Emily swallowed. There was nothing left of the stables other than the once-proud horse she had loved with all her heart, who now bore little resemblance to the powerful creature on which she had learnt to ride. Her body trembled with pain as she stroked his dusty coat.
‘Oh, Tomas,’ she said as the old groom reached her side. ‘This is so awful.’
‘Sí, señorita,’ he agreed, his voice full of sadness.
‘How on earth did it happen?’
Tomas gave a weary shrug. ‘There was a little money left for his upkeep and I did what I could, but that money is now gone and the house is about to be sold to new owners who do not want him—or me. I would keep him if I could, but there is no room at my house for any animal—not even Joya.’
Emily dared to voice the fear which had been growing inside her ever since she’d walked in through the rusting gates of the property. ‘Why on earth did my stepfather leave me the horse?’ she demanded, but inside she suspected she knew why. It was to punish her. To lash out from beyond the grave and to cause her pain for daring to be the unwanted witness to his fiery marriage to her mother. The daughter he had never wanted, who had dared to fall in love with the son of the hired help.
Tomas was quiet for a moment and then spoke with the authority of someone who had observed a great deal during the years he had worked at the huge estate.
‘He bequeathed him to you because you loved him,’ he said slowly.
Emily nodded. Yes. She had loved Joya. With all her heart she had adored that horse, who had been such an important part of her teenage years. She’d been taught to ride on that horse, by the man with the green eyes and the hard body. She’d sought refuge from her mother’s hysteria by galloping out over the lush green of the Argentinian landscape for hours on end. And it was hard to see the welfare of a creature you loved threatened like this.
Yet she’d hardly followed his progress avidly in the years since the divorce and her mother’s subsequent death, had she? She had cut her ties with Argentina ruthlessly for all kinds of reasons, but now fate had brought her back to this vast land and she was shocked by what she had found. ‘I can’t bear the thought that Joya might have to be...put down, Tomas,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve racked my brain and tried to come up with some kind of solution but I can’t think of anything.’
She had expected gloomy agreement but, surprisingly, the grooves on Tomas’s weathered skin began to deepen as, unexpectedly, he smiled. ‘But there is a solution, señorita,’ he said. ‘And it has arrived sooner than even I imagined.’
He was looking at the sky as he spoke. The clear, blue Argentinian sky. It took a moment for Emily to realise that its unspoiled surface had been marred by the tiniest black spot in the distance, which was growing bigger all the time, and that a peace-shattering buzzing sound was gradually getting louder.
Shielding her gaze against the brightness of the sun with the flat of her hand, she frowned. ‘What’s that?’ she questioned, even though it was perfectly obvious what it was. A flashy-looking helicopter, and it was heading this way. A sudden inner misgiving made her skin grow cold, despite the heat of the day.
‘My prayers have been answered,’ said Tomas emotionally. ‘For he flies to us like a bird of prey! El cóndor!’
It was then that goosebumps began to ripple over Emily’s body as if an icy wind had suddenly started whipping through the warm day, and she wrapped her bare arms tightly over her chest as if to protect herself. Her heart started to pound as the helicopter grew closer and she watched it hover overhead before beginning its swaying descent. She wanted to run as far as her feet would take her. To seek refuge from the dark figure she could see seated at the controls, displaying the kind of powerful mastery which had always been so much a part of his appeal. But not all of it, no, she reminded herself painfully. He had been tender, too—and it had been that tenderness which had been her undoing. He had demonstrated an affection which had been like a revelation to her, for she had never experienced anything like it before. And hadn’t it been that more than anything else which had made her fall head over heels in love with him? Hadn’t it been that which had made the pain of leaving him so bitterly hard to bear?
