‘Where are you going?’
He had reached the door, but turned back at the tremulous sound of her voice. ‘I’m leaving for a polo tournament in South Africa early in the morning. I don’t want to disturb you, so I’ll sleep in the spare room.’
‘South Africa! Why didn’t you tell me before now?’ Rachel asked shakily. It was crazy, but she couldn’t help thinking that Diego was running away from her.
He shrugged, refusing to admit that up until five minutes ago he had decided to pull out of the competition so that he could stay with her. ‘You know I play all over the world. I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to me disappearing at short notice.’
‘But how long will you be gone? We have things to discuss,’ she said desperately. ‘Your brother …’
‘What happened with Eduardo does not concern you,’ Diego told her grimly. ‘The only thing you need to think about is the baby. I will be away for less than a week, but I have arranged for Juana Gonzalez to come to the apartment to give you Spanish lessons. What with that and your antenatal classes, you will be too busy to miss me, querida,’ he taunted.
Rachel flushed. Did he know that she would be counting the minutes until he returned? she wondered in an agony of embarrassment. And, if so, did he also guess that she was utterly besotted with him?
She sat up and pushed her hair over her shoulder, feeling a minute sense of triumph when his eyes lingered on her breasts and dull colour flared along his cheekbones. ‘I’m sure I won’t give you a second’s thought,’ she said coolly. ‘Have a good trip.’
Diego came home from South Africa on Christmas Eve. He greeted Rachel with cool politeness and she went to bed alone soon after he arrived and wept silently into her pillow, wishing she could recapture the closeness they had briefly shared the night he had made love to her.
The following morning she was taken aback to find a pile of gifts beneath the Christmas tree, and she stiffly thanked him when she unwrapped a breathtaking pearl and diamond necklace and matching earrings, a solid white gold bracelet and a platinum ring set with an emerald the size of a rock. The jewellery must have cost a fortune, but she could not tell him that what she really wanted was the most priceless gift of all and the one thing, it seemed, he would never give—his love.
They spent Christmas Day with Federico and Juana, and in the following days attended numerous lavish parties thrown by Diego’s many wealthy friends. Rachel grew used to being the focus of interest—it seemed that everyone was curious about the woman who had tamed Diego. Little did his friends know that once they returned to his apartment Diego invariably disappeared into his study, making no attempt to disguise the fact that he was avoiding her, Rachel thought bitterly, or that that they slept in different beds.
Once the festive period was over he settled into a routine of leaving home at dawn and travelling by helicopter to his ranch to the north of Buenos Aires. Rachel filled the long days while he was away chatting to Juana, who visited regularly or invited Rachel back to her home. She attended antenatal appointments and birthing classes and shopped in earnest for baby clothes and nursery equipment, amazed by the amount of paraphernalia required for one small baby.
But the heat and humidity of the city left her exhausted. She was thirty-six weeks pregnant and was convinced that if her stomach grew any bigger it would explode. Perhaps Diego spent all his time at the Estancia Elvira to avoid seeing her waddling around the apartment, she thought dismally. He had said that he found her pregnant shape beautiful, but she certainly did not feel beautiful, she felt huge and clumsy and horribly hormonal, which at least explained her tendency to burst into tears when no one was around to see.
It was understandable that she felt homesick, she thought one morning when she stepped out of the air-conditioned apartment onto the balcony and felt as though she had walked into a furnace. But in reality she hadn’t had a proper home in England for years apart from her dilapidated old caravan. She wasn’t so much homesick as horse-sick—which was ridiculous when she was married to a man who owned one of the largest polo pony stud farms in Argentina. She longed to visit the estancia and see the horses but, although she had asked Diego several times when he would take her, he had always made some excuse.
But Diego had said that the estancia was not much more than an hour’s journey by road, she brooded as she stared out over the endless expanse of skyscrapers that stretched up to the sky like concrete giants, their hundreds of windows winking in the brilliant sunlight. If she left now she should arrive at the Estancia Elvira by late morning. Filled with a sudden restless excitement she ignored the niggling backache that had woken her in the early hours, threw a few basic necessities into a bag and put a call through to the chauffeur, Arturo.
