Bought Bride For The Argentinian
- -
- 100%
- +
Desperate? Was she? Emily met the question in his piercing green gaze. She was certainly still reeling from the recent events which had recently turned her life upside down. Her loathsome stepfather had finally paid the price for his long-standing love affair with the bottle and had died a lonely death, which she couldn’t really be sad about. She hadn’t seen him since the bitter events following his acrimonious divorce from her mother and had been shocked to find herself listed as a beneficiary of his will. She still wondered what had possessed her to beg her business partner for some unplanned leave and then to turn up in a dusty lawyer’s office in Buenos Aires to discover what he had left her. Was it simply curiosity or just a sudden desire to lay to rest the ghosts of her past?
Either way, she had been disappointed. It seemed there had been no deathbed conversion which had made Paul Vickery want to make amends for the harsh treatment he’d meted out to her and her mother. It had been just another twist of the knife really.
‘Some of it is true,’ she said huskily. ‘My stepfather did leave me Joya. But no way did I ask Tomas to get in touch with you. You’re the last person I’d ever choose to contact.’
Alejandro’s mouth flattened as her soft English voice washed over him. Of course he was. He was disposable, wasn’t he? A poor boy with a hard body who could be dispensed with once he’d done his job as stud. He had been deemed suitable enough to introduce her to the art of pleasure and then afterwards tossed aside like a piece of trash. And Emily Green had played him for a fool, hadn’t she? Stared at him with those big sapphire eyes. Tossed her fair hair like a feisty pony, so that it rippled down her back like a field of golden wheat. He’d been transfixed by her Englishness. By her pale beauty and the pert vigour of her young body. Long legs and slender arms and a pale bottom, which curved like the moon.
She’d driven him mad with frustration and desire those hot summer nights when he’d lain alone on his narrow bunk next to the stables, sweat pouring from his brow and his groin close to bursting as he imagined losing himself in all her sweet, secret places. And then, when his dream had finally come true and he had bedded her at last—she had turned around and crushed his honour and his hopes beneath one of her costly leather shoes, before walking away from him without a backward glance.
At the time he had been astonished by her behaviour—but not for long. Because soon after that he was to discover that all women were liars and cheats. But it had been Emily who had hurt him the most, who had wielded the sharpest blade, which felt like it was digging deep into his heart. And didn’t they say that the first cut was the deepest?
‘So what are you planning to do?’ he said, slanting a compassionate look towards the horse who was still trying to summon up the strength to nuzzle Emily’s hand. ‘Put a bullet to his head?’
She recoiled, staring at him as if he had just ascended from the depths of hell.
‘Are you advocating I kill my horse?’ she accused shakily. ‘You, who always loved animals?’
‘Yes, I loved them and still do,’ he grated. ‘More than I ever loved any human, that’s for sure—and way too much to want to condemn them to a life of neglect. Is that what you want for Joya, Emily? For his eyes to grow so dull that he can barely see and he doesn’t even have the strength to put food in his mouth?’
‘Of course that’s not what I want,’ she declared, the quick shake of her head drawing his eyes reluctantly to the thick shimmer of her blonde hair. ‘But I don’t have...’
‘Don’t have what?’ he prompted silkily.
Emily stared at him, not wanting to divulge the truth—not to him of all people. But what good was pride in a situation like this? Shouldn’t she be thinking about Joya, rather than how humble her life must appear to this new and very different Alejandro, who breathed wealth and power from every pore of his spectacular body?
‘I don’t have the means to look after him,’ she admitted. ‘I live in a small apartment in the middle of London and I couldn’t possibly move him there—’
‘I doubt he would survive the journey anyway.’
She nodded, wishing he hadn’t made the curt intervention because she didn’t need reminding of how frail Joya was. ‘I also have a very modest lifestyle,’ she continued, a rush of blood heating her cheeks as he continued to look at her with a trace of scorn. ‘Which certainly wouldn’t allow me to fund Joya’s care here in Argentina.’
