The Most Expensive Lie of All

by Michelle Conder

  Not bothering to look at her, he paused infinitesimally, his hands on the key in the ignition.

  ‘Probably,’ he said, with so little concern it made her teeth grind together.

  He turned the key and the car purred to life. Then his eyes drifted lazily over her from head to toe and she felt her heart-rate kick up. He was studying her again. Looking at her as if he was imagining what she looked like without her clothes on.

  ‘But it won’t make a difference.’

  His lack of empathy, or any real emotion, drove her wild. ‘To what?’

  ‘To this.’

  Quick as a flash he reached for her, grabbed the back of her neck before she’d realised his intention and hauled her mouth across to his. Aspen stiffened, determined to resist the force of his hungry assault. And she did. For a moment. A brief moment before her senses took over and shut down her brain. A brief moment before his mouth softened. A brief moment before he pulled back and looked at her with lazy amusement. As if he was already the victor.

  ‘He won’t sell to you,’ she blazed at him.

  His smile kicked up one corner of his mouth. ‘He’ll sell to me.’

  Aspen cut her gaze from his. She hated his insolent confidence because she wished she had just a smidgeon of it herself. ‘How long till we get there?’ she griped.

  He laughed softly. ‘So eager, gatita?’

  ‘Yes,’ she fumed. ‘Eager to get out of your horrible company. In fact I don’t know why we didn’t just do this on the plane. Or at The Farm, come to think of it.’

  His head tilted as he regarded her. ‘Maybe I want to woo you.’

  Aspen blew out a breath. ‘I wonder what your mother would have to say about your behaviour?’

  ‘Damn.’ Cruz forked a hand through his hair, his lazy amusement at her expense turning to disgust.

  He cursed again and gunned the engine.

  ‘Problem?’ she asked, hoping beyond hope that there was one.

  ‘You could say that.’ His words came out as a snarl.

  She waited for him to elaborate and sighed when he didn’t. This situation was impossible. There was no way she would be able to relax with this man enough to have sex with him. Which was fine, she thought. It would serve him right, all things considered.

  Switching her mind off, she turned her attention outside the window. From the air Mexico was an amazing contrast of stark brown mountains and stretches of dried-up desert against the brilliant blue of the Pacific Ocean. On the ground the theme continued, with pockets of abject beauty mixed with states of disrepair. A bit like her own mind, she mused in a moment of black humour.

  But gradually, as Cruz drove them through small towns and along broken cobblestoned streets alive with pedestrians and tourists fortified against the amazing heat with wide-brimmed hats, Aspen felt herself start to relax.

  She snuck a glance at Cruz’s beautiful profile. His expression was so serious he looked as if he belonged on a penny. The silence stretched out like the bitumen in front of them and finally Aspen couldn’t take it any longer. ‘So you went back to Mexico after you left The Farm?’

  He cut her a brief glance. ‘You want the low-down on my life story, gatita?’

  No, she wanted to know if it would take a silver bullet to end his life, or whether an ordinary one would do the trick.

  One night, Aspen.

  ‘I was making polite conversation.’

  ‘Choose another topic.’

  Okay.

  ‘Why do you want my farm?’

  ‘It’s a great location for a hotel. Why else?’

  Aspen glared at him. ‘You’re going to tear it down, aren’t you?’ Tear down the only home she’d ever loved. Tear down the stables.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘Actually, I can.’

  ‘Why? Revenge?’

  She saw a muscle tick in his jaw. ‘Not revenge. Money.’

  Aspen blew out a breath, more determined than ever that he shouldn’t get his hands on her property. ‘How much further is it to the hotel?’ she asked completely exasperated.

  Cruz smiled. ‘You sound like you’re not expecting to enjoy yourself, gatita.’

  She didn’t answer, and she felt his curious gaze on her as she stared sightlessly out of the window.

  ‘It will be a while,’ he said abruptly. ‘We have a small detour to make.’

  Aspen glanced back at his austere expression. ‘What sort of detour?’

  ‘I have to stop at my mother’s house.’

  ‘Your mother’s house?’ She frowned. ‘Why would you take me to meet your mother?’

  ‘Believe me, I’m not happy about it either,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately my brother has arranged her surprise birthday party for today and I promised I’d show up.’

  ‘Your mother’s...’ She cleared her throat as if she had something stuck in it. ‘You could have warned me.’

  ‘I just did.’

  She blew out a frustrated breath.

  ‘Don’t make a big deal out of it,’ he cautioned. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Well, that’s obvious. But how can I not? What will she think of me?’

  ‘That you’re my latest mistress. What else?’

  Cruz saw a flash of hurt cross her face and hated how she made him feel subtly guilty about the situation between them. He had nothing to feel guilty about. She had asked him for money, he had laid down his terms, and she’d accepted. And now that she knew he was in direct competition with her his conscience was clear. Or should have been. Still, it picked at him that he might be making a decision he would later regret. His body said the opposite and he ran his eyes over her feminine, but demure outfit. All that wild hair caught back in a low ponytail just begging to be set free.

  ‘I don’t have anything for her,’ she said in a small voice.

