rather than the familiar, almost ritualistic routine she would have done anything to be a part of. She’d thought she might feel better contributing. Instead she felt more ragged inside with every step she took. More undone.
When was it going to stop hurting so much? Because right now it felt like never.
She managed to avoid the familiar faces she came across, including Virginia Nelissen, her arch rival on the Dutch team who was competing in a later class. Slipping out of the ring after wishing Natalia good luck, she went to watch in the VIP area with Alejandro and the rest of their group.
The strategy she and Natalia had devised paid off. Cutting the corner at precisely the right angle, Natalia turned in a clear round with a very fast time and placed second in her class. Sebastien, radiating with pride, insisted they all join him and Monika for a celebratory drink in the tent he’d had erected for refreshments.
It was über-hot in there, with the soaring afternoon temperatures, far too many people packed inside far too small a space. Cecily’s head throbbed, a band of tension encircling her skull. She really should have eaten more today but her stomach had been so off.
She would find Natalia, congratulate her and leave. But that, of course, proved impossible. She and Alejandro got caught up in an endless round of chit chat with her old social set. Wrapping herself in an impenetrable shield, she allowed nothing and no one to permeate it, including her fiancé she was still furious with.
She was discussing the course with a jubilant Natalia, intent on extracting herself imminently, when Virginia Nelissen tracked her down.
“Cecily.” The current number six rider in the world enveloped her in a cloud of perfume and air kisses, causing Natalia to melt away into the crowd. “How did I not know you were going to be here?”
“I’m not riding.”
“Why ever not?’ Virginia, the circuit’s biggest gossip, gave her a speculative look. “It’s a fabulous course.”
“I’m taking a break,” Cecily said woodenly. “That’s all.”
“Oh,” said the Dutch rider, hazel eyes wide with feigned innocence, “I was worried the rumors were true.”
Don’t bite, don’t do it, Cecily. She’s poison. But she couldn’t help herself.
“What rumors?”
“I heard the powers that be on the American committee were worried you’d lost your edge after the accident. That they didn’t think you were a good bet for the team.” Virginia lifted a shoulder. “I’m sure it isn’t true.”
Or was it? Her stomach twisted as she remembered the closed-off conversation she’d had with the team chief. Did they think she was damaged goods? Was her career on the rocks? Once you had a reputation for being a broken rider, it tended to stick.
Alejandro joined the two of them. She gave him a frozen look, remaining stiff under the arm he wrapped around her waist, the thick air in the tent closing in around her with every minute that passed.
Confused, shattered, the heat pressing down on her lungs, it was all she could do to function on auto-pilot until Alejandro excused them and pulled her aside.
“This whole routine is getting old,” he murmured in her ear. “You freezing me out, me trying to make this work. It was a bet, Cecily. Get over it.”
Perspiration broke out on her brow. She swallowed hard as a wave of nausea rolled over her, noticing the curious looks Sadie and Antonio were directing their way. “Can we get out of here?” she asked sharply, biting back the bile that climbed her throat. “Your friends are watching us.”
“When we’re finished here.” His ebony eyes blazed with heat. “You know you can trust me. I’m not going to let you derail us again, just when we’re finally getting somewhere.”
A cold sweat enveloped her, a clammy film covering her skin. She dragged in a breath, but the air felt too thick, too heavy to speak.
“Cecily.” Alejandro’s voice sharpened. “What’s wrong?”
Darkness swirled around her, everything dissolving into a thick, gray fog. She swayed into him. “I—I can’t breathe.”
* * *
Alejandro cursed and slid an arm around Cecily’s waist. He couldn’t even see the exit through the crush of people. A glance back at her ash-colored face made his heart pound.
Sinking his fingers into her waist, he hoisted her slight frame into his arms, and elbowed his way through the crowd. Shock guests gaped at them. Alejandro threw a laconic smile in Antonio’s direction. “Lovers quarrel,” he said loudly enough that everyone in the immediate vicinity could hear. “Only one way to solve this problem.”
The crowd parted like the Red Sea. A blast of fresh air hit him as soon as he walked outside, making him realize how oppressively hot it had been in there for his pregnant fiancée. Furious at himself for being so insensitive, he carried Cecily up the hill and into the house. He didn’t stop until they were inside the cool, quiet confines of their suite, away from prying eyes.
He set her down on the edge of the bed and made her put her head between her knees. “Breathe,” he instructed, sitting down beside her. She took a deep breath, then another. He made her continue until she was taking regular, even inhales of air.
