Argentinian Playboy, Unexpected Love-Child

It had been a far from idyllic childhood, and by the age of twelve she had been fiercely independent—getting up early every morning to do a paper round to pay for her riding lessons. She preferred horses to people and, after witnessing her parents’ various failed marriages, she was adamant that she never wanted to get married or be reliant on another human being.

‘The caravan is sound and dry, although it does shake a bit in strong wind,’ Rachel admitted as she spooned coffee granules into the two least chipped mugs she could find. ‘But it’s got all the basic amenities—a shower, and Peter rigged up a generator to provide me with electricity. I can’t afford to rent a house,’ she explained when Diego gave her a look that said he seriously questioned her sanity. ‘Property is very expensive around here, and everything I earn goes on Piran’s upkeep and competition fees.’

Diego noted that the caravan might be small and old, but it was immaculately clean. The collection of china horses arranged on the shelf above the cooker were free from dust, and on the miniature kitchen worktop stood a jar filled with wild daisies. Rachel’s home was as unconventional and dainty as its occupant, and he felt like a giant who had somehow squeezed himself into a doll’s house.

He would drink the coffee and then leave, he decided, shaking his head when she offered milk and sugar, and grimacing when he took a sip of the foul black liquid she handed him. He didn’t know why he hadn’t simply dropped her off at the farm entrance.

His eyes strayed to her slender figure and her pert derrière, moulded by her jeans, and he felt a tightening sensation in his groin. He was used to dating sophisticated socialites who wouldn’t be seen dead in anything other than designer labels, but there was something wholesome and incredibly sexy about Rachel’s scrubbed face and simple clothes. He wondered if she was aware that the sunlight streaming in through the window made her shirt semi-transparent. He could clearly see the outline of her breasts, and liquid heat surged through his veins.

He took a gulp of the hot coffee and felt it scald the back of his throat. ‘Do you live here alone?’ he asked shortly.

Rachel glanced around the cramped living space, her brows lifting expressively. ‘There’s barely enough room for me, let alone anyone else,’ she murmured.

‘So, no boyfriend sharing your bunk?’

‘No! I told you, I’m training hard in the hope of being picked for the British Equestrian team. I don’t have time for boyfriends.’ Much less the desire for one, she thought, her mouth firming. But that did not mean she was completely oblivious to men, or at least this man. She could not tear her eyes from Diego. He looked faintly incongruous, standing in her tiny caravan in his formal black trousers and beautifully tailored shirt. He reminded her of one of those impossibly gorgeous male models from a glossy magazine—and he should be somewhere exotic like Monte Carlo or Rio, not a field in rural Gloucestershire. But he was here, with her, and he was looking at her in a way that was making her heart race and her face feel hot.

She should have suggested that they drink their coffee outside, she thought frantically. But her garden furniture consisted of two upended feed buckets, and she could not picture suave Diego Ortega sprawling on the grass. The atmosphere inside the caravan suddenly seemed to be charged with electricity and she was agonisingly aware of his hard, lean body standing inches from her. She held her breath when he closed the gap between them, and her eyes darted nervously from his chest up to his face and focused helplessly on his sensual mouth. Her heart seemed to stop beating when he slid his hand beneath her chin and lowered his face so close to hers that she could see the tiny lines that fanned out from the corners of his eyes.

‘What…what do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded, dismayed that her voice sounded so weak and breathless when she wanted to give the impression that she was in complete control of the situation.

‘I think I am going to kiss you,’ Diego drawled, patently amused by the question. ‘In fact, I know it, querida—just as I know that you want me to.’

Rachel’s heart was jerking painfully beneath her ribs. ‘I don’t,’ she said desperately, her cheeks flaming as she recalled how she had silently urged him to kiss her in the stables yesterday.

‘Liar,’ he said with gentle mockery which disguised the tension that gripped him. Her skin was almost translucent, her peaches-and-cream complexion as exquisite as a work of art, and her mouth, pink and moist and slightly parted, was a temptation he could no longer resist. The sexual awareness between them was white-hot—and mutual. Rachel might try to deny it, but her eyes were huge with excitement, the invitation in their depths unmistakable. He hesitated for a second, wanting to savour the anticipation, but as he brushed his lips over hers in that first explorative caress and felt her tentative response, hunger coursed through his veins and with a muffled groan he crushed her mouth beneath his and kissed her with unrestrained passion. It did not cross Rachel’s mind to resist him—and, even if her brain clung to some last vestige of sanity, her body had a will of its own and demanded her complete and utter surrender. Diego’s lips were warm and firm, sliding over hers with such erotic skill that she simply melted against him and opened her mouth, her heart thudding in her chest at the first bold thrust of his tongue.

