by Jennie Lucas
Closing her eyes, she breathed in his woodsy, masculine scent, in the pleasure and comfort of his embrace.
Only one night left.
Swallowing, Annabelle pushed away from him, tucking her smallest digital camera into the back pocket of her oversize jeans. Trying to hide the emotion on her face, hiding her desire to cling to him forever, she said sadly, “I have to work today.”
“Forget work,” he commanded, stroking her cheek. “Stay in bed.”
She shivered with longing, staring up at his handsome face. “I’ve forgotten work too much already,” she said. She shook her head. “Equestrian will wonder what on earth I’ve been doing all week here.”
“Then let’s both give back their advance,” he said, nuzzling her neck. “I would happily lose a hundred thousand euros for a single hour of having you in my arms.”
Annabelle sighed. Looking up at his handsome face, she was beyond tempted. She wanted nothing more than to stay here, in the warmth of his bedroom, with its rustic furniture and incredible view of the vast fields and horses outside. She wanted nothing more than to stay here in his arms forever.
No. No, she couldn’t give in to that feeling! I don’t love him, she told herself desperately. Absolutely not …
A loud bang came from outside the house. Crossing to the bedroom window, Stefano peeked through the blinds, then winced at the roar and hum of moving vans and the shouting of men outside.
“We’re under siege,” he said grimly, pulling away from the window.
She grinned. “You invited them here.”
“I hate this time of the year.”
“You only gave the party planners a single day to set up for tomorrow. What did you expect? What else could they do but send an army? And it is for charity.”
“I still hate it.” He scowled, then lifted a dark eyebrow with a wicked half smile.
“Come distract me …”
She tilted her head as if considering. “I suppose I could use your services today.”
“Aha—”
“.as my assistant,” she finished.
He pouted, then brightened. “Taking any photographs in the meadow today?” he suggested sweetly.
She snorted, then turned back to the mirror and reached for her simple diamond stud earrings, which she put on one at a time. Her makeup and toiletries had already taken up residence across his private bathroom counter. Grabbing her small collection of tiny brushes, she put on her makeup, carefully covering the scar on her face. “Sadly, no. I need to go to the village. For my story.”
“Go to Algares? Why?”
“You grew up there—many of the young stablehands you now employ came from there.”
“So?”
“It’s the first village you helped with your charity foundation, long ago. I want to see how it’s changed. The village is part of the story. I have to include it.”
Stefano looked irritated, and was just opening his mouth to argue when they heard another loud bang outside, and the sound of a truck’s loud, incessant beep as it backed up in the courtyard. Men started yelling in Spanish and they heard a woman’s loud voice in French telling them they were setting it up all wrong. The men answered angrily in Spanish, and the multilingual dispute had the ranch’s dogs barking in a cacophony of noise.
“On second thought,” Stefano growled, “I’ll come with you.”
“You will!” Annabelle said, thrilled she didn’t have to leave him in order to finish her work. So much for guarding her heart, she thought to herself sourly.
Stefano swiftly showered and put on a cotton shirt and jeans that fit him far better than they fit her. He didn’t need a belt to keep the jeans snug against his lean hips. After he pulled on his boots, they walked to his six-car garage, where he climbed into an old 1950s Willys Jeepster. Getting in beside him, Annabelle looked at the rare open-topped truck with appreciation. “Nice,” she said. “Not flashy. Real.”
“Glad you like it.” He started the engine. Maneuvering his truck around the vans and trucks sprawled all over his lawn, past people unloading supplies from food to flowers to polo equipment, Stefano drove past the chaos and down the peaceful tree-lined avenue. They passed the old stone gate, crenellated and covered with moss in the shade, and Annabelle realized it was the first time she’d left the ranch for almost a week.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to go back into the real world, to be honest. But the village was only a few miles away, down the slender road clinging to the edge of the rocky green hills. All too quickly, they arrived at Algares, a tiny, prosperous village of whitewashed houses tucked in the valley.
The moment they arrived, a crowd of children appeared, rushing from the houses, running in the dust behind the Jeepster. They joyfully shouted Stefano’s name.
“Children are following us,” Annabelle said, looking back in amazement.
Stefano glanced back in the mirror. A smile lifted the hard edges of his mouth. “I know.”
Parking the truck on the street, Stefano climbed out and held out his arms. “¡Hola, mis amigos!”
The laughing children ran to him eagerly. Bending to their eye level, he patted one little girl on the shoulder as he smiled at another child and asked him something in Spanish.
Annabelle climbed slowly out of the truck. Children were bouncing all around Stefano, a little girl in pigtails and a pinafore tugging on his shirt to get his attention, an older boy excitedly telling him a story in Spanish about a football game. From nearby doorways, she saw mothers, young and old, coming out the doorways of their gleaming, tidy homes to smile at their children who held the total attention of the tall, powerful Señor Cortez.
Annabelle slowly looked around her. This was Algares, which ten years ago had been called the poorest village in Spain? Now, it was charming, picture-perfect, a scene of warmth and domestic happiness. With a slow intake of breath, she raised her camera and took pictures of the village, the children and the tall, handsome man smiling at them.