Diego had spent the morning in the paddock, working with one of the gauchos to introduce a couple of four-year-old colts to the ball and mallet which were used in polo. But now the midday sun was at its hottest and it was time to give the ponies a break.
‘The chestnut mare is showing particular promise,’ he spoke to the gaucho in Spanish as they rode the horses back to the stable block.
Carlos nodded. ‘Another good horse from the Estancia Elvira, huh, boss?’ He paused and stared curiously along the dirt track at the figure some way in the distance. ‘Boss … I think we’ve got a visitor.’
‘There are no appointments today.’ Diego broke off as he followed the gaucho’s gaze, and then he swore savagely. ‘Santa madre! That woman would test the patience of a saint!’ he growled before he urged his horse into a gallop and thundered along the track.
‘What the blazes are you doing here?’ he demanded when he halted in front of Rachel. She looked achingly lovely in a yellow sundress that left her slim shoulders bare and softly skimmed her rounded stomach. Her hair was caught up in a ponytail, secured with the yellow ribbon she always wore, but stray tendrils had escaped and curled around her face and Diego could not prevent his eyes from focusing on her soft pink mouth. ‘You look like a buttercup,’ he muttered, staring at her dress.
‘More like a butter-pat,’ she replied with a rueful glance at her sizeable bump.
‘You should have stayed in town. The baby …’
‘The baby isn’t due for another month,’ Rachel said serenely. In the past weeks Diego’s preoccupation with the baby’s well-being had driven her mad. She was sure he would wrap her in cotton wool and forbid her from leaving her bed if he had the chance, no matter that her obstetrician had assured them the baby’s heartbeat was strong and Rachel’s pregnancy was progressing normally.
She looked up at him, astride his horse. His dark hair brushed his shoulders and his hard-boned face was so beautiful that her heart turned over. ‘It’s so hot in the city, and I wanted to breathe fresh air and feel a breeze on my face. It’s beautiful here,’ she murmured, lifting her arms wide to encompass the view of two thousand acres of prime grassland, the horses grazing in the distance and the sprawling white-walled hacienda which was further up the track, surrounded by blue-flowered jacaranda trees.
‘The sun is hot here too,’ Diego growled impatiently, ‘and I see you failed to have the good sense to wear a hat. You’d better get up to the house. The housekeeper, Beatriz, will be pleased to see you,’ he said in a tone which clearly implied that he was not.
‘I’ve already met her,’ Rachel told him. ‘When I first arrived, one of your ranch-hands showed me around the stables and then took me to the house. But Beatriz isn’t there now. She told me she was going to visit her sister who lives on another farm.’
Diego nodded. ‘I’d forgotten. She goes every week.’ He looked up the track towards the hacienda. ‘I need to take the horse back to the stables. Will you be all right to walk to the house—I’ll meet you there as soon as I can?’
‘Of course I’ll be all right,’ Rachel assured him firmly. She certainly was not going to mention that her backache was now acutely painful, she thought as she walked slowly up to the house. She had probably slept aw
kwardly and pulled a muscle, but she had to admit that she would be glad to sit down in the cool shade of the veranda that ran right around the hacienda.
At least Diego had not immediately demanded that she should return to the city. The chasm that had opened between them when she had asked him about his brother’s death was growing wider each day, and she knew she had to try and make him talk to her. She just prayed that here at his childhood home she would be able to reach him, and that one day soon he would smile at her again instead of treating her with a cool indifference that broke her heart.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THERE was no sign of Rachel when Diego walked into the hacienda. He strode down the hall, his boots echoing on the terracotta stone floors as he searched the various big airy rooms on the ground floor. Little had changed over the years. The house seemed to be trapped in a time-warp, he brooded when he reached the kitchen and stared at the copper cooking pots hanging on the wall and the huge wooden table that Beatriz still scrubbed every day.