He appeared to be mulling over her words when Rosa appeared on the veranda carrying a couple of the wooden drinking cups known as gourds, and Emily felt a quick pang of nostalgia as she recognised the traditional Argentinian drink of yerba maté. Because it had been Alejandro who’d first introduced her to it—showing her how to suck it up out of the straw-like strainer, which prevented the leaves from clogging up your mouth. Who had told her laughingly that if she wasn’t careful, the caffeine would keep her awake all night—but that was okay by him. She remembered how cosmopolitan he’d made her feel and how the whisper of his fingertips over her skin had made her stomach turn to jelly.
‘Why don’t we go over to the veranda and have this discussion in the shade, while Tomas takes Joya back to the stables?’ Alejandro suggested smoothly.
To Emily’s surprise she found herself agreeing, even though instinct was telling her it might not be such a great idea. Maybe it was the shock of seeing him again which made her follow him up the old wooden steps. Or maybe it was just that old habits died hard, because she’d always been a sucker for his suggestions. Either way, she was glad to take a seat on the veranda, taking a thirsty pull of the bitter drink Rosa had left for them.
Once her thirst had been quenched, she became aware of the Argentinian’s cool gaze fixed on her and she fidgeted a little. He had undone a third button on his white shirt and was stretching his long legs in front of him, drawing her attention to the taut fabric of his trousers, which stretched across the muscular definition of his hard thighs. She could feel beads of sweat breaking out on her forehead as she found herself remembering those thighs hair-roughened and naked as they thrust against the smoothness of her own skin. Yet their physical relationship had been cut abruptly short, she reminded herself, wondering how something so brief could have had such an enduring impact. And then she remembered something else.
‘Tomas told me that your mother had died last year,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m very sorry for your loss.’
It was then that his face changed. She watched it darken with anger and she shrank back a little against the battered wicker chair.
‘You are hypocritical enough to express your condolences?’ he demanded. ‘When it was your spite which meant my mother lost her job?’
CHAPTER TWO
THE LOUD SWELL of the cicadas was the only sound which could be heard above the loud beat of her pounding heart as Emily stared at Alejandro across the faded veranda. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she breathed. ‘How could I have possibly been responsible for your mother losing her job?’
He sliced his hand through the air with a gesture of disdainful impatience. ‘Don’t give me that false wide-eyed look of innocence, Emily.’
‘It’s not false. It’s genuine. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
His brow darkened, his green gaze narrowing. ‘After we were discovered together and you flew back to England as if the hounds of hell were at your heels, my mother was called into your father’s study and told to leave the property immediately, never to return.’ His face contorted with contempt. ‘Twenty-one years of devotion thrown back in her face.’
Emily’s lips fell open and she shook her head in vehement denial. ‘I swear I didn’t know that. I thought she’d left of her own accord.’
‘Oh, come on. Women of such subservience don’t just leave of their own accord,’ he mimicked cruelly. ‘Did you know your stepfather refused to provide any references for her, so she couldn’t get any more work? And although I was able to provide some means of support, she complained that her life felt empty without work.’
Alejandro felt his mouth harden with anger and frustration. He had wanted to help his mother in more practical ways than simply buying her a small house. Having given birth to him at just seventeen, she’d been young enough to retrain in something different. Young enough to start again. But she hadn’t wanted a new life. She had just smoked cigarette after cigarette while continuing to spin him the same old lies, which for a time while he’d been growing up had made him feel special and different. And wasn’t it crazy that he’d hung onto the myth he’d been spun for so long—so that when he had finally learned the truth, it had nearly broken him?
He stared at Emily. Maybe it was true what she said and she hadn’t been directly responsible for his mother’s sacking, but that didn’t change the anger he felt towards her, did it? Because he had loved her in a way he had never loved anyone else and he’d thought she loved him, too. But she hadn’t. She had been the only woman who had ever rejected him and she had done it in a cruel and dismissive manner which had emphasised his subservient status. He would never forget the way she had looked through him, as if he had been invisible. As if he were nothing. Was it that which had planted the bitter seed of anger, deep in the empty place he called his heart?
He watched as, with an unsteady hand, she put down her half-empty gourd and fixed him with those incredible sapphire eyes of hers.
