His Ultimate Prize

Marco stiffened, his eyes growing cold and bleak. ‘There won’t be any children.’

The granite-like certainty in his voice chilled her soul. ‘Why do you say that?’

For a long, endless moment he didn’t answer. Then he took the wallet from her. Reaching for his trousers, he opened the car door, stepped out and pulled them on.

‘Come with me.’

Despite already missing his arms around her, she sat up. ‘Where are we going?’

The look in his eyes grew bleaker. ‘Not far. Put your clothes on. I don’t want to get distracted.’

She was all for distracting him if it meant he wouldn’t look so cold and forbidding. But she did as he said.

Marco led her to the far side of the garage. Keying in a security code, he threw open the door and stepped inside, pulling her behind him.

With a flick of a switch, light bathed the room. Sasha looked around and gasped at the contents of many glass cabinets.

‘These are all yours?’ she whispered. Walking forward she opened the first cabinet and lifted the first trophy.

‘Sí.’ Marco’s voice was husky with emotion. ‘I started racing when I was five.’

There were more trophies than she could count, filling four huge cabinets. ‘I know.’

He walked to the farthest cabinet and picked up the lone trophy standing in a case by itself. ‘This was my last trophy.’

‘You never told me why you gave up racing,’ she murmured.

When he tensed even more, she went to him and grasped his balled fists.

‘Tell me what happened.’

His eyes bored into hers, as if judging her to see if he could trust her with his pain. After an eternity his hand loosened enough to grasp hers.

‘I got my first contract to race when I was eighteen. By twenty-one I’d won two championships and acquired a degree in engineering. I was on the list of every team, and I had the choice of picking which team to drive for. A week after I signed for my dream team I met Angelique Santoro. I was twenty-four, and foolishly believed in love at first sight. And even by then I’d had my fill of paddock bunnies. She was...different. Smart, sexy, exciting—far older than her twenty-five years. All I wanted to do was race and be with her. She convinced me to sack my manager and take her on instead. Six months later we were engaged and she was pregnant.’

A shiver of dread raced over Sasha. Deep inside her chest a ball of pain, buried but not forgotten, tightened.

There won’t be any children.

‘You didn’t want the baby?’ she whispered in horror.

He laughed. A harsh, tortured sound that twisted her heart. ‘I wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.’

Sasha frowned. ‘But...what happened?’

‘I rearranged my whole life around that promise of a family. I designed the Casa de León track so I could train there, instead of going away to train at other tracks. My parents moved here. My mother was ecstatic at becoming a grandparent.’

The note of pain through his voice rocked her.

‘Angelique wasn’t satisfied?’

‘She wholeheartedly agreed with everything. Until I crashed.’

Her hand tightened around his. ‘I don’t understand. Your crash was serious, yes, but nothing you couldn’t come back from.’

‘I was in a coma for nine days. The team hired someone else to replace me when the doctors told my parents and Angelique it was unlikely I’d race again.’

‘They must have been devastated for you.’

‘My parents were.’

Sadness touched her soul. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what you must have gone through.’

He slid a finger under her chin and lifted her face to his, an echo of pain in his eyes. ‘Nor would I want you to. But this...’ he pulled her closer, his gaze softening a touch ‘...this helps.’

With a smile, she lifted her mouth to his. ‘I’m glad.’

Their kiss was gentle, a soothing balm on his turbulent revelations.

When they parted, she glanced again at the trophies. ‘Is that why you don’t let anyone in here? Because it reminds you that your racing career is over?’

‘When I accepted that part of my life was over I locked them away.’ He pulled her away from the cabinet.

‘Wait. You said your parents were devastated? What about Angelique?’

He stiffened again, his gaze turning hooded as he thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘When it turned out I was destined for a job designing cars instead of racing them, she lost interest,’ he said simply, but his oblique tone told a different story.

‘That’s not all, is it?’

Pain washed over his face before he could mask it. ‘Before I crashed Angelique was almost three months pregnant. When I woke from my coma she was no longer pregnant.’