‘Senhorita?’
‘Sorry.’ She smiled as the flight attendant indicated that she might like to exit the aircraft—preferably some time this year, Karina guessed with a rueful grin.
Reality hit as she walked down the steps. She smoothed an imaginary crease in her jeans with damp palms as she took in the fact that this wasn’t her land, this was Dante’s land. He lived his unknown life here. She wished she’d dressed up a bit more, to add to her confidence and to reinforce her professional image. She had chosen to dress casually for the flight, as it wouldn’t have been a surprise to find that Dante had two wild horses waiting to transport them bareback to his ranch. She’d got that badly wrong. There was no sign of Dante, but there were two top-of-the-range off-road vehicles waiting on the tarmac. The one closest to the aircraft had a young gaucho standing by the passenger door, who nodded to her as she hesitated.
‘Welcome to Fazenda Baracca, Senhorita Marcelos.’
‘Karina, please,’ she replied with a smile.
‘Gabe. Ranch manager.’
Gabe’s handshake was brisk and firm, and he was about a foot taller than she was, though not as tall as Dante.
‘Senhor Baracca sends his apologies, but he may not join you today.’
From this she assumed Dante meant to keep her on tenterhooks. Good luck with that, she thought, firming her chin. She was here to work, not to idle her time away, waiting for him.
‘He has his usual checks to carry out,’ Gabe explained, seeing her expression change. ‘He asks that you make plans to tour the ranch tomorrow, and meanwhile he asks that you make yourself at home and get to work on your plans for the cup.’
Was that a rain check or a reprieve?
Thanking Gabe, she settled into the passenger seat and he closed the door. She stared around with interest. Dante’s land radiated order and care. From the pristine fencing around the paddocks stretching away towards the horizon to the impeccable airstrip, where his private jet sat like a gleaming white bird, it was obvious that no expense had been spared. This was gaucho polo in a diamond-studded frame. She was already excited at the thought of organising an event here. She’d known Dante was rich—all the polo guys were wealthy—but this was money on a vast scale.
Inevitably, she began to brood. Where had the money come from? Dante’s parents had lived beyond their means, as far as she could remember. Her parents’ ranch had enjoyed much better facilities, which was why Dante and all the other young polo hopefuls had come there to train. Dante held several valuable franchises now he was so successful, but was that enough for a private jet, this ranch and his glittering lifestyle?
She jolted alert, as Gabe called out through his open window. Dante was just climbing behind the wheel of the second off-road vehicle. His eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, but he raised a hand when he saw her looking. Then he started the engine and drove away. His interest in her was as fleeting as it got, as if it was enough for him to check her transfer from jet to ranch was going smoothly.
That suited her fine, she told herself firmly. Settling back in her seat, she turned her mind to the project. Everything she saw and experienced from this moment on might be crucial to the polo cup. Nothing must escape her notice. She had to be like a sponge and soak it all up. She had no idea what to expect. She had only visited the Baracca ranch a couple of times as a child, and had never been invited into the main house. She remembered it as being dark and forbidding. Money had been tight for the Baraccas, her mother had explained, because of the high life Dante’s father made sure he enjoyed.
Gabe drove cross-country for around ten minutes before they reached some imposing gates. These marked the formal entrance to the main ranch house complex, he explained. The entrance had been pulled back considerably since the last time she had visited. Opening the window, she leaned out to stare around with interest. The barns and buildings had been developed and improved to the point where the run up to the ranch house was more like a drive through a well-ordered village set in a beautiful emerald-green frame than a potholed track flanked by the rotting buildings she remembered.
Mellow stone and burnished wood combined beneath a sultry sun to turn Dante’s large ranch house a soft, shimmering bronze, while a frame of trees added shade and coolness to the entrance. She was impressed. More importantly, for the purposes of the polo cup, visitors would be impressed.
Her excitement for the project was building. There wasn’t a thing out of place. The vivid floral displays in the formal grounds around the house were breathtaking. The image visitors would carry away would be that of a perfect ranch, with perfect grounds and perfect animals happily grazing. She could see the flyers and the brochures she’d have printed now, showing warm wood, sun-kissed stone and white paintwork, flanked by brilliantly coloured flowers and emerald-green paddocks stretching away into the distance, with choice groupings of well cared-for animals. This year’s polo cup was shaping up to be the easiest event she’d ever been asked to promote.
She had to organise it first, Karina reminded herself as the familiar excitement rose inside her. It was tinged with a slight attack of nerves as she considered the enormity of the task ahead of her, but she put those aside for now to smile at Gabe as he drew up outside the open front door, where a beaming housekeeper was waiting to welcome them.
‘I can’t believe the changes here since the last time I visited.’
‘That must have been some time ago,’ he commented. ‘Dante has renovated everything, and the main house has been added to substantially since he’s been in charge.’
‘Have you worked here long?’
‘For the past few years—since Dante’s other interests started taking up more of his time.’
His other interests?
‘I’ve got my own spread,’ Gabe explained. ‘This is a temporary placement—a favour for Dante. He’s done a lot to help me build up my own breeding programme and so I said I’d help him out. He assures me that he’s going to settle down here one day,’ Gabe added with a wry look. ‘But so far no sign of that.’
