She kissed them again, then froze when a pair of huge feet in thick-soled tan boots appeared in front of her.
A wave of dizziness hit her and she sucked in a long breath before saying a prayer for strength and carefully straightening.
She hadn’t seen him all day. While the great clean-up had been going on, the cleaning team sweeping and polishing around snoozing bodies, Emiliano had been nowhere to be found. But he’d arranged her flight home from wherever he’d holed himself up and asked Paula to pass on the details to her. The two women had already said their goodbyes.
She dragged in another breath to see his bloodshot eyes and stubbly face. He’d obviously slept in his clothes. Possibly in a bush. His hair had foliage of a sort in it. He must have really enjoyed his return to the party.
They stared at each other for the longest time before he rammed his hands into his jeans’ pockets. ‘Have a safe journey,’ he said hoarsely.
She nodded and tried to smile. It was as impossible as speech.
‘Let me know when you get home?’
Still unable to speak, she nodded again and opened the door. The sun shone so brightly it blinded her...or was that the flickering of her eyes from a body so choked that every single part of her felt paralysed?
Somehow she managed to drag her feet to the car.
‘Becky.’
She stopped in her tracks, heart suddenly leaping.
He paused a few feet from her, jaw rigid and throbbing at the sides, muscular arms folded across his chest.
She was going to be sick. She could feel it building inside her...
‘I want you to listen to me,’ he said quietly. ‘You have to stop using your studies and your work as a shield to hide behind. Make new friends. Enjoy your life. Everything will change very soon, so enjoy your freedom while you have it. Okay?’
She sniffed back the tears, managed a jerky nod and then, concentrating harder than perhaps she’d ever done, managed to find a smile for him to remember her by.
The next time they met she would be noticeably pregnant, her features subtly altered. Let him remember her as she was now. ‘Hasta luego, Emiliano.’
And then she got into the car and drove out of his life.
On the flight back, Becky was inconsolable. The tears would not stop falling. She kept her privacy pod up the entire journey and sobbed until she wore herself out and slept, only to wake and sob herself to sleep all over again. Fourteen and a half hours later, voice hoarse and eyes sore from all the crying, tear ducts pleading for a rest, she landed in the UK.
Emiliano had arranged for a chauffeur to collect her from the airport so the hour-long journey to her new Oxford home went without any hassle.
Then she stepped inside and it hit her all over again.
The furniture he’d ordered for her on that shopping trip that now felt so long ago had been delivered. She’d known it was being delivered here—she’d given Emiliano the address and her landlord’s details—but it hadn’t occurred to her that it would all be unpacked and set out for her. Or that the flat would have been freshly decorated and have a new carpet.
Emiliano had arranged this. If she closed her eyes she could see him on the phone, barking out his orders in that way he had that was both no-nonsense but with a tone that made people want to go out of their way to please him.
She traced her fingers over the sofa she’d fallen in love with before she’d seen the price and baulked. In her bedroom, filling it so that she doubted she’d be able to open the wardrobe doors fully, was the sleigh bed she’d thought she’d cooed over without him noticing. She’d actually enthused about a different, much, much cheaper bed. But he’d noticed.
He’d noticed everything, she thought in wonder when she drifted into the small kitchen and found the slow cooker, and a food processor she’d run her fingers over before moving on to something else as she’d considered it an extravagance she didn’t need.
But it was when she pulled the freshly laundered bedsheets back that her tear ducts were pulled back into service after their hard-earned break.
The pillow on the left-hand side of the bed, the side she’d slept when she’d slept with Emiliano, had a bespoke pillowcase on it. A picture of Emiliano’s gorgeous face was imprinted into the silk.
Crying and laughing simultaneously, she cuddled his face to her belly.
She could picture him perfectly, his face alight with glee as he went to the trouble of ordering it and imagining her reaction when she discovered it.
When, much later, she was in that semi-conscious twilight state between sleep and wakefulness, her last coherent thought was that he must have forgotten about the pillow. Because it was the playful jest of a gift from a lover who expected or at least hoped for a future.
Not from someone who was preparing to let his lover go.
Emiliano stared at the screen before him. His finger hovered on the call icon in the laptop’s corner.
This was something he would have preferred to do in the flesh but the person he needed to speak to was on a different continent to him. Europe. England, to be precise. Had flown there with no intention of returning to Argentina.
He clicked the icon before he could talk himself out of it again.
Moments later, his brother’s face filled the screen. ‘Emiliano! Great to see you!’
He had enough feeling left in him to acknowledge the small kindling of happiness that the man he’d tormented for most of his life should greet him with such enthusiasm and strove to inject the same enthusiasm into his own voice. ‘Great to see you too. How’s England? I bet it’s raining.’
But his attempt at cheerfulness didn’t fool Damián. His brows knotted. ‘What’s wrong?’
Before he could answer, Mia appeared in the background. She was the reason for Damián’s uprooting of his life. The actress he’d paid to play the part of his lover...he’d fallen in love with her. And she’d fallen in love with him. This video call Emiliano had made had no doubt interrupted their wedding planning.
