by Marinelli, Carol; Hayward, Jennifer; Stephens, Susan; Anderson, Natalie
Cecily shook her head. “My mother didn’t know.”
Adriana lifted a shoulder. “I had no proof. DNA typing wasn’t available then. But there was a groom who had worked at the stables where Diablo was studded. We had him ready to testify in a court case—until your father’s money got to him.”
Her skin stung. “Did Luisa tell my mother about the groom?”
Adriana nodded. “Luisa told her not to be so naïve. She said Zara seemed flattened…that she left after the awards ceremony and never went to the party.”
Confusion consumed her. That would have been weeks before her mother died—before that awful argument with her father. But surely her mother would have told her if she’d known? They had never kept secrets from each other—not even the smallest ones. Especially about something like this.
But if that was true, what had her parents been arguing about that night?
She shook off the uneasy feeling that ran through her. “I’m sure she didn’t know,” she said to Adriana.
* * *
“Even if she did,” reasoned Alejandro as they walked out to the pasture after dinner to enjoy the spectacular sunset, “does it really matter now? Perhaps she was protecting you.”
She shook her head. “She would never have done that. We told each other everything. We were building our careers on those horses.”
And another lie would destroy her right now. Alejandro laced his fingers through hers as they walked down the cobblestoned path that lined the pastures, voluminous, silver-leafed chestnut trees swaying overhead.
It was a stunning night, the sunset painting streaks of orange, yellow and pink across the sky, the grazing horses silhouetted against the blaze of color. But his fiancée’s attention was elsewhere, her face creased with her current preoccupation.
“So what did you think of La Reve?” he asked. “Pretty impressive?”
“Yes.” A smile lit her face. “The equine therapy center is amazing. I was blown away by the work they do. I peppered Adriana with so many questions she was likely glad to get rid of me.”
“I’m sure that isn’t true.” He’d watched his grandmother softening up to Cecily all day, no more immune to her charms than he was.
“I was thinking,” she said, shooting him a sideways look, “of asking you to teach me what your grandmother taught you so I could offer those services in our stables. It helped Bacchus so much, I think it could do the same with others.”
And her. He didn’t miss the subtle psychological cue. “It’s a big time investment. You will have your career and a new baby to think about.”
“I have a year before that happens. We could train the grooms so I have back up when I’m busy.”
The sparkle in her eyes was irresistible. She’d clearly been thinking about this. “It’s a great idea,” he conceded. “But you should ask my grandmother to teach you, not me. And that should wait until we get this issue with your father sorted.”
She nodded, a shadow moving across her gaze. He bit down the antagonism that rose inside of him. He was dealing with Clayton Hargrove as soon as they got home.
“Do you think she’d say yes?”
He nodded. “My grandmother has always been a teacher first. It’s her great love.”
She fell quiet then as they walked in silence to their destination, a lush, green pasture in which a dozen horses grazed.
“It’s so gorgeous,” Cecily murmured as they stood watching the horses cavort and play before they came in for the night. “I can see why you were so happy here as boys.” Her eyes were bright as she looked up at him in the fading light. “There’s this air about it here, this spirit I can’t describe. More like when my mother was alive at Esmerelda.”
He nodded. “It comes from my grandmother. She’s competitive, she likes to win, but nothing comes before her horses. They are her lifeblood.”
Her lashes swept down. “It must have been great therapy for you boys to be here, surrounded by all of this. I can see why your grandmother means so much to you.”
“She was the glue,” he said simply. “She insisted we come here instead of being exposed to the toxic environment at home. She knew the grounding effect being around the horses would have on us.” He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his jaw. “Those first few summers, Joaquim and I were broken. We had no conception of what love was. My grandmother gave it to us. She was the one thing that made sense when nothing else did.”
A wet sheen blanketed her eyes, turning them an iridescent blue. “Sometimes that’s all you need,” she said quietly, “that one person who believes in you—who gives you that unconditional love.”
Something unraveled inside of him. Santo Deus, she tore him apart.
“Yes,” he agreed huskily, “sometimes that’s all you need.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, dangerously close to a host of emotions that were strictly off limits to him.
She pulled back to look up at him. “How do you feel?” she asked. “About our baby?”
The question caught him off guard. He thought about it for a moment, realized his feelings had morphed from shock into something deeper he couldn’t describe. “Hopeful,” he finally said, “that I can do things differently. That I can give our child all the things I never had…that we can give he or she a happy childhood.”
Her eyes darkened. “I think you will be a better parent for your experiences, Alejandro. You will know what’s important for our child because you have been there.”
Perhaps. And perhaps he might severely disappoint her with his inability to foster a deep, open relationship with their child, exactly what he couldn’t offer her.
“What I do know,” he said quietly, shaking it off as he tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear, “is that we are going to do this together. If one of us falters, the other one will pick them up. It will be a team effort.”
“Yes,” she agreed huskily, “it will be.”
