CHAPTER SEVEN

OCCASIONALLY THERE WAS an amnesty between them. Some nights, when they passed each other on the beach, he would nod to her; other nights he would be too far in the distance.

‘Look at that,’ she marvelled on one such night, more to herself than to Capricorn, as she watched Dom rear up while Elias leaned in and clung on to his back with his strong thighs.

They both looked magnificent, Carmen thought. Elias because he allowed the animal to be himself while remaining in complete control, and Domitian because he was simply a beautiful creature.

Some evenings Elias didn’t acknowledge her at all.

‘Don’t mind him,’ said John, who was riding Rocky at the time. He must have seen her face as Elias galloped past without even looking. ‘He’s like that with everyone. Well, not his fancy friends in the city...’

Carmen wanted to correct John, because that wasn’t the man she had come to know, but then she thought of how he’d been when she’d first arrived. And then, as she thought of the awards night when she’d first met him, telling that blonde woman to go to hell and snapping at his date, she wanted to correct John again.

Elias was like that with everyone.

Though perhaps, at times, not with her...

The next night when it just Carmen and Capricorn on the beach Elias reined Dom into a walk as he approached them. He wore short boots that were as scruffy as her own for his rides on the beach, so it wasn’t his casual attire that was different. There was just a more relaxed feeling in the air.

‘Hola,’ Carmen said, and now when she put up her hand to stroke Dom, Elias no longer warned her off.

She gently stroked the soft nose and the stallion nudged at her shorts.

‘I had treats in there!’ Carmen laughed.

‘Not for him, I hope.’

‘Of course not,’ she lied. ‘My boss won’t let me,’ she said with a wry smile.

She stroked Dom’s ears and, although she spoke to the horse, it was clear for whom her words were intended.

‘I’d love to work with you, Dom, if only your owner wasn’t so determined to keep you all to himself.’

‘Carmen, even I can’t handle him some days! His previous owner was going to destroy him. And he threw your predecessor—’

‘From everything I’ve heard, I would throw Martin.’

‘Maybe...’ Elias laughed and jumped down.

It was as though, on occasion, they called a truce, he thought. On certain evenings he found the opportunity to be on the receiving end of a dose of her opinionated conversation irresistible.

The fact was, she turned him on, just not in the usual way.

It wasn’t simply about chemistry—though there was plenty of that. It was that she turned him on with her laugh, and the way she nudged him and pestered him to let her ride the stallion. It was the way they caught up on stable yard gossip—nothing indiscreet, just everyday chatter.

‘I hear you made the most amazing paella,’ Elias said now.

‘I did!’ Carmen smiled, hoping he couldn’t see her burning cheeks.

It was the only time since she’d got to America that she’d cheated. Instead of foisting her lack of culinary skills on her hungry, hardworking housemates, she’d caved and arranged a secret delivery from a very swish restaurant.

‘What are you making next week?’ he asked.

‘I haven’t decided...’

He loved how she blushed as she lied, and laughed silently to himself at how the entire staff had seen the restaurant truck rumbling up the drive and the driver unloading not bags of ingredients but dishes of food.

She was a mystery—one that made him smile.

He enjoyed the view as she bent to pick up a piece of sea glass from the beach. It wasn’t just the backs of her toned thighs that tightened his groin, but the pout on her lips as she examined it, the scrutiny in her eyes as she held up the piece of glass to the light before discarding it with a huff.

‘Brown!’ she scowled, and tossed it back.

‘What’s wrong with brown?’

‘It’s everywhere. I’m always looking out for orange.’

‘Why orange?’

‘Because in the olden days they didn’t make many orange things.’ Carmen shrugged. ‘It’s very rare. There’s lots of brown sea glass, and I have a few turquoise pieces too, but no orange.’

‘What about this one?’ he asked a while later.

She was about to tell him that green was as common as brown, and that she had a hundred pieces like this, but suddenly she knew there could never be one as beautiful as this, because this one came from long fingers that had selected it just for her...

She saw that the hairs on his knuckles were gold from the sun, that his nails were neat, but the skin on his palms was strong and rough.

Carmen wore gloves for a reason.

She had to present herself as picture-perfect at family events.

