He exhaled. He’d wanted to kiss her and never stop, and yet … she’d been so bewildered, so frightened by her dream. More than making love to her, he’d wanted to protect her and keep her safe. He’d never felt this way about any woman.
Annabelle was so strong. And yet, vulnerable. Almost. innocent.
What dream could have possibly affected her so horribly?
Stefano looked around the old stables. The ancient stalls had been meticulously repaired. The tools and equipment that were always carefully put away in their place had been cleaned and brought to shine. He grabbed a pitchfork and furiously shoveled piles of fresh hay, putting his back into it.
He thought again of how she’d sobbed after her dream, how she had refused to tell him about it, how she hadn’t even allowed him to turn on the light.
He paused, leaning on his pitchfork.
Perhaps he was making a mistake, getting involved with Annabelle Wolfe. His instincts were starting to warn that an affair with her would not be light. Or simple. Or easy. All the things he usually insisted upon in a brief relationship.
But she intrigued him. Her cold exterior was just armor to protect her vulnerable heart. She might be from an aristocratic English family, he thought, but she was nothing like the rest of her class.
As a boy, Stefano had once envied wealthy men such as his father’s employer, who bought and sold horses and lavish estates, and could change other people’s lives on a whim. It had taken Rosalia and her father’s long-ago betrayals to teach Stefano how artificial and heartless those people truly were. Now, he despised the cold, glittering world of the international jet set. He stayed away from the cities and the racing circuits where the upper crust traveled, and only had to endure their company once a year.
His annual polo match and gala raised money for his charitable foundation. Important.
Valuable. But, oh, how Stefano dreaded it. Just a few days more.
He exhaled, shoveling another pile of straw, and pushed his thoughts back to a more pleasurable topic.
How many lovers had Annabelle had? Not many, surely. She was too prickly for that. And she could certainly afford to be choosy. So how many men had she invited to her bed? Less than ten? Less than five?
Stefano scowled. It irritated him to think of Annabelle with other men. Hypocritical of him, surely, since he’d taken so many lovers himself. He could barely recall half of the women he’d made love to, any more than he could remember satisfying other physical needs over his lifetime. Sex was a physical need like any other. He couldn’t remember every single blanket he’d used in winter, every glass of wine he’d drunk or every bite of food he’d eaten. Why would he remember every woman who’d warmed his bed?
But if he ever made love to Annabelle. He shuddered. That he knew he would remember.
But would he have her?
You’ll never have me, Stefano. Never.
So she’d said. But training horses had taught him to pay attention to nonverbal cues. And in many ways body language was the same for women as horses. The way her eyes wouldn’t meet his. The way she skittered from him, backing away. The way she resisted his touch. The way she seemed to tremble—and if he drew too close, the way she would lash out. Whatever she said with her words, he could read her body as clear as day.
Seducing her was going to be far more challenging than he’d thought. But he would not fail. Could not.
Stefano heard a noise and looked up. Through the stable window, he saw a shadow and recognized Annabelle’s slim figure silhouetted against the gray-and-pink dawn.
Strange. He’d once thought of her color as gray, but now he realized he’d been wrong. She wasn’t like winter twilight at all. Annabelle was a January dawn. Cold, brittle—and yet with a pale mist curling upon the edges, soft pink promise like a whisper, wistfully dreaming of spring.
My work is all that matters. It is all I care about, she’d said.
Madre de Dios, that a woman like Annabelle should think such a thing!
He wanted to free her from that tight self-control. He wanted to see her smile, give her joy, hear her scream with pleasure—
“Oh.” With an intake of breath, Annabelle stood blinking in the stable doorway. Her blond hair was pulled back in her regular tight chignon, and she wore a soft pink linen pantsuit and plain, sensible shoes. She pulle
d her camera down from her face. “I didn’t expect you to be up so early.”
“I couldn’t sleep.” He looked her over, relishing the image of her slim body. “Not after I left you.”
“Oh. Right.” She bit her lip. “About last night. Thank you for staying with me. I’m rather embarrassed by the whole thing …”
“Don’t,” he said sharply. “You had a bad dream. It happens to everyone at times.”
Turning away with an unintelligible mutter, Annabelle lifted her camera and snapped pictures of the wood-slatted ceiling, of the horse in the closest stall, of the dust motes floating in the air from the first light of sunrise flooding through the open door.