Argentinian Playboy, Unexpected Love-Child

He shook his head. ‘That’s not a good idea. It’s your first day back and you must be tired.’ He had watched her on several occasions during the day, when she had been unaware of him, and he was astounded at how hard she worked. She was so petite, and the life of a stable-hand was physically demanding, but from the moment she had arrived at the stables early this morning she had taken on more than her fair share of the workload.

If Rachel was honest, she was worn out and ached all over, but her innate stubbornness rebelled at Diego’s dictatorial tone. ‘Olympic champions don’t get to the top of their sport by giving in every time they’re tired,’ she said briskly. ‘Piran and I both need all the practice we can get before our next competition.’

‘Santa Madre! You are the most headstrong, argumentative…’ Diego inhaled deeply, trying to control his temper. ‘I understand your desire to succeed as a showjumper, but it’s sheer folly to take unnecessary risks.’

‘Jumping is a dangerous sport—as is polo,’ Rachel said tightly. ‘How can you warn me about taking risks when your whole career has been built on the fact that you consistently risk your safety when you play? I’ve watched footage of you competing in tournaments, and you ride with a crazy disregard for your safety—almost as if you’ve got a death-wish,’ she added, her voice faltering when the hard gleam in Diego’s eyes warned her that she had gone too far.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he snapped coldly. ‘I’ve been at the top of my sport for the past ten years and I know what I’m doing.’

Rachel shrugged. ‘Fine—let’s agree that I won’t give you advice on your sport, and you won’t tell me how to do mine.’

Diego glared at the mutinous line of her mouth and was seriously tempted to kiss her into submission. She was as strong-willed and reckless as…as he had been at twenty-two, he owned grimly. She thought she was infallible, just as he had a decade ago, and he wanted to warn her that she wasn’t—no one was.

Once he had been headstrong and impetuous, but it had been those traits that had caused his brother’s death. Diego closed his eyes briefly, trying to stem the wave of pain that swept through him as he pictured Eduardo’s lifeless body. Even after all this time the memories were agonising and the pain still raw. The ache in Diego’s heart had never eased—nor had the belief that he had no right to experience happiness in his life when he had unwittingly caused Eduardo’s accident.

Rachel was wrong about one thing; he brooded grimly as he watched her dismount and lead her pony into the stable. He did not have a death-wish—it was simply that his survival or otherwise was something that did not interest him unduly. He had spent the last ten years pushing himself to the limits and daring death to take him as it had taken his brother, and it was ironic that his recklessness had made him a national sporting hero in Argentina and a world renowned polo champion.

Hardwick Polo Tournament was always a popular event, but this year more tickets had been sold than usual because Diego Ortega would be playing for the home team. For the past two weeks Rachel had arrived at the stables at dawn and worked until dusk, helping to prepare the estate for the influx of twenty thousand visitors. Somehow she managed to fit in riding Piran. She’d felt apprehensive the first time she had taken him over the jumps after he had thrown her, and Diego’s brooding presence at the edge of the paddock had only made things worse. But she forced herself to control her nerves—aware that Piran would pick up on her tension, and she was euphoric when he jumped the six foot fence with no problems.

She was less happy that Diego seemed to have appointed himself as her minder and turned up without fail every evening when she took Piran down to the practice paddock. His presence unsettled her. He unsettled her, she admitted when she watched him stride into the yard on the morning of the polo tournament. He looked breathtakingly handsome in the Hardwick team colours—a gold shirt, taupe jodhpurs and black leather boots. As usual the sight of him made her pulse-rate quicken and she blushed when he looked over at her, the slight smile on his lips telling her that he was aware that she had been staring at him.

She had developed a monumental crush on him, she acknowledged ruefully, feeling a shiver of excitement run the length of her spine when his gaze lingered on her. She worked with him closely every day and was finding it increasingly hard to hide her attraction to him. And it was not just her physical awareness of him. Watching him train the polo ponies, she had been impressed by his skill and patience, and his amazing affinity with horses. He was an outstanding horseman, and she knew she could learn a lot from him. She wished she could relax and chat to him as easily as the other stable-hands did, but she felt tongue-tied whenever he spoke to her, and was terrified he would guess how much she longed for him to kiss her again.