  Cruz forced himself to concentrate on a particularly dilapidated section of road before he had an accident. ‘I’ve got it covered.’

  She fell blessedly silent after that as he navigated through the centre of town and he was just exhaling when she spoke again.

  ‘What did you get her?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Your present. I would know what it was if I was really your mistress.’

  ‘You are my mistress,’ he reminded her. ‘For one night anyway.’

  If possible even more colour drained from her face, and it irritated him to think that she saw sleeping with him as such a chore. By the time he was finished with her she would be screaming with pleasure and begging for more than one night.

  ‘Money,’ he said, pulling his thoughts out of his pants.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’m giving her money.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Her nose twitched as if she’d just smelt something foul.

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ he snapped.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Her tone implied everything.

  ‘Money makes the world go round, gatita,’ he grated.

  ‘Actually, I think the saying is that love makes the world go round.’

  ‘Love couldn’t make a tennis ball go round,’ he said, knowing from her tight expression that she didn’t approve or agree. Well, he didn’t give a damn. She hadn’t been given up as a child. ‘Look, my mother sold me to your grandfather when I was thirteen. I think I know what she likes.’

  Aspen looked aghast. ‘I had heard that rumour but I never actually believed it.’

  ‘Believe it,’ he said, hating the note of bitterness that tinged his words.

  ‘I’m sure she didn’t want to send you away.’

  Cruz didn’t say anything. She sighed and eventually said, ‘I know how you feel.�
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  ‘How could you possibly know how I feel?’ he mocked. ‘You grew up on a hundred-acre property and went to a private school.’

  ‘I wasn’t born into that, Cruz. My father left my mother when I was three and she struggled for years to keep our heads above water while she was alive. What I was getting at was that my grandfather paid my father to stay away.’

  Cruz frowned. He’d assumed her mother had lived off some sort of trust fund and her father had died. ‘Your father was a ski instructor, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Probably better that you didn’t have anything to do with him.’

  ‘Because of his profession?’

  ‘No, because he accepted being paid off. A parent should never give up a child, no matter what.’

  ‘I’m sorry that happened to you,’ she said quietly.

  Cruz didn’t want her compassion. Especially not when he understood why his mother had done it. Hell, wasn’t that one of the reasons he worked so hard? So that if he did ever marry no wife of his would ever have to face the same decision?

  He shrugged it off, as he always did. ‘I had a lot of opportunities from it. And worse things happen to kids than that.’

  ‘True, but when a child feels abandoned it’s—’

  He cut off her sympathetic response. ‘You move on and you don’t look back.’

  Aspen registered the pain in his voice, the deep hurt he must have felt. She experienced a strange desire to make him feel better—and then reminded herself that he was a wealthy man who was determined to steal her home away from her and was so arrogant he was lending her money to challenge him.

  ‘I’d like to stop for flowers,’ she said stiffly.

  Cruz turned down a side street and cursed when the traffic came to a standstill along a busy ocean-facing boulevard, completely oblivious to the cosmopolitan coastline that sparkled in the sun.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’d like to stop for flowers.’

  ‘What for?’

  She looked pained—and stiff. ‘Your mother’s birthday, for one, and the fact that I’m visiting someone’s home and don’t have a gift.’

  ‘I told you I have it covered.’

  ‘And given your attitude to money I’m sure it’s very generous, but I would prefer to give something more personal.’

  Cruz ground his teeth together, praying for patience.

  Five minutes later he swung the big car onto the side of the road in front of a group of shops. When she made to get out of the car, he stopped her. ‘I’ll get them. You wait here and keep the door locked.’

  ‘But they’re supposed to be from me.’

  ‘Believe me, my mother will know who they’re from.’ The last time he’d given her flowers he’d picked wild dahlias by the side of the road when he’d been about twelve.

  * * *

  Not long after that Aspen was relieved when Cruz pulled into the circular driveway of a large hacienda, with fat terracotta pots either side of a wide entrance filled with colourful blooms.

  She stepped out of the car before Cruz reached her side and saw his scowl grow fiercer as he unloaded a box of brightly wrapped presents from the back.

  ‘You told me you were giving your mother money,’ she said, confused.

  ‘I am. These are for my nieces and nephews.’

  That surprised her, and she wondered if maybe he had a heart beating somewhere inside his body after all. The thought lasted for as long as it took for his eager nieces and nephews to descend on him in a wild flurry.

  It was as if Santa had arrived and, like that mythical person, Cruz was treated with deference and a little trepidation. As if he wasn’t quite real. Aspen saw genuine affection for him on the faces of his family, but it was clear when no one touched or hugged him that all was not quite right between them.

  For his part, Cruz didn’t seem to notice. His cool gaze was completely tuned in to the delighted squeals of his six nieces and nephews as they unearthed remote-controlled cars, sporting equipment and several dolls. That was when Aspen realised that the gifts were either an ice-breaker or possibly a replacement for any real affection between them.

  ‘This is Aspen,’ he said once the furore had died down. ‘Aspen, this is my family.’

