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“I’m looking forward to it,” de Montalvo returned, with a sincere enthusiasm that made brother and sister feel flattered.
“Your luggage is already in your room, Varo,” Ava told him, aware she was struggling with the man’s magnetism. “One of the staff will have brought it up by now, taking the back entrance.” Although de Montalvo had travelled a very long way indeed, he showed no signs whatever of fatigue or the usual jet lag. In fact he exuded a blazing energy.
“So no one is wasting time?” De Montalvo took a small step nearer Ava. An inch or two above average height, Ava felt strangely doll-like. “Please lead on, Ava,” he invited. “I am all attention.”
That made Dev laugh. “I have a few things to attend to, Varo,” he called as his sister and his guest moved towards the grand staircase. “I’ll see you at lunch.”
“Hasta luego!” De Montalvo waved an elegant hand.
Ava had imagined that as she ascended the staircase she would marshal her defences. Now, only moments later, those defences were imploding around her. She had the sense that her life had speeded up, entered the fast lane. She had met many high-powered people in her life—none more so than her grandfather, who hadn’t possessed a shining aura. Neither did Montalvo. It was dark-sided, too complex. It wasn’t any comfort to realise she had been shocked out of her safe haven. Worse yet to think she might be shorn of protection.
How could any man do that in a split second? The impact had been as swift and precise as a bolt of lightning. Maybe it was because she wasn’t used to exotic men? Nor the way he looked at her—as if he issued an outright challenge to her womanhood. Man, that great force of nature, totally irresistible if he so chose.
The thought angered her. Perhaps it was borne of her sexual timidity? Luke had early on in their marriage formed the habit of calling her frigid. She now had an acute fear that if she weren’t very careful she might rise to de Montalvo’s lure. He was no Luke. He was an entirely different species. Yet in some bizarre way he seemed familiar to her. Only he was a stranger—a stranger well aware of his own power.
As he walked beside her, with his tantalising lithe grace, glowing sparks might have been shooting off his powerful lean body. Certainly something was making her feel hot beneath her light clothing. She who had been told countless times she always appeared as cool as a lily. That wasn’t the case now. She felt almost wild, when she’d had no intention let alone any experience of being any such thing. To her extreme consternation her entire body had become a mass of leaping responses. If those responses broke the surface it would be the ultimate humiliation.
His guest suite was in the right wing. It had been made ready by the household staff. Up until their grandfather’s death the post of housekeeper had been held by Sarina Norton, Amelia’s mother. Sarina had been most handsomely rewarded by Gregory Langdon for “services rendered”. No one wanted to go there …
The door lay open. Varo waved a gallant arm, indicating she should enter first. Ava had the unsettling feeling she had to hold on to something. Maybe the back of a chair? The magnetic pull he had on her was so strong. How on earth was she going to cope when Dev flew off to Sydney? She was astonished at how challenging she found the prospect. What woman reared to a life of privilege couldn’t handle entertaining a guest? She was a woman who had not only been married but was in the process of divorce—she being the one who had initiated the action. Didn’t that qualify her as a woman of the world?
Or perhaps one could interpret it as the action of a woman who didn’t hesitate to inflict pain and injury? Perhaps de Montalvo had already decided against her? His family of Spanish origin was probably Roman Catholic, but divorce couldn’t be as big a no-no now as it had been in the time of Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s deposed, albeit lawfully wedded, wife. Not that taking Katherine’s place had done Anne Boleyn much good.
Ava put the tension that was coiling tighter and tighter inside her down to an attack of nerves. It was all so unreal.
The guest room that had been chosen for de Montalvo was a grand room—and not only in terms of space and the high scrolled ceilings that were a feature of Kooraki’s homestead. The headboard of the king-sized bed, the bed skirt and the big cushions were in a metallic grey silk, with pristine white bed-coverings and pillows. Above the bed hung a large gold-framed landscape by a renowned English-Australian colonial artist. Mahogany chests to each side of the bed held lamps covered in a parchment silk the same colour as the walls. A nineteenth century English secretary, cabinet and comfortable chair held pride of place in one corner of the room. The rest of the space was taken up by a gilded Louis XVI-style sofa covered in black velvet with a matching ottoman. All in all, a great place to stay, with the added plus of a deep walk-in wardrobe and an en suite bathroom.
