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Aspen read the flash of annoyance in his gaze—and something else she couldn’t place. But his annoyance fed hers and once again she stalked away from him and stopped at Gypsy Blue’s stall. If she’d been able to afford it she would have kept her beloved mare, and that only increased her aggravation.
‘Here she is,’ she rapped out. ‘Her sire was Blue Rise, her dam Lady Belington. You might remember she won the Kentucky Derby twice running a few years back.’ She sucked in a breath, trying not to babble as she had done over her apology before. If Cruz was happy with the way things were between them then so was she. ‘I have someone else interested, so if you want her you’ll have to decide quickly.’
Quite a backpedal, Cruz thought. From uncomfortable, apologetic innocent to stiff Upper East Side princess. He wondered what other roles she had up her sleeve and then cut the thought in half before it could fully form. Because he already knew, didn’t he? Cheating temptress being one of them. Not that she was married now. Or engaged as far as he knew.
‘I’ve made you angry,’ he said, backpedalling himself.
This wasn’t at all the way he needed her to be if he was going to get information out of her. It was just this damned place. It felt as if it was full of ghosts, with memories around every corner that he had no wish to revisit. He’d closed the door on that part of his life the minute he’d carried his duffel bag off the property. On foot. Taking nothing from Old Man Carmichael except the clothes on his back and the money he’d already earned.
Of its own accord his gaze shifted to the other end of the long walkway to the place where Aspen had approached him that night, wearing a cotton nightie she must have known was see-through in the glow of his torch. He hadn’t been wearing much either, having only thrown on a pair of jeans and a shirt he hadn’t even bothered to button properly when he’d heard something banging on the wall and gone to investigate.
He’d presumed it was one of the horses and had been absolutely thunderstruck to find Aspen in that nightie and a pair of riding boots. She’d looked hotter than Hades and when she’d strolled past the stalls, lightly trailing her slender fingers along the wood, he couldn’t have moved if someone had planted a bomb under him.
It had all been a ploy. He knew that now. He’d kissed her because he’d been a man overcome with lust. She’d kissed him because she’d been setting him up. It had been like a bad rendition of Samson and Delilah and she’d deserved an acting award for wardrobe choice alone.
His muscles grew taut as he remembered how he had held himself in check. How he hadn’t wanted to overwhelm her with the desperate hunger that had surged through him and urged him to pull her down onto the hay and rip the flimsy nightie from her body. How he hadn’t wanted to take her innocence. What a joke. She’d played him like a finely tuned instrument and, like a fool, he’d let her.
‘Like I said before.’ She cleared her throat. ‘This feels a little awkward.’
She must have noticed the direction of his gaze because her voice sounded breathless; almost as if her memories of that night mirrored his own. Of course he knew better now.
About to placate her by pretending he had forgotten all about it, he found the words dying in his throat as she raised both hands and twisted her flyaway curls into a rope and let it drop down her back. The middle button on her dress strained and he found himself willing it to pop open.
Surprised to find his libido running away without his consent, he quickly ducked inside the stall and feigned avid interest in a horse he had no wish to buy.
He went through the motions, though, studying the lines of the mare’s back, running his hands over her glossy coat, stroking down over her foreleg and checking the straightness of her pasterns. Fortunately he was on autopilot, because his undisciplined mind was comparing the shapeliness of the thoroughbred with Aspen’s lissom figure and imagining how she would feel under his rough hands.
Silky, smooth, and oh, so soft.
Memories of the little sounds she’d made as he’d lost himself in her eight years ago exploded through his system and turned his breathing rough.
‘She’s an exceptional polo pony. Really relaxed on the field and fast as a whip.’
Aspen’s commentary dragged his mind back to his game plan and he kept on stroking the horse as he spoke. ‘Why are you selling her?’
‘We run a horse stud, not a bed and breakfast,’ she said with mock sternness, her eyes tinged with dark humour as she repeated one of Charles Carmichael’s favourite sayings.
‘Or an old persons’ home.’ He joined in with Charles’s second favourite saying before he could stop himself.
‘No.’ Her small smile was tinged with emotion.
Her reaction surprised him.
‘You miss him?’
She shifted and leant her elbows on the door. ‘I really don’t know.’ Her eyes trailed over the horse. ‘He had moments of such kindness, and he gave me a home when Mum died, but he was impossible to be around if he didn’t get his own way.’
‘He certainly had high hopes of you marrying well and providing blue stock heirs for Ocean Haven.’ And he’d made it more than clear to him after Aspen had returned to the house that night that Cruz wouldn’t be the one to provide them under any circumstances.
‘Yes.’
Her troubled eyes briefly met his and for a moment he wanted to shake her for not being a different kind of woman. A more sincere and genuine woman.
‘So what do you think?’
It took him a minute to realise she was talking about the mare and not herself. ‘She’s perfect. I’ll take her.’
‘Oh.’ She gave a self-conscious laugh. ‘You don’t want to ride her first?’
Oh, yes, he certainly did want to do that!
‘No.’
‘Well, I did tell you to be quick. I’ll have Donny run the paperwork.’
‘Send it to my lawyer.’ Cruz rubbed the mare’s nose and let her nudge him. ‘I hear Joe is planning to sell the farm.’
She grimaced. ‘Good news travels fast.’
‘Polo’s a small community.’
‘Too small sometimes.’ She gestured towards the mare. ‘She’ll ruin your nice suit if you let her do that.’
‘I have others.’
So nice not to have to worry about money, Aspen thought, a touch enviously. After the abject poverty she and her mother had lived in after her father’s desertion, the wealth of Ocean Haven had been staggering. It was something she’d never take for granted again.
‘Where are you planning to go once it’s sold?’
‘It’s not going to be sold,’ she said with a touch of asperity, stepping back as Cruz joined her outside the stall. ‘At least not to someone else.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re going to buy it?’
‘Yes.’ She had always been a believer in the power of positive thinking, and she had never needed that more than she did now.
Gypsy Blue whickered and stuck her head over the door and Aspen realised her water trough was nearly empty. Unhooking it, she walked the short distance to a tap and filled it.
‘Let me do that.’
Cruz took the bucket from her before she could stop him and stepped inside the stall. Aspen grabbed the feed bucket Donny had left outside and followed him in and hooked it into place.
‘It’s a big property to run by yourself,’ he said.
‘For a girl?’ she replied curtly.
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Sorry. I’m a bit touchy because so many people have implied more than once that I won’t be able to do it. It’s like they think I’m completely incompetent, and that really gets my—’ She gave a small laugh realising she was about to unload her biggest gripe onto him and he was virtually a stranger to her now. Why would he even care? ‘The fact is...’ She looked at him carefully.
He had money. She’d heard of his business acumen. Of the companies he bought and sold. Of his innovative and brilliant new polo-inspired hotel in Mexico. He was the epitome of a man at the top of his game. Right now, as he leant his wide shoulders against the stall door and blocked out all sources of light from behind, he also looked the epitome of adult male perfection.
‘But the fact is...?’ he prompted.
Aspen’s eyes darted to his as she registered the subtle amusement lacing his voice. Did he know what she had just been thinking? ‘Sorry, I was just...’ Just a bit distracted by your incredible face? Your powerful body? Way to go, Aspen. Really. Super effort. ‘The fact is—’ she squared her shoulders ‘—I need ten million dollars to keep it.’
She forced a bright smile onto her face.
‘You’re not looking for an investment opportunity, are you?’
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