by Lucy Ellis
Given that was exactly what they’d been doing for the last couple of weeks, Lulu felt something lodge uncomfortably at the base of her throat.
‘You like your own space?’ she said slowly, giving him exactly that, edging her bottom away against the table.
‘It’s suited me up until now.’
Lulu tried not to take that personally. ‘Would you like to have more to do with your sisters?’
He swigged at the beer, looking markedly uncomfortable. ‘With me in their lives things can only end in tears. I’m there if they get into trouble, but that’s about it.’
‘I would have loved to have had an older brother to lean on a little,’ Lulu confessed. ‘I always felt like a second mum to my brothers. I think your sisters are very lucky.’
Colour actually scored the high ridge of his cheekbones. ‘It’s my job.’
Lulu felt a little sliver of cold run down her spine. Was that what his I’ll marry you notion was about? All it was about? He felt responsible?
‘You don’t love them? Your sisters?’
‘What kind of a question is that?’
‘A simple one—it’s either yes or no.’
She held his gaze, knowing that this didn’t have much to do with his siblings. She wanted to hear him say it. To her. Or at least she wanted to know if there was a possibility he could love her.
Because that was the only reason she could see to get married. She believed in romantic love—even if she’d always imagined it wasn’t something that would ever happen for her.
‘Of course I love them,’ he said simply. ‘They’re my sisters.’
‘Then why would you being in their lives end in tears?’
‘It’s complicated, Lulu.’
‘Possibly…’ She looked up at him expectantly.
He made a timeless male gesture of exasperation. ‘I inherited the estancia…the girls received dowries. They both wanted a say in the ranch—I didn’t think that was a good idea. Satisfied?’
‘Oh, so it’s a will thing?’
Alejandro looked taken aback. ‘A will thing?’
‘Like in King Lear—your father hung the ranch over your heads and the child who flattered him the most got it all. Although in your case you just had to be a boy.’
‘My grandfather was King Lear. He disinherited my father in favour of me.’
Lulu realised she’d gone stomping unaware into a minefield. Alejandro looked grim.
‘How did your father feel about that?’ she asked, more circumspectly.
‘He never spoke to me again.’
‘Oh, Alejandro, that’s awful.’
Alejandro shrugged, but the empathy in Lulu’s brown eyes warmed something that had been cold inside him for a long time.
‘I took control of this place at twenty, and almost lost it. My father’s gambling debts had to be paid off. The girls were still at school and there were fees.’
‘Your mother couldn’t help?’
‘She told me she’d put up with the old man for almost two decades and she wanted her share. It wasn’t as if she could go out and resurrect her modelling career.’
‘But couldn’t she have retrained and done something else?’
Alejandro gave her an arrested look. ‘She’s nothing like you, Lulu. It would never have occurred to my mother to help herself—or anyone else.’
‘I’m so sorry that happened to you.’ Lulu was aware he’d just paid her the most enormous compliment.
She desperately wanted to wrap her arms around him, but she also didn’t want to impose when he was standing there so obviously man as an island. Men did that. She’d noticed it with her brothers when they were hurting. She would wait to have her cuddle.
‘It’s obvious you had a lot of responsibility on your shoulders from a young age.’
He lifted those thick lashes guarding his amazing amber-brown eyes. ‘From what you’ve said, Lulu, so did you.’
‘But my mother was always there to help me.’
Alejandro acknowledged this with a slight grunt.
‘My mother didn’t give a damn about her kids,’ he said in a low voice, chewing out the words, ‘and she sure as hell didn’t lift a finger to help anyone—including herself. She took her frustrations out on us. All I remember from my childhood are her threats. She’d say she wanted to leave my father—he wouldn’t let her go. She’d tell me she was going to kill herself—’ He ground to a halt, rolled his shoulders as if shaking it off. ‘She was a nightmare,’ he muttered.
‘She threatened to kill herself?’ Lulu tried to keep her voice even and not make a drama of this. ‘Did you believe her?’
‘I was a kid,’ he said without inflection. ‘Of course I believed her.’
‘She shouldn’t have put that on you. How could she do that to you and your sisters?’
‘Not the girls.’ His tone was flat. ‘Just me.’ Alejandro’s hand tightened around the beer bottle and his knuckles showed white. ‘I felt responsible for her, I guess. I was the one she turned to…confided in.’
‘But you were a child—she should have been protecting you from all that.’
Lulu stopped, her own chest filling with cold as her own sweet, frustrating mother flared into her mind. But her mother had done the best she could with what she’d had. It sounded as if Alejandro’s mother hadn’t cared at all.
‘That’s right,’ he said, meeting her eyes, ‘and that’s why I want any child of mine under my protection.’
‘From me?’ Lulu framed the words in a voice that suddenly sounded very far away.
He frowned and put down the bottle, his arms falling loose to his sides. ‘No, Lulu, that’s not what I mean.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said faintly, backing up. ‘It’s not as if I haven’t thought about it. How does a woman like me take care of a helpless baby?’
‘The same way you’ve been taking care of yourself,’ he said, his tone firm. ‘Look at you—you’re riding a horse, you’ve been in crowds, you’re here with me now.’