He said something in Spanish that seemed to make sense to her even though she didn’t know the language. Quite obviously he was pleased. She did have passable French. She was better with Italian, and she even had some Japanese—although, she acknowledged ruefully, keeping up with languages made it necessary to speak them every day. She even knew a little Greek from a fairly long stint in Athens the year after leaving university.
De Montalvo turned back from surveying the landscaped garden. “I’ll be most happy and comfortable here, Ava,” he assured her. “I’m sure this will be a trip never to be forgotten.”
She almost burst out that she felt the same. Of course she did not. She meant to keep her feelings to herself. “I’ll leave you in peace, then, Varo,” she said. “Come downstairs whenever you like. Lunch will be served at one. Dev will be back by then.”
“Gracias,” he said.
Those brilliant dark eyes were looking at her again. Looking at her. Through her. She turned slowly for the door, saying over a graceful shoulder, “Nuestra casa es su casa.”
His laugh was low in his throat. “You make a fine attempt. Your accent is good. I hope to teach you many more Spanish phrases before I leave.”
Ava dared to face him. “Excellent,” she said, her tone a cool parry.
CHAPTER TWO
THEY set out after breakfast the next day, the horses picking their way through knee-high grasses with little indigo-blue wildflowers swimming across the waving green expanses. Dev had flown to Sydney at first light, leaving them alone except for the household staff. She would have de Montalvo’s company for a full day and a night and several hours of the following day before Dev, Amelia and co were due to fly back. So, all in all, around thirty hours for her to struggle against de Montalvo’s powerful sexual aura.
For someone of her age, marital status and background Ava was beginning to feel as though she had been wandering through life with her eyes closed. Now they were open and almost frighteningly perceptive. Everyone had the experience of meeting someone in life who raised the hackles or had an abrasive effect. Their Argentine visitor exerted a force of quite another order. He had roped her, in cattleman’s terms—or she had that illusion.
Dinner the previous evening had gone off very well. In fact it had been a beautiful little welcoming party. They’d eaten in the informal dining room, which was far more suitable and intimate than the grand formal dining room only used for special occasions. She’d had the table set with fine china, sterling silver flatware, and exquisite Bohemian crystal glasses taken from one the of numerous cabinets holding such treasures. From the garden she had picked a spray of exquisite yellow orchids, their blooms no bigger than paper daisies, and arranged them to take central pride of place. Two tall Georgian silver candlesticks had thrown a flattering light, finding their reflection in the crystal glasses.
The menu she’d chosen had been simple but delicious: white asparagus in hollandaise, a fish course, the superb barramundi instead of the usual beef, accompanied by the fine wines Dev had had brought up from the handsomely stocked cellar. Dessert had been a light and lovely passionfruit trifle. She hadn’t gone for overkill.
Both Dev and his guest were great raconteurs, very well travelled, very well read, and shared similar interests. Even dreams. She hadn’t sat back like a wallflower either. Contrary to her fluttery feelings as she had been dressing—she had gone to a surprising amount of trouble—she had found it remarkably easy to keep her end up, becoming more fluent by the moment. Her own stories had flowed, with Dev’s encouragement.
At best Luke had wanted her to sit quietly and look beautiful—his sole requirements of her outside the bedroom. He had never wanted her to shine. De Montalvo, stunning man that he was, with all his eloquent little foreign gestures, had sat back studying her with that sexy half-smile hovering around his handsome mouth. Admiring—or mocking in the manner of a man who was seeing exactly what he had expected to see? A blonde young woman in a long silk-jersey dress the exact colour of her eyes, aquamarine earrings swinging from her ears, glittering in the candlelight.
She was already a little afraid of de Montalvo’s half-smile. Yet by the end of the evening she had felt they spoke the same language. It couldn’t have been a stranger sensation.