So he hadn’t settled down. Her heart thundered and her brain was clicking. What other interests could Dante possibly have? Surely the ranch and his polo took up all his time? A glance at Gabe’s face suggested he would be no more forthcoming than Dante.
‘Did you know his father?’
Gabe stared at her for a few long seconds before volunteering in a lazy drawl, ‘I’ve heard about him.’
It wouldn’t be anything complimentary, she guessed. Apart from instinctively not liking Dante’s father, she remembered her mother saying Dante had saved his mother from his bullying father. She’d been too young to remember the detail. It still sent a shiver down her spine. His mother’s suffering had been bad enough, and the thought of the things Dante must have seen and endured as a child made her feel sad for him.
‘I didn’t really know Senhor Baracca senior that well myself. Strange really when you consider that Dante, my brother and I spent endless days on this ranch as kids. It was an amazing setting for any child. Though I don’t suppose there are any children on the ranch now?’ she queried curiously.
Gabe exploded with laughter. ‘No children?’ he echoed. ‘I hope you’re not allergic to the little brutes, because you’re going to find hordes of them here.’
‘Hordes?’ she questioned, but Gabe wasn’t giving anything away.
‘What about you, Karina?’ he pressed. ‘Family?’
‘No.’ Her voice sounded strained, but she found a smile to reassure Gabe.
‘You must love your job to make it everything,’ he said, staring at her keenly.
‘Yes, I do.’ It helped her to live with the memories by taking up so much of her time, and she was looking forward to escaping the safety net Luc had always provided for her. She wanted to taste life, to try and learn to live with the past
, and where better to do that than here on the pampas she had almost forgotten she loved so much?
‘Hey, Dante!’
Her heart leapt into her mouth as she swung around to follow Gabe’s greeting. She was just in time to see Dante vault a fence as he went to check on some horses in the paddock.
His virility shocked her. How could she have forgotten?
She hadn’t forgotten, but in this setting it seemed more pronounced than ever. Dante was brutally masculine, so strong and hard-muscled—and yet so gentle and affectionate towards the horse, she noticed. Animals loved him, and she loved watching his interaction with them. There was nothing left of the polished businessman here, or even the startlingly good-looking playboy featured in so many magazines. Dante was a gaucho through and through, and here on his fazenda he was at home, back in control of his land.
She tensed as he raised a hand to acknowledge Gabe, noticing how Dante’s black stare remained fixed on her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
KARINA WAS REALLY HERE. Forget the checks he usually made on his return to the ranch. Gabe could handle them. Dante felt alive—more alive than ever before. His senses were on full alert, with every instinct he possessed honed to the sharpest point. Having Karina on his ranch and under his roof was like warm honey singing through his veins. They’d been apart too long. And here there could only be truth between them. The pampas was too vast, too beautiful, too unforgiving to allow for human shortcomings. It revealed and exposed. It was harsh and true. It brought out the best in people...and the worst.
Seeing Karina here took him back to the past, a place he usually avoided. It was never easy to remember the way his father had treated his mother, not even troubling to hide his countless infidelities. His father had seen these as proof of his virility, rather than a tragedy that had broken his mother’s heart. He glanced at the ranch house his mother had called home, and which he had renovated in her memory, knowing the housekeeper would be settling Karina in, and she would be meeting up with the happy chaos that characterised his lifestyle. He smiled to himself as he wondered what she’d make of it.
* * *
The housekeeper welcomed Karina into a vaulted hallway where the noise levels were off the scale. Gabe was right. There were hordes of children. Which was the last thing she had expected of Dante.
‘Descuplas! My apologies!’ the housekeeper, who had introduced herself as Maria, exclaimed with an indulgent laugh as she took hold of Karina’s arm to steer her out of the way of a makeshift raft on wheels manned by several youngsters. ‘Today is a very special day. The master is home and everyone is excited.’
Dante, the master of all he surveyed? Karina smiled, admitting to herself that she felt completely at home here in the chaos. Riding tack and footballs, along with discarded toys and a number of junior bicycles piled up in a heap competed for space with sturdy antique furniture, polished to within an inch of its life.
‘So?’ She jumped at the sound of the deep male voice. ‘What do you think of my home, Karina? Do you approve?’
‘Dante!’ She spun on her heel. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here today.’
‘Why?’ He shrugged. ‘This is my home.’
‘Gabe said—’ She bit her tongue and let it go. Dante was entitled to change his mind.
‘Do you like what I’ve done with the house?’ he prompted, giving her a look that made her stomach clench with pleasure rather than alarm.
He was talking about the mess, which she didn’t care about at all. It was a happy home. She could feel that right away. And that was all that mattered.
‘As it happens, I like it a lot,’ she said.
‘Good.’
Dante’s deep, husky voice shivered through her like a hot knife through melting meringue. His wicked smile was something she hadn’t seen enough of, though he was making it increasingly hard for her to confine her thoughts to business. It didn’t help that he was as tall and as dark and as devastatingly handsome as he’d ever been—but not quite so menacing now that he had a group of children clinging to his legs.
