‘Then, will you please stop talking to the horse,’ Danny complained, ‘and concentrate on me? I’m slowly melting here while you run your equine counselling service.’
‘Here—’ Lizzie tossed a tube of mints across for Danny to catch.
‘Do you think we’ll ever meet our leader?’ Danny asked, cramming a handful of mints into her mouth. ‘Personally, I’m beginning to doubt he exists.’
‘We know he exists,’ Lizzie said sensibly, wishing Danny hadn’t brought up the subject of Chico Fernandez. ‘He piloted the plane that brought us here.’
‘So, where is he?’ Danny demanded.
‘I don’t know. I’m in no hurry to see him. Are you?’
‘Liar,’ Danny accused. ‘Your face has pinked up, and your eyes are huge. I’m not going into any further anatomical detail on the basis that it wouldn’t be appropriate between friends. But, honestly, Lizzie, please don’t ask me to believe that you’re not eaten up with excitement at the thought of seeing Chico again.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. I blame Chico for my obsession with all things equine, and nothing else.’ Which was also a lie, but Danny didn’t need to know that.
‘I remember,’ Danny mused. ‘Since the moment you met Chico, you talked of nothing but having a life with horses, just like him. And now here we are, on his training ranch,’ she exclaimed.
Lizzie faked a laugh, wishing she could join in Danny’s upbeat mood. True, everything on Fazenda Fernandez had surpassed her wildest expectation, and she was more determined than ever to excel and pass her diploma with top honours, but when it came to Chico...
‘Suck him dry, Lizzie, and then take his ideas back to Scotland, so you can use them to set up in competition and destroy him.’
She didn’t hate Chico as much as her father wished she did. In fact, she didn’t hate him at all, but she did feel disillusioned by him. She couldn’t even blame him if he had flirted with her mother, though she guessed Serena would be the instigator. Would Chico force himself on her mother? No. Would he rape her? Absolutely not. But Lizzie’s mother was still a very attractive woman, and Chico had always been a free spirit. But he could have been straight with her instead of promising to rescue her from Rottingdean House, and then disappearing without a word.
‘Share your thoughts,’ Danny insisted, crunching mints noisily as she sprawled out on the hay.
Not a chance, Lizzie thought ruefully. In this instance, she wouldn’t be confiding in her friend. ‘Hang up the tack for me, and then we’ll talk. It’s steaming in here. I’m melting after moving all that hay.’ Fanning herself, Lizzie started to peel off her breeches and claggy top. She relished the freedom of thong and sports bra for a few moments, before reaching for her jeans. ‘The heat, when you’ve been working as hard as we have, certainly takes it out of you.’
‘It’s not the only thing that’s hot,’ Danny observed with mischief in her voice.
‘The men?’ Lizzie pretended disinterest. Wiping her arm across her glowing face, she bundled her bright copper hair up into a band.
Danny opened an eye. ‘Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed them. The gauchos are off-the-scale hot, while the polo players are like gilt-edged invitations to sin.’
‘Really?’ Lizzie’s lips pressed down. ‘I can’t say I’ve noticed.’
‘Like hell you haven’t,’ Danny scoffed.
There was only one man Lizzie was interested in, and their paths hadn’t even crossed yet. She guessed Chico must have been busy catching up with everything that had happened while he’d been away, and doubted he’d even recognise her when they met again. She was hardly fifteen years old now. Nor was she impressionable, or prone to having a crush on a man who looked like a barbarian, and who had the morals of a goat, according to the scandal sheets. It was hard to miss the bad boy of polo, as the sports pages called him, when Chico scored as many front covers on polo magazines as he’d scored goals this season.
Leaning her head back against the wall of the stall with her arms outstretched, she relished the breeze coming in from an open window on her naked skin. ‘Do you think anyone’s going to notice if I just forget to put on my top?’
‘Who’s going to see you?’ Danny pointed out. ‘There’s only one horse in the stable block, and we’re his grooms.’
Lizzie relaxed as her friend hefted the horse’s saddle over her arm, and picked up his bridle. Danny was right. Who was going to see her?
* * *
Coltish limbs and an intriguing flash of naked skin held him motionless for a moment as the girl struggled to pull on a fresh top over what appeared to be—at least to her, judging by her muttered curses—inconveniently large breasts. He wanted to check on a pony that had suffered a bad knock during a match while he’d been away. The pony’s spirit would benefit from human contact and he was keen to make sure it was as comfortable as possible. Anyone who believ
ed animals couldn’t understand what was said to them was missing an empathy gene, in his opinion. He had heard the two female grooms talking, but one of them had left the stall and slipped out of the back entrance that led to the tack room where they stowed their gear. Grooms hanging round so late in the day were either up to no good, or were working late, which meant one of two things: they were dross he’d get rid of, or they were the best of the best. He was keen to find out which category he was dealing with. Shouldering a pitchfork to make the hay bed in the stall more comfortable for the horse, he grabbed a fistful of pony nuts and strolled down the line of stalls.
Emotion caught him square in the gut as a halo of red-gold curls gave the groom’s identity away. He would have known her anywhere, even after all these years. The half-naked body belonged to Lizzie Fane. Perfect.
‘Out of there, now,’ he rapped.
‘What?’ a girl who sounded in no way dismayed demanded. ‘Who is this?’
It was a shock to hear adult Lizzie sounding just like her mother. Not good.
‘I said,’ he repeated in a menacing tone, ‘get out of there now.’
‘Do you mind?’ she replied in the same honeyed voice. ‘Your tone is upsetting the horse.’
She had a nerve. No one cared about horses more than he did.
Had he really imagined he would know how it felt to be confronted by a member of the Fane family on his fazenda? He’d been nowhere close. Anger consumed him as the past rushed back. The humiliation he’d suffered—the expense to Eduardo, thanks to the false accusations made against Chico, and the fact that Lizzie had turned her back on him.
‘I won’t be a minute,’ she murmured.
Was he supposed to wait?
‘There are some things I need to pick up and put away,’ she explained, still in the same mild voice, and still mostly hidden from him in the stall.