His Ultimate Prize

* * *

Sasha looked after Marco’s disappearing figure, shocked by the astonishing revelation.

Now Marco’s motives became clear. His overprotective attitude towards Rafael, his reaction to the crash, suddenly made sense. Watching his mother die on the race track he’d built had to be right up there with enduring a living hell every time he stepped foot on it.

So why did he do it?

Marco de Cervantes was an extraordinary engineer and aerodynamicist, who excelled in building astonishingly fast race cars, but he could easily have walked away and concentrated his design efforts on the equally successful range of exclusive sport cars favoured by Arab sheikhs and Russian oligarchs.

So what drove him to have anything to do with a world that surely held heart-wrenching memories?

She slowly climbed the stairs and entered the house, her mind whirling as she went into her suite to wash off the heat and sweat of the race track.

After showering, she put on dark jeans and a striped blue shirt. Pulling her hair into a neat twist, she secured it with a band and shoved her feet into pair of flat sandals.

She met Marco as she came down the stairs. The now familiar raking gaze sent another shiver of awareness scything through her. He stopped directly in front of her, his arresting face and piercing regard rendering her speechless for several seconds.

‘Lunch won’t be ready for a while, but if you want something light before then, Rosario can fix you something.’

The matronly housekeeper appeared in the sun-dappled hallway as if by magic, wiping her hands on a white apron.

‘No, thanks. I’m not hungry.’

With a glance, he dismissed the housekeeper. His gaze returned to her, slowly tracing her face. When it rested on her mouth she struggled not to run her tongue over it, remembering how his eyes had darkened the last time she’d done that.

‘I have a video call with Tom Brooks, my press liaison, in five minutes. Can I use your study?’

His eyes locked on hers. ‘Why’s he calling?’

‘He wants to go over next month’s sponsorship schedule. I can give you a final printout, if you like.’

She deliberately kept her voice light, non-combative. Something told her Marco de Cervantes was spoiling for a fight, and after his revelations she wasn’t sure it was wise to engage him in one. Pain had a habit of eroding rational thought.

Being calmly informed by the doctor that she’d lost the baby she hadn’t even been aware she was carrying had made her want to scream—loudly, endlessly until her throat gave out. She’d wanted to reach inside herself and rip her body apart for letting her down. In the end the only thing that had helped was getting back to the familiar—to her racing car. The pain had never left her, but the adrenaline of racing had eased her aching soul the way nothing else had been able to.

Looking into Marco’s dark eyes, she caught a glimpse of his pain, but wisely withheld the offer of comfort on the tip of her tongue. After all, who was she to offer comfort when she hadn’t quite come to terms with losing her baby herself?

Silently, she held his gaze.

For several seconds he stared back. Then he indicated his study. ‘I’ll set it up for you.’

She followed him into the room and drew to a stunned halt. The space was so irreverently, unmistakably male that her eyes widened. An old-style burgundy leather studded chair and footrest stood before the largest fireplace she’d ever seen, above which two centuries-old swords hung. The rest of the room was oak-panelled, with dusty books stretching from floor to ceiling. The scent of stale tobacco pipe smoke hung in the air. It wouldn’t have been strange to see a shaggy-haired professor seated behind the massive desk that stood under the only window in the room. Compared to the contemporary, exceedingly luxurious comfort of the rest of the villa, this was a throwback to another century—save for the sleek computer on the desk.

Marco caught the look on her face and raised an eyebrow as he activated the large flat screen computer on the immense mahogany desk.

‘Did your designer fall into a time warp when he got to this room?’

‘This was my father’s study—his personal space. He never allowed my mother to redesign it, no matter how much she tried. He hasn’t been in here since she died, and I...I feel no need to change things.’

A well of sympathy rose inside Sasha for his pain. Casting a look around, she stopped, barely suppressing a gasp. ‘Is that a stag’s head on the wall?’ she asked, eyeing the large animal head, complete with gnarled, menacing antlers.

‘A bull stag, yes.’

She turned from the gruesome spectacle. ‘There’s a difference?’

The semblance of a smile whispered over his lips. Sasha found she couldn’t tear her gaze away. In that split second she felt a wild, unfettered yearning to see that smile widen, to see his face light up in genuine amusement.