ALEJANDRO PACED THE floor of his lower Manhattan office the morning after his and Cecily’s return from Belgium, managing the delicate threads of the Columbian acquisition while simultaneously castigating himself for allowing his relationship with Cecily to devolve into the emotional affair it had become.
Clearly he couldn’t be trusted not to sink into that realm with her, which necessitated a cooling off period while he figured out how to handle his vulnerable, irresistible fiancée. Because that couldn’t happen again between them—another of those charged encounters guaranteed to push their relationship off the track.
His conference call droned on, digressing into legalese he couldn’t be bothered to follow. Stopping in front of the windows, he braced his palms on the sill and took in a gray, stormy-looking view of the Hudson. Most people would welcome that level of emotion in their relationship, he acknowledged. For him it was a place he would never go because he knew where it led.
No matter how good he and Cecily were together, no relationship retained that shiny, newly purchased glow. Whether boredom, friction or simply like turning to dislike, all good things came to an end. He’d watched his parents reenact that vicious pattern over and over again and it never ended well, passion and happiness turning to anger, then to hatred and back again until he’d been begging for them to end it. It wasn’t something he’d ever subject himself or his child to. Nor would he raise Cecily’s expectations as to the type of relationship he could provide.
Better to take his own advice and focus on the things he could affect such as attacking the root cause of all of his problems.
His conference call mercifully came to an end. Discarding his headset, he sat down at his desk and messaged his lawyer.
Is the letter ready?
Just finished. Want me to bring it over?
Please.
Sam Barton knocked on his door just as he was taking a sip of his espresso. Waving him into a chair, Alejandro scanned the document his lawyer pushed across the desk.
The letter, addressed to Clayton Hargrove, recapped the terms of the public apology the Salazar family was willing to accept from the Hargroves as compensation for the financial and reputational losses it had incurred as a result of the theft of its property.
Should the Salazars not receive a written response by the date indicated on the letter, the family would proceed with its plans to prosecute the Hargroves to the fullest extent of the law, exposing the lies and criminal business practices the Hargrove dynasty had been built upon.
A very persuasive letter. Satisfied with its contents, Alejandro strengthened the language in a couple of sections, then pushed the document back across the desk to Sam.
His lawyer scanned the edits. Raised a brow. “That will get his attention.”
“That’s the point.”
“And if he doesn’t respond?”
“We cross that bridge when we come to it.”
He was hoping that day never came. That Clayton Hargrove’s lawyers would take the letter for the warning it was and advise their client accordingly. Because this had to end, this piece of history that was tearing his fiancée apart. This daily hope her father would call when the bastard clearly couldn’t care less, because it was dismantling him too to see her this way.
It needed to be over.
* * *
Cecily resumed her life in New York determined to cultivate that unshakeable vision she had promised herself. She tuned out the newspapers and the gossip, focused on the future she and Alejandro were building together and refused to look back, only forward.
Controlled the things she could.
The week after they returned, their real estate agent found them a property in upstate New York that was everything they’d been looking for. Sitting in the shadow of the Catskill Mountains, Cherry Hill Farm, a two hundred and fifty acre spread being sold by its polo ground owners, was spectacular.
Cecily lost her heart to its scenic views across the Hudson Valley, acres of riding trails up into the mountains and its elegant, eighteenth-century ranch-style house.
“You love it,” Alejandro said, flicking her a glance as they made the drive home after viewing it.
She nodded, excitement brimming inside her at the potential of such a special place. Warmer than the grand Esmerelda she’d grown up on, she knew it could be a wonderful home for her and Alejandro’s family, plus a great base for her business. Something as special as La Reve.
And if that brought with it a host of questions as to where her relationship with Alejandro stood after that explosive night they’d shared together in Belgium, she ignored them just as she’d been doing all week.
She didn’t want to examine the depth of feeling she had for him. How much she was coming to depend on him. The fact she’d unwisely allowed herself to care for a man who’d had no trouble playing by the rules ever since they’d returned to New York.