“I can’t believe you did that,” she said when she sat up, still pale but far less gray.
“Would you have preferred I let you pass out in front of everyone?
“No.” Her chin dropped. “But what are they going to think?”
“That we are having sex.” He was amused to see that brought her full color back. “Why on earth didn’t you tell me how you were feeling?”
“I thought it would pass. It usually does…but it was so hot in there. And,
” she admitted, eyes on his, “I was angry with you.”
His gaze darkened. He stood, walked to the sideboard and poured a glass of water from the crystal jug. Carrying it back to the bed, he handed it to her and sat down.
She took a sip of the water. Exhaled with a deep sigh. “I told myself I was going to be tough today—prove I can get through this.”
“You were tough. You walked that course with Natalia. You faced what must have been a difficult day head-on.”
She shook her head. “I let Virginia get to me. She told me she’d heard a rumor—that the selection committee might not have picked me for the team. It…upset me.”
“You can’t listen to that kind of conjecture,” he reprimanded. “She’s playing with your head, Cecily. You of all people know how cut throat the competition is.”
“But she’s connected. What if it’s the truth?”
“If it is, there’s nothing you can do about it except prove them wrong. Focus on what you can affect rather than what you can’t.” He arched a brow at her. “Remember what we talked about in Kentucky? You are the master of your own destiny. No one else.”
“That’s just it,” she said quietly, “I can’t prove anything right now. I’m scared of what this year off—this baby—is going to do to my career.”
His heart tugged at her vulnerability. “Your mother had you when she was young and remained highly competitive. You will do the same because you are just as fiercely competitive. You are a Hargrove.”
A hint of her trademark stubborn defiance crept back into her blue gaze. “Use the year to get your stables up and running,” he advised. “Find another couple of horses to back up Bacchus and Derringer so when you come back, you come back even stronger than before. That’s what winners do. They build on their setbacks. They use them to make them stronger.”
She eyed him. “Why do you always know exactly the right thing to say?”
“Because I know what it’s like to be on top. What it’s like to be surrounded by people whose mission in life is to tear you down. Protect yourself by having an unshakeable vision. Don’t give the Virginias of the world the opportunity to steal your joy.”
Her gaze darkened. She looked down at the glass she held balanced on her lap, the afternoon sun arcing off its finely cut crystal edges. “You asked me once who I was doing this for. I thought about it a lot after you left. I know now it’s for me. Of course it’s for my mother too,” she acknowledged, “but this dream, the dream to be the best that I have, comes from me, not from what I’m expected to be. Riding is who I am, Alejandro. It’s what I love. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
“Then tune out the noise,” he said softly. “Follow your heart.”
She nodded. A play of emotion moved through those beautiful eyes. “What you said about trust… I have trouble trusting because of what happened with a previous relationship of mine. I was engaged to a man named Davis Hampden Randolph when I was twenty-three—of the banking Randolphs. My father does business with him.”
He tipped a brow. “An arranged match?”
She shook her head. “I was mad about Davis. I was about to marry him and move to Savannah when I found out weeks before the wedding he was mad about his mistress too—he just wasn’t going to marry her.”
Shades of his father. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “That must have been difficult.”
A shadow whispered across her gaze. “I was a political choice for him. Funnily enough, when I gave him the ring back, it turned out I was the last to know.”
His stomach hollowed out. He knew that humiliation. Had watched his mother go through it more times than he could count. And he, he had not made the situation any better by deceiving Cecily, then walking away.
He curled his fingers around hers. “I promise I will never hurt you like that. You will get honesty from me but never pain.”
Her chin dropped. “Every time I’ve invested myself in someone in my life I’ve gotten hurt, Alejandro. Melly, Davis, losing my mother, my father’s lack of caring…” She shook her head. “I know this is a practical thing between us—exactly as I was for Davis. That we are doing this for our child. But I need to know if I put my trust in you, that trust is inviolate. That you are willing to invest in us too.”
He almost laughed at the unnecessary nature of the request. He’d been invested in her from the beginning—far more than he ever should have been. He thought it might be that extreme vulnerability of hers—how it tapped into a part of him that remembered all too vividly what it felt like to be at the mercy of the world. To have those who should have protected you fail in their promises.
It made him wonder about Sebastien’s analysis of him. If perhaps he was capable of more with Cecily because he did care about her. Maybe that, he ventured, was what he could offer her beyond the love he couldn’t give her. He could be the one person who never let her down. Who taught her she was worthy of that promise.
