Cruz could almost see the sweat breaking out over Aspen’s body and noted the way her cat-green eyes wouldn’t quite meet his. He didn’t know if that was because he was keeping her from an assignation with Billy Smyth, or someone else, or because she could feel the chemistry that lay between them like a grenade with the pin pulled.
Whatever it was, she wasn’t leaving his side until he had won over her confidence and figured out a way to handle the situation.
His brother’s silky question about ‘handling the lovely Aspen Carmichael’ came into his head. He knew what Ricardo had meant and looking at Aspen now, in her svelte designer dress and ‘come take me’ heels, her wild hair curling down around her shoulders as if she’d just rolled out of her latest lover’s bed, he had no doubt many men had ‘handled’ her that way before. But not him. Never him.
So far he’d drawn a blank as to how to contain her money-grabbing endeavours without alerting her to his own interest in Ocean Haven. Until he did he’d just have to rein himself in and keep his eyes away from her sexy mouth.
‘I’m here to buy a horse, Aspen. What else?’
‘A horse?’
Aspen blinked. That was the last thing she had expected him to say, though what she had expected she couldn’t say.
‘You do have one for sale, don’t you?’ he continued silkily.
Aspen cleared her throat. ‘Gypsy Blue. She’s a thoroughbred. Ex-racing stock and she’s gorgeous.’
‘I have no doubt.’
Aspen frowned at his tone, wondering why he seemed so tense. Not that he looked tense. In his bespoke suit with his hands in his pockets, his hair casually ruffled by the warm breeze, he looked like a man who didn’t have a care in the world. But the vibe she was picking up from him was making her feel edgy—and surely that wasn’t just because of her sense of guilt.
‘Are you hoping the horse will materialise in front of us, Aspen, or are you going to take me to see her?’
‘I...’ Aspen felt stupid, and not a little perturbed to be standing there trying not to look at his chiselled mouth. Which was nearly impossible when the memory of the kiss they had shared on that awful night was swirling inside her head. ‘Of course.’ She glanced around, hoping to see Donny, but knew that was cowardly. It was really her responsibility to show him the mare, not her chief groom’s.
‘She played earlier today, so she should be in the south stables.’ It was just rotten luck that she happened to be in the building where she had kissed Cruz on that fateful night. ‘Hey, why don’t I take you past the east paddock?’ she said, using anything as a possible distraction. ‘Trigger is out there, and I know he’d remember you and—’
‘I’m not here on a social visit, Aspen.’
And don’t mistake it for one, his tone implied.
No polo, no champagne, no socialising. Got it.
Still, she hesitated at his sharp tone. Then decided to let it drop and listened to the sound of their feet crunching the gravel as they walked away from the busy sounds of horse-owners loading tired horses into their respective trucks. It was all very normal and busy at the end of the afternoon’s practice, and yet Aspen felt as if she was wading through quicksand with Cruz beside her.
She cast a curious glance at him and wondered if he felt the same way. Or maybe he didn’t feel anything at all and just wanted to do his business and head out like everyone else. In a way she hoped that was the case, because the shock of seeing him again had worn off and his tension was raising her stress levels to dangerous proportions.
But then he had a reason for being tense, she reminded herself, and her skin flushed hotly as the weight of the past bore down on her. Years ago she had promised herself that she would never let pride interfere with the decisions she made in her life, but in avoiding the elephant walking alongside them wasn’t that exactly what she was doing now?
Taking a deep breath, she stopped just short of the stable doors and turned to Cruz, determined to rectify the situation as best she could before they made it inside.
Shading her eyes with one hand, she looked up into his face. Had he always been this tall? This broad? This good-looking?
‘Cruz, listen. This feels really awkward, but you took me by surprise before when I ran into you—literally.’ She released a shaky breath. ‘I want you to know that I feel terrible about the way you left The Farm all those years ago, and I’m truly sorry for the role I played in that.’
‘Are you?’ he asked coolly.
‘Yes, of course. I never meant for you to get into trouble.’
Cruz didn’t move a muscle.
‘I didn’t!’ Aspen felt her temper flare at his dubious look, hating how defensive she sounded.
She’d gone down to the stables that night because Chad—now thankfully her ex—had stayed for dinner so he could present his idea to her grandfather that he would marry her as soon as she turned eighteen. Aspen remembered how overwhelmed she had felt when neither man would consider her desire to study before she even thought about the prospect of marriage.
She’d known it was what her grandfather wanted, and at the time pleasing him had been more important than pleasing herself. So she’d done what she’d always done when she was stressed and gone down to be with the horses and to reconnect with her mother in her special place in the main stable.
Gone to try and make sense of her feelings.
Of course in hindsight letting her frustration get to her and kicking the side of the stable wall in steel-capped boots hadn’t been all that clever, because it had brought Cruz down from his apartment over the garage to investigate.
She remembered that he had looked gorgeous and lean and bad in dirty jeans and a half-buttoned shirt, as if he had just climbed out of bed.
‘What’s got you in a snit, chiquita?’ he’d said, the intensity of his heavy-lidded gaze in the dim light belying the relaxed humour in his voice.
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ she’d thrown back at him challengingly.
Inwardly grimacing, she remembered how she had flicked her hair back over her shoulder in an unconscious gesture to get his full attention. She hadn’t known what she was inviting—not really—but she hadn’t wanted him to go. For some reason she had remembered the time she had come across him kissing a girlfriend in the outer barn, and the soft, pleasure-filled moans the girl had made had filled her ears that night.
Acting purely on instinct she had wandered from horse stall to horse stall, eventually coming to a stop directly in front of him. The warm glow of his torch had seemed to make the world contract, so that it had felt as if they were the only two people in it. Aspen was pretty sure she’d reached for him first, but seconds later she had been bent over his arm and he had been kissing her.
Her first kiss.
She felt her breathing grow shallow at the memory.
Something had fired in her system that night—desperation, lust, need—whatever it had been she’d never felt anything like it before or since.
Looking back, it was obvious that a feeling of entrapment—a feeling of having no say over her future—had driven her into the stables that night, but it had been Cruz’s sheer animal magnetism that had driven her into his arms.
Not that she really wanted to admit any of that to him right now. Not when he looked so...bored.
‘This is old news, Aspen, and I’m not in the mood to reminisce.’
‘That’s your prerogative. But I want you to know that I told my grandfather the next day that he’d got it wrong.’