on the second ring.
“Daisy Collingsworth?” he said sharply. He didn’t want to be harsh, but he didn’t like what he was going to do. He didn’t want to nail the Collingsworths to the wall, but he couldn’t afford to waste more time here. He needed to get on a plane. Needed to return home. One had to be tough to survive, he thought cynically. One had to take no prisoners.
“This is Zoe. Did you want Daisy?”
Zoe. Her voice was so gentle, almost tender, and he realized she couldn’t be much older than Anabella.
His gut burned. His chest tightened. He felt like hell. “Yes. Is she available?”
He waited a good several minutes before someone picked up the phone. “This is Daisy.”
Daisy’s voice was firmer than Zoe’s, a little huskier but no less feminine, and Dante suddenly pictured Daisy as she’d faced him at the track—pink T-shirt outlining full breasts, long legs sheathed in tight denim and the barest, softest lips he’d ever seen.
She was tall, blond and beautiful. And while her blue eyes looked cool, he’d seen enough of her temper to know she burned fire.
“Dante Galván here,” he said, and then almost smiled when he heard her swift inhale. “It’s time to get serious, muneca.”
CHAPTER TWO
HE WAS already at the track office when she pulled into the driveway. As she slammed the truck door shut behind her, Daisy caught a glimpse of Count Galván through the office window, and her stomach did a sudden wild free fall.
Perhaps her father had liked working with the Galváns, but she didn’t. It wasn’t just the issue of the stud fee. It wasn’t an issue of trust, as much as one of personal dislike. The Galváns weren’t known for their ethics, and Daisy despised anyone who took advantage of the weak. But that’s how Dante’s father had operated. Tino Galván preyed on struggling businesses, pumped them up with cash or promises of financial assistance and then later moved in for the kill, seizing not just the investment but the small business itself.
Dante was sitting on the edge of her desk reading a stack of paperwork when she walked through the door. She recognized the papers as their yearly farm report, a dismal record of all the losses they’d incurred in the last year. She couldn’t help shuddering inwardly, recalling that disastrous fire. The losses had been horrifying. On paper the farm was an absolute disaster. But she refused to let him see her fear. “Found what you wanted?” she asked grimly.
He made a rough sound and gave his head a silent, derisive shake. “It’s worse than I thought.”
Daisy felt heat sweep through her, embarrassment and shame. “It’s been a hard year.”
“That’s putting it mildly.” He tossed the report onto the desk next to him, the paper sliding to a far corner. “You don’t have any income. What happened to your great new breeding program? Where are your boarders? Your investors?”
She hated that she had to defend their business, especially to him, and still found it inconceivable that they owed his family so much money.
Nearly half a million dollars for a stud fee? Highway robbery, that’s what it was. Daisy couldn’t hide her hostility. “We have plenty of boarders. We’re training more horses today than ever before.”
“Pet ponies, not thoroughbreds.”
“Our work may appear trivial to you, but we’re a respected farm—”
“Without a competent manager,” he softly interrupted.
“I am the manager.”
“My point, exactly.”
The gloves were off. He wasn’t worried about hurting feelings any longer, or bloodying noses. It was war, and he intended to win.
He pushed off the desk and moved to the window. His narrowed gaze swept the distant farm buildings, focusing on the old barn in need of a new roof and the new stable, erected after the old one had burned down, that had yet to be painted. “You haven’t paid me, and you certainly haven’t maintained the farm. So what have you done with your money? How did you blow my father’s investment?”
His words were a relentless assault, a hard pummeling that made her ache.
Daisy closed her eyes, swayed on her feet and wished for the first time in years that she’d never fallen in love with horses and hay and Collingsworth’s green meadows.
She wished she didn’t care so much about colts, yearlings and winning the big races. If she didn’t care she could walk away from it all. If she didn’t love the whole business so much she could give up on the disaster taking place at Collingsworth’s and become someone else. But she did love the business—she loved the horses, the foals, the stallions, all of it.
He’d turned from the window and was studying her with the same detached scrutiny he’d viewed the farm buildings. Daisy felt his gaze all the way through her and dug her nails into her palms as heat flooded her middle. She didn’t want to feel him. Didn’t want to be aware of him. She wanted nothing to do with him. Not now. Not ever.
“We didn’t blow that investment,” she answered hotly, moved by emotions she couldn’t name. Her heart raced as though she were one of the yearlings on the track, and she felt dangerously close to tears. “Our farm has been struggling for a number of years. American farmers have been struggling for a decade. But we’ve made progress this year. We’ve made progress under my management.”
Her gaze met his as she emphasized the last words, her chin lifting defiantly. “I realize being Latin, and male, you don’t want to work with a woman. But in this case, you don’t have a choice. My father retired earlier this year. I run the farm now. I cut the checks. I make the decisions.”
Dante turned completely around. “I have no problem working with women. I just don’t like working with stupid people.” He paused as her lips parted, her eyes widening. “But I don’t think you’re stupid. I think you’re very intelligent and perceptive enough to realize I don’t play games.”
His arrogance made her see red, and yet beyond the emotional reaction came another response. Unwilling admiration. He’d dealt with conflict before. He was handling her like a pro.
It crossed her mind for the first time that she just might be in over her head.
What if she couldn’t pull this off? What would happen to the farm and her family? She pictured Zoe, pictured her sister twisting and untwisting the dish towel.
A lump lodged in her throat, and she swallowed with difficulty. “I don’t play games, either, Count Galván. I want nothing more than to work this out with you. But I have to be honest. I’m not prepared to lose the farm. It’s been in our family since nineteen-eighteen, when my great-grandfather emigrated from Ireland. This is home.”
“Miss Collingsworth—”
“No. Don’t do it. Please. Give me one more year.”
She saw a flicker of emotion in his face, his eyes darkening and his jaw tensing. She felt his ambivalence and thought for a moment he’d relent. But then he gave his head a sharp