Above them a flight of the budgerigar endemic to Outback Australia zoomed overhead, leaving an impressive trail of emerald and sulphur yellow like a V-shaped bolt of silk. De Montalvo studied the indigenous little birds with great interest. “Amazing how they make that formation,” he said, tipping his head back to follow the squadron’s approach into the trees on the far side of the chain of billabongs. “It’s like an aeronautical display. I know Australia has long been known as the Land of the Parrot. Already I see why. Those beautiful parrots in the gardens—the smaller ones—are lorikeets, flashing colour. And the noisy ones with the pearly-grey backs and the rose-pink heads and underparts—what are they?”
“Galahs.” Ava smiled. “It’s the aboriginal name for the bird. It’s also a name for a silly, dim-witted person. You’ll hear it a lot around the stockyards, especially in relation to the jackeroos. Some, although they’re very keen, aren’t cut out for the life. They’re given a trial period, and then, if they can’t find a place in the cattle world, they go back home to find alternative work. Even so they regard the experience as the adventure of a lifetime.”
“I understand that,” he said, straightening his head. “Who wouldn’t enjoy such freedom? Such vast open spaces virtually uninhabited by man? Our gauchos want only that life. It’s a hard life, but the compensations are immense. Kooraki is a world away from my home in Argentina,” he mused, studying Ava as though the sight of her gave him great pleasure. “There is that same flatness of the landscape. Quechua Indians named our flatness pampa—much like your vast plains. But at home we do not know such extreme isolation at this. There are roads fanning out everywhere from the estancia, and the grounds surrounding the house—designed many decades ago and established by one of our finest landscape designers—are more like a huge botanical garden. Here it is pure wilderness. Beautiful in the sense of not ever having been conquered by man. The colours are indescribable. Fiery red earth, all those desert ochres mixed in beneath dazzling blue skies. Tell me, is the silvery blue shimmer the mirage that is dancing before our eyes?”
“It is,” Ava confirmed. “The mirage brought many an early explorer to his grave. To go in search of an inland sea of prehistory and find only great parallel waves of red sand! It was tragic. They even took little boats like dinghies along.”
“So your Kooraki has a certain mysticism to it not only associated with its antiquity?”
“We think so.” There was pride in her voice. “It’s the oldest continent on earth after all.” Ava shifted her long heavy blonde plait off her nape. It was damp from the heat and the exertion of a fantastically liberating gallop with a splendid horseman who had let her win—if only just. “You do know we don’t call our cattle stations ranches, like Americans? We’ve kept with the British station. Our stations are the biggest in the world. Anna Creek in the Northern Territory spreads over six million acres.”
“So we’re talking thirty thousand square kilometres plus?” he calculated swiftly.
“Thirty-four thousand, if we’re going to be precise. Alexandria Station, also in the Territory, is slightly smaller. Victoria Downs Station used to be huge.”
He smiled at the comparatives. “The biggest ranches in the U.S. are around the three thousand square kilometres mark, so you’re talking ten times that size. Argentine estancias are nowhere in that league either. Although earlier in the year a million-acre estancia in north-west Argentina was on sale, with enormous potential for agriculture—even eco-power possibilities. Argentina—our beautiful cosmopolitan capital Buenos Aires—was built on beef, as Australia’s fortunes were built on the sheep’s back—isn’t that so?” He cast her a long glance.
“I can’t argue with that. Langdon Enterprises own both cattle and sheep stations. Two of our sheep stations produce the finest quality merino wool, mainly for the Japanese market. Did Dev tell you that?”
“I believe he did. Dev now has a great many responsibilities following your grandfather’s death?”
“He has indeed,” she agreed gravely, “but he’s up to it. He was born to it.”
It was her turn to study the finely chiselled profile de Montalvo presented to her. He wasn’t wearing the Outback’s ubiquitous akubra, but the startlingly sexy headgear of the Argentine gaucho: black, flat-topped, with a broad stiff brim that cast his elegant features into shadow. To be so aware of him sexually was one heck of a thing, but she strove to maintain a serene dignity, at the same time avoiding too many of those brilliant, assessing glances.
“Your father was not in the mould of a cattleman?” he asked gently.