How many times had he and Eduardo sat at that table, eating empanadas—delicious meat-filled pasties—and watching Beatriz prepare the evening meal? He remembered how the cook used to give them a big bowl of peas to shell, and Eduardo had carefully prised open the pods while he had fired his peas at Beatriz until she had waved her wooden spoon at him and told him he was the devil’s child.
Beatriz had been joking, but he was sure his mother and grandfather had truly believed he was one of Satan’s offspring, he thought grimly. He had understood from an early age that his startling resemblance to his father had provoked his mother’s hatred of him, but he hadn’t cared. He’d had Eduardo and that was all that mattered …
Diego turned abruptly and strode out of the kitchen, taking the stairs to the second floor two at a time. He did not want to be here. He wanted to find Rachel and take her back to the city, where the ghosts were still in his head but he was not surrounded by visual reminders of the past.
‘Rachel …’ he called impatiently.
‘I’m in here.’
He followed the sound of her voice and halted in the doorway of the bedroom directly across the hall from the master bedroom.
‘What are you doing?’ he demanded, frowning at the sight of her taking clothes out of a small suitcase and stowing them in a drawer.
‘Unpacking,’ she replied brightly. ‘I brought enough things with me so that we could stay for a few days. Beatriz said that you keep spare clothes here, and it seems silly to rush back to town.’ She did not add that she had planned to put her things in Diego’s room, hoping he would realise that she wanted to share his bed, but that her nerve had failed her at the last minute. From the deep frown furrowing his brow, her decision had probably been unwise, she thought with a sinking heart.
‘Silly or not, that’s what we’re doing,’ Diego said harshly. ‘I have no wish to stay here, and you are a few weeks away from giving birth and need to be close to the hospital. You’d better repack while I tell Arturo to bring the car down to the house.’
‘You can’t. I sent him back to town,’ Rachel murmured, steeling herself for Diego’s angry response when his eyes glittered dangerously. ‘Diego … we can’t carry on like this,’ she said shakily.
His brows rose. ‘Like what?’
She quailed beneath his haughty stare, but forced herself to go on. ‘You … so cold … and distant.’ How would he feel if he knew she cried herself to sleep every night? ‘I don’t understand what happened in your past, but while it hangs over us we can’t begin to have a future. I thought we were friends,’ she whispered when he said nothing. ‘In a few weeks our baby will be born—the baby we vowed to give the happy childhood that neither of us had. But how can we, Diego, when there is this terrible silence between us?’
Tears clung to her lashes, and the sight of them tore at Diego’s insides. Rachel was right; they could not carry on avoiding his past. He hated the silence that hovered between them like a poisonous gas cloud, and he missed her laughter and her cheerful chatter, but more than anything he was swamped with a loneliness that felt like a knife in his ribs when he lay in bed every night and wished that she was curled up next to him, all warm and soft and so sexy that he ached for her.
Her cornflower-blue eyes were fixed on him, waiting. But he had never spoken about Eduardo’s death to anyone and he could not face her as he revealed the guilt he had carried for ten long years. He swung away from her to stare unseeingly across the grasslands that surrounded the hacienda.
‘I don’t remember a time when my mother ever loved me,’ he said harshly. ‘She adored Eduardo but, as I grew older and my physical resemblance to my father became more marked, she seemed to hate me more. She had loved my father, you see, but his infidelity broke her heart and left her deeply bitter.
‘My grandfather, Alonso, had always thought that my father had married Lorena for money. After their bitter divorce he persuaded her to revert back to her maiden name, and she also changed my and Eduardo’s name to Ortega. But although I carried the family name, my grandfather—like my mother—believed that my resemblance to my father was more than just skin deep,’ Diego continued bleakly. ‘He made no secret that he intended to make Eduardo the sole heir to the Estancia Elvira.’
‘That must have been hard,’ Rachel said quietly. ‘It would be understandable if you had been jealous of Eduardo.’