Stefano and Annabelle spent hours visiting different families in the village, all of whom clamored for the honor of making their lunch. The people were so warm and friendly, she thought. Both children and parents clearly thought the world of Stefano. Annabelle took tea in more than one snug house, and when they heard she was doing an article, they insisted on telling her all about how Stefano had saved their jobs or improved their lives, how his foundation had built a playground for the old park and bought supplies for schoolchildren.
About how he’d helped their sons, after the boys had gotten into trouble with the law and started down the wrong path, by hiring them as stablehands and giving them not just a job … but a vocation.
Stefano had helped them, as he helped everyone he cared about.
Annabelle took pictures of everything. She took photos of Stefano most of all. When he looked at her, she lost her breath. When he smiled, her heart lifted to her throat.
After they’d visited practically every house in Algares, Annabelle’s arm was wrapped companionably around his as they walked down the street. He was so much more than a playboy, she thought, sneaking sideways glances at him. She’d known his charitable foundation was important to him, but she’d never realized what a difference he made.
What an amazing man, Annabelle thought. She swallowed. The way she really felt about him now.
Clumsily, she stumbled over her feet.
“Careful, querida.” Stefano caught her before she fell face-first into the street. “You seem tired,” he said, tilting his head at her. He pointed at the village pub. “Why don’t we stop and have a drink?”
Trembling, Annabelle looked at the building across the street. The tavern was two stories high, on a corner lot with a painted sign dangling cheerfully from the eaves. It was charming and cheerful and, as Annabelle stared up at it, she hated it on sight.
If I wish to, as you say, take a lover, I go to the village tavern and rent a room for the night.
“One drink before we leave,” S
tefano suggested. “You can even take a picture or two, if you like. This place is a local landmark.”
“I just bet it is,” she muttered with a surge of bitterness, and lifted her camera.
When she was done, they went inside. The pub was fairly empty and very well-swept.
Annabelle tried to hide the way her body was shaking as Stefano led her to the small table in the window. As she sat down across from him, she wondered how many women had already joined him at this very table. And how many more would sit with him here in the coming weeks.
“Your usual, señor? ” the bartender called in Spanish.
“Sí,” Stefano replied with a grin. “And the lady will have.” He turned to her, waiting.
“I’m not thirsty,” Annabelle said. “Come, you must have something. One drink.”
“What are you having?” she asked him listlessly.
“A beer.”
“I’ll have the same.”
He lifted an eyebrow in approval, then relayed her drink to the bartender. Turning back to her at the small table, he asked abruptly, “Can I see the new pictures you’ve taken?”
She bit her lip. “Will you tell me honestly what you think of them?”
“Do you really want me to?”
Reluctantly, Annabelle handed him her digital camera. The camera seemed tiny in his large hands as he looked slowly through the digital images she’d taken of the village, and the ranch before that.
Watching him, she licked her dry lips. She adored these new pictures. The photographs she’d taken over the past few days seemed rich and vibrant, full of life, even to her artist’s critical eye.
But would he scorn them as he had her last pictures? Would he call them frozen and dead?
Trembling, she peeked over his shoulder as Stefano went through picture after picture.
And Annabelle suddenly noticed something she’d never seen before. Her eyes went wide with shock.
No wonder she loved these pictures. There was Stefano in the village, bending on one knee as he talked to the children. Stefano tilting his head back, giving advice to the young stablehands at Santo Castillo. Stefano standing alone in the paddock at sunset, training a yearling. Even her pictures of the wild, vast landscape somehow had his blurry elbow on the edge of the frame. Every single picture had Stefano in it. She’d even taken one of him last night, at a private moment in his bed. She’d wanted to capture the tenderness and passion of his dark eyes, and so she’d taken a picture of him as the red-and-orange sunset from the window cast a halo over his dark head, like fire.
Stefano was in all her pictures now. He was in her soul. In her heart. Annabelle gave a strangled, silent gasp. She was in love with him. She’d tried desperately to fight it. She hadn’t wanted to love him. For days, she’d denied her feelings, even to herself, because she knew loving him would destroy her.
But her photographs didn’t lie.
Stefano had become the center of her whole world. The only man for her.
She loved him.
The bartender came over with their two drinks, and stared at her openly. She tried not to notice his knowing smirk before he left. He clearly thought she was Stefano’s newest easy woman, here today and gone tomorrow.
Which was exactly what Annabelle was. She blinked, hard.
With a quick sip of his beer, Stefano continued to turn through the digital images.
Ignoring her own drink, Annabelle stared at him, fighting back tears.
Would he notice he was in every picture? Would he understand what it meant?
Please, God, she prayed. Don’t let him notice. If he did, her humiliation would be complete.
Finally, he looked up at her, and his dark eyes glowed.
“These pictures are perfect, full of passion and life,” he said with a smile, handing back the camera. “I see your love and appreciation for my ranch in every image. Well done,” he added softly.
Not just her love for Santo Castillo. She swallowed, her cheeks feeling hot. “Thank you.”