Ava looked away over the shimmering terrain that had miraculously turned into an oasis in the Land of the Spinifex. The wake of the Queensland Great Flood had swept right across the Channel Country and into the very Red Centre of the continent.
“That jumped a generation to Dev. He was groomed from boyhood for the top. There was always great pressure on him, but he could handle it. Handle my grandfather as well. The rest of us weren’t so fortunate. My father is much happier now that he has handed over the reins. My grandfather, Gregory Langdon, was a man who could terrify people. He was very hard on all of us. Dad never did go along with or indeed fit into the crown-prince thing, but he was a very dutiful son and pleasing his father was desperately important to him.”
“And you?”
Ava tilted her chin an inch or so. “How can I say this? I’m chiefly remembered for defying my grandfather to marry my husband. Neither my grandfather nor Dev approved of him. It soon appeared they were right. You probably know I’m separated from my husband, in the process of getting a divorce?”
Varo turned his handsome head sideways to look at her. Even in the great flood of light her pearly skin was flawless. “I’m sorry.” Was he? He only knew he definitely didn’t want her to be married.
“Don’t be,” she responded, more curtly than she’d intended. He would probably think her callous in the extreme.
He glimpsed the flash of anger in her remarkable eyes. Obviously she longed to be free of this husband she surely once had loved. What had gone so badly wrong?
“I too tried very hard to please my grandfather,” she offered in a more restrained tone. “I never did succeed—but then my grandfather had the ingrained idea that women are of inferior status.”
“Surely not!” He thought how his mother and sisters would react to that idea.
“I’m afraid so. He often said so—and he meant it. Women have no real business sense, much less the ability to be effective in the so-called ‘real’ world. Read for that a man’s world—although a cattle kingdom is a man’s world it’s so tough. Women are best served by devoting their time to making a good marriage—which translates into landing a good catch. Certainly a good deal of time, effort and money went into me.”
“This has led to bitterness?” He had read much about the ruthless autocratic patriarch Gregory Langdon.
Ava judged the sincerity of his question. She was aware he was watching her closely. “Do I seem bitter to you?” She turned her sparkling gaze on him.
“Bitter, no. Unhappy, yes.”
“Ah … a clarification?” she mocked.
“You deny it?” He made one of his little gestures. “Your husband is not putting up a fight to keep you?” Such a woman came along once in a lifetime, he thought. For good or bad.
Ava didn’t answer. They had turned onto a well-trodden track that led along miles of billabongs, creeks and water-holes that had now become deep lagoons surrounded on all sides by wide sandy beaches. The blaze of sunlight worked magic on the waters, turning them into jewel colours. Some glittered a dark emerald, others an amazing sapphire-blue, taking colour from the cloudless sky, and a few glinted pure silver through the framework of the trees.
“One tends to become unhappy when dealing with a divorce,” Ava answered after a while. “My marriage is over. I will not return to it, no matter what. Dev at least has found great happiness.” She shifted the conversation from her. “He and Amelia are twin souls. You’ll like Amelia. She’s very beautiful and very clever. She holds down quite a highflying job at one of our leading merchant banks. She’ll be a great asset to Langdon Enterprises. Mercifully my grandfather didn’t pass on his mindset to Dev.”
“Dev is a man of today. He will be familiar with very successful women. But what do you plan to do with yourself after your divorce comes through?”
She could have cried out with frustration. Instead she spoke with disconcerting coolness. “You are really interested?”
“Of course.” His tone easily surpassed hers for hauteur.
She knew she had to answer on the spot. Their eyes were locked. Neither one of them seemed willing to break contact. They could have been on some collision course. “Well, I don’t know as yet, Varo,” she said. “I might be unequal to the huge task Dev has taken on, but I want to contribute in any way I can.”
“Then of course you will.” A pause. “You will marry again.”
It wasn’t a question but a statement. “That’s a given, is it? You see it as my only possible course?” she challenged.
He reached out a long arm and gently touched her delicate shoulder, leaving a searing sense of heat. It was as though his hand had touched her bare skin.
“Permit me to say you are very much on the defensive, Ava. You know perfectly well I do not.” The sonorous voice had hardened slightly. “Dev will surely offer you a place on the board of your family company?”