Maybe it was the way he made love to her with such passion, then walked away afterward as if he’d been untouched by it. As if he could turn his feelings off and on for her as he pleased while she felt as if the world was shifting beneath her feet. As if whatever brakes he’d been attempting to put on them that night in Belgium were firmly in place and he was keeping him there.
Or maybe it was because the very thing she’d been afraid of happening—that she would fall into love with him—was exactly what she’d done.
Bottom lip caught between her teeth, her attention was captured by the phone call Alejandro was having with their real estate agent. Buying the farm.
She gaped at him when he’d finished. “Did you just do that?”
“Sim. He was going to put it on the market tomorrow. Better not to take chances. Plus now we have a location for our wedding. We can get the invitations out.”
Her stomach plummeted. Given the simple ceremony they’d envisioned and the wedding planner they’d hired to execute it for them, six weeks was more than enough time to execute it. It was not having it at Esmerelda that ripped open the jagged hole inside of her. The fact that there had still been no word from her father.
“Don’t,” Alejandro murmured. “I am going to fix this, Cecily. I promise you.”
How? Both sides were so deeply dug in, their pride ruling them, she didn’t see any way around it.
She turned her head to stare out the window. Perhaps Alejandro had been right. Perhaps her father would see reason once he received their wedding invitation and acknowledged it as the inevitability it was. Because he wouldn’t let her walk down the aisle without him, would he? As rocky as their relationship had been, she loved her father and deep down, she thought he loved her too.
* * *
Fortunately, she was too madly busy over the next few weeks to ruminate about anything except getting the renovations done at Cherry Hill Farm so the wedding could go on as planned.
The ceremony was to take place in the lovely wild flower garden at the back of the house, the reception, a barn party Alejandro had suggested as apropos for them. Which meant her priority was making sure the main barn—the showpiece of her new stables—was ready in time.
The days passed in a flurry of frenzied activity, a small army working at the farm. It was surreal, magical, to watch her dream come true. Her stomach swooped with butterflies every time she thought of saying her vows to Alejandro in the beautiful garden. Dancing her first dance with him under the sparkling Murano chandeliers inspired by La Reve.
If she worried she was committing herself to a man who might never love her, that those walls of his showed no signs of coming down, it was a reckless ride she couldn’t seem to stop because he was becoming everything to her, this man who always kept his promises.
If she got too carried away, hot on its heels came the reminder her father had not yet responded to the deal Alejandro had offered him, nor to their wedding invitation. Neither had the better portion of the Hargrove clan for that matter—as if her father had orchestrated a family-wide boycott of their nuptials.
If this kept up, there would be only Salazars at her wedding.
It ate away at her insides, corroded her happiness. But she refused to show it.
An unshakeable vision.
* * *
Two weeks before the wedding, she arrived home well after dinner, so exhausted she could hardly move, but bubbling over with enthusiasm with the progress of the day. Curled up in the chair beside Alejandro’s desk, she gave him a recap.
“It sounds as if you’re almost there,” he said, leaning back in his chair, coffee cup in hand.
“We are. It’s going to be amazing.” She set her gaze on the man who seemed intent on doing everything he could to help her rebuild her life alongside his. “Thank you,” she said huskily. “For this. For all of it.”
He shook it off. “It’s nothing. It’s what I promised you.”
“It’s everything and you know it.”
An enigmatic look claimed his face. He took a sip of his coffee, set the cup down. “I have to go to Colombia tomorrow.”
“Colombia?” She blinked. “Our wedding is two weeks away. We have the ultrasound tomorrow.”
“It’s the acquisition...unavoidable, I’m afraid. I’ll do the ultrasound, then leave for the airport from there.”
“When will you be back?”
“Friday.”
Friday. A week.
“Okay,” she murmured, lifting her chin. She could hold down the fort for a week. She’d been doing it all along with his insane schedule.
They discussed a few urgent wedding items. She lost the plot somewhere along the way, her eyes drifting closed. Alejandro took her cup from her hand, placed it on the desk and pulled her to her feet.
“Bed,” he instructed.
She stood on tiptoe, curved a palm around his nape and brought his mouth down to hers. “Come with me,” she murmured against his lips, “and I will.”