Diego had been chatting with the other members of the Hardwick team, but now he detached himself from the group and walked over to collect the first of the four horses he would ride during the match. ‘Do you have a partner to escort you to the after-tournament party, Rachel?’ he queried casually as he swung himself into the saddle.

He hadn’t yet donned his hard hat and in the sunlight his hair gleamed like raw silk on his shoulders, blown back from his face by the breeze. Rachel’s heart jolted beneath her ribs and her voice emerged as a strangled sound. ‘Alex asked me to go with him,’ she mumbled. Alex was another groom and one of her closest friends. She saw Diego glance across the yard to where the copper-haired young man was leading out a polo pony, and he gave a slight shrug.

‘What a pity. I was hoping I could persuade you to partner me tonight.’ He gave her a bland smile, but the expression in his eyes stole her breath. It was gone before she could define it—yet she was sure she had not mistaken the look of feral hunger in his gaze, and she felt a surge of gut-churning disappointment that she had missed her chance to attend the party with him.

But what chance did she realistically have with Diego? she brooded later as she watched him tear around the polo pitch, controlling his horse with awesome skill. He dominated the field, and she doubted there was a woman present among the spectators who was not bowled over by his stunning looks and blatant virility.

At the end of the tournament he was presented with the winner’s trophy by Felicity Hardwick, who looked pink cheeked and flustered as she gave him a congratulatory kiss. Afterwards he posed for photos with the promotional glamour models, and as Rachel stared at the bevy of beautiful blondes crowded around him, and then glanced down at her mud-stained jodhpurs, she wondered why she had thought he could ever be interested in her. He was going back to Hardwick Hall for a champagne reception, but she still had hours of work to do at the stables. They were worlds apart, she accepted with a heavy heart, and for her own good she had to stop mooning over him like a lovesick teenager.

Dusk was falling by the time she returned to her caravan, and she could summon little enthusiasm for the party which Earl Hardwick gave every year for guests and staff of the polo club. But she had promised Alex she would go, and so she stripped out of her filthy clothes and squeezed into the tiny shower cubicle.

‘You look fantastic,’ Alex greeted her when he arrived to drive her to the party. ‘You should dress up more often, Rache. I can’t remember the last time I saw you in something other than jodhpurs.’

‘I can hardly trip around the stables in a skirt and heels,’ she pointed out. She felt ridiculously girly in her pink floral skirt and a silky chemise with delicate shoestring straps that left her shoulders bare. She had swept her hair up into a loose knot on top of her head, but it was so fine and silky that stray tendrils had already worked loose and framed her face. On an impulse, which she assured herself had nothing to do with the knowledge that Diego would be at the party, she was even wearing make-up—just a touch of mascara to darken her lashes and a pale pink gloss on her lips.

A huge marquee had been erected in the grounds of the Hardwick estate and the party was already in full swing when they arrived. Rachel’s eyes were immediately drawn to Diego. Taller than everyone else in the room, his black tailored trousers and matching silk shirt emphasised his height and the breadth of his shoulders. With his dark hair falling onto his shoulders, and his gleaming olive skin, he was exotic and different, and other men paled into insignificance beside him.

She was not the only woman watching him, she noted moodily when she glanced around the marquee and saw that Felicity Hardwick and a gaggle of her aristocratic friends, all dressed in haute couture, were openly ogling him. Rachel instantly felt underdressed in her cheap skirt, which she’d bought from a market stall. Her arms ached from grooming fifteen polo ponies, and the evening suddenly seemed very flat. She was on her way over to the bar to tell Alex she was going home when Diego stepped into her path.

‘Do you think your red-haired friend will object if I ask you to dance?’ he murmured, his eyes gleaming with amusement and something else when Rachel’s face flooded with colour.

