Kept at the Argentine's Command

She grasped at the issue at hand like a drowning woman. ‘What happened with your sisters?’

‘They resented me inheriting the ranch, being the favourite. They were away at school when I was struggling to keep it all together.’

‘You hid it from them?’

‘Protected them,’ he substituted.

Lulu swallowed hard. ‘So you protected them but you didn’t confide in them? You don’t trust them?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far, Lulu.’ His hands slid with disarming gentleness down her arms.

‘But you inherited this ranch. What about them?’

‘They’re taken care of.’ He frowned. ‘Why does this bother you?’

‘Because it clearly bothers you. Do you see them regularly?’ She knew she was being incredibly intrusive, but she could still feel that surge in her panic levels, and she needed to know what his idea of a family was if he was going to throw around marriage proposals like baseball bats.

‘I see them on occasion. We’re all busy people.’ He was frowning at her. ‘I don’t have a problem with my sisters, Lulu.’

‘Maybe not, but you seem to think you have a responsibility to protect them despite the difficulties in your relationship, and I wonder if that’s why you’re talking about marriage to me.’

‘Lulu, if I’m going to be a father I don’t have much choice.’

So there it was. She hit out at him. ‘You’ve been married before and it didn’t last,’ she said.

‘I

was a kid. I wanted some stability and normality.’ He snorted. ‘It went to hell in a hand basket, naturally. It couldn’t ever have been anything other than a disaster. At that age it’s hard to be tied down.’

‘You weren’t faithful to her?’ Lulu didn’t really want to know.

‘She cheated on me.’

That brought her up short.

‘But—but why?’

Maria had brought out the rest of their meal, but Alejandro remained where he was.

‘Valentina married me to get away from her domineering father and then discovered she’d swapped one ranch for another.’

‘You rescued her,’ Lulu said dully as it all fell into place.

His sisters. His wife. Her?

‘No, Lulu, I was nineteen and horny and I’d seen a lifetime of the havoc my father’s indiscriminate whoring around had caused to our family. So I did the traditional thing and married her. But she liked the glamour, and I wasn’t playing enough polo at the time to make my name. I was too busy saving this place from all the debt my father had drowned us in. So she slept with one of my teammates who had made his name.’

How any woman could exchange Alejandro for another man baffled Lulu.

‘So there you have it, Lulu. The man who just proposed marriage to you. Quite a catch.’

She didn’t know what to say.

‘But, really, how unlucky could we be?’ he went on.

Her eyes went up to meet his. She was not sure at first what he was referring to. As the penny dropped she realised he had referred to their situation in the same bored dismissive tone he’d used to impart the sorry story of his upbringing and early marriage.

Something primal stirred inside her. This wasn’t a part of that. Everything in her rebelled against it.