Kept at the Argentine's Command (Harlequin Presents)

by Lucy Ellis

‘Not at all.’

  She’d looked so cross his heart had stumbled. She’d told him once before that she wasn’t topless on stage, and he realised he hadn’t entirely believed her. He hadn’t then—but he did now. Lulu didn’t lie. She was almost painfully honest and that was part of why he’d fallen in love with her. She meant what she said.

  A woman who meant what she said and did what she said. He waited to feel that old trapped feeling, as if the jaws of some mechanism were closing down on him.

  He thought of his mother, railing against the hand life had dealt her. His father, flickering in and out of their lives, as insubstantial a male role model as you could imagine with his string of young girlfriends. His ex-wife, complaining about how he’d trapped her, and that moment of horror when he realised he’d married a woman startlingly like his mother.

  He’d vowed he would never be like his father, and he’d held to that. Lulu was with him now because he wouldn’t visit his childhood on any other kid. Especially a kid of his own.

  Only that was just a part of the picture.

  He knew now why he’d brought Lulu with him to Buenos Aires. Because she wouldn’t do any of those things the people who had been supposed to love him had done.

  She wouldn’t cheat and lie and walk away.

  Because she loved him.

  She wouldn’t be here, curled in his bed every night, if she didn’t love him.

  And that was when, like a herd of unbroken Criollos thundering across the plains of his barren heart, it all fell into place.

  *

  It wasn’t until she saw the wives and girlfriends of the players being photographed with their significant others before the match that Lulu experienced the first drop of cold doubt.

  Then, between chukkas, she saw Alejandro being photographed with two socialites, and when she asked questions of Xavier the poor guy tried to distract her by taking her to pet the ponies.

  Honestly!

  But she didn’t feel confident enough to stalk across the ground, push those two girls onto their behinds and stick a passionate kiss on Alejandro—as well as sticking her heel into his foot!

  Instead she stood with her glass of champagne and her smile, sat in her box during the match, decided what ‘separate entrances’ really meant and began to feel sick.

  It all made a horrible kind of sense: if she wasn’t pregnant, he didn’t want their relationship to seem official in front of the world.

  Lulu told herself not to be silly, not to jump to conclusions. But why else would he do this? Was he ashamed of her? Was it because she was a showgirl and he was a sixth generation du Crozier?

  She set her chin mutinously. What was so hot about being descended from a horse-stealing profiteer anyway?

  Only she lost her hold on her anger as Alejandro and his team thundered up and down the field. She caught her breath every time he swayed low in his saddle. She knew he wouldn’t fall—she knew intellectually he was the best player on the field. But her heart still sat in her throat and she was relieved when the last goal was scored and the victory cup was filled with champagne.

  ‘What do we do now?’ she asked Xavier, who had been flirting with a very pretty blonde girl and now turned back to her with ‘duty’ written all over his face.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she interrupted him as he began to say something about going to the marquee. ‘Why don’t you enjoy yourself here a little longer? I’ll just pop off to the ladies’.’

  Xavier didn’t argue with her, and she made her way determinedly towards the sponsor’s marquee.

  The pitch was crowded, and there was a great deal of jostling, but she focused on her outcome—which was finding Alejandro.

  She saw him with two of his teammates. They were laughing, and Alejandro had the cup under his arm.

  It was as she raised her hand to catch his attention that a woman standing beside her with glorious sunshine-blonde hair turned to her and said, ‘Don’t even try, honey. There’s a queue for Alejandro du Crozier and the competition is fierce.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  But the woman had already turned to her companion and forgotten about her.

  Lulu blinked and swallowed.

  ‘Lulu!’ Alejandro had finally seen her and was shouldering his way towards her like the force of nature he was.

  Somehow she’d forgotten in the last weeks who he was, his reputation, and the very public life he led.

  The public life he’d sidelined her from.

  Why?

  What was wrong with her?

