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?’
‘Of course that’s not what I want,’ she declared, the quick shake of her head drawing his eyes reluctantly to