During the intervening years since their last tumultuous meeting, Alejandro Sabato had become an icon and international heart-throb. He had dramatically ended his career as a world-class polo player—though nobody knew why—but hadn’t taken any of the usual paths after leaving the sport behind. No riding schools or polo club for him. Instead he had become a hugely successful businessman who operated on a global scale, though he’d never been able to shake off the stormy reputation which had grown up after a bitter book written by his ex-mistress.
But Emily didn’t associate him with riches beyond most people’s wildest dreams. She remembered him as the man who used to slowly trace the line of her lips with his fingertip before bending his head to kiss her. The man who had taught her the true meaning of love.
And she had thrown it all back in his face.
The wind created by the clattering craft was flattening the grasses and playing havoc with her hair, even though she’d tied it back into a plait when she’d stumbled out of bed that morning, still jet-lagged after her long flight. Her jeans were clean but that was pretty much all you could say about them, and her T-shirt was plain and unremarkable. Briefly, she wondered why she was worrying about her appearance at a time like this. But deep down she knew why.
Because he had been her lover.
Her only lover.
The man to whom she’d given her innocence, and in doing so had sealed her empty fate for ever.
She smoothed a flapping strand of hair away from her cheek, wishing she could quell the painful thundering of her heart. She hadn’t realised he could pilot a helicopter, but that shouldn’t have come as any surprise. Hadn’t he gone from being a dirt-poor boy who possessed an extraordinary gift with horses to becoming one of the world’s richest men? Financial success stuck to his skin like stardust—but not personal success, she reminded herself. The newspapers always described him as a playboy and commitment-phobe—as a man who had left countless broken hearts in his arrogant wake.
The rotor blades slowed to a halt and as the door of the craft opened, Alejandro Sabato leapt to the ground. He landed with a light thud, giving a brief masterclass in agility and strength and reminding her of his nickname earned during his polo-playing days—el cóndor—the one which Tomas the groom had just breathed in wonder. Emily swallowed. They used to call him that because he was dark and menacing and because he used to swoop down like a graceful predator, always getting the ball he was chasing. He’d been on the winning side of three World Polo Championships—and it had always been Alejandro who was pictured holding the trophy aloft, his dark head thrown back, his face grinning with victory and vitality.
Yet he had started out from the most humble of places—the illegitimate son of her stepfather’s housekeeper who, from the age of three, had grown up on his ranch and learned to ride almost as soon as he could walk. His talent had been spotted early and he’d moved to a polo stable on the other side of the country, where he had been intensively schooled in the sport. Six years older than Emily, he returned to the ranch only infrequently and she’d met him first at the age of twelve, soon after her mother had married Paul Vickery.
Had he recognised how lonely and out of place the English city girl had felt in that sweeping great country, in the home of a man who didn’t really want a stepdaughter? Was that why he’d been so kind to her? He’d taught her to ride—and to recognise the stars. He’d given her yerba maté to drink and taught her how to light a fire and then how to put it out again safely. A friendship had grown between them, although inevitably she had grown to idolise him. And then, when she was seventeen, something had shifted and changed. Desire had entered into their easy camaraderie and nothing was ever the same again.
But that
was a long time ago. They’d both lived a lot of life and were adults now. Yet Emily found herself standing watching as Alejandro raked his windswept waves back from his forehead and the clench of her heart reminded her just how much he had meant to her. Suddenly a wave of nerves was rushing through her and she felt as if she were back in the shoes of that gauche young girl who had so adored him.
He must have seen her but he completely ignored her, going instead to Tomas and gripping him in a bear hug, before slipping into a stream of velvety Spanish, which caused the aging groom to beam with delight. Emily’s command of the language was rusty these days but she understood enough to realise that Alej was making a request for refreshment and Tomas nodded and began to walk slowly towards the house, presumably to relay the message to his wife, Rosa.
