“RELAX,” ALEJANDRO MURMURED as they stepped off the jet outside of Brussels, deep in the heart of Salazar country. “My grandmother has promised to be on her best behavior.”
Cecily gave him a long look. Relax? She was walking into enemy territory. About to meet the woman who refused to be in the same room as a Hargrove. How was she supposed to accomplish that?
He slid an arm around her waist and tugged her into his side as they walked across the tarmac toward the jeep that waited, a silver-haired, diminutive figure standing beside it.
Cecily had met Adriana Salazar once when Alejandro’s grandmother had presented her with a rosette at a show in Germany. A tiny powerhouse, she’d struck Cecily as having an iron spine. Proud. Regal.
All those qualities met her now as they came to a halt in front of the hawk-eyed eighty-three-year-old, La Reve’s glorious seventy-five acres spread out behind her like a vibrant green picture postcard.
“You remind me of your mother,” were the first words out of the matriarch’s mouth as she stepped forward to take Cecily’s hands in hers. “You could be twins.”
Unsure if that was a compliment or not, Cecily brushed a kiss to both of Adriana’s lined cheeks. “Lovely to meet you,” she murmured. “We met in Germany of course, but it was very brief.”
“Yes,” Adriana said. “You had a hell of a ride that day. You are gutsy, just like your mother was.”
She chose to take that as a compliment. “Thank you.”
Alejandro’s grandmother gave her grandson a warm hug, the deep affection between them obvious. “Come,” she said, gesturing toward the jeep. “I have lunch waiting.”
The lovely meal in the Spanish, hacienda-style house was utterly civilized as Alejandro had promised, only the three of them in attendance with Alejandro’s mother, Luisa, off at a show. It was when Adriana took Cecily on a tour of La Reve after the meal, as Alejandro caught up on work, that the more probing questions came.
She was clearly being vetted as Alejandro’s choice of bride as they explored the lush Belgian countryside in the jeep. Prepared for it, Cecily answered Adriana’s curious, sometimes blunt questions with honest, straightforward answers...and fell in love with La Reve along the way.
The sprawling countryside was magnificent, the architecturally complex indoor schooling rings the work of a master, but it was the stunning, dark wood stables with their cathedral ceilings and beautiful chandeliers that stole her heart.
It was there that Adriana housed her center for equine therapy where horses and riders from around the region came seeking her expert help. It had been in her head ever since Alejandro had helped her heal Bacchus that she might someday provide those same facilities in her own stables. She listened with rapt fascination as Adriana talked about the program, asking question after question.
“You’re interested in that type of work,” Alejandro’s grandmother commented when they finally concluded the tour in the late afternoon with a glass of lemonade on the porch.
Cecily nodded. “Bacchus and I had a bad accident in London. Alejandro helped us to get past it. I’m not sure we would have without him.”
An assessing look from those hawk-like eyes. “You care for him.”
She nodded. “I had no idea who he was when I met him. I fell for the man with all the trappings stripped away.”
Adriana’s gaze moved back to the activity in the yard, a young groom leading an impressive black stallion toward the barn. “Alejandro tells me you didn’t know about Bacchus’s lineage.”
“No,” she said evenly, “I thought he was descended from Nightshade. That’s what I was always told.”
Adriana rested her head against the back of the chair, a frown drawing her brows together. “I never understood it.”
“Understood what?”
“Why your mother didn’t know.” She looked over at Cecily. “Luisa and Zara had an argument after the world championships the year your mother won silver. A big blow-out. Luisa lashed out, calling Zara a coward for refusing to admit Zeus was stolen property. Zara said it was all lies.”
Cecily shook her head. “My mother didn’t know.”
Adriana lifted a shoulder. “I had no proof. DNA typing wasn’t available then. But there was a groom who had worked at the stables where Diablo was studded. We had him ready to testify in a court case—until your father’s money got to him.”
Her skin stung. “Did Luisa tell my mother about the groom?”
Adriana nodded. “Luisa told her not to be so naïve. She said Zara seemed flattened...that she left after the awards ceremony and never went to the party.”
Confusion consumed her. That would have been weeks before her mother died—before that awful argument with her father. But surely her mother would have told her if she’d known? They had never kept secrets from each other—not even the smallest ones. Especially about something like this.
But if that was true, what had her parents been arguing about that night?
She shook off the uneasy feeling that ran through her. “I’m sure she didn’t know,” she said to Adriana.
* * *
“Even if she did,” reasoned Alejandro as they walked out to the pasture after dinner to enjoy the spectacular sunset, “does it really matter now? Perhaps she was protecting you.”
She shook her head. “She would never have done that. We told each other everything. We were building our careers on those horses.”
