Emily’s lips fell open and she shook her head in vehement denial. ‘I swear I didn’t know that. I thought she’d left of her own accord.’
‘Oh, come on. Women of such subservience don’t just leave of their own accord,’ he mimicked cruelly. ‘Did you know your stepfather refused to provide any references for her, so she couldn’t get any more work? And although I was able to provide some means of support, she complained that her life felt empty without work.’
Alejandro felt his mouth harden with anger and frustration. He had wanted to help his mother in more practical ways than simply buying her a small house. Having given birth to him at just seventeen, she’d been young enough to retrain in something different. Young enough to start again. But she hadn’t wanted a new life. She had just smoked cigarette after cigarette while continuing to spin him the same old lies, which for a time while he’d been growing up had made him feel special and different. And wasn’t it crazy that he’d hung onto the myth he’d been spun for so long—so that when he had finally learned the truth, it had nearly broken him?
He stared at Emily. Maybe it was true what she said and she hadn’t been directly responsible for his mother’s sacking, but that didn’t change the anger he felt towards her, did it? Because he had loved her in a way he had never loved anyone else and he’d thought she loved him, too. But she hadn’t. She had been the only woman who had ever rejected him and she had done it in a cruel and dismissive manner which had emphasised his subservient status. He would never forget the way she had looked through him, as if he had been invisible. As if he were nothing. Was it that which had planted the bitter seed of anger, deep in the empty place he called his heart?
He watched as, with an unsteady hand, she put down her half-empty gourd and fixed him with those incredible sapphire eyes of hers.
‘You still haven’t explained what brought you here today, Alej.’
He leaned his head back against the chair and surveyed her from between slitted eyes. ‘Because I think I can help you. Or rather, I think we can help each other.’
She shook her head. ‘After the things you’ve just accused me of, I’m amazed you’re offering, but I’ll decline if it’s all the same to you.’ She gritted him a polite smile. ‘I don’t need your help.’
‘Oh, I think you do,’ he contradicted softly. ‘That is, if you want to save Joya. If you’d like him to live out his days happily in a flower-filled meadow, with a loving groom to tend to his every need rather than ending up on the scrapheap, which is where he’s heading right now.’
‘Are you trying to use an old, sick horse in order to blackmail me?’
‘Not at all. I’m simply stating facts,’ he said. ‘And suggesting we do a trade-off.’
Still reeling from the fact that he held her responsible for his mother’s sacking, Emily wondered what on earth he was talking about. Because what could someone like her do for someone like him, when he was an iconic billionaire and she was...? She stared down at her jeans and canvas sneakers. At the unmanicured hands which were resting on the sides of the chair. She was just an ordinary woman trying to find some balance after a tumultuous upbringing, which had bounced her round like a rubber ball. A woman who had been chasing independence since she’d graduated from college. Normality was what she craved more than anything and contact with Alejandro Sabato certainly wouldn’t go anywhere towards helping her achieve that aim. Because he made her want something it was dangerous to want and that something was him. He made her think of slow touching and long kissing—both of which she’d like to do right now, even though he was looking at her with an expression of barely veiled contempt. And hadn’t that been the root cause of her mother’s tragic story—that she had been hooked on a man who had secretly despised her? Did she really want the same thing for herself?
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Her instinct was to finish her drink, to smile politely and tell him she would manage somehow. She would find a way to save Joya, though she wasn’t quite sure how she was going to go about it in a country which now felt distinctly foreign to her, despite having spent so much time here.
But Argentina was Alej’s homeland, wasn’t it? If anyone knew how best to deal with rehoming an ancient horse and rescuing him from certain death, it was him. And because he looked so powerful and dependable as he sat opposite her on the shaded veranda, she found the words leaving her mouth before she’d had time to consider the wisdom of saying them. ‘What kind of trade-off?’ she questioned cautiously.
Reflectively, he stirred his drink with the bombilla before lifting his gaze to hers, rugged features darkened by the shade cast by the overgrown shrubs which tumbled down the side of the veranda. ‘How much do you know about me, Emily?’
It was an unexpected question and Emily wished he hadn’t asked it. Because she knew him intimately, as only a lover could. His hard body. That low, exultant moan he’d given as he had bucked to fulfilment—over and over during that night. The only night. Flustered, she shrugged, trying to dredge up some of the facts she’d buried deep in her mind, where she rarely allowed herself to venture. ‘I know you came from a poor family and that your mother—’
‘No, not back then,’ he interrupted, and suddenly there was a bitterness about him which she’d never seen before. Or maybe she just hadn’t hung around long enough to see it.
‘Spare me the rags-to-riches story which has been told a million times,’ he ordered roughly. ‘I’m talking about modern day. Real time. Now.’
Emily screwed up her eyes. If she admitted to knowing stuff about his current lifestyle, mightn’t that seem as if she was somehow trolling him, like some sad ex-lover who couldn’t bear to let go? But Alejandro Sabato wasn’t just anyone, she reminded herself. Everything he touched made headlines—both work and play. Who hadn’t heard of him?
‘I know you suddenly retired from polo,’ she said. ‘And that your decision took everyone by surprise.’
He nodded but provided no explanation. His verdant gaze just continued to cut through her, like a knife slicing through a ripe melon. ‘What else?’
She hesitated. After all the drama and fallout she’d experienced while growing up, she tried not to place too much importance on wealth—but in this case that would be like trying to ignore a whole herd of elephants who were trying to trample their way into a small cupboard. Especially with that top-of-the-range black helicopter, which was shining like a giant beetle in the field not far from where they were sitting, and the fact that Alejandro had recently come in at number thirty-four on a list of the world’s richest men.
‘That you invested in an energy drink which is pretty much drunk everywhere and used some of the money you made to help a friend set up a social media app. And then you bought into a motor-racing team, which has reaped its own rewards,’ she offered. ‘So you’ve exchanged one kind of high-intensity sport for another.’
‘Very neatly summarised,’ he said, raising his dark eyebrows. ‘Perhaps I should be flattered that you’ve taken such an interest in my progress, Emily.’
‘Please don’t be,’ she said sharply. ‘I work in PR and it’s my job to read the papers. And since you take up a lot of column space in the international press, it’s hardly surprising that I should have picked up some facts about you over the years.’
From the thick lashes which framed the startling green eyes, he continued to survey her. ‘Then you will know about Colette?’
There was the briefest of pauses before Emily nodded, surprised by how much it hurt to hear him say another woman’s name. ‘Doesn’t everyone? Supermodels of her stature are few and far between. I gather you broke up,’ she added blandly. ‘And she wrote an unauthorised biography about you.’
‘Did you read it?’
Emily shook her head. Was he mad? Of course she hadn’t read it! She’d seen the title and hadn’t even been able to face giving it a quick skim-through. Because what woman would want to absorb details of her ex-lover’s wild sex life with one of the world’s hottest supermodels? ‘No,’ she said, and then—because he seemed to be waiting for more—she forced herself to continue. ‘But I gather it wasn’t favourable towards you.’