Rocco wasn't looking for a life partner. He was looking for a bed partner and some arm candy. And so was she.
She turned on her heel. She'd go to the stables. She'd feel much more at home there.
It was strange how unlike her expectations this part of the estancia was. She'd grown up with so many stories of heartless South American animal husbandry. Horses whipped and starved and punished. But Mark had been vehement in his defence of Rocco. He had confirmed the rumours that had rolled through their own stables-of the Hurricane in the early days, sleeping with his horses rather than in his own home, spending more time and money on them than he did anything else. He'd been notoriously close to his animals, and notoriously distant with people.
It didn't look as if much had changed.
She picked her way along the side of the house, past the high-maintenance gardens and round to the even more highly maintained stables.
They were immaculate. Nothing out of place. All around grooms-some young, some old, Argentines and Europeans, men and girls-seemed lazily purposeful. Here and there horses were being walked back and forth to the ring, or beret-capped gauchos were arriving back from the fields with five or six ponies in lightly held reins. No one seemed to notice that she was there, or if they did they left her well alone.
Rocco was nowhere to be seen.
She walked past high fences, their white-painted wood starkly perfect against the spread of grass behind. The sun's heat was losing its hold on the day, but some horses and dogs still sought shade under the bushes and trees that lined various edges of the fields.
Rounding the corner of a low stable block, she saw him. Off in the distance, deep in conversation with an old, bent man. Juanchi, she supposed.
Even from here he was striking, breathtaking. His stride was so intense, yet it held the effortless grace of a sportsman. Every part of him was in harmony, undercut with power. Everything he did with his body was an art. Kissing, dancing, riding, making love. Being so close to him for these few hours she had learned his ways, his unashamed confidence, control and drive. He was everything she had spent the past ten years expecting him to be. Everything her broken teenage heart had built him up to be. More was the pity.
She stood back, watched, willed herself not to care. So he was Rocco Hermida? She was Frankie Ryan. He didn't have the monopoly on everything. She could kiss, she could ride and, now that she'd spent the past fourteen hours with him, she could claim to be quite an accomplished lover, too.
She supposed …
She didn't have much to compare him to-a few disappointing fumbles at university parties, a dreary relationship with a co-worker when she had first arrived in Madrid. But that was because she hadn't known her own body back then. It wasn't because Rocco and only Rocco could light her up with a single touch. Other men could do that-she just hadn't learned to let go yet. Now she would. She was sure.
But even watching him standing on the threshold of his immaculately appointed barn, a structure more at home in a plaza than a field, she couldn't deny he was captivating. He listened to the old man, gave him his full attention, nodded, then pulled the bolt closed on the barn and moved off with him. She watched them walk back out from the shadows cast by the building's sides into bright sunlight.
Respect. That was what he was showing. He respected this old man.
That intrigued her. Of all the qualities she'd seen in him-leadership, confidence, passion, determination, even brotherly affection to Dante-respect hadn't been visible. It showed something about him now, though. It showed that he was even deeper and harder to read than she'd thought.
They turned another corner and vanished from view. Her eye was drawn back to the barn.
Wouldn't it be fabulous if one of Ipanema's ponies was inside? No high-powered polo match to recuperate from, just waiting for a little handful of polo nuts and a hug. Wouldn't it feel fabulous to sit on one of Ipanema's ponies? Wouldn't that be worth a phone call back home?
She started across the yard, but the low groan of a helicopter coming in to land made her look to her left. And there, off in the distance, she saw them. All shiny chestnut coats and forelock-to-muzzle white stars. Her face burst into a smile that she could feel reach her ears-she would know them anywhere. Like a homing device, she made her way forward.
They were playing in the field with four other classic caramel Argentinian ponies. For a moment she wondered what it would be like to be able to see them, be with them every day. Hadn't that been her dream job once? What had happened to that girl? So desperate to get away from the choking darkness of depression and the oppressive judgement of her father, she'd moved away from everything else she held dear, too. She barely had any time with her mother or her brother Mark. She was in regular contact with Danny, thousands of miles away in Dubai, but that was probably because they'd recognised in each other the same desperate need to escape.
Two of the ponies noticed her leaning on the fence and began to trot over. She looked about. Maybe the grooms and gauchos were all crowded together inside somewhere, drinking maté, because the whole place seemed to have become deserted.
Would it be too awful to help herself to a saddle? To tack up one of the ponies? To climb on its back and trot a little? What would be the harm in that? It wasn't as if Rocco would even know. It wasn't as if he particularly cared what she was doing. Then or now.
He'd never made the slightest effort to find out anything about her after that night. It was all very easy to say now that he felt terrible, but really-how much effort would it have taken to ask after her while he was negotiating the sale of Ipanema? She'd never blamed him for her getting sent to the convent-she held herself personally responsible for that … had made herself personally responsible for everything! And maybe it was that-the tendency to be so hard on herself-that had made her slide so quickly into depression.
Well, not anymore. She would never go back there.
She spotted the tack room and sneaked inside.
Five minutes later she was up and over the wide, white-slatted fence. Five minutes after that she was hoisting herself lightly onto a pony. In a heartbeat she had covered the entire length of the field-just in a walk, then a trot. Then, with a look around her, to make sure there was still nobody caring, she tapped her heels into the sides of the adorable little pony and cantered to the farthest side.
In the distance she could see seas of green and yellow grass. Brown paths cut through them here and there, and running east to west the blue trail of a stream. Gunmetal clouds had rolled across the sky. And that was it. She was alone, she was as free as a bird and she was loving every last moment.
The pony was a dream-the lightest squeeze with her thighs and it picked up speed, the lightest tug with the reins and it turned or stopped. Most of their horses before Ipanema had been show jumpers rather than polo ponies. Ipanema's grandmother had been a champion show jumper, her mother had carried royalty at Olympia and then Ipanema herself had been spotted as a potential polo pony. When her father had taken her to County Meath she had just won best playing pony at the Gold Cup at Cowdray.
Frankie had been put on horses since she could walk. At age four she'd been able to balance on one leg on the sleepiest pony as it circled the yard-until she'd got yelled at to get down. At age ten Danny had dared her to try fences as high as the ones she had seen at the show trials. Of course she had fallen, tried to hide her broken arm for fear of her father's wrath and then been taken by her long-suffering mother to get it put in plaster. Yes, she'd pushed every boundary growing up-and she was going to push another one now.
Nobody was around. She walked the little pony out of one field and into another. A long clear path lay ahead. She squeezed lightly and started to gallop. On through the pampas, with the seas of green on either side of her as high as the pony's withers. Dust blew up around her, clouding her path, but she trusted the pony and gave her her head.
It all came back-those daily rides with Ipanema, and before her all her other favourites from the yard.
Feeling the warm air whip past her cheeks, the excited thump of her heart and the sensation that she was leaving all her worries behind her, she realised that there was no release like this. No wonder the first thing she'd done after school was to race home, tear off her school uniform and fly to the stables. She'd never known how badly she missed it until now.