  Why did that woman think she couldn’t cut it with the competition?

  She looked up at him and some of her distress must have been in her eyes, because he frowned. But then he caught her around the waist and lifted her with both hands. Instinctively she put her arms around his neck and then he was kissing her—deeply, passionately—and she kissed him back—furiously, possessively.

  After almost a month with Alejandro she had massive skills in kissing!

  As her heels touched the ground again a little light applause broke out around them.

  Lulu didn’t even care. She had her arm around him, and he was hot and sweaty, and he was hers.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘walk me to the showers.’

  *

  Twilight was gathering outside. People called out to him, but apart from lifting his hand to give a brief wave he ignored them, steered her off, away from the official crowd, towards the players’ amenities.

  Lulu was full of mixed emotions. She didn’t understand what had gone down today but she knew it was crucial to whatever was between them.

  ‘Alejandro, why did I have to arrive separately? Nobody knew who I was. One woman told me I didn’t have a chance with you.’

  ‘Que?’ Anger rippled across that steady surface she depended on. ‘What woman?’

  ‘I don’t know—some woman. Are there a lot of groupies?’

  ‘Sí.’ He stopped and pulled her in against him. ‘But that doesn’t affect us.’

  ‘Well, it does if no one knows who I am.’

  He frowned. ‘It won’t happen again.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have happened at all if you’d let me arrive with you, like a normal couple—like everyone else,’ she finished, feeling she was whining but not knowing any other way to put it.

  He studied her face. ‘Look, I’ll be honest with you. I arranged for you to enter privately because I was concerned you would have a panic attack. I didn’t want to put you through that level of anxiety.’

  She shook her head. ‘But I wouldn’t—I mean I thought you understood.’

  ‘Understood what, Lulu?’

  He looked faintly irritated. Or it might be that he was just tired. It had been a hard match, and he still had to shower and change and talk to the sponsors and the media and… And she was holding him up.

  ‘This is what you do, isn’t it? You fly around the world and play polo for six months of the year.’

  ‘Sí.’

  ‘So every time you play I’ll have to be secreted away?’

  He released a gusty sigh. ‘Once we get you into a routine it won’t be a big deal, but until then you need to be careful.’

  ‘Why? Because I’ll embarrass you?’

  ‘Because, mi chica loca, I can’t keep my mind on the match if I’m worrying about you.’

  Lulu flinched. She knew enough Spanish now to know he’d called her his crazy girl. She tried not to let that get its teeth into her. ‘You’re right,’ she said heavily. ‘I didn’t think of that.’

  His expression softened and he framed her face with his hands, stroked her hair as if he needed to touch her.

  ‘It will get better, Lulu. You will get better.’

  She knew then, even if he hadn’t faced it, that she couldn’t fit into his lifestyle. Alejandro was operating on a timescale that ended with her getting better. She was never going to get better. Even if she hadn’t discussed this with her therapist she would have known it on a gut le
vel herself. Some things you just had to learn to live with and, where you could, embrace them.

  Alejandro had made her comfortable within her limitations, but he was waiting for her to ‘get better’.

  Suddenly her path became terrifyingly clear. ‘I’m going back to Paris. Tonight.’

  ‘Hang on—what?’ He looked genuinely thrown.

  ‘The new season for our show starts up next week, I’d have to go by Monday anyway. You know I have a job.’

  ‘I don’t want you to go.’ He spoke as if this were a fact. Not a request. He seemed to realise this, because he exhaled a breath and said more reasonably, ‘Listen, I don’t know where all this has come from, but I think you’re having a reaction to the stress of the day—’

  ‘No!’ She exploded in a low roar, yanking herself free of him. ‘You do not speak to me like that, Alejandro. I am not crazy—do you understand me? I came here with you to Buenos Aires because I was scared and I thought it was the right thing to do.’

