The little scheme she and her preppy fiancé had concocted had done Cruz out of a fortune in money and, more importantly, lost him the respect of his family and peers.
Aspen Carmichael had bested him once before and he’d walked away. He’d be damned if he walked away again.
‘How?’
‘She wants to keep Ocean Haven for herself and her uncle has magnanimously agreed to sell it to her at a reduced cost. The information has only just come to light, but apparently if she can raise the money in the next five days the property is hers.’
Cruz stilled. ‘How much of a reduced cost?’
When Lauren named a figure half that which he had offered he cursed loudly. ‘Joe Carmichael is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but why the hell would he do that?’
‘Family, darling.’ Lauren shrugged. ‘Don’t you know that blood is thicker than water?’
Yes, he did, but what he also knew was that everyone was ultimately out for themselves and if you let your guard down you’d be left with nothing more than egg on your face.
He ran a hand through his damp hair and sweat drops sprayed around his head.
Lauren jumped back as if he’d nearly drenched her designer suit in sulphuric acid and threw an embarrassed glance towards Ricardo, who was busy surveying her charms.
Cruz snapped his attention away from both of them and concentrated on the blank wall covered in streaks of rubber from years of use.
Eight years ago Ocean Haven had been his home. For eleven years he had lived above the main stable and worked diligently with the horses—first as a groom, then as head trainer and finally as manager and captain of Charles Carmichael’s star polo team. He’d been lifted from poverty and obscurity in a two-dog town because of his horsemanship by the wealthy American who had spotted him on the hacienda where Cruz had been working at the time.
Cruz gritted his teeth.
He’d been thirteen and trying to keep his family from going under after the sudden and pointless death of his father.
Charles Carmichael, he’d later learned, had ambitious plans to one day build a polo ‘dream team’ to rival all others, and he’d seen in Cruz his future protégé. His mother had seen in him an unmanageable boy she could use to keep the rest of his siblings together. She’d said sending him off with the American would be the best for him. What she’d meant was that it would be the best for all of them, because Old Man Carmichael was paying her a small fortune to take him. Cruz had known it at the time—and hated it—but because he’d loved his family more than anything he’d acquiesced.
And, hell, in the end his mother had been right. By the age of seventeen Cruz had become the youngest player ever to achieve a ten handicap—the highest ranking any player could achieve and one that only a handful ever did. By the age of twenty he’d been touted as possibly the best polo player who had ever lived.
By twenty-three the dream was over and he’d become the joke of the very society who had kissed his backside more times than he cared to remember.
All thanks to the devious Aspen Carmichael. The devious and extraordinarily beautiful Aspen Carmichael. And what shocked Cruz the most was that he hadn’t expected it of her. She’d blindsided him and that had made him feel even more foolish.
She had come to Ocean Haven as a lonely, sweet-natured ten-year-old who had just lost her mother in a horrible accident some had whispered was suicide. He’d hardly seen her during those years. His summers had been spent playing polo in England and she had attended some posh boarding school the rest of the year. To him she’d always been a gawky kid with wild blonde hair that looked as if it could use a good pair of scissors. Then one year he’d injured his shoulder and had to spend the summer—her summer break—at Ocean Haven, and bam! She had been about sixteen and she had turned into an absolute stunner.
All the boys had noticed and wanted her attention.
So had Cruz, but he hadn’t done anything about it. Okay, maybe he’d thought about it a number of times, especially when she had thrown him those hot little glances from beneath those long eyelashes when she assumed he wasn’t looking, and, okay, possibly he could remember one or two dreams that she had starred in, but he never would have touched her if she hadn’t come on to him first. She’d been too young, too beautiful, too pure.
He found himself running his tongue along the edge of his mouth and the taste of her exploded inside his head. She sure as hell hadn’t been pure that night.