do it.”
She felt as though the air were being strangled from her. “Can’t, or won’t?”
“Both.”
He did pity them, she thought faintly, it was there in his face, in his voice, in the cynical twist of his lips. His smile was bitter, the lower lip curling, accenting his high carved cheekbones and the hollows beneath.
My, he was beautiful, like a fallen angel, but only worse because he was real. Daisy had never felt so out of her depth before. How on earth was she supposed to pull this off? “Why not?” she whispered.
“Bad business. You make an exception for one, you’ve set a precedent. Before long you’re making exceptions for all. So I don’t do it. Won’t do it. For anyone.”
A soft, strangled sound ripped from her throat. She hadn’t meant to cry out. She’d thought she had better control over herself.
She turned away, leaned against the desk, palms pressed flat on the scratched surface. She pressed hard, pressing against the suffocating desperation. It couldn’t be this bad. It couldn’t be the end. Everything was here. Her whole life was here. Even her mother was buried here.
Her rage threatened to boil over. “If your father were alive—”
“Your father shouldn’t have agreed to work with him,” he interrupted.
“My dad was charmed by your father.” She dug her nails into the desk. “Charmed right out of the farm.”
Dante saw her fingers whiten as she pressed them against the desk. Her blue eyes shone dark with pain, and her soft lips twisted, compressing to keep her misery within. She didn’t want to reveal her suffering but she couldn’t quite hide it.
This was his father’s responsibility, and now it had become his.
He drew a slow breath, feeling the tightness in his chest, conscious of his self-disgust. His father, Tino, should never have made the deal with Bill Collingsworth. But his father had never been able to resist easy money, or what he perceived to be easy money. Tino had intended to take possession of Collingsworth Farm and add it to the stockpile of farms, ranches and family businesses that he was accumulating around the world.
The problem with Tino’s plan had been that most of these family businesses were bankrupt or nearly bankrupt, and all were in need of massive infusions of cash.
Tino’s greed had almost bankrupted Galván Enterprises and it had taken Dante nearly two years to break up and sell off two dozen debt-ridden ventures.
What a waste of time.
He’d arrived in Lexington to settle with the Collingsworths. The unpaid stud fee was the last debt uncollected, the last of the headaches Tino had left behind, and Dante needed closure. He needed to move forward and close the door on the past, but suddenly it wasn’t that simple.
He rubbed the back of his neck, easing the knot of tension tightening the muscles there. He didn’t owe the Collingsworths anything and didn’t have to work with them, but Daisy was complicating everything.
Her golden blond beauty and leggy elegance had nothing to do with his change of heart. It was her courage, her intelligence, her passion for the horses.
He couldn’t forget her expression as she watched the horses race earlier in the morning. He’d seen the wonder in her eyes and sensed her devotion. She loved the horses profoundly. It seemed criminal to make her suffer for her father’s mistakes—and his.
Don’t do it, he told himself. Don’t turn soft now. This is exactly why you and Father always fought. This is why he called you names.
He swallowed, and his mouth tasted sour. This bad day was getting worse. Yet he couldn’t ignore his conscience, couldn’t throw the Collingsworths from their home.
If only he didn’t feel so much, care so much, he might be a bigger success. He might be a multibillionaire instead of just a multimillionaire.
His lips twisted cynically. “Maybe there is a way,” he said, pushing aside his personal fatigue to focus on the Collingsworths’ needs.
He moved toward her, felt her stiffen as he leaned past her slender body to pick up the farm records. Heat surged through him as his arm brushed her shoulder. He hadn’t meant to touch her, yet the touch felt electric.
Daisy slid from beneath his arm and moved quickly to the water cooler. She lifted a chipped cup from the shelf behind her but didn’t fill it. Instead she stared at him, hands clasping the mug, apprehension in her eyes.
She’d felt the electricity, too, he thought. She’d felt the same current that had passed through him.
“What?” Her voice was pitched an octave lower.
She was right to be mistrustful. Dante’s mouth tugged. His motives weren’t entirely pure. He did want her more than he’d wanted any woman in a long, long time. “Let’s look at the books together. Perhaps we’ve overlooked something.”
Hands jerky, she filled her cup with water and brought it to her mouth, but she didn’t drink. “When?”
“Now. Unless you have something more pressing to do?”
Three hours later Daisy wished she’d had something more pressing to do. She would have been willing to agree to Chinese water torture instead of looking at the farm books with Count Galván.
Three hours of shoulder-to-shoulder contact. Three hours of her thigh accidentally brushing his. Three hours of the most crazy tension imaginable, a tension that balled in her belly, tight and hard and heavy.
She wasn’t attracted to him, was she?
Disconcerted, Daisy frantically pushed up and away from the desk, needing to create some immediate distance. She walked to the water cooler again and filled her cup, gulped the chilled water until it was gone.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.” No. She drew a small, shallow breath. The truth was her head swam, her nerves were shot, and she felt terrible.
They’d come to no resolution about the debt, but one thing she knew. Dante Galván was not good for her. He made her feel nervous and unsure of herself and completely unbalanced. This wasn’t the way she liked to function. This wasn’t a comfortable sensation. It was making her sick.
“Should we take a break?” she suggested, thinking she definitely needed some air.
His dark gaze met hers and held. He searched her eyes. She didn’t know what he was looking for and she certainly wasn’t about to reveal anything more. She’d already exposed too much weakness.
“I think it’s best if we just continue,” he answered. “The sooner we get this settled, the sooner we can put this behind us.”
Her wish exactly, she thought with a ragged sigh.
Finally, an hour later, they finished going through the records. They’d gone over every entry, discussed every line, checked her numbers.
Dante