They show my love for you. All for you. Her breath caught in her throat as she waited in agony for him to say something more, anything.
Annabelle, why am I in every picture?
Annabelle—surely you have not been stupid enough to fall in love with me?
Stefano cleared his throat.
“There were some good pictures of Mrs. Gutierrez and the boys. Perhaps you could make copies and send them to the boys’ parents.”
She blinked. “Sure.”
His brow furrowed as he looked down at her, his dark eyes warm and tender.
“Everything all right?”
“Yes,” Annabelle whispered over the lump in her throat. But it wasn’t all right. It would never be all right again.
He threw some money on the table to pay the bill and rose from his chair. “Let’s head home.”
On the drive back to the ranch, Annabelle stared out the window at the sunset shimmering in the west. The light turned the undulating green hills into silken ribbons of scarlet and coral and magenta.
Rolling down the window to lean her elbows against the frame, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath of the fragrant air, redolent of oranges and earth and the distant sea.
She loved this beautiful, wild, half-arid landscape.
As they drove back, the simple brush of Stefano’s hand against her knee as he shifted the gears caused a thrill through her body, even as it caused a jagged pain through her heart.
Then he spoke.
“Don’t leave tomorrow, Annabelle,” he said in a low voice. “Stay here. With me.” She looked at him with an intake of breath.
“I wish I could.”
“Why can’t you?”
Because her heart was already breaking, and she didn’t know how much longer she could hide her love for him, love he would never return. “Because … I can’t.”
His eyes looked black, then he turned back to the road and switched gears, hard. She sat in stricken silence as they drove back through the gates of Santo Castillo.
The chaos at the ranch had only increased. He navigated past the delivery vans and horse trailers parked along his gravel drive, skirting around the people setting up for the polo match and gala dinner afterward. By noon tomorrow, Annabelle knew, Santo Castillo would be overrun by the world’s most beautiful, sophisticated, experienced women. Just thinking of it, she felt sick inside.
Stefano parked the truck in the garage and turned off the ignition. Setting his jaw, he faced her.
“Come to my bedroom,” he said. “So we can discuss this.”
“I’ll come to your bedroom, but there’s nothing to discuss.”
“There is.”
“Don’t ruin our last precious night by trying to change things that cannot be changed.”
“Anything can change. We are the ones who know what we want and how we want to live. You have three minutes to get to my bedroom.” The hard set of his jaw frightened her.
“Or I’ll carry you. Right now.”
“Everyone would see!”
“Three minutes.”
He got out of the truck, slamming the door behind him.
Annabelle sat in the darkened garage in shock. When she finally got out of the truck and left the garage, Stefano’s broad, muscular back was disappearing behind a brightly colored horse trailer as he pushed through the throngs of caterers and party planners and hired help.
She stared at him, and felt like crying.
Leaving him was the last thing she wanted to do. But she had to do it. The longer she stayed now, loving him, the more vicious her heartbreak would be. She’d never loved anyone like this. If she let herself stay, his ultimate betrayal might kill her. Her only hope of saving herself was to leave. Immediately.
Annabelle slowly started to walk through the crowds toward the house. But she had a sinking feeling that it was already too late.
Chapter Ten
Three minutes felt like an eternity.
Stefano paced across the cool tiles of his bedroom floor. He was not going to let Annabelle leave tomorrow. Not now. Not yet.
He had to persuade her to stay. With words. With his body. Whatever it took. The more time he spent with Annabelle, the more he knew they were meant to be together—if not forever, then at least for longer.
Stefano heard her knock, and flung open the door.
Annabelle’s beautiful face looked both sad and determined as she folded her arms.
“All right, I’m here,” she said. “But I’m not going to change my mind about tomorrow. So let’s not talk about it, we have so little time left already….”
Stefano held open the door. “Come in.”
He could see the uncertainty and longing across her lovely, expressive face as she entered his bedroom.
“Sit down,” he said. “I want to tell you something.”
She stood in front of him with a spine straight as steel and shook her head. “I’ll stand.”
“I want to tell you,” he said quietly, “the real reason I gave up my show-jumping career at nineteen, in the middle of the London International Equestrian Show.”
Her mouth fell open. Her gray eyes were wide as she sank onto the bed.
Stefano looked down at her. He hadn’t wanted to ever explain this, but it was the only thing that might help her understand. He forced himself to speak, and the words came slowly.
“I told you I was lured into joining the show-jumping team by the coach’s daughter.
Rosalia,” he said in a low voice. “I thought she loved me, and we would someday marry. The night before the horse show, I was unable to reach my parents back in Spain. My mother hadn’t answered her phone for weeks. I was worried so I went to see my coach, who I believed cared for me as a son.”
“What happened?”
Stefano’s lips curved sardonically. “He thought I was asleep in my hotel room. I overheard him laughing with another coach about how he’d convinced my parents to keep my mother’s illness a secret. Stupid peasants with no money, he called them. He’d convinced them it would be selfish to ask me to leave my team and be with my mother before she died.”
“Oh, no,” Annabelle whispered, her face stricken.