Mia waved at him with a beaming smile. He managed to raise his hand to wave back.
Damián turned from the camera to speak to her in a low voice. She looked briefly back at the screen before leaning down to kiss him, waved again at Emiliano and then walked out of the camera’s range.
He heard a door close before Damián’s face reappeared before him. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked again.
It took a few moments for Emiliano to gather his prepared thoughts back in order. Something about the way Damián and Mia interacted had knocked his thoughts off course, set off a tightening in his chest...
‘Emiliano!’
With a snap back to attention he stared into his brother’s concerned eyes and realised he was making this call for her. To swallow his pride and put the past behind him once and for all. Just as she’d told him to.
‘There’s something I need to tell you.’
‘Oh?’
‘About what happened during my time at the Delgado Group. With the money.’ And then he took a deep breath and for only the second time revealed how he’d been played for a fool by a gold-digging con-artist.
Later that night, alone in his bed, Emiliano stared at the ceiling. The cliché of weights being lifted from shoulders was, he’d discovered, a cliché that was true.
He’d confessed everything. And then he’d apologised. For everything, including treating his younger brother like dirt for almost his entire life.
And Damián had apologised too for his own part in everything. They’d talked for hours. By the time they’d ended the video call, both of them had sunk half a dozen bottles of beer.
The weight of guilt he’d carried all these years had gone. The past was, finally, in the past and it would stay there.
So why did he still feel so heavy and lethargic?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AFTER THE NOISE and exuberance of Argentina, Becky had thought she would find it soothing to be back in such a quietly serious environment as a laboratory, a return to normality that she would easily settle into. And maybe she would have done if she didn’t return home to her lonely flat every evening.
Last night, though, she’d gone for a meal with her new colleagues. She’d been touched that they were ready to include her in their social gatherings so soon and, remembering Emiliano’s words about making new friends, had readily accepted. She’d enjoyed a good meal and even managed not to think about him for a few seconds.
And now here she was, alone in the huge bed he’d bought her with two whole days of nothing ahead and only the pillow with his image for company. The flat felt so small, not because it was tiny compared to the ranch but because Emiliano magnified everything with his presence alone.
She’d been back in England for thirteen days. It felt like thirteen months.
She wondered if he was awake yet. The first polo competition of the Argentine season would be taking place later that day. She imagined him supervising the loading of his horses into the transporters that would drive them to the venue. She imagined the bustle and noise involved with transporting the minimum of ten horses he would personally ride that day, all the equipment needed, the grooms and other staff rushing around making sure they hadn’t forgotten anything, and felt an enormous pang of regret that she wouldn’t be there to share the day with them and that she wouldn’t be there with the boys at her heels, cheering the Delgado team on until her voice grew hoarse.
The morning drifted away from her. Just as she was contemplating fixing herself something to eat, her doorbell rang.
How exciting. Her first visitor. Except she was expecting a book delivery, so the first person to arrive at her door would be the delivery driver.
But it wasn’t a delivery driver standing on the doorstep.
It was her mother.
Emiliano watched the shadows on the bedroom walls. They’d been changing with the rising sun. Thinning.
He felt as if he was thinning too. Losing substance.
He’d thought putting the past to bed with his brother would snap him out of his bad mood but he only felt worse.
Becky had been gone for thirteen days.
His alarm went off. Rufus and Barney woke and jumped on the bed, slobbering over him.
They missed her.
He remembered Adriana, how frantic he’d been when she’d disappeared. He’d believed himself in love with her but he’d never felt that every breath taken was for her. Within days of her disappearance he’d shocked himself with how little he actually missed her. He’d thought about her constantly but only because of the question of where the hell she was.
He knew exactly where Becky was, but she was in his head every waking moment. She flooded his dreams—dreams that turned into living nightmares when he woke to find her side of the bed empty and he had to go through the grief process all over again, day after day.
To say he missed her would be like saying the sun was nothing but a yellow ball in the sky. There was a gaping hole in his chest filled with a pain so acute that it hurt to breathe and finally the truth penetrated his thick, stubborn head.
He loved her.
If he’d paid any attention to his feelings, he would have known the truth a long time ago. He’d fallen in love with Becky the moment he’d looked up from the trembling coward on the floor who’d dared kick his dog to see her holding Rufus so protectively in her arms. There had been no one for him since.
All these years spent actively avoiding commitment, going through women too quickly for them to feel the slightest hint of cosiness with him, cynically determined never to be fooled again by anyone, man or woman, driven by the sole ambition to prove that he was the best and that the whole world—his father and brother especially—should know about it, living his life with his own pleasures and needs at the centre of everything...
He was glad to now have his brother in his life as a brother, but nothing else mattered a damn.
He would give it all up for her. For Becky. The woman who’d stolen his heart, who made his world better with a simple smile. The woman with the tenderest heart. A woman he would trust with his life.