Even as she took all this in, she felt her frantic city life drop away and the pampas claim her. She felt different. Even Dante looked different here, and the longing to ride free and wild with him was suddenly overwhelming.
‘I’m going to the kitchen to grab some food with these urchins,’ he said. ‘Join me when you’ve settled in, and then we’ll discuss my agenda.’
Dante had changed? Maybe not that much! She held back on a salute. ‘I trust you’ll be equally open to discussing my agenda?’
‘That all depends on what your agenda is...’
He held her stare a beat too long, his mouth slanted in a challenging smile and his eyes glowing with an emotion she couldn’t read. She still hadn’t figured out where the children fitted into his lifestyle, and was halfway up the stairs when a female voice called out, ‘Karina?’
Her stomach contracted as she turned around. The girl was very beautiful.
‘Honestly, they’re impossible,’ the mystery girl exclaimed, shaking a play fist at the children. ‘You’re very brave to come here.’
Karina got over her initial reaction fast. She liked the girl on sight. ‘It looks like fun to me.’ She smiled down.
‘I’m Nichola, but everyone calls me Nicky. Sorry! Can’t shake your hand. I’m covered in finger-paint.’ Nicky brandished both hands palms up as proof.
‘You’re in charge of the children?’
‘In charge?’ Nicky’s laughter pealed out as she thought about that. ‘That’s one way of putting it! I love them, but I’m always glad to hand them back to their parents. But what about you? Apparently, you’re amazing—according to Dante,’ she explained, when Karina looked surprised. ‘The children from the families of those who work on the ranch treat this as their second home,’ Nicky explained, ‘and Dante brings more in from the city to experience life on a ranch. He says he loves the place to be used, and I’m usually around, a bit like an adoptive auntie, I suppose, which in a way I am, being Dante’s sister...’
‘Sister?’ Karina queried, thinking back. She couldn’t remember Dante having a sister.
‘You were away, I expect, when I moved in, or you’d have heard all about me. I’m Dante’s father’s love child,’ Nicky explained, with the same openness that had drawn Karina to her. ‘Not that there was much love involved, from what I can understand.’
Were there any similarities between father and son? A knot snagged in Karina’s stomach.
‘Dante’s mother brought me here to live with them when my own mother died,’ Nicky explained. ‘Things weren’t easy for Dante’s mother, but I suppose you know that—it was common knowledge. That didn’t stop her taking me in. You probably remember, that was the sort of woman she was.’
‘A saint,’ Karina agreed, as pieces of the jigsaw that made up the life of Dante Baracca flew together at breakneck speed. ‘I’m only sorry I didn’t get the chance to know Dante’s mother better. I only met her a few times when I was a child, but my mother used to talk about how good she was.’
Nicky shared her grimace as they thought back. ‘Dante’s father liked to keep her out of the way—kitchen sink or his bed were her only permitted zones, from what I can understand.’
Karina guessed they both felt the same shiver run down their spines, but Nicky soon lightened the mood with her smile. ‘Sorry. I’m keeping you from settling in. Let Maria show you to your room—I have to pack anyway, as I’m leaving soon.’
‘You’re leaving?’ Karina was disappointed, having found someone she believed could be a friend.
‘Yes.’ Nicky heaved a mock sigh. ‘Dante will have to fend for himself, though my best guess is that his adoring staff will do the fending for him, leaving Dante free to bring in more waifs and strays.’
‘Waifs a
nd strays?’ Karina was beginning to feel like a parrot, but this was so much information in the space of a couple of minutes she couldn’t get things straight in her head.
‘Dante has a plan for the future,’ Nicky revealed enigmatically.
There was only one certainty, Karina concluded when Nicky headed off across the hall. Every preconceived notion she’d had about Dante Baracca had been turned upside down.
‘I’d make the most of having the day to yourself today if I were you,’ Nicky shouted back to her. ‘Knowing Dante, he’ll be knocking on your door at cockcrow in the morning. Just remember the fun starts tomorrow, so make the most of the peace and quiet today.’
Karina’s head was spinning, but it was hard not to be optimistic when Maria ushered her into the most beautiful guest room. Light and bright, it was beautifully decorated in shades of ice blue and coral. If it hadn’t been for Dante and the history they shared, she would have been more thrilled than ever to be back on the pampas she loved, especially when Maria threw back the drapes to reveal a wide, deep balcony overlooking fields full of foals and their mothers. What more could she possibly want than this?
Answers?
Her life was what she’d made it, though it was impossible not to think about Dante and try to piece together the nuggets of information Nicky had shared. Did Dante take after his cold, self-serving father or after his mother, a woman who had cared enough to bring the orphaned child of her husband’s mistress into her home?
That was a question for another day, Karina concluded as Maria suggested that Nicky’s idea was a good one, and that tonight Karina might like to take supper in her room later.
‘I would. Thank you.’ She’d spend the rest of the day working on her laptop, then a hot, foamy bath beckoned, before food and bed. Something told her she would need her sleep, and that tomorrow would be soon enough to start piecing together the puzzle that was Dante Baracca.
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