  Succinct, she thought as each one of his family members warily introduced themselves, clearly unsure how to take her. Deciding to ignore the way that made her feel and make the best of the situation, she smiled at them as if there was nothing amiss about her being by Cruz’s side.

  ‘These are from both of us,’ she said, handing Cruz’s mother the elaborate posy he had purchased and watching as her gentle face lit up with pleasure. She must once have been a great beauty, Aspen thought, but time and life had wearied her, lining her face and sprinkling her thick dark hair with silvery streaks. She gazed up at her son with open adoration and Aspen could have kicked Cruz when he barely mustered a stiff smile in return.

  An awkward silence fell over his sisters until his brother, Ricardo, took charge and led them all out to the rear patio, where the scent of a heavenly barbecue filled the air.

  Cruz’s youngest sister, Gabriella, who looked to be about nineteen, hooked her arm through Aspen’s and took it upon herself to introduce her two brothers-in-law, who each had a pair of tongs in one hand and a beer in the other.

  Gabriella pointed out the small vineyard her mother still tended, and the lush veggie patch in raised wooden boxes. Three well-fed dogs lazed beneath the shade of a lemon-coloured magnolia tree and the view of the ocean from the house was truly spectacular.

  ‘Cruz has never brought a girlfriend here before,’ Gabriella whispered.

  Aspen smiled enigmatically. She knew the label hadn’t come from Cruz but she wasn’t about to correct his sister and embarrass them both. And, anyway, ‘girlfriend’ sounded much better than mistress to her ears, even if it did mean that she had terrible taste in men.

  Returning to the patio, she found Cruz sprawled in a deckchair at the head of the large outdoor table, with his sisters and his mother crowded around him like celebrity minders who were worried about losing their jobs. One after the other they asked if he was okay or if he needed anything with embarrassing regularity, offering him food and drink like the Wise Men bestowing gifts on the baby Jesus.

  The two brothers-in-law had cleverly retreated to tend the state-of-the-art barbecue, and Aspen tried her best to appreciate the amazing view of grapevines tripping down the hillside towards the azure sea below.

  The conversation was like listening to an uninterested child practising the violin: one minute flowing and easy, the next halting and grating. Nobody seemed to know which topic of conversation to stick to.

  Even worse, Cruz’s mother kept throwing guilty glances his way, while treating him like a king. Cruz either didn’t notice, or pretended that he didn’t, conversing mainly with his brother about work issues.

  It made her think about what Mrs Randall had said the day before. He missed his family terribly, that boy.

  Ironically, Cruz didn’t look as if he had missed them at all, and yet Aspen sensed from his intermittent glances along the table that Mrs Randall had been right.

  What had it been like for him? she wondered. On The Farm, all alone and cut off from his family? And how did one reconnect after that?

  Bizarrely, she started to feel sorry for him, and found herself wanting to break through the solid barrier he seemed to have erected around himself.

  Thankfully one of the older boys brought out the new basketball Cruz had bought and called for everyone to play Four Square. Gabriella jumped up and mercifully asked Aspen to join in. It was the only time Cruz wasn’t asked if he wanted to partake.

  One of the children quickly drew out four squares and Aspen patiently waited for a cherubic-loo
king boy with a mop of curly black hair to explain the rules while his ten-year-old sister tapped her foot impatiently and said, ‘We know...we know.’

  Before long there was a mixed line of adults and kids and Aspen found she was enjoying herself for the first time that day, laughing with the children and jockeying for position as king of the game.

  When one of the older children tried a shifty manoeuvre the ball went spinning off towards the stone table. Cruz deftly caught it and threw it back to Aspen.

  Some devil on Aspen’s shoulder made her toss the ball straight back at him. ‘Come and play.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘He never plays games when he comes,’ Gabriella whispered.

  Aspen gave her a half-smile, knowing exactly how it felt to hanker after the affection of someone who wouldn’t give it. She remembered that her grandfather and her uncle had been far too serious to play games with her and she’d very quickly learned not to ask.

  Sensing that Cruz was far too serious as well, and that if he just lightened up a little everyone else could start to as well, she bounced the ball back in his direction.

  ‘Are you afraid you’ll lose?’ she challenged lightly.

  He stood up from the table and placed his beer bottle down with deliberate restraint.

  Every member of his family seemed to hold their collective breath—even the two men tending the sizzling barbecue—waiting to see what he would do. If a tree had fallen in Africa they would have heard it.

  Aspen saw the moment Cruz became conscious of the same thing and the smile on her lips died as he stared at her with a dangerous glint in his eyes. He came towards her slowly, like a hungry panther, his black hair glinting in the sunlight just as she remembered.

  A shiver of awareness skittered over her skin. Her mind told her to run, but her body was on another frequency because it remained rooted to the spot.

  Towering over her, Cruz took her hand and carefully placed the ball in it, as if he was handing back a newborn baby—or a bomb about to go off. He leant closer, and Aspen forgot about their audience as his gaze shifted to her mouth.

  ‘I said no.’

  When his gaze lifted to hers there was an implicit warning for her to behave deep within his cold regard. Then without a word he spun on his heels and stalked towards the garden.