But a woman damaged. The years she should have spent drinking too much and having fun, having sex with her peers, had been lost as she’d wrestled with her parents’ bitter divorce, which had culminated in her father’s desertion and her mother’s rejection, burying herself so deeply in her studies that she used it as a shield to protect herself from more hurt.
In his heart, he knew there would never be anyone else. If he couldn’t have Becky then he would have no one.
He had to try. He knew that now. Maybe it was too late for them but he would try. He would get this competition done with and then he would fly to England, swallow his pride, get on his knees and beg for another chance. Because he’d been the one to end things. She’d refused to marry him but at no point had she said she wanted to end their relationship.
Trust had to be earned. When had he ever given her the chance to trust his vow of fidelity? He’d been so damn intent on keeping control of himself and control of his feelings that he’d made it sound as if he was giving that promise as a sop to her, like some stupid benevolent gift, when the truth was he didn’t want anyone else because there couldn’t be anyone else. He was Becky’s, heart, body and soul.
And if it was too late then at least he would always have a part of her. Their baby. He would stay in England and, living together or apart, they would raise him or her together and lavish them with so much love that they would thrive and grow up healthy and secure and with the ability to love and be loved.
He would have to be satisfied with that.
But he could do nothing about any of it right now.
With a kiss for his boys first, he climbed out of bed and dragged himself into the shower. He had to pull himself out of this funk. In an hour he’d be travelling with his horses and his team to the first cup competition of the season. He needed to be sharp. He needed his wits about him. Polo was too dangerous a sport not to be on form.
Five hours later and the doorbell rang for the second time. This time, it was a delivery of Chinese food for Becky and her mother to share.
The shock and disbelief she’d experienced when she’d first opened the door had slowly seeped away as the awkwardness dissolved and they began to talk.
Anthony, her sex pest stepfather, was history. Her mother had woken a few days ago after a dream about her unborn grandchild. It had been her epiphany. Her only child was pregnant and she didn’t even know who the father was or when the baby was due. When she’d idly mentioned this to her new husband, along with her intention to arrange a meeting with her estranged daughter, his reaction had been so over the top and incredulous that suddenly the veil had slipped from her eyes.
It was as Emiliano had predicted. Having taken his advice to keep the door to her mother open, Becky had messaged her new address the day she’d arrived back in England. Never had she believed her mother would turn up on her doorstep within two weeks of her sending it.
‘Have you told your dad about the baby?’ her mum asked after swallowing a huge forkful of chow mein.
Becky pulled a face. ‘Not yet. He messaged last Wednesday. He was about to catch a flight to Chile to start his tour of South America. I’ll tell him when we next speak.’
‘Doesn’t Chile border Argentina?’
She shrugged. She’d told her mum only that the baby’s father was an Argentine polo player. It was too soon to start exchanging real confidences. Things couldn’t return to how they’d been. Not yet.
‘I bet your dad comes home for the birth,’ she predicted.
Becky raised a brow in surprise at a comment about her father that was remarkably free of malice.<
br />
Her mum smiled ruefully and stabbed at a piece of sweet and sour chicken. ‘I can’t stand the man but he loves you. He was always a great father. He’s dreamed of travelling the world since he was a kid. He put all his dreams on hold because he loves you and you needed him. He waited until you didn’t need him any more.’
‘I never knew that.’
‘Well, now you do.’
‘He never said goodbye when he left.’
‘That’s because he’s selfish and immature.’
‘I thought you just said he was a great father.’
‘He was. And now he’s a terrible one. Just as I’ve been a terrible mother in recent years.’
‘I’ve hardly been the best daughter,’ Becky admitted wretchedly. ‘I’m a woman in my twenties expecting my parents to still put me first. If anyone’s been selfish and immature, it’s me.’
Emiliano had put her needs first, in all ways. Those weeks when they’d been lovers, he’d given her passion but also a security she’d never known.
‘Becky?’
She blinked. ‘Sorry, did you say something?’
‘You looked lost in thought.’
The urge to spill all bloomed inside her. To confide how desperately she’d fallen in love and how it had been her own distrust and lack of confidence in herself that had destroyed them.
All those things she wished she could have said to him. Things she should have said. Like how wonderful he was. How he made her laugh harder than anyone in the world. How he infuriated her more than anyone in the world. How he was also the best person she knew and how glad she was that he was the father of her child. Their child could have no better protector and guide.
‘Becky!’
She jumped at the sharpness in her mother’s tone.
Eyes that were a mirror of her own softened. ‘Talk to me, honey. Please. I might be able to help.’
Tears filled her eyes. The urge to confide had grown big enough to choke her but, before she could open her mouth, her phone rang. She would have ignored it if the name of the caller hadn’t flashed on the screen. Louise. Who should be busy tending the horses during the ongoing cup competition, not taking time out to make a call.
The Cost Of Claiming His Heir (The Delgado Inheritance, Book 2) Page 15
