a place like this. Didn’t know he could buy and sell her family ten times over. Only said quietly, sincerity shining in her eyes, “I hope you do that someday. You’d be amazing at it.”
He thought then that perhaps first impressions hadn’t done Cecily Hargrove justice. That if he curved his fingers around her neck and drew her to him for a kiss so he could taste that delectable mouth, she wouldn’t protest, she’d meet him halfway. That if he did, he might be able to banish some of those dark shadows from her eyes for just a few minutes.
Why all of a sudden it was the most unbearably tempting proposition when it was the last thing in the world he should ever do was beyond him.
He pushed to his feet before madness ensued. “A few minutes of that every day will help him stretch out, trust himself a bit more. It might help.”
She rose to her feet beside him, any hint of an invitation gone from those blue eyes. If he saw a flash of regret there, she masked it just as quickly.
“Thank you, Colt,” she said quietly, brushing her palms against her dress. “He’s in excellent hands. Y’all have yourself a good night.”
* * *
Oh, my God. Cecily dragged in a deep breath as she exited the stables on weak knees, the earth feeling as if it was shifting beneath her feet. What had just happened?
You didn’t invite a complete stranger to kiss you when he’d clearly barely been tolerating your presence and didn’t even like you. And yet, her dazed brain processed, for a second there, she’d thought he’d been thinking about kissing her too before he’d replaced those barriers of his and put her back in her place as surely as she’d put him in his earlier today.
Had she imagined it?
She pressed her palms to her heated cheeks. She shouldn’t be interested in kissing anyone right now. It was the last thing she should be doing with her career hanging in the balance.
Skirting the floodlit natural water grotto her father had spent millions building for her mother, she took the path to the house. Perhaps she should go stick her head in there. It might inject some sense into her.
Hadn’t her disastrous engagement to Davis taught her a lesson? Good looking men were trouble. A disaster waiting to happen. She was better off sticking with males of the four legged variety. They never broke her heart.
CECILY SPENT THE next few days steadfastly ignoring sexy, elusive Colt Banyon and putting all her focus into her practice sessions. But it seemed the harder she tried, the worse her times became—as if desperation was setting in and Bacchus could sense it, feeding off her nerves in all the worst ways.
By the time Friday rolled around, her event three weeks away, she was at her wit’s end. She could continue to pound away at the fruitless efforts that were getting her nowhere or she could follow Colt’s suggestion and take a step back.
She couldn’t afford to give up on her hopes for the season, but perhaps she might be able to rewire her horse’s brain with a total change of pace. Maybe Bacchus just needed a mental breather, an escape from the pressure cooker. Just like her.
An idea filled her head over tea in the thankfully deserted breakfast room. Except she knew her father wouldn’t allow it unless she took someone with her and since having company along for the ride defeated the purpose of obtaining some peace, it wasn’t an option.
Unless she took the less than talkative Colt with her, she mused over a sip of tea. She could pick his brain about some of his techniques along the way. While keeping her head in sane territory, of course, something that shouldn’t be hard because Colt would clearly give her the brush off again if she did something dumb like invite him to kiss her, which of course, she wouldn’t.
Her mouth curved. It was a plan. She finished her tea, collected her things and went off to execute.
* * *
Alejandro dropped the package off at the courier office in town on his mid-morning break. Containing a sample of Bacchus’s mane hairs, it was now up to Stavros’s high tech lab to confirm the Hargroves’ crime.
He texted Stavros from the truck.
Package has been sent. Obrigado amigo, I owe you one.
Forget it. I’m feeling generous. I am, after all, soon to be a married man.
Alejandro almost dropped his phone.
Sorry?
You heard me. Details to come. Got to run.
Got to run? Alejandro eyed the phone as he threw it on the seat of the truck. Antonio with an insta-family? Stavros married? What the hell was going on? It was...insano.
Stavros, he bemusedly processed as he started the truck, didn’t even sound panicked about it. He sounded almost...cheerful.
The sense of relief he’d been feeling about having netted this particular challenge magnified ten-fold as he drove back to the farm. No chance of any of those emotional attachments with him. He didn’t need to acquire a wife as Stavros did, had no undiscovered children lying around—he’d made sure of that. And Sebastien knew his feelings on marriage.
When the day came for him to make a match to deliver the Salazar heir, it would be at least a few years down the road with a woman he’d handpicked as a sensible selection. He would research her just as he would an expensive car, making sure she ticked all the right boxes for the rational, practical match he had planned. Because he knew from personal history, impulse purchases, matches made out of passion never lasted. His parents were a perfect example of that.
He reached the stables five minutes after his break officially ended. Putting his mind blowing conversation with Stavros out of his head, he went directly to the tack room to collect the gear he needed to exercise one of the three horses he had to take out that afternoon.
Checking the gear over, he let the easy rhythm of the stables slide over him. The clip clop of hooves on concrete, the whinny of horses talking to each other over their stalls, the clink of metal on metal as an animal was shod filled him with a sense of peace he hadn’t felt in months.
If he wasn’t consumed with the thought of the hundreds of emails piling up in his inbox back in New York, the two massive deals his brother Joaquim, director of Salazar’s European operations, was stickhandling for him, it would almost be idyllic.
“Hey Hollywood.” Tommy, one of his fellow grooms, stuck his head in the tack room. “Boss’s daughter wants to see you.”
Uh-oh. He’d done such a good job of avoiding Cecily after that moment they’d shared in the stable. Was pretty sure she’d been avoiding him too. So why seek him out now?
He joined a group of grooms congregated in front of the tiny kitchen, Cecily holding court in their midst. Dressed in jeans and a sleeveless shirt that hugged her lithe curves, her hair caught up in a ponytail, she was a tiny, delectable package a man might want to eat for breakfast. Just not him, of course.
She turned to him once she’d finished her conversation with the others. “I want to go for a hack up to the