‘You still haven’t explained what brought you here today, Alej.’
He leaned his head back against the chair and surveyed her from between slitted eyes. ‘Because I think I can help you. Or rather, I think we can help each other.’
She shook her head. ‘After the things you’ve just accused me of, I’m amazed you’re offering, but I’ll decline if it’s all the same to you.’ She gritted him a polite smile. ‘I don’t need your help.’
‘Oh, I think you do,’ he contradicted softly. ‘That is, if you want to save Joya. If you’d like him to live out his days happily in a flower-filled meadow, with a loving groom to tend to his every need rather than ending up on the scrapheap, which is where he’s heading right now.’
‘Are you trying to use an old, sick horse in order to blackmail me?’
‘Not at all. I’m simply stating facts,’ he said. ‘And suggesting we do a trade-off.’
Still reeling from the fact that he held her responsible for his mother’s sacking, Emily wondered what on earth he was talking about. Because what could someone like her do for someone like him, when he was an iconic billionaire and she was...? She stared down at her jeans and canvas sneakers. At the unmanicured hands which were resting on the sides of the chair. She was just an ordinary woman trying to find some balance after a tumultuous upbringing, which had bounced her round like a rubber ball. A woman who had been chasing independence since she’d graduated from college. Normality was what she craved more than anything and contact with Alejandro Sabato certainly wouldn’t go anywhere towards helping her achieve that aim. Because he made her want something it was dangerous to want and that something was him. He made her think of slow touching and long kissing—both of which she’d like to do right now, even though he was looking at her with an expression of barely veiled contempt. And hadn’t that been the root cause of her mother’s tragic story—that she had been hooked on a man who had secretly despised her? Did she really want the same thing for herself?
Her instinct was to finish her drink, to smile politely and tell him she would manage somehow. She would find a way to save Joya, though she wasn’t quite sure how she was going to go about it in a country which now felt distinctly foreign to her, despite having spent so much time here.
But Argentina was Alej’s homeland, wasn’t it? If anyone knew how best to deal with rehoming an ancient horse and rescuing him from certain death, it was him. And because he looked so powerful and dependable as he sat opposite her on the shaded veranda, she found the words leaving her mouth before she’d had time to consider the wisdom of saying them. ‘What kind of trade-off?’ she questioned cautiously.
Reflectively, he stirred his drink with the bombilla before lifting his gaze to hers, rugged features darkened by the shade cast by the overgrown shrubs which tumbled down the side of the veranda. ‘How much do you know about me, Emily?’
It was an unexpected question and Emily wished he hadn’t asked it. Because she knew him intimately, as only a lover could. His hard body. That low, exultant moan he’d given as he had bucked to fulfilment—over and over during that night. The only night. Flustered, she shrugged, trying to dredge up some of the facts she’d buried deep in her mind, where she rarely allowed herself to venture. ‘I know you came from a poor family and that your mother—’
‘No, not back then,’ he interrupted, and suddenly there was a bitterness about him which she’d never seen before. Or maybe she just hadn’t hung around long enough to see it.
‘Spare me the rags-to-riches story which has been told a million times,’ he ordered roughly. ‘I’m talking about modern day. Real time. Now.’
Emily screwed up her eyes. If she admitted to knowing stuff about his current lifestyle, mightn’t that seem as if she was somehow trolling him, like some sad ex-lover who couldn’t bear to let go? But Alejandro Sabato wasn’t just anyone, she reminded herself. Everything he touched made headlines—both work and play. Who hadn’t heard of him?
‘I know you suddenly retired from polo,’ she said. ‘And that your decision took everyone by surprise.’
He nodded but provided no explanation. His verdant gaze just continued to cut through her, like a knife slicing through a ripe melon. ‘What else?’
She hesitated. After all the drama and fallout she’d experienced while growing up, she tried not to place too much importance on wealth—but in this case that would be like trying to ignore a whole herd of elephants who were trying to trample their way into a small cupboard. Especially with that top-of-the-range black helicopter, which was shining like a giant beetle in the field not far from where they were sitting, and the fact that Alejandro had recently come in at number thirty-four on a list of the world’s richest men.