‘Alex and I are simply friends, and I’ll dance with whoever I like,’ she replied breathlessly, her heart racing as Diego caught her hand in his and slid his other arm around her waist.

‘Then dance with me, querida,’ he invited with a sultry smile that made her heart thud. ‘You value your independence, don’t you?’ he commented, trying to focus on their conversation rather than the fire coursing through his veins when he drew Rachel’s slender body against his thighs.

‘More than anything,’ she told him seriously. ‘The most important lesson I learned from my mother’s tangled love-life is that I don’t want to be beholden to any man.’

She sounded so fierce that Diego’s brows rose. ‘Perhaps you have not yet found a man who excites you sufficiently that you would want to be beholden to him?’

‘That’s not likely to happen.’ Rachel wondered what Diego would say if she admitted that he excited her unbearably. Since he had kissed her in her caravan they seemed to have been playing a waiting game where the sexual chemistry between them had simmered beneath the surface and they had both tried to ignore it. But the look in his eyes tonight told her that he was bored of the game. She could feel the tension in his body, and when he held her close so that her head rested on his chest she could hear the erratic beat of his heart and knew that it matched her own.

‘What about marriage and children?’ he queried curiously. ‘Don’t you want those?’ Every woman he’d ever met had seemed to regard him as suitable husband material, and their first demand for commitment was invariably the point at which he ended a relationship. Rachel was a novelty in more ways than one, he brooded as he glanced down at her simple skirt and top and acknowledged that she looked sexier than any of the women at the party who were wearing designer outfits.

Rachel shrugged. ‘I believe children deserve to have two parents who are committed to each other and, as I don’t want to get married, I guess I won’t have them. Perhaps I’ll feel different in the future, but right now I don’t have any maternal urges. I’d rather concentrate on my riding career.’

Diego’s mouth curved into a smile that stole her breath. ‘So, you are a free spirit and you can do whatever pleases you?’

‘Yes.’ The word escaped as a little gasp as he stroked his hand down to the base of her spine and exerted gentle pressure so that he brought her pelvis into direct contact with his. The hungry gleam in his eyes filled her with a feverish anticipation. Did he know how much he was pleasing her, holding her like this? How much she longed for him to lower his mouth to hers and kiss her as he had done two weeks ago?

He knew, she thought dreamily as their bodies swayed together in time with the music, one tune spilling into another so that she lost all sense of time and place and was conscious only of Diego—the hardness of his body and the subtle perfume of his aftershave, mingled with male pheromones that tantalised her senses. She didn’t want to ever stop dancing, and felt a lurch of disappointment when the band announced they would be taking a break while the firework display took place. But, instead of releasing her, Diego kept his arm firmly around her waist as he led her outside and drew her to the edge of the crowd.

Starbursts of gold and silver shot across the sky and were reflected in the inky blackness of the lake. Rachel tilted her head to watch, supremely aware of Diego standing behind her, and she gave a little shiver when she felt him brush his lips down her neck in a feather-light caress.

The pyrotechnic display ended with a cascade of sparkling colours falling down to earth. There was a round of applause and, as the guests returned to the marquee, silence fell around them, a prickling, shimmering silence so intense that Rachel was aware of the faint, uneven whisper of her breath.

‘It’s not working, is it?’ Diego murmured in her ear, his accent very pronounced and heart-stoppingly sexy.

Rachel turned to face him and shook her head, bemused by the question. ‘What isn’t?’

‘Trying to ignore the hunger that is eating away at both of us,’ he said softly.

She understood immediately, but understanding did not lessen her confusion. ‘But you never gave any indication during the past two weeks that you wanted…’ She broke off, her face flaming, and his smile widened into a predatory grin.

‘You?’ He finished her sentence for her. ‘I promised myself that I would behave in a professional manner in the workplace. But that doesn’t mean I have not secretly fantasised about barricading us in the hay barn and making love to you until we were both utterly sated.’