to go undercover to gain a job here. To risk everything to be near the horses.”
“It’s easy to risk everything when you own nothing,” she pointed out.
“Perhaps. But a great many people in your position would have simply sat down and bemoaned the unfairness of life. You were not prepared to cope with your loss. Not the loss of your father, not the loss of the rancho. And yet, you have done so admirably. And perhaps your actions were unorthodox, but I find that I respect that all the more. It is rare that someone is able to fool me, Camilla,” he said. “I should be angry, but I find that I only respect what you have done.”
He thrust the ring box toward her and she took it, still feeling slightly stunned.
“There,” he said. “It is done.”
“I haven’t put it on yet,” she said.
“But you will,” he responded, his tone maddeningly certain.
“Perhaps,” she said, snapping the box shut just to spite him. She had a feeling he’d expected her to go all silly over the piece of jewelry. She had a feeling he had expected her to slip it on her finger immediately. To see how it might fit.
Driven either by some magpie instinct he imagined all women must possess, or by some sense of avarice that someone like her—someone impoverished—might be expected to demonstrate.
The truth was, she felt both of those things stirring in her chest, but she would not give him the satisfaction of it.
She had expected a kiss. She had not received it.
She was not going to give him what he expected.
“Do you suppose my dancing will suffice?” she asked, letting her hands drop to her sides, her fingers curled around the ring box.
“So long as you don’t trip over your feet,” he returned.
She sniffed. “If you lead correctly, I don’t suppose there is a danger of that.”
A slow smile spread over his face, and he chuckled. “Then I will endeavor to lead, mi tesoro.”
MATÍAS SPENT THE next few days avoiding Camilla. He told himself that was not what he was doing, because he was no coward. Particularly not where women were concerned. He was a man who’d had ample and early access to the female form, who had never much seen the point in denying himself physical feminine company when the need arose itself.
However, he felt it best not to engage himself physically with Camilla Alvarez. Their fates were too linked. Their lives far too intertwined at the moment for his peace of mind.
When all was said and done, he wished to part with her as business partners might.
But that did not stop the yawning ache in his gut from making itself known.
They would get through tonight. Through the public presentation of them as an engaged couple. And then he would find himself a woman to deal with his physical desires.
As he had suspected, his brother had ensured that his marriage to Liliana became a headline the world over. In the days since her defection, it had become headline news.
And so he had to replace it with the headline of his own, and he was determined to do so tonight.
Another reason he could not afford a distraction.
He had to maintain control of himself. Even though the attraction that sparked between himself and Camilla was convenient when it came to presenting a front as an engaged couple, he could not afford to be anything but in absolute control of himself and his body.
He thought of the way she had fallen against him a few days ago during their dance lesson. The way she had tilted her face up toward him, her eyes fluttering closed. And it irked him that he couldn’t read her. That he could not tell whether it was innocent on her part, or whether she was, in fact, a skilled seductress.
That was the problem with her in general. The fact that she had tricked him as she had done when she had come to work for him meant he did not trust anything she did or said now. They were allied of a necessity, and he believed what it suited him to believe, but he also believed it entirely possible that she might have ulterior motives.
He was all right with that, as long as he was fully cognizant that it might be the case.
In order to be fully cognizant he had to keep his lower extremities out of the equation.
Everything was prepared for the trip down to the city. He had arranged to have his penthouse prepared, so the two of them could spend the night there after the ball ended.
He had asked that his staff arrange to have any personal items she might need brought there and installed for her.
He was now waiting in the antechamber of his family home, and she was late.
He looked down at his watch, then looked up at the stairs, filled with impatience. Surely, arriving at an appointed time was not difficult. Liliana certainly had never had any trouble with it.
But then Liliana was an accomplished socialite, and he knew that Camilla was not.
Still, he had an entire team of people aiding in her preparations. Surely, it could not be that difficult.
He heard footsteps and looked up, and was shocked by the level of intensity that hit him hard in the stomach.
Because there she was, bare-shouldered, wearing a strapless gown that conformed to her lithe figure, until it reached her hips, where it fanned out in a glorious blaze of glittering gold. Her short hair was adorned with a simple golden band that was fashioned to look like a vine.
That vision of her as a goddess of some sort was only cemented by this. And suddenly, he did not care if they were late.
Her brown eyes were wide, and he could not read the emotion in them as she descended the staircase, her gown swishing around her with each movement.
When she reached the bottom of the steps, she looked at him with deep uncertainty. “Do you like it?”
“The dress?”
“I suppose so.” Though she was keeping her tone flat, even, he could sense a vulnerability to her in that moment. One he found quite surprising.
“I like it on you,” he returned.
She looked down, and he took her arm, surprised by the softness of her skin. He examined her profile, the strong shape of her jaw, the sweet, supple curve of her lip.
She was a fascinating woman. And more and more he could not fathom he had ever believed her ruse.
He simply hadn’t looked.
It made him wonder what else he didn’t see. It made him wonder what else he had closed himself off to.
But