Nothing in her life had prepared her for the storm of sensations that swept through her. She had never experienced true desire before; not this desperate need for something she did not even understand but which raged inside her as wild and dangerous as a bush fire.

Perhaps her subconscious mind had deliberately subdued her normal sexual urges? she wondered vaguely, finding it hard to think straight when Diego slid his arms around her and drew her against the hard wall of his chest.

But now those urges had been awakened, and she could not control them. The pressure of his mouth on hers was as addictive as a drug, and she wanted more. She placed her hands on his chest and felt the heat of his body through his silk shirt. What would it be like to feel his bare skin pressed against hers?

But, before she could give in to her heated fantasy, Diego suddenly dropped down so that he was sitting on the edge of her makeshift bed and pulled her onto his lap.

‘That’s better, hmm…?’ he murmured against her mouth, before he kissed her again, moving his lips on hers with undisguised passion which sent a shiver of need down her spine. She was trembling, every nerve-ending tingling, and when he brushed his hand lightly over her breast she shivered in anticipation of a more intimate caress.

‘Do you like that, querida?’ His voice was a husky growl, but Rachel was beyond giving an answer, the feelings he was arousing in her were new and wondrous and she was swept away to a place where nothing mattered except that Diego should continue to kiss her and touch her. She heard him mutter something in his own language, and was vaguely aware of his fingers gently stroking her waist before inching up towards her ribs once more. The bright sunlight streaming through the window made her squint, and through her half closed eyes he seemed dark and forbidding—a stranger who had kissed her until she could not think straight.

As he gently increased the pressure of his caresses, Rachel suddenly drew in a sharp breath. Aware that her rapid intake of air had nothing to do with arousal, Diego quickly removed his hands before he gently pushed her shirt over her shoulder, revealing the fragile line of her collarbone—and the mass of purple bruises that contrasted starkly with her pale skin.

‘Your injuries are worse even than I imagined,’ he said harshly, the sound of his voice shattering the last of the sexual haze that had held Rachel a willing prisoner in his arms. The fire in her veins cooled as quickly as if he had thrust her beneath an ice-cold shower, leaving her feeling slightly sick. What had she been thinking, allowing a man she barely knew to kiss her, and touch her…?

Diego was staring at her bony shoulder with a look of undisguised horror, and she felt embarrassed that he was clearly repelled by her body. With a jerky movement that jolted her ribs and caused her to wince in pain, she snatched the edges of her shirt together to hide the offending bruises from his gaze. ‘I’d like you to leave,’ she said tightly. ‘You’ve had your fun.’

‘My fun?’ Diego stiffened, his eyes narrowing on her flushed face.

Rachel was aware that she sounded abrupt to the point of rudeness, but she was dying of mortification as she recalled her wanton response to him. What must he think of her? She had made no attempt to stop him kissing her. The moment he had taken her in his arms, she had melted against him and kissed him back; and her soft moans of pleasure when he had caressed her must have sent out a message that she was his for the taking.

Since she was old enough to understand adult relationships, she had proudly announced that she would never act like her mother, lurching blindly between marriages and affairs with no thought to the consequences. She would never allow any man that kind of power over her, she’d stated confidently. Yet here she was, practically making love with a stranger just because he was the most gorgeous male she’d ever met.

‘I don’t know what you were expecting,’ she snapped, taking her anger with herself out on him, ‘but I am not the kind of woman who jumps into bed with a man five minutes after meeting him.’

‘You could have fooled me,’ Diego drawled, the warmth that had blazed in his amber eyes turning rapidly to an expression of icy arrogance. ‘I was not expecting anything,’ he snapped, furious with himself that he had come on to her like some callow youth. It was not his style. He always played it cool with women, and he had meant to stop after one brief kiss. Rachel’s passionate response had blown him away, but he wasn’t prepared to take all the blame. ‘Do you seriously expect me to believe that if I hadn’t stopped just then, you would have called a halt?’ He gave a disbelieving laugh that sparked Rachel’s temper. ‘Don’t kid yourself, Rachel. Your need was as great as mine—and still is,’ he said coolly as he trailed his hand insolently down the front of her shirt and noted how her nipples jutted to attention.

He watched her cheeks flood with colour, and with an impatient movement he stood up and strode over to the door of the caravan, snatching oxygen into his lungs as he stared over the lush green English countryside. He was only going to be here for a few weeks, and he had a job to do that promised to be interesting. Rachel played an important role at Hardwick. He had learned from talking to the other grooms that she was highly regarded for her dedication to the horses and the polo club, and he needed to establish a good working relationship with her. The attraction between them was seriously inconvenient—but if Rachel could fight it then so could he.

