Faith stood completely still. ‘But it was a woman who hurt you?’
‘Yes, but not in the way you’re imagining.’ He stood for a moment, his breathing slow and steady, as if he were concentrating on that one action. A tiny muscle flickered in his hard jaw and it was several long seconds before he spoke again. ‘She took away everything that mattered to me, everything I loved. She was vicious, selfish and greedy.’
A deafening silence followed his hoarse statement and for a moment Faith was afraid even to move. She felt his agony but she suppressed the natural instinct to offer comfort, sensing that if she said the wrong thing now, he’d retreat. So she stood for a moment with her head full of words but her mouth tightly shut.
He glanced towards her and his eyes locked with hers. ‘I promised myself, never again. Never would that happen to me.’
Faith had to force herself to ask the question. ‘Was she someone that you loved?’
His dark eyes glinted hard and cold and his mouth tightened to a thin line. ‘She was my mother.’
His confession was such a shock that for a moment Faith couldn’t respond.
Of all the scenarios she’d imagined, that hadn’t been one of them.
Clearly he wasn’t surprised by her inability to speak, because he grimaced. ‘Not every woman is maternal. She became pregnant to force my father into marriage. No other reason. They divorced when I was nine and it was extremely acrimonious. She was determined to take my father for every penny he had and I was the tool she used to do it. And once she’d stripped him bare of everything that mattered, she took me, too.’
‘You mean you stayed with your mother?’
His eyes glittered dark and dangerous. ‘I mean that she took me from him. Not because she loved me or wanted me, but because she knew how much my father did. I was her trump card.’
Shocked, Faith shook her head in disbelief. ‘No.’
‘This was my father’s land.’ Raul turned, looking through the windows of the Beach House towards the estancia. ‘He was a horseman. A very skilled horseman. There wasn’t a horse in South America that my father couldn’t work with. He had more patience than any man I’ve ever met.’ He glanced at Faith, his eyes gleaming with self-mockery. ‘Needless to say, I have my mother’s genes. She was volatile and explosive, given to major tantrums.’
‘I didn’t know your father owned the estancia. I thought you bought it.’
‘I did. It was sold after the divorce. My father gave my mother the money because he couldn’t bear to think that I might suffer. Even though this place had been in my family for generations, he sold it.’ Raul was silent for a moment, emotion radiating from every angle of his powerful frame. ‘So that’s what she did. On the other side of the world.’
‘Estancia La Lucia,’ she murmured softly. ‘I never even asked you about the name. I—’
‘Lucia was my great-great-grandmother.’
She’d had no idea. ‘Raul—’
‘This estancia had been our family’s heritage for more than a hundred years. It was in my father’s blood and in my blood.’ Raul’s voice was rough. ‘He taught me to ride before I could walk. We were going to run this place together.’
Faith stood in silence, absorbing his horrible, horrible story, her insides aching as she imagined the pain of that little boy, longing for his father. ‘You couldn’t stay with him?’
‘A child stays with his mother. That’s the tradition isn’t it? She told me we were going on holiday.’ Each word was another beat of agony. ‘It was only when we arrived in Australia that she told me that we wouldn’t be coming back.’
Faith licked dry lips. ‘You must have missed him so much.’ She put her hand on his arm and felt the flex of his strong muscle and the utter chill of his skin.
‘At first I refused to accept it. I ran away. I made it as far as the airport and then they rang my mother.’ He gave a dark, cynical smile that revealed far more about that encounter than any words could have. ‘And she told me to grow up and be a man. And that’s what I did. Every day I was in hell, but I kept that hell to myself and just lived it. I was trapped in an alien country with people who were alien to me. I pined for my father, for Argentina, the estancia, the horses—everything. I hated the life my mother led and the fact that she didn’t even want me. But I learned not to show what I was feeling.’
‘And you still don’t—’
His beautiful mouth twisted. ‘I think I’ve forgotten how.’
‘But you left Australia?’
‘I left as soon as I could and came back here only to find that my father had sold the estancia to pay for my mother’s costs. It was broken up and sold.’ His accent grew more pronounced. ‘He was trying to make sure that I had a good life. That I didn’t suffer. But for me it was never about the money.’
Touched by this surprisingly emotional admission, Faith leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him. ‘So you started your own business. What you have achieved is nothing short of amazing.’
‘I vowed to buy it back, piece by piece. And I have.’
‘The land that Pedro owns…’