the crest of the wave at the moment.’
Dante Baracca was on the front cover. Of course he was. Where else would the god of the game be?
‘There couldn’t be a better time for you two to be getting together.’
‘We won’t be getting together,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll be working alongside him.’
‘Of course you will,’ Luc agreed—to placate her, she suspected.
She made herself stare at the photograph while Luc looked on with approval.
Thank goodness Luc couldn’t hear her heart thundering at the sight of a man who had always affected her profoundly, both for good and for bad. The photo showed Dante seated bareback on a horse at sunset on the fringes of the surf. He was stripped to the waist with his face in profile. His powerful torso was warmed to a seductive bronze by the mellow rays of the setting sun. He was a daunting sight. The shadows pointed up the harsh angles of his face and delineated his formidable muscles. She had no doubt the photographer’s intention had been to big up the legend that was Dante Baracca, and in that he had succeeded.
Dante had more tattoos than she remembered. All the members of Luc’s team had a Thunderbolt inked on their torsos, but it wouldn’t have surprised her to learn that these new additions to Dante’s hard frame had been handcrafted by the devil.
Her mouth dried as she thought back. She would never shake the past. In many ways she didn’t want to. The memories were bittersweet. The loss had been too great, the sadness too searing, and Dante would always be part of that. He was still wearing the earrings that matched her own. Dante had given them to her on her eighteenth birthday—teasing her, saying they could be twins, but the look in his eyes had not been that of a sibling, and the earrings had been pushed to the back of a drawer after the party, because they’d become too cruel a reminder of Dante and everything he stood for...too close a reminder of kindred spirits who had almost destroyed each other.
‘Stop fretting, Karina,’ Luc coaxed when she frowned. ‘You can handle one barbarian. Why not two?’
‘If Dante is prepared to do things my way, it might work,’ she mused distractedly.
‘That should be fun to watch,’ Luc commented dryly.
‘This is no joke, Lucas.’
‘Clearly, as you’re calling me by my Sunday name.’
‘I mean it,’ she said, rounding on her brother. ‘My work is a serious business. You and Dante may have grown up wild on the pampas—’
‘As did you,’ Luc cut in, his tone turning hard. ‘What’s wrong with you, Karina? You never used to be like this. Just because you’re about to do business with a man women lust after doesn’t mean you have to wear a hair shirt. You can loosen up and make this project a success, or you can carry this ridiculous grudge you seem to have against Dante to its ultimate conclusion and wreck the match.’
‘Okay,’ she said, holding up her hands. ‘Just so long as we get one thing clear. You can’t just hire me out to your friends whenever you feel like it without my permission. No more Dante Baraccas—okay?’
Luc turned to face the door where his secretary was miming an apology for the interruption. ‘Why don’t you tell Dante that yourself? Come in, my friend...’
Striding forward to greet his fellow polo player, Luc added, ‘Karina can’t wait to tell you what she has planned.’
TIME HALTED AS they stared at each other. Dante’s body reacted instantly as the past flooded back—a past best forgotten while her brother was in the room. He hadn’t seen Karina this close since the night of her eighteenth birthday, when he’d seen her in infinitely more detail than he was seeing her now.
‘Come in, my friend—come in.’
He broke eye contact with Karina as Luc drew him deeper into the room, but the aftershock of his feelings for her blanked out everything but Karina. The strength of those feelings made him wonder if his first impulse had been correct. He’d been strongly tempted to veto Luc’s suggestion when Karina’s name had been suggested to the team. Why resurrect the past? He didn’t need that sort of trouble in his life. Karina had been wild, as had he, and though he’d heard how successful she had become, he had no proof that she’d changed.
In the end he had decided that vetoing Karina on the strength of evidence from the past was mean-minded of him, and that as the sister of a teammate he should at least give her a chance. He had already made plans to keep contact between them to a minimum while she was working on his ranch. She’d avoided him for many years, so he was confident that that was what she would want too. But now, being in the same room as Karina, he was forced to rethink. Her effect on him was profound. He understood now why no other woman had ever matched up to her. But all the old reasons for resisting Karina remained. He was a player in life as well as on the field, and as the sister of his teammate Karina Marcelos was forbidden fruit.
‘Dante...’
Her voice was soft and polite—for her brother’s sake, he suspected, as the expression in her eyes was at odds with that professional exterior as she crossed the room to greet him. There was no intimacy at all in her gaze. Intimacy? She was almost hostile towards him. Had that single night all those years ago taken such a toll? Apparently, it had. There was nothing to be done about it. Karina had wanted more from him than he’d been able to give. He had thrown her out of his bed for the best of reasons. He had nothing to give her in the emotional sense, and still marvelled that he had put his concern for Karina above his own selfish lust. He’d been utterly selfish back then.
He was still where women were concerned, he reflected as her cool gaze levelled on his. He still had nothing to offer. The only difference today was the fact that she wasn’t interested. Worse. The light had gone from her eyes. Where was the Karina he had known? What had happened to the tomboy who would give him as good as she got?
‘You look well,’ he said, still searching for clues.
‘Do I?’
His groin tightened at the challenge. She wasn’t so dead inside after all. She had always been a good actress, and he could understand why she was cool with him. The blow to her pride must have been immense. Saving her from him had come at a heavy price. Their friendship was dead.
‘You look well, Dante.’
‘Thank you.’
The polite exchange over, he returned to assessing Karina. She was all woman now, not a girl to provoke and tease. Her figure had filled out and her thick black hair gleamed with good health, though since that night she had started tying it back severely. Whenever he caught a glimpse of her at a polo match, it was dragged back, and it was dragged back today—so different from the past when it had cascaded in wild tangles down her back. They had both changed. They were both very different people now. He had responsibilities, while Karina’s career had obviously grounded her, and though that reassured him on a professional level, this was not the girl he had vowed to stay away from for her own good but a woman who would keep him at bay.
‘Can I get you something to drink?’ she asked politely.
Hemlock,