‘This was a mistake,’ she said huskily. For some reason the discernible tremor in her voice tugged at Diego’s insides. He turned his head and saw that she had buttoned her shirt right up to the neck. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to kiss me…and I admit I got carried away. I can’t believe I fell for the “can I come in for coffee?” line,’ she choked. Her eyes fell on the glorious yellow roses and she felt sick. ‘Is that what the flowers were for—to soften me up for a quick sex session?’

‘Of course not,’ he grated, outraged at the accusation. She was making it sound as though she was some virginal innocent and he was an utter bastard who had cynically planned to seduce her, but neither was true. ‘It was just a kiss,’ he said coldly. ‘I assure you I had no intention of asking you to jump into bed with me.’

It might have been ‘just a kiss’ to him, but for Rachel it had been the most devastatingly sensual experience of her life. Still, she would rather die than let him see how much he affected her, and she preferred to carry out a post-mortem of her behaviour away from his mocking gaze. ‘Please go,’ she said shakily. ‘I think it would be best if we both forgot this…this…’

‘Fascinating interlude?’ Diego suggested sarcastically.

‘Get out!’ The glittering amusement in his eyes was the last straw and she clenched her fists and dared him—dared him—to say another word.

‘I’m going.’ He sauntered down the caravan steps and glanced back at her, his tone no longer mocking but quietly serious as he murmured, ‘I agree we should try to forget the sexual chemistry that exists between us, Rachel. But I wonder if we can.’

CHAPTER THREE

THE heatwave, which had been unusual for early May, broke and on Monday morning Rachel walked up to the stables in the rain, dreading facing Diego again. Over the weekend she had come to the dismal conclusion that she had seriously overreacted. Of course he hadn’t kissed her as a prelude to persuading her to sleep with him. He was a gorgeous playboy and a sporting hero who was frequently photographed in the tabloids in the company of beautiful models. He was hardly likely to have felt uncontrollable lust for a scruffy stable-girl.

His scathing dismissal of their kiss emphasised how unimportant he regarded the whole episode, but she had acted like a shocked virgin from a Victorian melodrama. No doubt that was because she was a shocked virgin, she acknowledged gloomily. Diego had made her feel things she had never felt before, and now she felt restless and unfulfilled.

She did not see him until later in the afternoon, when she and a few of the other grooms had been out exercising some of the polo ponies and gave them one last gallop back to the stables. Diego was wearing a knee-length black oilskin coat and matching wide-brimmed hat that shielded his face, but his height and the width of his shoulders made him instantly recognisable, and Rachel’s heart lurched when she reined in her horse and they trotted into the yard.

‘Are you sufficiently recovered from your accident to be riding?’ he greeted her as he strode over and caught hold of her pony’s bridle.

‘I’m fine,’ she replied automatically, ignoring the nagging pain in her ribs. Her eyes were drawn to his mouth, and she blushed as she recalled the tingling pleasure of his kiss. She saw something flicker in his eyes and hastily looked away from him. ‘I’d better go and rub Charlie Boy down. He’s covered in mud.’

‘You both are,’ Diego said dryly. He did not understand how he could possibly be turned on by Rachel when she was wearing a bulky waxed jacket and mud-spattered jodhpurs. He usually liked women to look feminine and alluring—as if they’d spent their days in the beauty parlour and came to him beautifully groomed and coiffed and dressed in exquisite couture gowns. Rachel looked as though she had rolled in every muddy puddle she’d come across but, to his self-disgust, he imagined undressing her slowly, layer by layer, until he exposed her slender, pale body.

‘How are the bruises?’ he asked roughly.

‘Fading,’ she mumbled, remembering how he had unfastened her shirt and discovered the ugly purple marks on her shoulder, and how the desire in his eyes had rapidly disappeared. What would he make of her now that the bruises were turning an unattractive greenish yellow? She would never know, she told herself firmly. She was never going to allow him to touch her again, let alone undress her—and, from the cool expression in his eyes, he obviously regretted the whole episode as much as she did.

‘You could have taken another day off,’ he murmured. ‘I can see that your shoulder is still stiff.’

‘It’s fine—and I’m not used to sitting around doing nothing. I’m not the world’s most patient patient,’ she owned honestly.

Amusement glinted in his eyes at her understatement. ‘No, I don’t suppose you are. When you’ve seen to your horse I’ll give you a lift home. I have to go into the village and the farm is on my way.’

‘Oh, no, it’s okay—I’m not going home just yet.’

He frowned. ‘There’s nothing more to do here today.’

‘I want to take Piran over the jumps,’ Rachel admitted reluctantly.