Lulu tried to focus on that, but all she was seeing was herself with a tiny baby, so vulnerable and needy, and being unable to care for it.
Alejandro put his hands on her shoulders and she felt his warmth and his strength.
‘You’re not alone, Lulu.’
She nodded, because she knew that was what he wanted from her, but the panic she was so familiar with was stirring like a snake in the grass and she could feel herself preparing for the worst.
She grasped at the issue at hand like a drowning woman. ‘What happened with your sisters?’
‘They resented me inheriting the ranch, being the favourite. They were away at school when I was struggling to keep it all together.’
‘You hid it from them?’
‘Protected them,’ he substituted.
Lulu swallowed hard. ‘So you protected them but you didn’t confide in them? You don’t trust them?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far, Lulu.’ His hands slid with disarming gentleness down her arms.
‘But you inherited this ranch. What about them?’
‘They’re taken care of.’ He frowned. ‘Why does this bother you?’
‘Because it clearly bothers you. Do you see them regularly?’ She knew she was being incredibly intrusive, but she could still feel that surge in her panic levels, and she needed to know what his idea of a family was if he was going to throw around marriage proposals like baseball bats.
‘I see them on occasion. We’re all busy people.’ He was frowning at her. ‘I don’t have a problem with my sisters, Lulu.’
‘Maybe not, but you seem to think you have a responsibility to protect them despite the difficulties in your relationship, and I wonder if that’s why you’re talking about marriage to me.’
‘Lulu, if I’m going to be a father I don’t have much choice.’
So there it was. She hit out at him. ‘You’ve been married before and it didn’t last,’ she said.
‘I
was a kid. I wanted some stability and normality.’ He snorted. ‘It went to hell in a hand basket, naturally. It couldn’t ever have been anything other than a disaster. At that age it’s hard to be tied down.’
‘You weren’t faithful to her?’ Lulu didn’t really want to know.
‘She cheated on me.’
That brought her up short.
‘But—but why?’
Maria had brought out the rest of their meal, but Alejandro remained where he was.
‘Valentina married me to get away from her domineering father and then discovered she’d swapped one ranch for another.’
‘You rescued her,’ Lulu said dully as it all fell into place.
His sisters. His wife. Her?
‘No, Lulu, I was nineteen and horny and I’d seen a lifetime of the havoc my father’s indiscriminate whoring around had caused to our family. So I did the traditional thing and married her. But she liked the glamour, and I wasn’t playing enough polo at the time to make my name. I was too busy saving this place from all the debt my father had drowned us in. So she slept with one of my teammates who had made his name.’
How any woman could exchange Alejandro for another man baffled Lulu.
‘So there you have it, Lulu. The man who just proposed marriage to you. Quite a catch.’
She didn’t know what to say.
‘But, really, how unlucky could we be?’ he went on.
Her eyes went up to meet his. She was not sure at first what he was referring to. As the penny dropped she realised he had referred to their situation in the same bored dismissive tone he’d used to impart the sorry story of his upbringing and early marriage.
Something primal stirred inside her. This wasn’t a part of that. Everything in her rebelled against it.
This was real and special and he had no right to bring it down to the common denominator of those women who had failed him so fundamentally.
She wouldn’t fail him.
Which was when Lulu realised she was in a lot deeper with him than she’d understood going into this conversation.
He carried the steaks over to the table. It all looked beautiful. There was even candlelight. But Lulu had never felt less like sitting down with him.
Alejandro might not have phobias to hide from, but he was carrying some serious damage from his parents. Yet he’d managed to get on in life and achieve so much in such a short amount of time. How? Where did he put the anger? The answer was in front of her. Into his work. Into the hours she’d seen him put in today. This was what he did. He worked.
She hid. He worked. What a pair they were.
A pregnant pair?
All of a sudden Lulu needed to sit down.
‘What is it?’
Alejandro was at her side, all his masculine bravado in the face of his disturbing childhood recollections gone as he hunkered down beside her. He took the glass from her hand.
‘I’m only twenty-three. You’re a workaholic. This could be disastrous.’
Alejandro frowned. ‘I shouldn’t have told you all that. Lulu, it’s in the past.’ He cupped her face. ‘That ship sank years ago—it’s just wreckage floating past us.’
Us.
That was when it occurred to Lulu that this conversation had started off lightly enough, with her teasing him about a proposal he hadn’t even made, and now somehow they’d both come round to the idea that it could be real.
She looked into Alejandro’s eyes and saw her own amazement reflected back at her. Something inside her had soared over the last weeks, because he’d seen the worst of her and he hadn’t run.
She thought of all the things he’d told her. She wouldn’t run either.
*
Lulu came downstairs the next afternoon feeling confident that she looked her best in a backless raspberry silk dress worn over flowing white silk pants and a pair of thirties cream-and-black heels with perfect bows.