He pressed a hard kiss to her mouth. Set her away from him. “I have to get ready for this trip,” he said quietly, “and you’re dead on your feet. You should get some sleep.”
Her skin stung. He’d hardly touched her over the past few weeks. She’d attributed it to the pressure he was under with this deal that was making the papers, the crazy amount of work he had on his plate. But she knew in that moment she hadn’t been imagining the distance he’d put between them—it was a very real thing she’d been willfully avoiding. Testimony to his promise love wasn’t ever going to be on offer from him even if he did feel something for her.
Too tired to face it now because she knew she was already in far too deep—she immersed herself in a long, hot bath, hating the hollow feeling inside of her. Hating that she’d come to need him so much.
Curling up in bed, she picked up her tablet. Eyes blurring, emotions too close to the surface, she checked her email before she turned out the light. Everything on track with the wedding, she flipped to their RSVP inbox. Froze at the email from her father.
She pressed a shaking finger to the screen to open it. It wasn’t from her father, it was from his assistant, Claire.
Your father regrets to inform you he will not be able to attend your wedding.
No explanation. No elaboration. He hadn’t even sent it himself.
A tear slipped down her cheek. Then another, until they were a steady, inexorable flow.
She had to go see him. She had to know the truth.
* * *
She and Alejandro attended the ultrasound together the next morning at her doctor’s plush Upper East Side clinic. Everything thankfully on track, their baby healthy and thriving with a vibrant heartbeat, Cecily found herself left with a remarkable sonogram and a whole host of emotions after her fiancé departed for the airport.
Anticipation about her and Alejandro’s baby had replaced fear as her dominant emotion as she put her faith in the future. With it had come a desperately strong hope her baby would be a girl—that she would develop that same unbreakable bond with her child that she’d had with her mother and maybe it would fill some of the void still left inside of her.
She flew to Kentucky the day before Alejandro was due home, the finishing touches on the barn almost complete, last-minute wedding tasks in her planner’s capable hands. Cliff, bless his heart, met her at the airport.
She gave him a hug. “Thank you for coming.”
“It was a good escape for me. How is New York treating you?”
“Just fine.” She gave him a wary look as she drew back. “How’s father?”
“Missing you,” he said bluntly, “although he refuses to admit it. The place hasn’t been the same without you.”
“Kay?” She wrinkled her nose to hide the sharp stroke of pain that cut through her. “Left to her own devices, she’ll spoil everything.”
“Yes,” Cliff said with meaning. “Kay.”
They drove out to the farm. The familiar lush beauty of Kentucky’s horse country hit her like a brick to the chest. How had she survived without this?
A vision of Cherry Hill Farm with its spectacular canopy of pink cherry blossoms and soaring views up into the mountains filled her head. That was why. Because she wanted that life she’d envisioned with Alejandro so badly it hurt.
She gave into the impulse to go see her horses when they arrived, which didn’t help her level of emotion as she rapped on the door of her father’s study.
What if he wouldn’t speak to her? What if he threw her out?
She let herself in at her father’s curt command. He sat behind the solid, cherry wood desk in a pose imprinted from childhood, head bent over the document he was reading, brow furrowed in concentration.
Swallowing past the lump that formed in her throat, she took in the newly imprinted lines bracketing his eyes and mouth as he looked up at her.
“Daddy.”
His expression softened for a moment, a warmth entering his cool gray eyes, before his face closed over into an expressionless mask. “You didn’t say you were coming.”
She crossed her legs at the ankle, wrapped her arms tight around herself. “I got your RSVP. I wanted to talk to you.”
“You made your choice, Cecily. You chose to marry a Salazar.”
She pressed trembling lips together. “So your pride means more to you than I do?”
He rested his head against the back of the chair and regarded her with a hooded look. “I gave you everything...your career handed to you on a silver platter, the best coaches and horses in the world, every advantage you could ask for. You could have married a fine man like Knox, instead you chose to jump into bed with the man who is trying to destroy us. What do you want me to say?”
Her temper caught fire. She moved forward until she stood flush with the edge of the desk, hands clenched by her sides. “I would like you to care for me like a father should. And for the record, I made my career, not you.”