‘That you invested in an energy drink which is pretty much drunk everywhere and used some of the money you made to help a friend set up a social media app. And then you bought into a motor-racing team, which has reaped its own rewards,’ she offered. ‘So you’ve exchanged one kind of high-intensity sport for another.’
‘Very neatly summarised,’ he said, raising his dark eyebrows. ‘Perhaps I should be flattered that you’ve taken such an interest in my progress, Emily.’
‘Please don’t be,’ she said sharply. ‘I work in PR and it’s my job to read the papers. And since you take up a lot of column space in the international press, it’s hardly surprising that I should have picked up some facts about you over the years.’
From the thick lashes which framed the startling green eyes, he continued to survey her. ‘Then you will know about Colette?’
There was the briefest of pauses before Emily nodded, surprised by how much it hurt to hear him say another woman’s name. ‘Doesn’t everyone? Supermodels of her stature are few and far between. I gather you broke up,’ she added blandly. ‘And she wrote an unauthorised biography about you.’
‘Did you read it?’
Emily shook her head. Was he mad? Of course she hadn’t read it! She’d seen the title and hadn’t even been able to face giving it a quick skim-through. Because what woman would want to absorb details of her ex-lover’s wild sex life with one of the world’s hottest supermodels? ‘No,’ she said, and then—because he seemed to be waiting for more—she forced herself to continue. ‘But I gather it wasn’t favourable towards you.’
Alej almost smiled. He’d forgotten the English penchant for understatement, just as he’d forgotten how Emily’s cool beauty had the ability to ignite something deep inside him. It always had. He hadn’t seen her in eight years, yet the lust which was pulsing through his body was as powerful as it had been when he’d met her way back when. Back then, she had been forbidden fruit for all kinds of reasons. Too young, for a start—even before you factored in that she was the stepdaughter of his mother’s employer and that nobody in their right mind would dare mess around with the boss’s family.
But desire was a powerful driver. It had eaten him up from the inside out. Plagued and tormented him like a fever, so that he’d had to work extra hard to concentrate on the polo which had always consumed him and had promised a route out of the poverty into which he’d been born. And wasn’t the truth that Emily hadn’t been like the other girls who hung around the polo field with their breasts practically falling out of their shirts? An out-and-out tomboy, she’d somehow made him feel stuff. Stuff he wasn’t used to feeling, which had made him want to buy her flowers and brush her hair in the moonlight and tell her that her skin was paler than the stars. He’d thought it had been the same for her—that she had reciprocated his see-sawing emotions during those long months of stolen kisses and furtive embraces before he had finally made love to her.
His groin hardened. Because of her innocence and relative youth he had employed an uncharacteristic restraint around Emily Green. It had almost killed him to hold off until her eighteenth birthday, though in the end they had missed it by a day because they just couldn’t wait any longer. Never had a sexual build-up been so exquisitely slow or sweetly torturous, so that when he had finally slipped inside her, he’d come almost as quickly as she had done. He’d been having safe sex with willing partners since the age of sixteen—but nothing could have prepared Alej for his first time with Emily, when he plunged deep into her tight and molten heat. The only time, he reminded himself bitterly, before forcing his attention back to the present and the sapphire-blue eyes which were regarding him with a curiosity which was somehow adding to his frustration and long-suppressed anger.
‘It was, as you say—an unfavourable piece,’ he conceded, his temperate tone at odds with his turbulent thoughts. ‘But, unfortunately, mud sticks and she told a lot of lies about me.’
She tilted her head to one side, so that her thick blonde plait fell forward and lay enticingly against the firm thrust of her breasts. ‘What kind of lies?’
‘What man would wish to list their supposed transgressions to another woman? Why don’t you just read the book for yourself?’ There was a pause. ‘And in the meantime, I could make sure that Joya is taken care of.’
Her attention was momentarily distracted as she watched a lizard slithering its way across the decking before looking up at him.