“If I want a place, yes,” she acknowledged.
He gave her another long, dark probing look. “So you are not really the businesswoman?”
She shook her head. “I have to admit it, no. But I have a sizeable chunk of equity in Langdon Enterprises. Eventually I will take my place.”
“You should. There would be something terribly wrong if you didn’t. You want children?”
She answered that question with one of her own. “Do you?”
He gave her his fascinating, enigmatic half-smile. “Marriage first, then children. The correct sequence.”
“Used to be,” she pointed out with more than a touch of irony. “Times have changed, Varo.”
“Not in my family,” he said, with emphasis. “I do what is expected of me, but I make my own choices.”
“You have a certain woman in mind?”
It would be remarkable if he didn’t. She had the certainty this dynamic man had a dozen dazzling women vying for his attention.
“Not at the moment, no,” he told her with nonchalance. “I enjoy the company of women. I would never be without women in my life.”
“But no one as yet to arouse passion?” She was amazed she had even asked the question, and aware she was moving into dangerous territory.
Her enquiring look appeared to him both innocent and seductive at one and the same time. Did she know it? This wasn’t your usual femme fatale. There was something about her that made a man want to protect her. Possibly that was a big mistake. One her husband had made?
“I don’t think I said that,” he countered after a moment. “Who knows? I may have already succumbed to your undoubted charms, Ava.”
She raised a white hand to wave a winged insect away—or perhaps to dismiss his remark as utterly frivolous. “It would do you no good, Varo. I’m still a married woman. And I suspect you might be something of a legend back in Argentina.”
“Perdón—perdonare!” he exclaimed. “Surely you mean as a polo player?” He pinned her gaze.
Both of them knew she had meant as a lover. “I’m looking forward to seeing you in action at the weekend.” She declined to answer, feeling hot colour in her cheeks. “It should be a thrilling match. We’re all polo-mad out here.”
“As at home. Polo is the most exciting game in the world.”
“And possibly the most dangerous,” she tacked on. “Dev has taken a few spectacular spills in his time.”
He answered with an elegant shrug of one shoulder. “As have I. That is part of it. You are an accomplished rider,” he commented, his eyes on her slender body, sitting so straight but easy in the saddle. Such slenderness lent her a deceptive fragility, contradicted by the firmness with which she handled her spirited bright chestnut mare.
“I should be.” Ava’s smile became strained as memories flooded in. “My grandfather threw me up on a horse when I was just a little kid—around four. I remember my mother was beside herself with fright. She thought I would be hurt. He took no notice of her. Mercifully I took to riding like a duck to water. A saving grace in the eyes of my grandfather. As a woman, all that was expected of me was to look good and produce more heirs for the continuation of the Devereaux-Langdon dynasty. At least I was judged capable of expanding the numbers, if not the fortune. A man does that. I expect in his own way so does Dev. Every man wants a son to succeed him, and a daughter to love and cherish, to make him proud. I suppose you know my grandfather left me a fortune? I don’t have to spend one day working if I choose not to.”
“Why work at anything when one can spend a lifetime having a good time?” he asked on a satirical note.
“Something like that. Only I need to contribute.”
“I’m sure you shall. You need time to re-set your course in life. All things are possible if one has a firm belief in oneself. Belief in oneself sets us free.”
“It’s easier to dream about being free than to accomplish it,” she said, watching two blue cranes, the Australian brolgas, getting set to land on the sandy banks of one of the lagoons.
“You thought perhaps marriage would set you free?” he shot back.
“I’m wondering if you want my life story, Varo?” Her eyes sparkled brightly, as if tears weren’t all that far away.
“Not if you’re in no hurry to tell me,” he returned gently, then broke off, his head set in a listening position. “You hear that?”
They reined in their horses. “Yes.” Her ears too were registering the sound of pounding hooves.
Her mare began to skip and dance beneath her. In the way of horses, the mare was scenting some kind of danger. De Montalvo quietened his big bay gelding with a few words in Spanish which the gelding appeared to understand, because it ceased its skittering. Both riders were now holding still, their eyes trained on the open savannah that fanned out for miles behind them.