An emotion she couldn’t read flickered in those wintry gray eyes. “What I want from you, Daddy, is the truth. I want to know why you can’t make this apology and put it behind us so I can be happy.”
He got up from his chair and rounded the desk. “You think Alejandro is going to make you happy? He’s marrying you to secure the Salazar you’re carrying, Cecily. He is loving taking you away from me, paying me back by stealing the one thing I value most, but he does not love you. Don’t be so damn naïve.”
Her insides curled into a tight little ball. “It was me who pursued Alejandro. And I do trust him. He’s the only thing I can trust at the moment because you keep lying to me.”
He gave her a stone-faced look. “Then you’re being a fool.”
She swung away to the window, a wet heat blurring her eyes as she stared out at the perfectly manicured gardens. She blinked the tears back, fighting the show of emotion, but they fell unbidden down her cheeks.
“Cecily,” her father rasped, placing a hand on her shoulder. “You’re making me make impossible decisions.”
“Why?” She swung around. “Tell me why so I understand.”
He raked a hand through his hair. Rested a palm on the window ledge. “My father, in a severe lapse in judgment, made a deal with Paul Macintosh to stud Diablo to Demeter while Diablo was on loan to him. Your grandmother, as you know, was obsessed with beating Adriana, convinced if she had a horse as good as Diablo she could. So my father made it happen. No one was ever supposed to know.”
“But the groom talked.”
He frowned. “How do you know about him?”
“Adriana told me. She said we bought him off.”
“Unfortunately, yes. My mother was terrified of what would happen to her career if anyone found out...that she could be blacklisted or worse, stripped of her titles. So my father paid him off.”
“How did you know about it?”
“The groom came back years later, short on money, threatening to spill the story. I gave him more money hoping that would be the end of it.”
“But it wasn’t.” She bit the inside of her mouth. “Was that what you were arguing with mother about the day she died?”
“Yes.” The single word dismantled her insides. “I thought it was better she didn’t know. That neither of you knew. That you focused on your careers.” He shook his head, eyes bleak. “In hindsight, I should have known it was the wrong thing to do. Your mother was so emotional. She’d built her career on those horses. It was,” he said heavily, “my fault.”
Her heart pulled loose, anger and confusion clawing at her insides. All these years she’d wondered why her father couldn’t love her the way she needed him to...why the aloofness he had always carried had suddenly grown so much deeper, when it had been guilt driving him all along.
“I was trying to protect you,” he said quietly, eyes on hers. “I’ve always been trying to protect you, Cecily, to do what’s best for you, even when it hasn’t always appeared that way.”
She got that. She even believed it. But she wasn’t sure she could forgive him for sending her mother off in emotional distress while he went and did business in New York. For taking away her best friend.
Heat flashed in her father’s eyes. “Don’t you think I wish I’d done things differently? I miss her too, Cecily. Every single day. But I can’t change history. It’s the one thing I can’t do.”
Her nails dug into her palms. “You could apologize.”
“A public apology would stain your grandmother and mother’s reputation. Yours. Dismantle everything we’ve built. I won’t break the promises I’ve made.”
Even if he broke her heart keeping them.
She pressed her palms to her temples. “The Salazars will level you. Alejandro is a powerful man, Daddy. He’s not just going to walk away from this.”
Her father’s mouth thinned. “He’s made that clear. Perhaps you should remember that yourself. He is ruthless, Cecily. Have you read the letter he sent?”
What letter?
He walked to his desk, came back with a piece of paper he handed to her. She skimmed the letter. The last paragraph sucked the breath from her lungs.
Should you not respond to this communication by the date indicated, expressing the Hargrove family’s intent to make the public apology outlined above, the Salazar family will proceed with its plans to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, exposing the lies and criminal business practices the Hargrove dynasty has been built upon.
The blood drained from her face. She’d thought it would never come to this. She’d thought her father would make the apology. And perhaps, she acknowledged grimly, she’d thought Alejandro might bend given the growing feelings between them. Because she didn’t think he would do this to her.
Her father trained his gaze on hers. “You think you know him, Cecily...that you can trust him...that he cares for you? Tell him to back off...to leave ancient history where it belongs.”