He directed her toward the fence with a hand at her waist. “Would you like to see your engagement present now?”
Her brows pulled together. “I didn’t know we were doing that.”
“Not officially no.” He pulled an apple out of his pocket. Made a clicking sound with his teeth to catch the attention of a striking, chestnut-brown Belgian warm blood grazing a few feet away. The horse lifted his head, saw the apple in his hand and trotted over, tail held high.
They climbed up on the bottom rung of the fence. “This is Socrates,” he said as the stallion butted his head playfully against his closed hand, looking for the apple. “I know he’s not Bacchus and I will get you Bacchus back, but Socrates’s lineage is nearly as impressive. He’s my grandmother and I’s progeny. We think he’s going to be a brilliant jumper.”
Cecily stared at him, then at the handsome horse with the white blaze down his face. “What are you saying?” she breathed.
“He’s yours.”
Her eyes widened. “You can’t give him to me.”
“Why not? You need a back-up horse. I can’t think of a better way to cement the ties between our two families. It’s the perfect symbolic union.”
She bit her lip. “Your grandmother is okay with this?”
“Yes.” He handed her the apple. Socrates pursued it, butting Cecily’s hand now. She laughed and opened her palm, the stallion burying his muzzle in her hand and disposing of the apple in two big bites.
“Why Socrates?” she asked.
“I’m a football fan. Soccer,” he elaborated, “for you. Socrates was a great Brazilian midfielder.”
A smile tipped her lips. “Socrates it is, then.”
The stallion stayed for a little more attention then wandered away. Cecily climbed off her perch, stood on tiptoe and kissed him.
It was the sweetest, simplest kiss they had ever shared and it
drove a stake right through his heart.
* * *
Cecily didn’t know what to do with her heart on the walk back to the house. It thumped in her chest in the strangest of ways and refused to stop as she and Alejandro climbed the stairs to their suite of rooms that overlooked the lake.
He murmured something about having to work and plopped himself down in front of his computer in the sitting room. She showered and pulled on a filmy blue nightie, her mind still caught up in the very personal, undeniably special gift he’d just given her.
He kept doing these things that melted her heart. Coming on the heels of last night’s passionate, explosive encounter between them, it put reckless thoughts in her head. Like maybe they could be more, because she was sure he felt something for her.
Or maybe, she conceded, running a brush through her hair in a ruthless stroke, she was just seeing what she wanted to see. If she were smart, she knew, she would ignore this pull between her and her fiancé just as he was doing right now. Give them both time to breathe. But there were too many questions raging through her head for her to think straight.
Had her mother known about Zeus? What had her parents been arguing about the morning she’d died?
A vice gripped her chest. She couldn’t stand for one more thing to not be as it seemed…for one more piece of her life to come careening apart, because her memories of her mother were all she had.
She tried to tell herself how fragile she was. How much Alejandro was coming to mean to her. How dangerous that was to her. But right now he seemed like the only real thing in a sea of uncertainty. Nothing could seem to stop her feet from moving as she put down the brush and walked into the sitting room where he was working.
To hell with the consequences.
Slipping behind him on the sofa, she ran her hands up the taut, muscular skin of his back. The heat, the masculinity of him, singed her fingertips beneath the well-worn material of his T-shirt. Sent her pulse racing.
She set her mouth to his nape.
A tremor ran through him. “Cecily—”
She trailed open-mouthed, sensual kisses over the hot, salty skin exposed by the neck of his shirt. Slid her arms around his waist, imprinted her breasts against the muscled skin she’d just been touching. “You sure you want to work?”
“I need to get this report finished before—”
She dropped her hand to the hard length of him beneath his jeans. A curse left his mouth. He was steel beneath the denim, sizzling her blood in her veins.
Suddenly she was upside down, thrown over his shoulder, Alejandro heading toward the bedroom before she had a chance to breathe. And then it was her battling to regain her equilibrium as he deposited her on the bed, took her mouth in a series of hot, hungry kisses in between which he ripped off his jeans and pulled his T-shirt over his head.
“You are killing me,” he murmured, eyes holding hers in a suspended, searing moment she felt all the way to her toes, “slowly but surely.”
She sucked in a breath as he rode her nightie up her body with his hands and pulled it over her head. This was an Alejandro she didn’t know, the intensity in him bubbling over the edges, seeping into her skin.
She felt the burn of his gaze on her bare skin seconds before he pushed her back on the bed and braced himself on his elbows above her, a solid wall of sheer male power that made her mouth go dry.
He ran a possessive hand down her body, lingering on the dips and curves he found. Her pulse stuttered, then took off at a dead run. This wasn’t going to be a languid, leisurely seduction. It was going to be something else entirely.
Cupping her breasts, he traced his fingertips over the velvety points. Rolled the sensitive peaks between thumb and forefinger until she moaned and moved restlessly beneath him. Satisfying her demand, he palmed the curve of her belly with his hand, then drew his fingers down over the sensitive crease of her thigh.