He set his gaze on her. “I am invested,” he said quietly. “I’ve always been invested. I proposed marriage between us because I thought it could work, because we are good together. Because you have many of the qualities I admire in a woman, not just because you are having my baby. But you need to believe it can work too, Cecily. You need to trust me again.”
She nodded. “I’m learning to. But there’s only so many of these landmines I can take and still do that, Alejandro.” She arced a brow at him. “Is there anything else I should know? Because you should tell me now and not later.”
“Yes,” he said silkily, running a finger down her cheek. “I have a date with Antonio at the shooting range in twenty minutes. Which means you have time to rest up for our date tonight and find a sexy dress to wear, because we,” he added deliberately, “are picking up where we left off last night, querida. No distractions, no manufactured dramas and no interruptions.”
Her eyes widened. He lowered his mouth to hers, giving in to the lush temptation in front of him. “And if Stavros comes knocking,” he murmured against her lips, “I swear I will kill him with my bare hands.”
CHAPTER TEN
CECILY HAD NEVER been so nervous in her entire life. She had changed her dress three times while Alejandro had showered and shaved after his shooting date with Antonio and still she wasn’t convinced she’d made the right choice.
Champagne with a definite hint of pink, the sultry dress hugged her body like a glove, plunging at the neckline to show off the curves of her breasts, dipping in to highlight her tiny waist then flaring out over the full line of her hips. Very Marilyn Monroe, she’d thought as she’d purchased it on Madison Avenue last week. Sexy as Alejandro had requested. But was it too much?
“Oh, no,” murmured Calli as they stood under the elegant marquee set up on the Waldenbrook grounds. “You look like an angel. A very wicked angel. Alejandro can’t pick his tongue up off the ground.”
Her gaze slid to her fiancé who stood speaking with Sebastien and Antonio. He looked gorgeously sophisticated and untouchable in a black tuxedo, dark hair slicked back from his face. As far removed from the man she’d met in Kentucky as it was possible to be. And yet tonight she was sure she knew him. That she’d always known him. What was terrifying was what that meant.
The night she’d spent with Alejandro in his cabin had been a forbidden assignation with no consequences attached to it. Tonight there were so many consequences involved her stomach was doing backflips.
She was about to place herself in the hands of a man she hoped wouldn’t shatter the last piece of heart she had left. To fully trust him as she hadn’t yet let herself do because she needed to in order to make this marriage work. For the child they were going to have.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t terrifying. Because it was. Keeping that level head she’d promised herself was going to be key, banishing those feelings she still h
arbored for him to restricted territory, except keeping a level head was almost impossible to do as the man in question executed a subtle seduction over dinner in the beautifully set up marquee.
Seated with Stavros, Calli, Antonio and Sadie at one of the round tables dressed with white linen, candles and fresh roses, it was all she could do to keep her mind on the conversation with Alejandro’s eyes and hands on her the entire evening in an orchestrated campaign meant to drive her mad.
Her composure was in shreds by the time they got up to dance, Sebastien and Monika kicking things off. The Englishman and his wife had eyes only for each other, the deep love they shared patently obvious. It led to dangerous thinking on Cecily’s part. If Sebastien, once a confirmed bachelor, as steadfastly opposed to marriage as Alejandro had once been according to Monika, could change so much with the right woman, perhaps Alejandro could too?
And that, she castigated herself as Alejandro took her hand and led her onto the dance floor to join Sebastien and Monika, was the kind of thinking she needed to avoid if she was going to survive this relationship.
Heart hammering in her breast, pulse beating so fast she felt like she was in a drag race, she allowed him to pull her close, his fingers wrapped around hers, her head tucked beneath his chin.
Their fit was so perfect, so right, it sent her spiraling back to that night in Kentucky when he’d held her beneath the stars. When she’d given up fighting the attraction between them because it was simply too powerful to resist.
His heart beat a steady, staccato rhythm beneath her ear. A sigh left her lips.
Alejandro drew back, his gorgeous, inky black eyes glittering with amusement. “Are you all right, querida?”
“Fully recovered,” she murmured, “from this afternoon at least. This campaign you are waging has me distinctly on edge.”
The grooves on either side of his mouth deepened. “You seduced me last time. Surely turnabout is fair play?”
“I seduced you…the operative words. I knew what I was doing then.”