when he’d been unable to dismiss her from his mind he had decided that she was a complication he could do without. He had confidently assumed that when he saw her again he would have his inconvenient attraction to her under control, but as soon as he’d walked into the stables and felt his heart jolt at the sight of her he had been forced to admit that his awareness of her had not lessened.
Her hair was the colour of spun gold, falling to halfway down her back. He wanted to run his fingers through the thick, silky mass and then pull her into his arms so that her hips cradled the hard evidence of his arousal. His body was as taut as an over-strung bow and he felt an overwhelming urge to tumble her down in the hay, but instead he called on all his willpower and stepped out of Piran’s loose box.
‘As you can see, Piran is fine, and he gave me no trouble when I groomed him earlier.’ He followed Rachel out of the loose box. ‘I’ll drive you home. I understand you live at Irving’s farm.’
‘Yes, but there’s no need for you to give me a lift—I cycled here.’ Rachel nodded towards her bike, propped up against the barn wall. ‘It’s quicker for me to ride through the woods.’
‘I want to discuss the horses I’ve brought over from Argentina for the polo tournament. If you are going to oppose everything I say, I will have to seriously question whether I can have you working here,’ Diego snapped.
Was he threatening to sack her? Rachel chewed on her lip as panic surged through her. How could she admit that her reluctance to sit next to him in the close confines of the sleek silver sports car she could see parked in the yard was due to her acute awareness of him? But he gave her no further opportunity to speak and was already striding out of the barn. She hurried after him and when he held open the car door she slid into the passenger seat and stared determinedly ahead, her senses flaring when he sat behind the wheel and she inhaled the exotic scent of his aftershave.
‘You were going to tell me about your horses,’ she murmured tentatively when he had driven almost to the boundary of the Hardwick estate in a taut silence that played havoc with her nerves. Diego exhaled deeply, as if he too was aware of the prickling tension between them, but then proceeded to give her detailed information about his polo ponies. Rachel listened intently so that it was a surprise when the car came to a halt and she realised that they had turned into the farm.
‘I’ve left notes about feeds and medical histories, et cetera in the tack room. You can read through them when you come back to work after the weekend,’ he said in a tone that brooked no argument about when he would allow her back to the stables.
‘Fine. Well, I’ll see you next week then,’ Rachel replied flatly, wondering how she was going to survive for three long days without riding. The prospect of not seeing Diego for days had nothing to do with the deflated feeling that had settled over her, she told herself firmly.
‘Before you go…these are for you.’ He reached behind his seat and handed her a huge bouquet of yellow roses, his mouth curving into a smile at her expression of stunned surprise. ‘To wish you a speedy recovery,’ he explained. ‘When I visited the florist’s the colour reminded me of your bright hair—and the sharp thorns were a painful reminder of your prickly nature,’ he added dryly, showing her several deep scratches on his hand. ‘I almost bled to death removing them.’
‘I don’t mean to be prickly; I’m just used to doing things for myself and making my own decisions, that’s all,’ Rachel mumbled, burying her face in the scented blooms because she could not bring herself to meet Diego’s gaze. Unaccountably, her eyes filled with tears and she blinked fiercely to dispel them. She wondered what he would say if she revealed that she had never been given flowers in her life—and then wondered where on earth she was going to put them when she did not possess a vase.
She sensed he was waiting for her to say something, and forced herself to speak. ‘They’re beautiful. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ Diego paused, and wondered impatiently why he felt as edgy as a teenager on a first date. Rachel was a stable-hand, with an attitude problem and a sharp tongue—not the sort of woman he would usually be interested in. But he was intrigued by her and as he watched her tongue dart out to moisten her lips the tug of desire that had kept him awake for half the night intensified. ‘I was hoping they would persuade you to invite me in and offer me a cup of coffee.’
Rachel glanced at him, caught the unmistakable sensual gleam in his amber eyes and stared back at the golden bouquet, her heart beating very fast. It was only coffee, she reminded herself, and it seemed churlish to refuse when he had presented her with two dozen roses. ‘You’re welcome to come in for coffee. But I don’t live at the farmhouse. I live up there.’
Following her gaze, Diego restarted the engine and drove up the track that wound out of the farmyard and through a small copse of trees, his brows lowering in a frown when the track ended at a small shabby caravan nestled in the shade of a towering oak tree. ‘You don’t seriously expect me to believe you live in that?’
‘And the coffee is cheap instant,’ Rachel said sweetly. ‘Welcome to my home, Mr Ortega.’ While Diego stared out of the windscreen in patent disbelief, she jumped out of the car and unlocked the caravan, the heat that had built up inside hitting her as she pushed open the door. He had probably changed his mind about the coffee, she decided, trying to ignore her disappointment as she rummaged around in the cupboard under the sink, searching for a suitable vessel to hold the roses. She had unearthed a couple of jam jars when he climbed up the steps, ducking his head as he stepped through the door and instantly seeming to dominate the cramped space.
He glanced around the interior of the caravan and Rachel gave a silent groan when his eyes fell on the bed, which she had left down this morning because her shoulder had hurt too much to pack it away.
‘It’s what an estate agent might call a compact residence,’ she said brightly. ‘When the bed is folded away there’s actually a surprising amount of room—for me, anyway,’ she added when she glanced up and saw that Diego’s head was brushing the ceiling.
‘This can’t be your permanent home.’ He could not disguise his shock at her living conditions. ‘You just camp out here during the summer—right?’
‘No, I moved in here when I was seventeen, after my mother married for the third time and my twin half-sisters were born.’
Diego’s brows rose. ‘Family life sounds complicated.’
‘Believe me, it is. I went to live with my father for a while, but he and his new wife had also just had a baby and it was easier for everyone when Peter Irving offered me the caravan.’
Rachel’s voice was carefully controlled, giving no hint of how she had resented feeling like a spare part in her parents’ lives—unwanted, apart from being an occasional babysitter to her various half brothers and sisters. She had spent most of her childhood being passed between her mother and father, but she often thought that the bitter custody battle they had fought over her had been more about them trying to score points off each other than because either of them had actually wanted her to live with them.
It had been a far from idyllic childhood, and by the age of twelve she had been fiercely independent—getting up early every morning to do a paper round to pay for her riding lessons. She preferred horses to people and, after witnessing her parents’ various failed marriages, she was adamant that she never wanted to get married or be reliant on another human being.
‘The caravan is sound and dry, although it does shake a bit in strong wind,’ Rachel admitted as she spooned coffee granules into the two least chipped mugs she could find. ‘But it’s got
