‘Acknowledge it by keeping the finca as it is,’ she said. She closed her eyes, envisaging the horses grazing the dark green pastures, the rolling hills, and suddenly she saw Conor in her mind’s eye, Conor, carrying her into the shadowy coolness of a forest clearing. Her throat closed. ‘Just—just live up to your agreement,’ she said in a small, choked whisper. ‘Let El Corazon live on forever as it was, as it might have been...’
‘As it will always be,’ a soft, deep voice said.
Arden’s head shot up and there was Conor, standing in the doorway of her office, wearing a dark suit, a white shirt and red silk tie, looking as urbane and sophisticated as the day she’d first learned his true identity. But she could sense the elemental man lurking just beneath the civilised veneer, the power and passion that marked him as the Master of El Corazon.
The phone fell from her hand and clattered to the desk.
‘Conor?’ she breathed.
He smiled as he walked towards her. ‘Hello, Arden.’
She put her hands in her lap and laced the fingers together. ‘What—what are you doing here?’
‘You’ve lost weight,’ he said quietly, his gaze flickering over her.
Get hold of yourself, Arden told herself fiercely.
‘Well,’ she said with a quick little smile, ‘you know what they say. You can never be too rich or too thin.’
‘But you can be, querida. You can be so rich you see money as power, as a whip you can use to beat people into submission.’ The muscle in his cheek knotted and unknotted. ‘Felix was a master of it.’
‘Is that why you came here? To talk about your uncle?’
He stopped beside her desk, hung up the phone, then ran his hand lightly along her cheek. She caught her breath, fighting against the sudden, dizzying desire to press her mouth to his hand. ‘There are hollows here, beneath your cheekbones,’ he said softly. ‘Why have you lost so much weight, querida?’
Her laughter was quick and brittle. ‘I told you, there’s no such thing as being too rich or too thin. Now that I’m rich——’
‘You are not rich, querida.’ His hand slid down her throat, whispered across her breast and paused above her racing heart. ‘Here, where it matters, you are as poor as I am.’
Arden struck his hand away. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said sharply. ‘Anyway, I’m hardly “poor” any more—or have you forgotten that I won the fight for El Corazon?’
‘What fight? I didn’t oppose you.’
‘You were afraid of your own prophecy coming true.’
His brow furrowed. ‘Prophecy?’
‘You knew you’d lose, Conor, and so you decided not to waste money on a bunch of low-life lawyers.’
‘You’re sure of that,’ he said with a little smile.
‘The only thing I’m not sure of is why you’ve come here.’
He smiled again as he reached for her hand and drew her to her feet. ‘You know why.’
‘No,’ she insisted, ‘I don’t, but...’
But what? He was looking at her as he had the day they’d gone to the fiesta, when he’d said he wanted to tell her something important and she, poor fool that she’d been, had thought he’d wanted to tell her he’d fallen in love with her. Oh, God, oh, God, let me stop remembering...
Arden lifted her chin. ‘Are you trying to get me fired? Reception didn’t announce you—I don’t suppose you bothered with a pass. The company has rules against personal visitors.’
‘A visitor? Is that all I am, mi amor?’
Arden’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Don’t—don’t call me that!’ she said unsteadily.
‘Why?’ He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed the palm. ‘In my heart, you are mi amor. You always will be.’
‘Linda,’ she said, the words tumbling uncontrolled from her lips in a fierce whisper. ‘Linda is your love, she’s...’