She opened instinctively for him, eyes on his as he slid a hard male thigh between hers, moving against her in a sensual, breathtaking rhythm. She reached up, curled a hand around his nape and brought his mouth down to hers for an intensely erotic, open-mouthed kiss.
The friction achingly good, her body beyond ready for him, a low plea left her lips. Releasing her mouth, he slid a hand beneath her head to fist in her hair, sliding his other hand down her leg to urge her thigh up and over his hip. With a single, hard thrust he was buried inside of her, her breath escaping on a harsh gasp.
He kissed her through the slow, deep ride he took her on, stroking into her body with deliberate, sweet slides until her insides were a hot shimmer and all she could feel was him. Every inch of her catching fire, she shattered apart, nails digging into his biceps. He came with her, his powerful body swelling, expanding, spilling his scalding heat inside her.
She’d never been so lost and found all in one moment. So sure she’d made an irrevocable choice she could never take back.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ALEJANDRO PACED THE floor of his lower Manhattan office the morning after his and Cecily’s return from Belgium, managing the delicate threads of the Columbian acquisition while simultaneously castigating himself for allowing his relationship with Cecily to devolve into the emotional affair it had become.
Clearly he couldn’t be trusted not to sink into that realm with her, which necessitated a cooling off period while he figured out how to handle his vulnerable, irresistible fiancée. Because that couldn’t happen again between them—another of those charged encounters guaranteed to push their relationship off the track.
His conference call droned on, digressing into legalese he couldn’t be bothered to follow. Stopping in front of the windows, he braced his palms on the sill and took in a gray, stormy-looking view of the Hudson. Most people would welcome that level of emotion in their relationship, he acknowledged. For him it was a place he would never go because he knew where it led.
No matter how good he and Cecily were together, no relationship retained that shiny, newly purchased glow. Whether boredom, friction or simply like turning to dislike, all good things came to an end. He’d watched his parents reenact that vicious pattern over and over again and it never ended well, passion and happiness turning to anger, then to hatred and back again until he’d been begging for them to end it. It wasn’t something he’d ever subject himself or his child to. Nor would he raise Cecily’s expectations as to the type of relationship he could provide.
Better to take his own advice and focus on the things he could affect such as attacking the root cause of all of his problems.
His conference call mercifully came to an end. Discarding his headset, he sat down at his desk and messaged his lawyer.
Is the letter ready?
Just finished. Want me to bring it over?
Please.
Sam Barton knocked on his door just as he was taking a sip of his espresso. Waving him into a chair, Alejandro scanned the document his lawyer pushed across the desk.
The letter, addressed to Clayton Hargrove, recapped the terms of the public apology the Salazar family was willing to accept from the Hargroves as compensation for the financial and reputational losses it had incurred as a result of the theft of its property.
Should the Salazars not receive a written response by the date indicated on the letter, the family would proceed with its plans to prosecute the Hargroves to the fullest extent of the law, exposing the lies and criminal business practices the Hargrove dynasty had been built upon.
A very persuasive letter. Satisfied with its contents, Alejandro strengthened the language in a couple of sections, then pushed the document back across the desk to Sam.
His lawyer scanned the edits. Raised a brow. “That will get his attention.”
“That’s the point.”
“And if he doesn’t respond?”
“We cross that bridge when we come to it.”
He was hoping that day never came. That Clayton Hargrove’s lawyers would take the letter for the warning it was and advise their client accordingly. Because this had to end, this piece of history that was tearing his fiancée apart. This daily hope her father would call when the bastard clearly couldn’t care less, because it was dismantling him too to see her this way.
It needed to be over.
* * *
Cecily resumed her life in New York determined to cultivate that unshakeable vision she had promised herself. She tuned out the newspapers and the gossip, focused on the future she and Alejandro were building together and refused to look back, only forward.
Controlled the things she could.
The week after they returned, their real estate agent found them a property in upstate New York that was everything they’d been looking for. Sitting in the shadow of the Catskill Mountains, Cherry Hill Farm, a two hundred and fifty acre spread being sold by its polo ground owners, was spectacular.
Cecily lost her heart to its scenic views across the Hudson Valley, acres of riding trails up into the mountains and its elegant, eighteenth-century ranch-style house.
“You love it,” Alejandro said, flicking her a glance as they made the drive home after viewing it.
She nodded, excitement brimming inside her at the potential of such a special place. Warmer than the grand Esmerelda she’d grown up on, she knew it could be a wonderful home for her and Alejandro’s family, plus a great base for her business. Something as special as La Reve.
And if that brought with it a host of questions as to where her relationship with Alejandro stood after that explosive night they’d shared together in Belgium, she ignored them just as she’d been doing all week.
She didn’t want to examine the depth of feeling she had for him. How much she was coming to depend on him. The fact she’d unwisely allowed herself to care for a man who’d had no trouble playing by the rules ever since they’d returned to New York.