Tiago was striding ahead of her. His transformation into gaucho was complete. The unforgiving pampas had carved him. Even his clothes had changed. There was nothing designer about his clothes now—nothing of the playboy. He wore threadbare jeans with worn leather chaps over them, and a red bandana secured his wilful hair. His boots were tooled leather, and he carried a lethal-looking facón—the vicious knife that gauchos wore—hanging from their belt.
It was hardly possible to believe that this rock-like individual was the same sophisticate who had joked and laughed and made her feel good about herself on Chico’s ranch.
Tiago had stopped abruptly—but not to wait for her. He was staring at some horses in the field—evaluating them, counting them, maybe, though she suspected he knew every head of stock. Compared to his ranch, she was nothing. There were no sacrifices Tiago would not make, no lengths he would not go to, to keep this land.
She could always change her mind.
Could she? Signing this contract was a way forward for her—the best and perhaps the only way to secure her mother’s future.
* * *
‘Now you understand why I must do this,’ Tiago said with confidence as he laid the contract down in front of Danny on his desk. ‘You’ve only seen a fragment of the ranch, but enough to know that it must be saved.’
She wouldn’t disagree with him, Danny thought as she took her time to check the contract, line by line. It was everything she had asked for, everything she had read on the screen of his phone—not a line had been changed.
‘A year...’ she murmured, wondering if it would be a happy year, or a year of torment for them both. And then something mischievous occurred to her, right out of the blue. ‘How many relationships have you had that have lasted a year, Tiago?’
He narrowed his eyes and she could practically see his hackles rise. ‘I don’t understand what that’s got to do with this.’
‘How many?’ she pressed.
Raking his hair with an impatient gesture, he decided to ignore her question. ‘Are you going to sign this or not?’
She guessed he had never stayed with a woman for as long as a year. Tiago was sailing into uncharted waters as much as she was. If he had ever enjoyed a long-term relationship the press would have seized on it. What the press would make of their marriage she didn’t know—and didn’t care, either. This was a private arrangement between the two of them. The world would have to make of it what it wanted.
He held out his pen. She took it and signed her name, and Tiago countersigned the document after her. She stared at their signatures and felt cold inside. She had no idea what Tiago felt. Relief, certainly, but she doubted whether he felt anything more.
What had made him this way? she wondered. The polished playboy of the polo circuit seemed far happier and more relaxed here on his ranch, working alongside the gauchos. The thought that she had just contracted to marry a man she didn’t know did nothing to reassure her. She should have listened to those rumours of the lone wolf. If she had she wouldn’t be here now, with her heart yearning for a man who thought of her only as the means to an end.
‘So you’re rich now,’ he said. ‘How does that feel?’
‘Strange,’ she admitted.
Stranger still was the fact that she had never felt more impoverished in her life.
* * *
What had she done? Danny wondered as she watched Tiago cross the yard. She had to shake off this feeling of doom. She was about to join one of the finest horsemen in the world and work alongside him. What could be better than that? The wedding would happen when it happened, and in the meantime she would concentrate on everything Tiago could teach her about the ranch.
Maybe that would bring them closer. If not love, then maybe they could pick up their friendship and make the year ahead bearable for them both. That shouldn’t be too hard when they shared so many interests.
Deciding to act as if this were just a new and exciting day in Brazil, rather than the start of a new and uncertain life, she leaned over the fence of the corral where Tiago was working, telling herself that she would get through this, and would learn a lot along the way.
‘Would you like to try?’ Tiago called to her softly.
He didn’t take his attention off the young colt he was training for a moment. The pony was trembling with awareness, and it was one of the most valuable animals on the ranch, Tiago had explained.
‘You’ll let me work with him?’ Danny asked with surprise.
‘Why not? You’re good.’
She couldn’t pretend that didn’t thrill her.
Taking care to shut the gate silently, she joined one of the best horse-trainers in the world. Working alongside Tiago would be the greatest opportunity of her life.
‘Now, watch how I do this,’ he said after a few moments.
Watching Tiago was no hardship. She watched his lips move when he spoke. She watched the muscles flex in his arms as he worked with the pony. She watched his hands soothe and stroke with exquisite sensitivity—
‘Concentrate,’ he said softly.
She hated it that he knew what she was thinking.
‘That’s good, Danny.’
He came to stand behind her. She held her breath as his body brushed hers, and tensed when his hands came around her, allowing Tiago to use his hands to direct hers.
‘Bring your face closer,’ he advised in an undertone. ‘Share the same air as your pony.’
His husky voice was hypnotic, and his touch made both Danny and the pony relax.
‘He’s starting to trust you,’ Tiago murmured. ‘I’m going to move away now, while you carry on. Caress him, speak to him and build his confidence. Who knows? One day he might be yours.’
Danny smiled, knowing she would never be able to afford the young colt, and then felt a spear of surprise, knowing that with Tiago’s marriage settlement in the bank she could.
‘What would you call him?’ he asked.
‘Firefly.’ She turned, expecting to find Tiago behind her, but he was already with the gauchos on the other side of the fence.
* * *
He was on the same wavelength as Danny, Tiago reflected as he watched her work. He never allowed bystanders into the corral when he was working with young ponies fresh to training, but he trusted Danny. He’d seen her work on Chico’s ranch.
And on the personal front...?
He trusted her on the personal front too. He couldn’t say that about any other woman apart from Elena, his housekeeper. His mother had been a socialite—a butterfly who had fallen in love with the son of a rough working man who’d happened to own a valuable ranch. His mother had seen an opportunity.
Tiago had been pampered and petted as a boy—a situation he’d refused to tolerate as a teen. By that time his father had been a drunk and his mother an ageing beauty who had refused to accept that her day in the sun was over. There had to be more pills, more potions, more clothes, more visits to the beauty salon, and then eventually to the plastic surgeon. She had ruined his father, who had ended up stealing from the ranch, leaving Tiago’s grandfather with nothing.
It had taken Tiago to return—a changed man—and rescue things to the point where Fazenda Santos had become no longer a broken-down ranch that existed solely to feed the greed of his parents, but a highly successful concern he had dedicated his life to.
Did he want to get married, with a family history like that?