Diego shook his head. ‘I was never jealous of him. He was my twin, and he was as much a part of me as one of my limbs. We spent all our time together, and shared everything. I didn’t care what anyone else thought about me and, to be honest, Lorena and Alonso’s dislike of me upset Eduardo more than it did me.
‘But I rowed frequently with my grandfather. No matter what I did, and how hard I tried to please him and my mother, in their eyes I was a feckless playboy like my father.’ Diego paused and raked a hand through his hair. ‘On the day Eduardo died I’d had a furious argument with Alonso because he disapproved of my decision to become a professional polo player. I was in a foul temper,’ he admitted grimly. ‘It was a crazy idea to go out in my kayak when the river was swollen after the spring rains, and Eduardo tried to dissuade me. But I wouldn’t listen, and eventually I shouted at him to leave me alone.’
Diego’s throat felt raw, as if he had swallowed barbed wire, but now that he had started talking he could not stop the torrent. ‘It was our first and only argument,’ he said huskily. ‘My last words to Eduardo were words of anger, and to my dying day I will never forget the expression of hurt on his face when I pushed him away.
‘I continued up to the river alone, unaware that Eduardo had followed me. I didn’t realise until I reached the bottom of the rapids, and turned and saw his empty boat carried along on the white-water.’
Lost in his private hell, he was unaware that Rachel had moved until he felt the light touch of her hand on his arm. ‘Eduardo drowned?’ she queried gently.
Diego nodded jerkily. ‘The water was wild that day, and I imagine his boat must have overturned in the swirling current. We had both ridden the rapids many times before and knew what to do, but he must have hit his head on a rock. I got to the bank and raced back up the river … but I was too late.’ His voice cracked. ‘Eduardo was dead when I dragged him from the water.’
Oh, my love! Rachel wished she could say the words out loud, wished she could offer some sort of comfort to Diego, but the agony in his eyes told her that nothing could ease the devastation of losing his twin. Instead, she threaded her fingers through his and clung to him, and after a few moments he tightened his hand around hers.
‘My mother was naturally distraught when I carried Eduardo’s body back to the hacienda.’ Diego spoke in a clipped tone as he fought to control the emotions surging through him. ‘And my grandfather …’ he closed his eyes briefly ‘… my grandfather accused me of deliberately causing Eduardo’s death so that I could inherit the Estancia Elvira.’
‘No!’ Rachel could not restrain a cry at Alon
so Ortega’s cruelty. ‘He must have known how much you loved your twin. And no one could have predicted that Eduardo would die in the river. It was a tragic accident.’
‘An accident that I could have prevented,’ Diego said harshly. ‘Of course I did not mean for him to die, but if I had not been so headstrong, and Eduardo had not been so loyal, he would be alive today. He took his boat on the river to try and protect me—even though I had yelled at him.’ His jaw clenched. ‘You cannot know how that makes me feel,’ he ground out, his voice throbbing. ‘My grandfather was right. I killed my brother as surely as if I had stabbed him through the heart.’
‘Diego, you can’t believe that.’ Rachel forced back the tears that were threatening to choke her. ‘Everyone makes their own choices in life, and Eduardo chose to follow you down the river. It’s a terrible thing that he died, but I don’t believe he would have wanted you to spend your life racked with guilt.’ Or to have become so emotionally damaged that he never allowed himself to become close to another human being, Rachel thought sadly. Diego had buried his heart with his twin, and it was little wonder he seemed so cold and aloof when his mother and grandfather had blamed him for Eduardo’s death.
‘That’s why you don’t live at the estancia, isn’t it? There are too many memories of the past,’ she said softly.
For the first time since he had bared his soul to Rachel, Diego forced himself to look at her, certain he would see disgust in her eyes for what he had done. But there was only understanding in her bright blue gaze, and a deep compassion that brought a lump to his throat. At least she did not hate him, as his mother and grandfather had done, and she seemed determined to absolve him of blame. But he blamed himself—and he always would.
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