  She frowned, because that wasn’t entirely true. She’d come because she’d wanted something with him, and for the last couple of weeks she’d thought she’d found it. Had it all been a fantasy? Cooked up by a combination of her tendency to cling to people who offered her support and her inexperience with men so she hadn’t understood she was fooling herself?

  ‘I thought it was the right thing to do,’ she repeated. ‘Instead we’ve just confused the issue.’

  ‘I’m not confused, Lulu.’

  ‘Well, I am! Do you know what a baby would mean for me? It would mean dismantling all the new stuff I’ve been putting in place to try and make my own life. It would mean no downsizing to a flat I can afford to pay for, no starting college, no career that I’ve been dreaming of. All the things I’ve been working so hard towards—to make myself independent—would be taken away.’

  It all came pouring out, and that was when Lulu realised what she feared was not her ability to rise to this very grown-up challenge, but that she was going to lose her options.

  That she would be handing over responsibility for her life to Alejandro and nothing about her would have changed.

  ‘If feels like all my life I’ve been losing ground, inch by inch. I want my life to open up, Alejandro, not close down.’

  She shut her eyes, because she knew how she sounded. Selfish. Self-centred. All the horrible things he’d once said she was.

  ‘But I know one thing,’ she whispered. ‘If I’m pregnant I don’t want to be making choices out of fear. Part of me wants you to wave a wand and make it all work—absolve me from being a bad person who feels angry and resentful that her life choices are being taken away from her. Again.’

  It was the ‘again’ that silenced Alejandro when he would have argued with her.

  He couldn’t do it to her. If she felt trapped the last thing he should do was clang those bars shut.

  A dark tide of bitterness came, moving up through him. He’d been blind. Again.

  She gave him a sorrowful look. ‘You’re thirty-two. You’ve been married and divorced, you’ve carved out a successful career and you run a working estancia. There’s nothing you can’t do, Alejandro. And I’ve done what? Held down a chorus role in the Bluebirds. I’m not ready to have a baby,’ she choked.

  It was a relief to say it. It was also incredibly painful, because she knew now she was going home without him.

  He placed a hand that was incredibly gentle on her shoulder, but his eyes—they looked dead. Her heart stuttered.

  ‘I will phone you as soon as I have the results,’ she said, making herself hold his eyes.

  ‘I want to fly you back to Paris,’ he said quietly in return.

  She started. ‘N-no. I can fly by myself.’

  Let me be normal! she wanted to yell, until it splintered the air, but who was she railing against? Alejandro? Herself?

  ‘You need someone to travel with you. Let me organise that, at least. I want you to feel safe.’

  Lulu felt it like a punch to her chest.

  After everything that had happened over the last few weeks he still saw her as crippled. Just like everyone else. She knew then that she was doing the right thing—no matter how much she was hurting.

  ‘I am capable of boarding a flight alone,’ she said, in a voice that felt wrung out with yelling, although neither of them had raised their voices.

  He was being so appallingly reasonable—and quiet.

  ‘Lulu—’

  She knew the words that would stop him in his tracks but it would hurt like razor blades bloodying her mouth to utter them.

  ‘Don’t you understand, Alejandro? I don’t want you.’

  She turned around and walked. Very fast. Very deliberately. She knew after those words that Alejandro would not follow.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  IT HAD BEEN six weeks. Summer had turned to autumn and leaves rolled along the Paris street as Alejandro parked his hire car and looked up at the unexceptional six-storey building wedged between a laundromat and a thriving North African restaurant.

  He checked the address. This was it.

  Pocketing the car keys, he went inside and took the stairs up four flights.

  He was ringing her bell when he realised this couldn’t be the flat her parents had paid for.

  Lulu was living within her own means.

  He recognised that this wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d thought.

  If she’d put her plans into action she might be less inclined to give him a hearing. Plus, he was still angry with her. It burned more the closer he got to this moment, seeing her again, when he knew she damn well didn’t want to see him.

