coffee while he waited, eyes glued to his watch. Was the damned thing working? The minute hand seemed not to move. And then his phone rang and he flipped it open.
“Dante,” Sam said.
“Well?”
“The easy stuff first. Don’t make any legal commit-ments to the woman. Be pleasant, stay calm, but—I hate to use the word—keep your options open until we do some tests. Okay?”
It was solid legal advice. “Okay. What about the property issue?”
“The property.” Sam exhaled noisily. “You want it in legalese or words of one syllable?”
A muscle flexed in Dante’s jaw. It didn’t take a genius to know that Sam had not asked him a question meant to raise his hopes.
“Just tell me the bottom line.”
“The bottom line, dude, is that you’re screwed.”
“Screwed how? You mean, the bidding process has to begin all over again?”
“I mean,” Sam said carefully, “you bought an option to purchase the property and the option expired twenty-four hours from the moment you signed it. In other words, you have no further legal rights to it.”
Dante sprang to his feet. The other customers in the café shot him wary looks. He ignored them, tossed his coffee cup in the trash and stormed outside.
“I made the winning bid,” he said sharply. “The bank accepted it.”
“The auctioneer accepted it.”
“As the bank’s rightful agent. Listen here, Sam—”
“The guy who bought the property after the twenty-four hours were up is a national.”
“The twenty-four-hour thing is bull!”
“Maybe. But you’re not on a level playing field, Dante. You’re not in the U.S. of A., you’re in another country. Is what they’ve done legal?” Sam Cohen’s lift of the shoulders all but came through the phone. “Probably, but who knows? The only certainty is that you’d need a Brazilian attorney to walk you through this. I can get a name, fly down, meet with you and whatever guy is recommended, but—”
“There’s no time for all that,” Dante said grimly.
“Yeah. I figured as much. And, to be blunt, I can’t guarantee how it would work out. My best advice? Find yourself another ranch, man. Hey, you’re in Brazil. How tough could that be?”
Dante laughed. Even to his own ears, it was not a happy sound. He thanked his lawyer, disconnected and headed for his car.
Somehow the fazenda looked worse today than yesterday.
The potholes in the road seemed more numerous, the weeds higher, the house and outbuildings more forlorn. Dante parked, walked up the steps to the door and rang the bell. He could hear it echoing through the rooms.
He rang it again. And again. Finally the door swung open. A white-haired woman in a shapeless flowered dress scowled at him. She barked a question he figured was either what do you want or who are you? So he told her his name and said he wanted to see Senhorita Reyes.
The woman stood immobile. He started to repeat what he’d said when he heard Gabriella’s voice. He brushed past the woman, who hurried after him, and followed the sound to what seemed to be a library although, like everything else here, it had seen better times.
Gabriella’s back was to him as she squatted beside a cardboard box half-filled with books. She wore jeans and a T-shirt; the shirt had ridden up and he could see the ridge of her spine. Her hair was pulled back and secured with one of those things that looked like a rubber band but wasn’t. Her feet were bare and dusty.
She was, in other words, a mess.
And she was beautiful. So beautiful, she made his heart ache.
“Yara,” she said, without looking around, “quem está aí? Is it the man with the truck? If it is—”
“Hello, Gabriella.”
Gabriella sprang to her feet so quickly that she kicked over a stack of books piled on the floor. That voice. She had never expected to hear it again. Never wanted to hear it again—and yet, the sound of it made her heartbeat quicken. And when she turned and saw Dante, the joy that swept through her was indescribable.
The intensity of it shocked her. Joy? For what? This man meant nothing to her. She meant nothing to him. She put her hand to her temple, where last night’s headache had taken up what felt like permanent residence.
She was coming down with something, and was that not perfect timing?
This was even worse timing. That Dante should turn up again…
And why was he looking at her that way? As if she were a…a specimen in a zoo. She was a mess; she knew it. She’d dressed for the work of the day. A torn shirt. Ragged jeans. In New York, she had dressed for him, she had done everything for him because she had been fool enough to think she mattered to him.
But she never had.
She’d just been another of the endless string of shadow women who moved through his life, and if she’d lasted a little longer than most, so what? It had all come to nothing in the end.
Dante had never known the real her.
But she knew the real Dante Orsini. The man who had it all, who never looked back, who believed commitment to a relationship didn’t involve anything deeper than temporary exclusivity and pricey gifts, although there had been times like that one weekend, that lovely, glorious weekend…
“What are you doing?”
He was looking from her to the box of dusty books, scowling as if he’d discovered something unpleasant on his shoe. It made her angry. Everything about him made her angry, especially after last night. To think she’d been fool enough to believe he’d really wanted to help her…
She blew an errant curl off her forehead.
“I have a better question,” she said coldly. “What are you doing here?”
He flashed a quick smile. “Such a warm greeting.”
Gabriella narrowed her eyes. “My lawyer told me you went back to New York.”
“Your lawyer,” he said, his mouth twisting. “Is that what you think that double-dealing bastard is?”
“Answer my question. Why didn’t you return to the States?”
“I started to.” He moved slowly toward her. “But I thought things over and I realized…I decided to come back and try to sort things out.”
“There’s nothing to sort out. Not anymore.” Her chin rose. “Senhor de Souza explained everything to me. You chose not to buy the fazenda after all, and Ferrantes—”
“De