She knew from all Alejandro had told her that the match today, at the Campo de Buenos Aires, was one of the most important in the polo calendar. The dress code was ‘cocktail’, but there would be countless beautiful women and press photographers and she was nervous. She didn’t want to be feeling like the odd one out. So she’d gone for glamour—a red lip and a light hand on the mascara—and teased her hair so that her curls were crisp but not overdone. She’d attached a matching silk rose to her hair with a clip instead of wearing a hat.
All in all she felt ready to face the international jet set and not disgrace herself.
Alejandro was in shirtsleeves and jeans. She knew he’d be changing into his gear at the Campo and afterwards into more formal wear for the reception.
Her breath, however, did catch as he came towards her, caught anew by his rugged looks.
‘You’ll be travelling separately from me, Lulu. I’ve got a car waiting for you now.’
‘Separately? Why?’
‘The press—paparazzi. With the guest list, two royal princes in attendance and a couple of half-dressed rock stars it will be wall-to-wall.’
‘But they won’t be interested in me.’
‘Trust me on this, Lulu, you need to go in privately.’
‘Très bien,’ she said at last, moistening her lips and reaching up to brush the hair off his forehead. ‘Well, when will I see you?’
‘I’ll find you. Don’t worry—I’m sending Xavier with you. He won’t leave your side.’
‘Okay.’ She wasn’t sure if she was happy he was giving her a bodyguard, but she guessed she’d rather have someone to help her navigate the ground than go alone.
The last three weeks had been the happiest of her life. Alejandro had taken her with him wherever he went and, although she’d kept close to him, she had grown accustomed to the open spaces around her and was secure in the knowledge nothing was going to come cycloning out of that endless blue horizon to sweep her up.
If it did Alejandro would probably punch it.
The thought made her smile as she headed for the car.
The horse-riding lessons had developed into her doing a little gentle riding up and down the corral every day. He’d taken her about Luna Plateada in a Jeep, introduced her to the hands, to the gauchos, to the rhythms of the life they lived here.
She had seen that his heart was not so much with the estancia but with the horses and the breeding programme. Besides the Criollos he had interests in a stud in the Caucasus, with Khaled Kitaev, where they were breeding mountain Kabardins.
She’d spent many nights lying beside him, listening to him musing over breed characteristics. She knew more about the oestrous cycles of mares than she really thought she ought to. But she liked the way he grew so passionate on the subject—as if it had his heart and soul in a way she suspected neither polo nor this ranch did.
The ranch was something he held in trust for the next generation.
It wasn’t really about him.
Polo, she suspected, was his stress-breaker.
It was the horses that mattered—they were his passion.
As she was driven past the stables and they headed out for the highway Lulu pressed her hot cheek to the cold glass of the window and let the truth sink through her.
She was in love with him, and the only thing that mattered now was working out how to make this work.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AS HE ATTACHED his gear Alejandro was only too aware of the crowds outside. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lulu. Out there. Possibly in the sick bay. He blanked it and told himself she was in good hands with Xavier. If she was feeling in any way under pressure she would do what she needed to do. If he’d learned anything it was that Lulu was superb at self-care.
But he hadn’t been parted from her for even a day since he’d brought her to the estancia, leaving aside the twenty-four hours he’d spent in Buenos Aires at the beginning of her visit, and it felt a little strange to be on his own again.
Weird.
He focused on what he needed to do, but in the back of h
is mind as he cruised the stable where his mounts were tethered he knew these last three weeks had been the best of his life.
When Khaled had rung and said he was getting married he’d thought his old friend was loco. But right now he understood that psychology. Keeping Lulu on a short leash appealed greatly, and putting a ring on her finger was the best way of ensuring that. She was definitely an old-fashioned girl. A wedding ring would have special properties for her. She wouldn’t stray. She would stay with him. He could have her for ever.
Only experience told him that nothing lasted. Not mothers or wives. You thought you had something in your grasp, but if it didn’t want to stay you had nothing.
The night after Lulu’s confession in the stables he’d asked her over an alfresco dinner on the terrace how she managed at L’Oiseau Bleu, and he’d put the information she’d given him into practice.
‘When I started, I had Gigi with me. We learned about the place together—how it works, what goes on—so there were no surprises.’
This he knew was key. Routine was everything for Lulu.
‘There’s a strict schedule for every show and that helps a lot. Also, you’re in a team. I do have limitations, but nobody could link them to my anxiety condition.’
She’d looked so serious about this he had immediately wanted to confront anyone who questioned her over it.
‘As it is, I’ve been offered solo roles so many times I can’t count, and the money would be so much better.’ She’d given a little Gallic shrug. ‘Mais cela est impossible! I feel more comfortable in the chorus line. Besides—’ She’d broken off, suddenly looking a little shy.
‘Besides…?’
‘The solo roles are nude.’
‘Nude?’ Alejandro had put down his knife and fork. ‘You mean you go on stage…?’
‘Topless.’
‘Naked,’ he’d said at the same time.
Lulu had thrown her napkin at him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous—what kind of stage show would have naked women?’
Alejandro could have named several, but he hadn’t been prepared to risk Lulu throwing something more substantial at him.
He’d cleared his throat. ‘I was given to understand you all performed topless.’