But Elias...

She looked at his hands again and wanted so badly to touch them, to know how that tough skin felt against hers.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, and took the glass from him, slipping it into her pocket.

She knew that her plan not to like him was fading as fast as the setting sun.

‘Do you miss Spain?’ he asked one night, having returned to the ranch following a long day of meetings in LA.

‘Yes!’

She knew she sounded surprised, and saw him turn and look at her.

‘Had you asked me a couple of weeks ago, I would have said no. But since working here, at the yard...’

She went misty-eyed as she thought of Presumir.

‘How long are you in the US for?’

‘Three months,’ Carmen said. ‘Well, I guess there are only a few weeks left now...’

Her voice faded away as it dawned on Carmen that she was going to miss being here too.

Miss moments like this...

‘She’s tired,’ Carmen said, referring to Capricorn, whose pace had started to drop off. ‘I should get her back.’

‘Sure.’

But in her stable Capricorn refused to settle.

‘Lie down for me, girl,’ Carmen said to the mare.

But even when she got the pregnant mare to lie down, she was still unsettled—as though the second Carmen left she might stand up again.

‘I used to be like that,’ Carmen said, and she lay down with the tired mare.

She told her about the nanny who had raised her after her mother left.

‘As soon as Paula tried to turn out the light I would sit up and ask her a question or ask for some water.’

She lay there, remembering, but was brought suddenly back to the present as the little foal within Capricorn moved. Carmen smiled, as the mare lay quietly, accepting the movement and completely unfazed.

‘You’re going to be a wonderful mother,’ Carmen said, and Capricorn responded with a breathy hmmph. ‘Better than mine, anyway.’

It was Carmen who hmmphed this time.

She could hear the yard quietening down as the soft light of evening fell. She took out her phone and saw that there was another message from Emily, which included some more photos of her little niece.

Josefa was eight months old now, but she had been born twelve weeks early, so was still tiny. She was catching up fast, though, and for the very first time Carmen saw herself in her niece. She was blonde, like Emily, but she had dark almond-shaped eyes and was starting to get fat cheeks...

Carmen loved little Josefa with all her heart, but this evening the sight of her niece made her want to cry. The little girl was so close to the age Carmen had been when her mother had walked out...

‘How could you leave a little girl like that?’ she asked a dozing Capricorn, who of course didn’t reply.

How could her mother have just decided, when Carmen had been less than a year old, that she wanted no part in her life?

And then twenty-five years later decide to return?

She heard hooves then, and the sound of boots. She sat up, only realising then that she’d been crying.

‘Maldito,’ she cursed, and quickly wiped her eyes as she stood up, certain that Elias wouldn’t appreciate finding her lying down with one of the horses—or ponies, or whatever they were called here.

‘Carmen?’ he said, frowning when he glanced in and saw that she was there.

‘Capricorn took a while to settle,’ Carmen said, letting herself out.

He looked at the straw in Carmen’s hair and she knew he’d guessed she’d been lying down with the pregnant mare. He looked as if he was about to tell her off, but perhaps he saw how red her eyes were, and that her lashes were damp and decided she did not need scolding right now.

‘She looks peaceful,’ Elias said.

‘Yes,’ Carmen agreed.

She took a deep breath to calm herself, and it was at that very second that she fully encountered his scent. Cologne, she guessed, left over from his day spent in meetings in LA. She picked up little notes of citrus and wood—or was it wood smoke? The kind you encountered when you rode through the hills in winter? And there was another scent...one she had never really been aware of before...which she knew had to be the potent edge of masculinity, because it made her want to step closer and breathe deeper.

And then she recalled the chest and back and flat stomach she had seen that first morning...

‘I’m just going to do a final check and then head to bed,’ Carmen croaked. ‘It’s good to finally be tired.’

‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘I mean...’

She opened her mouth to explain that her head was not tired—that it hadn’t been for most of her life, and certainly not since her father died. That she meant physically tired, and that felt like a blessing.

‘It doesn’t matter...’ She put up a hand, as if to say it was too hard to explain, but...

Elias nodded.

‘Yep.’

He’d kill to be tired tonight.

Instead of hard for Carmen.