‘That’s a very generous offer,’ she said uncertainly.
‘Which obviously isn’t motivated simply by my love of horses.’
‘No?’
He shook his head and gave a glimmer of a smile. ‘Of course not. I expect to extract a reward for my benevolence.’
Behind the smile an undeniable threat was underpinning his words and as Emily stared into his eyes she felt a sudden chill whisper its way over her skin. If she hadn’t been so worried and in such a helpless position about helping Joya, she wouldn’t have needed to ask the question, but the reality was that she did. ‘What kind of “reward” did you have in mind?’
The slow smile he flicked her was tinged with sensual promise, but the words which followed were the last thing Emily was expecting to hear.
‘You work in public relations, don’t you?’
She blinked. ‘How did you know that?’
‘It wasn’t difficult. I did a little research, before you arrived. Your reputation is modest, but it’s growing. I read nothing but good things about you.’ There was a brief pause. ‘So how about you come and work for me, as my PR representative?’
‘You don’t have one at the moment?’
‘Never saw the need.’ He shrugged. ‘But if you can polish my tarnished image for me, then we’ll call it quits.’
‘But why?’ Her brow creased into a frown. ‘I mean, why do you suddenly care what people think about you when you never did before?’
He didn’t answer for a moment and when he did his voice was reflective. ‘Because I’m thinking of throwing my hat into the political ring and my current reputation will do me no favours. If you can make this bad-boy billionaire into a respectable member of polite society, I will reward you very handsomely.’
Emily stared at him. Was he actually offering her a job? Asking her to create a squeaky-clean image for him, which would involve her delving into aspects of his life which made her feel ill just thinking about them? She couldn’t do it. In fact, she wouldn’t do it. You could only ever take a job like this if you were properly impartial and impartiality was the last thing she felt towards the Argentinian billionaire.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think you realise how my kind of business operates, Alejandro,’ she said. ‘I can’t suddenly start working exclusively for you—even if I wanted to, which I don’t. I have commitments.’
His hand sliced through the air with that same impatient gesture. ‘I’m not interested in the detail. I’ve told you what I want, so make it happen. Leave your job if necessary.’
‘Leave my job?’ Her lips fell open. ‘I’m in partnership with a friend from uni. That’s just not possible.’
‘Anything is possible, Emily,’ he bit out. ‘We both know that. We live in a world where a poor illegitimate boy can rise up the greasy pole to have more money than he knows what to do with.’
She shook her head. ‘Find someone else, Alejandro. There are plenty of public relations officers who are of an equally high standard who would bite your hand off to get this kind of job.’
‘But they aren’t you,’ he said silkily. ‘Are you haggling with me because you want to obtain the highest price for your services—is that what this is all about? In which case, let me tell you something which might influence your opinion.’
He mentioned a sum of money which took her breath away. Emily dug her fingers into the arms of the wicker chair and levered herself up, needing to get away from his distracting gaze as she tried to process the offer he’d just made her. That was a lot of money. Walking over to the edge of the veranda, she stared out at the lush Argentinian landscape and the cotton-wool clouds which were billowing up on the horizon.
She knew she ought to refuse because only a fool would accept—given their history. She’d hurt him for no reason other than that she’d been scared. But she had reasons for being tempted by the money—and not just because her embryo PR business could do with a financial cushion. And there was Great-Aunt Jane to think about—her only living relative who Emily kept a tender eye on as often as she could. Because her pension was tiny, wasn’t it? She had become one of those old people who were scared of the future because they weren’t quite sure if they would have enough money to fund whatever lay ahead. Wouldn’t it be great if she could take away some of her worries by presenting her with a generous cheque?
But deep down Emily knew that her eagerness to accept Alejandro’s offer was about more than helping care for a dear relative. The truth was that for too long she’d felt as if she was existing on some kind of plateau. As if life was passing her by. These days she rarely dated but when she did, she felt empty. As if she’d been carved from stone. And the reason for that was standing right in front of her. Tall, dark and indomitable. The man who made all other men seem as insubstantial as shadows. The man who made the idea of loving someone else seem impossible.