And once the groom had disappeared, the two of them were alone and just at that moment the sun disappeared behind a cloud, so that all the light and warmth seemed to leave the day. Slowly, the Argentinian turned around to survey her with a look which was cold. So cold. She was shocked at how the vibrancy seemed to have left the gaze she remembered so well. How his once-warm green eyes were now like leaves which had been coated in ice and the curl of his lips bordered on contemptuous. Yet that didn’t stop her breasts from tightening beneath her cotton shirt, or a long-forgotten hint of awareness from rippling sweetly over her thighs.
‘Alej!’ she said, the word much shakier than she would have liked—but there was no answering smile in response.
‘Only my close friends and intimates call me that these days,’ he corrected coolly, the curve of his mouth flattening into a cruel, hard line. ‘Let’s stick to Alejandro, shall we?’
It hurt, as it was probably intended to do, but Emily nodded as if it didn’t. As if all those years of friendship and companionship and then love had never happened. As if the man who’d used to suck on her breasts as if they were freshly peeled grapes had just made the most reasonable of requests. She’d learnt many things over the years but one of the most important was to keep pain hidden away, where nobody could see it.
‘Of course,’ she responded, before adding a somewhat flippant amendment of her own. ‘It’s probably the shock of seeing you again, Alejandro.’
‘Would you really describe it as a shock, Emily?’ he questioned, his richly accented voice thoughtful. ‘Or a deep and abiding pleasure? From the darkening of your eyes and the tension in your body I recognise so well, I would guess it’s the latter.’
Emily worked in PR, so she knew everything there was to know about putting a positive spin on things, but never had an upbeat mindset seemed so distant as it did right then. He was talking to her with sensuality dripping from every word, yet he was staring at her with a flicker of contempt in his green eyes, as if she meant nothing. And yet that didn’t seem to have any effect on her reaction to him. All the feelings she’d thought were dead and buried started bubbling up inside her and she couldn’t seem to stem them, no matter how hard she tried. She wanted to feast her eyes on the liquorice-black waves of his just-too-long hair and the burnished bronze of his glowing skin. Just as she wanted to ogle his body in the way that someone who’d been wandering around in the desert for days might stare greedily at a cool flask of water. And most of all she wanted to hurl herself into his arms and kiss him.
Concentrating very hard, she fixed him with an expression of polite curiosity, trying to behave as if he was someone she’d just met. But her outward calm didn’t mirror what was happening inside, because suddenly it felt as if her hormones had remembered what they’d been designed for. As if his presence had the power to make her body prickle with desire and heat and expectation. Her nipples were thrusting uncomfortably against her bra and she felt a long-forgotten twist of lust low in her groin as she looked at him.
In the past he’d always worn jodhpurs or faded jeans, which hugged his hips and thighs in a way which had seemed indecently provocative. But not today. Today, clad in an immaculate lightweight suit, he was looking like the billionaire he’d become—not the rookie polo player she’d fallen in love with, who’d barely had two pesos to rub together. And love was the last thing she needed to think about if she was going to get through this, she reminded herself fiercely. She needed to find out what had prompted his unexpected appearance and then for him to leave as quickly as possible. She certainly didn’t need to respond to his provocative observations about her body. Even if they happened to be true.
‘Why are you here, Alejandro?’ she questioned, instantly becoming aware of the slight edge to her voice and trying her best to iron it out. ‘Why have you turned up out of the blue?’ Briefly, she cast her gaze towards the sky. ‘Quite literally in this case?’
‘Don’t play games, Emily,’ he said softly. ‘It’s a waste of both our time. I came because you need me.’
Emily blinked very fast. ‘I need you?’
‘Are you going to repeat everything I say?’ His voice was silky. ‘Haven’t you grown out of that kind of docile behaviour by now?’
Don’t react to that either, she told herself. You don’t need to get into a fight with him. You’re no longer that giddy teenager who used to follow him around like a tame dog and lap up everything he said to you. And you’re not the young woman who cried every night for months after she’d walked away. You left that person behind a long time ago. You became somebody else. Somebody grown-up and together.