And another lie would destroy her right now. Alejandro laced his fingers through hers as they walked down the cobblestoned path that lined the pastures, voluminous, silver-leafed chestnut trees swaying overhead.
It was a stunning night, the sunset painting streaks of orange, yellow and pink across the sky, the grazing horses silhouetted against the blaze of color. But his fiancée’s attention was elsewhere, her face creased with her current preoccupation.
“So what did you think of La Reve?” he asked. “Pretty impressive?”
“Yes.” A smile lit her face. “The equine therapy center is amazing. I was blown away by the work they do. I peppered Adriana with so many questions she was likely glad to get rid of me.”
“I’m sure that isn’t true.” He’d watched his grandmother softening up to Cecily all day, no more immune to her charms than he was.
“I was thinking,” she said, shooting him a sideways look, “of asking you to teach me what your grandmother taught you so I could offer those services in our stables. It helped Bacchus so much, I think it could do the same with others.”
And her. He didn’t miss the subtle psychological cue. “It’s a big time investment. You will have your career and a new baby to think about.”
“I have a year before that happens. We could train the grooms so I have back up when I’m busy.”
The sparkle in her eyes was irresistible. She’d clearly been thinking about this. “It’s a great idea,” he conceded. “But you should ask my grandmother to teach you, not me. And that should wait until we get this issue with your father sorted.”
She nodded, a shadow moving across her gaze. He bit down the antagonism that rose inside of him. He was dealing with Clayton Hargrove as soon as they got home.
“Do you think she’d say yes?”
He nodded. “My grandmother has always been a teacher first. It’s her great love.”
She fell quiet then as they walked in silence to their destination, a lush, green pasture in which a dozen horses grazed.
“It’s so gorgeous,” Cecily murmured as they stood watching the horses cavort and play before they came in for the night. “I can see why you were so happy here as boys.” Her eyes were bright as she looked up at him in the fading light. “There’s this air about it here, this spirit I can’t describe. More like when my mother was alive at Esmerelda.”
He nodded. “It comes from my grandmother. She’s competitive, she likes to win, but nothing comes before her horses. They are her lifeblood.”
Her lashes swept down. “It must have been great therapy for you boys to be here, surrounded by all of this. I can see why your grandmother means so much to you.”
“She was the glue,” he said simply. “She insisted we come here instead of being exposed to the toxic environment at home. She knew the grounding effect being around the horses would have on us.” He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his jaw. “Those first few summers, Joaquim and I were broken. We had no conception of what love was. My grandmother gave it to us. She was the one thing that made sense when nothing else did.”
A wet sheen blanketed her eyes, turning them an iridescent blue. “Sometimes that’s all you need,” she said quietly, “that one person who believes in you—who gives you that unconditional love.”
Something unraveled inside of him. Santo Deus, she tore him apart.
“Yes,” he agreed huskily, “sometimes that’s all you need.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, dangerously close to a host of emotions that were strictly off limits to him.
She pulled back to look up at him. “How do you feel?” she asked. “About our baby?”
The question caught him off guard. He thought about it for a moment, realized his feelings had morphed from shock into something deeper he couldn’t describe. “Hopeful,” he finally said, “that I can do things differently. That I can give our child all the things I never had...that we can give he or she a happy childhood.”
Her eyes darkened. “I think you will be a better parent for your experiences, Alejandro. You will know what’s important for our child because you have been there.”
Perhaps. And perhaps he might severely disappoint her with his inability to foster a deep, open relationship with their child, exactly what he couldn’t offer her.
“What I do know,” he said quietly, shaking it off as he tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear, “is that we are going to do this together. If one of us falters, the other one will pick them up. It will be a team effort.”
“Yes,” she agreed huskily, “it will be.”
He directed her toward the fence with a hand at her waist. “Would you like to see your engagement present now?”
Her brows pulled together. “I didn’t know we were doing that.”
“Not officially no.” He pulled an apple out of his pocket. Made a clicking sound with his teeth to catch the attention of a striking, chestnut-brown Belgian warm blood grazing a few feet away. The horse lifted his head, saw the apple in his hand and trotted over, tail held high.
They climbed up on the bottom rung of the fence. “This is Socrates,” he said as the stallion butted his head playfully against his closed hand, looking for the apple. “I know he’s not Bacchus and I will get you Bacchus back, but Socrates’s lineage is nearly as impressive. He’s my grandmother and I’s progeny. We think he’s going to be a brilliant jumper.”
Cecily stared at him, then at the handsome horse with the white blaze down his face. “What are you saying?” she breathed.
“He’s yours.”
Her eyes widened. “You can’t give him to me.”
“Why not? You need a back-up horse. I can’t think of a better way to cement the ties between our two families. It’s the perfect symbolic union.”
She bit her lip. “Your grandmother is okay with this?”
