‘My father worked on a ranch for a guy called Roberto Suarez. He was a dogsbody, but he became close to Roberto’s son, Fernando, and then, along the way, with Julie’s father, who had been to university in Oxford with Fernando and used to come over to the ranch for the long summer vacations. They were all roughly the same age. They hung out. My father was an excellent horseman and I suppose they bonded over that.’
He shrugged. When he was much younger, Leandro had been scathing about the quality of this so-called friendship, which he saw as one based on pity because how could the masters ever feel anything meaningful towards the servant? But time had proved him wrong and he had never really forgiven himself for that brief period of resentment. He’d been young.
‘When my mother...was no longer around...they took my father under their wing, so to speak, and much later, as the years rolled on...well, my father had an accident. He was thrown from a horse and was bedridden for a time. When it transpired that he was not going to be able to work in the capacity he’d worked in previously, Fernando, who was now in charge of the ranch and with a family of his own, ensured that my father was secure in his house...’
‘And where were you at the time? Did your mother...pass on?’
‘My mother passed on or, should I say, continued her onward journey in life with a very rich house guest who had visited the ranch to talk business with Roberto Suarez. She never looked back. I was a toddler at the time.’ Leandro moved on quickly from that statement of fact even though, as he looked at her, there was a gentleness in her gaze that almost made him want to break the rulebook and elaborate. He didn’t, of course. Not his thing.
‘When my father had his fall... Roberto gave him, as I said, permanent residence at the place he had always called home and Julie’s father...took care of every aspect of my education. He paid for me to attend a private school in Buenos Aires. My father had been saving for years but the accident reduced his income. It was a mess, as I came to understand. Later, Charles took care of every single bill that came my way, when I gained a scholarship to study at Cambridge. During the holidays, he paid for my flights back to Argentina and when I wasn’t there, I stayed at his country house, sometimes for weeks on end.’
‘It’s how you know Julie...’
‘Correct. We met from a young age but became good friends once I began studying in England. I was at her wedding, as it happens. I was the first and only person she told about her father’s financial situation. I would have been happy to have simply handed over the cash to sort out the mess but he’s too damned proud for his own good...’
There was affection, indulgence and frustration in Leandro’s voice.
‘I get it,’ Celia said softly. ‘You and Julie decided on a marriage of convenience to bail her father out without him seeing it as an act of charity.’
‘Charles fondly thinks that he’s giving me the cachet of being absorbed into one of the country’s oldest families. He doesn’t know that I don’t give a damn about any of that.’
‘But what about love?’
Leandro shrugged. ‘What does that have to do with anything? I’m repaying a debt, doing what any man of honour would do. There’s no place in this scenario for misty-eyed daydreams.’ He leant forward with a sense of urgency. ‘This is why I’ve come here. Of course, I can’t drag you off to Scotland with me. But I think that if for some reason Julie fancies herself in love with your brother, the two of us together might stand a better chance of at least trying to find a way to salvage the situation.’
‘I barely know you,’ Celia said, without thinking, and his eyebrows shot up in obvious amusement.
‘What do you think I’m going to do?’
‘Nothing!’ But she was bright red. ‘But...the thought of just taking off with a stranger...’
‘I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was important. Charles is in hospital with a stroke. Not only will Julie’s disappearance be a major cause of worry for him, but he will now be having to come to terms with the fact that he might be looking at losing everything that has been in his family for centuries. Either that, or he, as you put it, accepts charity from me, which would cut to the quick for a man who is kind and generous but too proud for his own good.’
‘Yes, I get that...’
‘You’re one hundred per cent safe with me,’ Leandro said earnestly, and Celia felt as though, somehow, he had a direct hotline to her thoughts and was having a private laugh at her unfounded misgivings. Not that she wasn’t well aware that her misgivings were unfounded, but she had led a sheltered life where impulse had always taken a back seat to common sense and it was hard not to fall back into that mindset even though she could see where he was coming from.
Dan had been the impulsive one. He had been the one who lived outside the box, always willing to take risks and explore options.
Celia, on the other hand, several years younger and born after her mother had suffered two miscarriages, had been raised with kid gloves, protected by loving parents who no longer had the mindset to let her run wild and free, as they had her brother.
That was the only basis for her hesitancy, she feverishly told herself.
The fact that there was a treacherous sizzle of something disturbing in her responses to this man had nothing to do with anything.
‘Celia...’
‘I’m not suggesting anything...it’s the way I am... I suppose I’m quite a careful person...’ She fell into an erratic explanation for her reluctance before lapsing into silence, mesmerised by the dark eyes pinned to her face as he listened to her rambling.
‘You’re not my type.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’m not being at all...insulting when I tell you that you’re perfectly safe with me because you’re not my type.’
Celia was mortified. She had no idea how to respond to the bluntness of his statement, and the fact that he genuinely hadn’t said it to offend her, because she could see the gentle sincerity in his eyes, somehow made his casual remark all the more offensive. Yes, she was short with freckles that had once been the bane of her life, but it still hurt to have her physical shortcomings pointed out by a guy with killer looks.
Byanybodyit would have been bad enough, but with someone as devastatingly good-looking as Leandro, it was positively humiliating.