So Emily tilted her chin in the way she’d learned from watching other women. The way which sent out a message to the world that you were super-confident, even if inside you wondered why you couldn’t ever seem to lose that little stone of sadness which was buried deep inside you.
‘I’m not here to trade insults, Alejandro,’ she said calmly. ‘I asked you a perfectly reasonable question about why you were here.’
For a moment his green eyes narrowed. ‘Tomas emailed me. I assumed with your blessing.’
She screwed up her brow in a frown. ‘What did the email say?’
He shrugged and she wished he hadn’t because it made her uncomfortably aware of the iron-hard muscle which lay beneath the fine silk of his shirt. Just as it made her aware of the rocky power of the arms which used to hold her so tightly, so that all the troubles of the world seemed to ebb away.
‘That your stepfather had died—which I already knew, obviously, since news travels fast—and that he had bequeathed you your old horse. And since you didn’t have the means to look after him, you were desperate for someone to step in and help you out.’ He stared at her. ‘Is that true?’
Desperate? Was she? Emily met the question in his piercing green gaze. She was certainly still reeling from the recent events which had recently turned her life upside down. Her loathsome stepfather had finally paid the price for his long-standing love affair with the bottle and had died a lonely death, which she couldn’t really be sad about. She hadn’t seen him since the bitter events following his acrimonious divorce from her mother and had been shocked to find herself listed as a beneficiary of his will. She still wondered what had possessed her to beg her business partner for some unplanned leave and then to turn up in a dusty lawyer’s office in Buenos Aires to discover what he had left her. Was it simply curiosity or just a sudden desire to lay to rest the ghosts of her past?
Either way, she had been disappointed. It seemed there had been no deathbed conversion which had made Paul Vickery want to make amends for the harsh treatment he’d meted out to her and her mother. It had been just another twist of the knife really.
‘Some of it is true,’ she said huskily. ‘My stepfather did leave me Joya. But no way did I ask Tomas to get in touch with you. You’re the last person I’d ever choose to contact.’
Alejandro’s mouth flattened as her soft English voice washed over him. Of course he was. He was disposable, wasn’t he? A poor boy with a hard body who could be dispensed with once he’d done his job as stud. He had been
deemed suitable enough to introduce her to the art of pleasure and then afterwards tossed aside like a piece of trash. And Emily Green had played him for a fool, hadn’t she? Stared at him with those big sapphire eyes. Tossed her fair hair like a feisty pony, so that it rippled down her back like a field of golden wheat. He’d been transfixed by her Englishness. By her pale beauty and the pert vigour of her young body. Long legs and slender arms and a pale bottom, which curved like the moon.
She’d driven him mad with frustration and desire those hot summer nights when he’d lain alone on his narrow bunk next to the stables, sweat pouring from his brow and his groin close to bursting as he imagined losing himself in all her sweet, secret places. And then, when his dream had finally come true and he had bedded her at last—she had turned around and crushed his honour and his hopes beneath one of her costly leather shoes, before walking away from him without a backward glance.
At the time he had been astonished by her behaviour—but not for long. Because soon after that he was to discover that all women were liars and cheats. But it had been Emily who had hurt him the most, who had wielded the sharpest blade, which felt like it was digging deep into his heart. And didn’t they say that the first cut was the deepest?
‘So what are you planning to do?’ he said, slanting a compassionate look towards the horse who was still trying to summon up the strength to nuzzle Emily’s hand. ‘Put a bullet to his head?’
She recoiled, staring at him as if he had just ascended from the depths of hell.
‘Are you advocating I kill my horse?’ she accused shakily. ‘You, who always loved animals?’
‘Yes, I loved them and still do,’ he grated. ‘More than I ever loved any human, that’s for sure—and way too much to want to condemn them to a life of neglect. Is that what you want for Joya, Emily? For his eyes to grow so dull that he can barely see and he doesn’t even have the strength to put food in his mouth?’
His Two Royal Secrets Page 16