“Yes.” He handed her the apple. Socrates pursued it, butting Cecily’s hand now. She laughed and opened her palm, the stallion burying his muzzle in her hand and disposing of the apple in two big bites.
“Why Socrates?” she asked.
“I’m a football fan. Soccer,” he elaborated, “for you. Socrates was a great Brazilian midfielder.”
A smile tipped her lips. “Socrates it is, then.”
The stallion stayed for a little more attention then wandered away. Cecily climbed off her perch, stood on tiptoe and kissed him.
It was the sweetest, simplest kiss they had ever shared and it drove a stake right through his heart.
* * *
Cecily didn’t know what to do with her heart on the walk back to the house. It thumped in her chest in the strangest of ways and refused to stop as she and Alejandro climbed the stairs to their suite of rooms that overlooked the lake.
He murmured something about having to work and plopped himself down in front of his computer in the sitting room. She showered and pulled on a filmy blue nightie, her mind still caught up in the very personal, undeniably special gift he’d just given her.
He kept doing these things that melted her heart. Coming on the heels of last night’s passionate, explosive encounter between them, it put reckless thoughts in her head. Like maybe they could be more, because she was sure he felt something for her.
Or maybe, she conceded, running a brush through her hair in a ruthless stroke, she was just seeing what she wanted to see. If she were smart, she knew, she would ignore this pull between her and her fiancé just as he was doing right now. Give them both time to breathe. But there were too many questions raging through her head for her to think straight.
Had her mother known about Zeus? What had her parents been arguing about the morning she’d died?
A vice gripped her chest. She couldn’t stand for one more thing to not be as it seemed...for one more piece of her life to come careening apart, because her memories of her mother were all she had.
She tried to tell herself how fragile she was. How much Alejandro was coming to mean to her. How dangerous that was to her. But right now he seemed like the only real thing in a sea of uncertainty. Nothing could seem to stop her feet from moving as she put down the brush and walked into the sitting room where he was working.
To hell with the consequences.
Slipping behind him on the sofa, she ran her hands up the taut, muscular skin of his back. The heat, the masculinity of him, singed her fingertips beneath the well-worn material of his T-shirt. Sent her pulse racing.
She set her mouth to his nape.
A tremor ran through him. “Cecily—”
She trailed open-mouthed, sensual kisses over the hot, salty skin exposed by the neck of his shirt. Slid her arms around his waist, imprinted her breasts against the muscled skin she’d just been touching. “You sure you want to work?”
“I need to get this report finished before—”
She dropped her hand to the hard length of him beneath his jeans. A curse left his mouth. He was steel beneath the denim, sizzling her blood in her veins.
Suddenly she was upside down, thrown over his shoulder, Alejandro heading toward the bedroom before she had a chance to breathe. And then it was her battling to regain her equilibrium as he deposited her on the bed, took her mouth in a series of hot, hungry kisses in between which he ripped off his jeans and pulled his T-shirt over his head.
“You are killing me,” he murmured, eyes holding hers in a suspended, searing moment she felt all the way to her toes, “slowly but surely.”
She sucked in a breath as he rode her nightie up her body with his hands and pulled it over her head. This was an Alejandro she didn’t know, the intensity in him bubbling over the edges, seeping into her skin.
She felt the burn of his gaze on her bare skin seconds before he pushed her back on the bed and braced himself on his elbows above her, a solid wall of sheer male power that made her mouth go dry.
He ran a possessive hand down her body, lingering on the dips and curves he found. Her pulse stuttered, then took off at a dead run. This wasn’t going to be a languid, leisurely seduction. It was going to be something else entirely.
Cupping her breasts, he traced his fingertips over the velvety points. Rolled the sensitive peaks between thumb and forefinger until she moaned and moved restlessly beneath him. Satisfying her demand, he palmed the curve of her belly with his hand, then drew his fingers down over the sensitive crease of her thigh.
She opened instinctively for him, eyes on his as he slid a hard male thigh between hers, moving against her in a sensual, breathtaking rhythm. She reached up, curled a hand around his nape and brought his mouth down to hers for an intensely erotic, open-mouthed kiss.
The friction achingly good, her body beyond ready for him, a low plea left her lips. Releasing her mouth, he slid a hand beneath her head to fist in her hair, sliding his other hand down her leg to urge her thigh up and over his hip. With a single, hard thrust he was buried inside of her, her breath escaping on a harsh gasp.
He kissed her through the slow, deep ride he took her on, stroking into her body with deliberate, sweet slides until her insides were a hot shimmer and all she could feel was him. Every inch of her catching fire, she shattered apart, nails digging into his biceps. He came with her, his powerful body swelling, expanding, spilling his scalding heat inside her.
She’d never been so lost and found all in one moment. So sure she’d made an irrevocable choice she could never take back.