  Well, he wasn’t giving her a choice. He knew Lulu. She’d only run and hide. The memory of her hunched over and trembling behind that nineteenth-century desk flashed unexpectedly to mind, but he shoved it aside. Thinking of Lulu small and fragile and vulnerable only got him so far. She wanted him to see her as strong. He’d treat her that way.

  The sound of a dog barking preceded the door opening. She had at least four chains on it, which satisfied his desire for her to be safe but also had him wondering about the neighbourhood.

  The door swung open and his pulse sped up.

  It was Lulu. In soft blue leggings, a stripy pullover, and she was holding a fluffy black dog in her arms.

  Her hair was longer. Her eyes looked bigger—as if she’d lost weight.

  Or maybe it was because she was staring at him.

  She was so beautiful.

  All his anger fell away.

  ‘Alejandro?’

  She looked as if she was seeing a ghost and it occurred to him that he should have rung. But it hadn’t been common sense that had seen him walk out of a sponsor’s event in Connecticut and take a flight direct to Paris this morning. It had been the certainty that if he didn’t claim her now she would never be his.

  ‘Lulu.’ His usual smooth charm with the female sex had deserted him and he was lost for words.

  She looked so delicate—nothing like the determined and robust picture she’d built for him over the phone.

  Because she’d rung him to confirm that she wasn’t pregnant.

  He’d had a moment when disappointment had bloomed so hard and fast in his chest he hadn’t been able to speak.

  She’d repeated his name and he’d found the appropriate words—it was good news…she must be relieved—and said he wanted to come and see her.

  She hadn’t spoken again, and it had been the longest moment, stretching between them across continents.

  He had been in London, she here in Paris. Obviously in this depressing-looking little flat.

  ‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea,’ she’d said at last, in a small voice.

  He hadn’t pushed then, because he’d learned not to push. It was why he had never made an effort to be in his sisters’ lives.

  He’d kept thinking about what Lulu had said about loving his sisters, about trusting them. That was why a f
ew weeks ago he’d invited the girls to join him in London. It had been a good weekend—catching up, sharing news. And he was currently drawing up a contract to give the girls equal shares in Luna Plateada. It was something long overdue.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Lulu said now, her eyes fixed on his.

  Good question. He should have been here six weeks ago. Instead he’d been touring with the team. Going to bed at night at ten, getting up before dawn, blocking what was standing in front of him now from his mind. He’d been gently mocked by a couple of his teammates and friends for eschewing the nightlife that went along with a tour. He’d had no interest in other women.

  He was looking at the reason why.

  ‘Are you free for dinner?’

  She looked flummoxed. ‘I have a show tonight, I’m not off until after eleven.’

  No other man, then. He could feel the knot of tension he’d carried in his gut these past weeks easing.

  Or at least not tonight. Tomorrow—who knew? Paris was a big city. He could imagine hundreds of worthy men lining up to take her out to dinner, to set aside the doubts and fears he’d held on to too long. One of those men would put a ring on her finger.

  ‘I’ll pick you up.’

  ‘I don’t know, Alejandro…’ she said slowly.

  ‘You’re so busy with this new life of yours you can’t date?’

  She moistened her lips, widened her eyes slightly. ‘Is this a date?’

  ‘What else would it be?’

  ‘You want to date me?’

  ‘Indisputably.’

  She hesitated. ‘Just because you’re in Paris tonight?’

  He knew then he had a lot to prove. ‘No, amorcito, I’m here because you’re in Paris.’

  *

  It was bedlam.

  The new girl from Australia, Romy, had pulled a hamstring in the last number and was in too much pain to perform the ‘Little Egypt’ set.

  Anna, the maîtresse de ballet, was on her knees, begging Lulu to don transparent scarves and wiggle her way through the act.

  ‘Those extra pounds on your hips can only help,’ she wheedled.

  ‘Those pounds you told me not four hours ago I was to get rid of or I’d be fined? Those pounds?’ Lulu demanded.