It was so different from her family.
Annabel and Abby could go months without so much as a brief catch-up, and as for Abby and her father...
Maybe she should make the effort, Abby thought.
Yes, he had hurt her a lot when she had told him about Hunter’s attack but, trying to be fair to her father, though he hadn’t handled it well, maybe he had been grieving.
Never more than at that time had Abby wanted her mother, but she had been dead for three years by then.
Perhaps it was time to try and be family again?
She jumped a little as Matteo came back to her side.
‘Sorry about that,’ Matteo said. ‘Allegra already knows that my grandfather is ill but I don’t think she knew just how bad things have got.’
‘Is he very sick?’
Matteo nodded and for a moment, just a brief moment, he looked at Abby and wondered if he could tell her about the necklace and the real reason that he had made contact.
It almost felt as if he could.
But then he remembered the brittle woman he had met yesterday and decided that no, it was far too risky to chance it.
He was here for the team; he really was. There was no need to confuse things by bringing up the necklace just yet.
All that could wait.
‘Come on...’ Matteo said.
‘Where?’
‘To the sky.’
There were helicopter rides and he took her on one, and Abby, who apart from the racetrack had only seen one restaurant and one boutique during her time in Dubai, was treated to a bird’s-eye view.
Over the artificial Palm Islands they flew and Abby had never seen anything more stunning. And she also saw where Matteo had suggested they go to dinner. The city seemed to glitter gold and silver and they flew, too, over the racetrack where the first leg of the Henley Cup would be held.
This time next week, she’d be down there, Abby thought with a flurry of both nerves and excitement.
They stepped off the helicopter and Abby took a moment more than Matteo did to find her land legs.
‘It makes you dizzy, doesn’t it,’ Matteo said. ‘Let’s go and find something to eat.’
They didn’t have to look very far; there was plenty to choose from, and though they had lunch it was a quick one because, as Matteo leafed through a glossy program, he decided that he wanted to look at the racehorses that were being paraded.
‘Oh, look at that one...’ Abby said. It was a stunning, white, purebred Arabian stallion, so highly strung that he looked as if at any moment he might take off.
‘Bastard!’ Matteo said but didn’t get a chance to explain as someone tapped him on his shoulder.
The sore one.
‘Kedah!’ Matteo grinned as he turned around and saw who it was and he introduced them both. ‘Abby, this is Kedah. We studied briefly together in New York.’
‘Until you dropped out.’
‘I’m still standing,’ Matteo said. ‘And this is Abby, owner and manager of the Boucher racing team.’
‘It is very nice to meet you,’ Sheikh Kedah said. He was incredibly handsome, Abby thought. He was beautifully presented, dressed in a robe of pale gold with a keffiyah tied and skilfully draped but he had that same wild gleam in his eye as Matteo and they made an extremely good-looking pair. Abby could only imagine the sort of trouble these two got into. ‘Your driver did well here last year. Fifth, if I remember rightly?’
Abby nodded, surprised that he knew and pleasantly surprised also that Kedah didn’t mention that, after that race, Pedro had gone on to place nowhere.
Kedah turned to Matteo. ‘How is the shoulder?’
‘Still sore.’ Matteo smiled. ‘Black and blue...’
‘The doctor said you would bruise.’ Kedah nodded. ‘So do you still want him even after he threw you?’
‘Absolutely,’ Matteo said and then looked back to the stallion. ‘Abby and I were just admiring him.’
At ten minutes to three, two thoughts hit and both unsettled her.
That the horse Matteo had fallen off was a thoroughbred racehorse. What the hell would have possessed him to be riding that?
But she couldn’t dwell on it because another thought was invading.
She wanted to see his shoulder.
Abby, who just pushed down all thoughts of sex, who actually felt sick at the thought of intimacy, suddenly wanted to go back to the hotel and peel off his shirt and touch that bruised skin.
With her mouth.
‘Are you okay?’ Matteo checked, picking up on the sudden tension in her.
‘Sorry?’
‘Kedah was just saying he’d love to come to the race...’
‘Oh!’
‘We’re not allowed to talk to Abby on race day though,’ Matteo warned him.
‘I’d love to be there,’ Kedah said to Abby and then addressed Matteo. ‘If the Boucher team make the podium, you get the horse,’ the sheikh said and they shook hands.
‘Do you bet on everything?’ Abby asked when Kedah had gone.
‘Not everything,’ Matteo said and then he met her eyes and again stopped what he was about to say.
He’d never have put money on enjoying today.
Usually, often, always, he’d be bored by now and would have run out of things to say.
Usually, often, always, he’d be glancing at his phone and wondering if they went back to the hotel now and slept together, then he could drop her back and hit the town with Kedah.
Usually, often, always, he’d have said hi to his sister, stayed for half an hour and then said goodbye.
Instead today felt like the best of days and there was but one reason why.
‘What the hell were you doing riding him?’ Abby asked, tearing her eyes from his gaze and looking back to the magnificent stallion. ‘Do you ride?’
‘Not really,’ Matteo admitted.
‘When you say “not really...”?’ Abby checked.
‘No.’
‘You could have been killed,’ Abby said and she was far from joking. This beast would test the limits of the most experienced rider. ‘Why would you take such a risk?’
‘Do you say the same to Pedro when he stands on the gas?’
‘Pedro’s skilled and trained,’ Abby retorted. ‘You’re a bit tall to be a jockey.’
Her cheeks were that lovely shade of turned-on pink, Matteo thought, and he was quite sure that it had nothing to do with the sun.
He wanted to turn her around and speak into her ear and put on a high voice, just to make her laugh as he told her what a fabulous jockey he was. And then Matteo wanted to be warned that public displays of affection could not happen here.
And then...
‘Come on,’ Matteo said. ‘The fashion show’s starting. You used...’ He faltered; it had been her father who had told him that she’d once studied fashion.
‘Used to what?’
‘I thought I read somewhere that you used to study fashion?’
‘I