In the Brazilian's Debt

‘I don’t know. I’m in no hurry to see him. Are you?’

‘Liar,’ Danny accused. ‘Your face has pinked up, and your eyes are huge. I’m not going into any further anatomical detail on the basis that it wouldn’t be appropriate between friends. But, honestly, Lizzie, please don’t ask me to believe that you’re not eaten up with excitement at the thought of seeing Chico again.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong. I blame Chico for my obsession with all things equine, and nothing else.’ Which was also a lie, but Danny didn’t need to know that.

‘I remember,’ Danny mused. ‘Since the moment you met Chico, you talked of nothing but having a life with horses, just like him. And now here we are, on his training ranch,’ she exclaimed.

Lizzie faked a laugh, wishing she could join in Danny’s upbeat mood. True, everything on Fazenda Fernandez had surpassed her wildest expectation, and she was more determined than ever to excel and pass her diploma with top honours, but when it came to Chico...

‘Suck him dry, Lizzie, and then take his ideas back to Scotland, so you can use them to set up in competition and destroy him.’

She didn’t hate Chico as much as her father wished she did. In fact, she didn’t hate him at all, but she did feel disillusioned by him. She couldn’t even blame him if he had flirted with her mother, though she guessed Serena would be the instigator. Would Chico force himself on her mother? No. Would he rape her? Absolutely not. But Lizzie’s mother was still a very attractive woman, and Chico had always been a free spirit. But he could have been straight with her instead of promising to rescue her from Rottingdean House, and then disappearing without a word.

‘Share your thoughts,’ Danny insisted, crunching mints noisily as she sprawled out on the hay.

Not a chance, Lizzie thought ruefully. In this instance, she wouldn’t be confiding in her friend. ‘Hang up the tack for me, and then we’ll talk. It’s steaming in here. I’m melting after moving all that hay.’ Fanning herself, Lizzie started to peel off her breeches and claggy top. She relished the freedom of thong and sports bra for a few moments, before reaching for her jeans. ‘The heat, when you’ve been working as hard as we have, certainly takes it out of you.’

‘It’s not the only thing that’s hot,’ Danny observed with mischief in her voice.

‘The men?’ Lizzie pretended disinterest. Wiping her arm across her glowing face, she bundled her bright copper hair up into a band.

Danny opened an eye. ‘Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed them. The gauchos are off-the-scale hot, while the polo players are like gilt-edged invitations to sin.’

‘Really?’ Lizzie’s lips pressed down. ‘I can’t say I’ve noticed.’

‘Like hell you haven’t,’ Danny scoffed.

There was only one man Lizzie was interested in, and their paths hadn’t even crossed yet. She guessed Chico must have been busy catching up with everything that had happened while he’d been away, and doubted he’d even recognise her when they met again. She was hardly fifteen years old now. Nor was she impressionable, or prone to having a crush on a man who looked like a barbarian, and who had the morals of a goat, according to the scandal sheets. It was hard to miss the bad boy of polo, as the sports pages called him, when Chico scored as many front covers on polo magazines as he’d scored goals this season.

Leaning her head back against the wall of the stall with her arms outstretched, she relished the breeze coming in from an open window on her naked skin. ‘Do you think anyone’s going to notice if I just forget to put on my top?’

‘Who’s going to see you?’ Danny pointed out. ‘There’s only one horse in the stable block, and we’re his grooms.’

Lizzie relaxed as her friend hefted the horse’s saddle over her arm, and picked up his bridle. Danny was right. Who was going to see her?

* * *

Coltish limbs and an intriguing flash of naked skin held him motionless for a moment as the girl struggled to pull on a fresh top over what appeared to be—at least to her, judging by her muttered curses—inconveniently large breasts. He wanted to check on a pony that had suffered a bad knock during a match while he’d been away. The pony’s spirit would benefit from human contact and he was keen to make sure it was as comfortable as possible. Anyone who believed animals couldn’t understand what was said to them was missing an empathy gene, in his opinion. He had heard the two female grooms talking, but one of them had left the stall and slipped out of the back entrance that led to the tack room where they stowed their gear. Grooms hanging round so late in the day were either up to no good, or were working late, which meant one of two things: they were dross he’d get rid of, or they were the best of the best. He was keen to find out which category he was dealing with. Shouldering a pitchfork to make the hay bed in the stall more comfortable for the horse, he grabbed a fistful of pony nuts and strolled down the line of stalls.

Emotion caught him square in the gut as a halo of red-gold curls gave the groom’s identity away. He would have known her anywhere, even after all these years. The half-naked body belonged to Lizzie Fane. Perfect.

‘Out of there, now,’ he rapped.

‘What?’ a girl who sounded in no way dismayed demanded. ‘Who is this?’

It was a shock to hear adult Lizzie sounding just like her mother. Not good.

‘I said,’ he repeated in a menacing tone, ‘get out of there now.’

‘Do you mind?’ she replied in the same honeyed voice. ‘Your tone is upsetting the horse.’

She had a nerve. No one cared about horses more than he did.

Had he really imagined he would know how it felt to be confronted by a member of the Fane family on his fazenda? He’d been nowhere close. Anger consumed him as the past rushed back. The humiliation he’d suffered—the expense to Eduardo, thanks to the false accusations made against Chico, and the fact that Lizzie had turned her back on him.

‘I won’t be a minute,’ she murmured.

Was he supposed to wait?

‘There are some things I need to pick up and put away,’ she explained, still in the same mild voice, and still mostly hidden from him in the stall.

‘The clock’s ticking,’ he warned, gritting out each word.

He rested against the wall, thinking back to when he’d been a youth and an easy target for two cheats with their eyes on the money of his sponsor, Eduardo Delgardo. Lies about him forcing himself on Serena Fane, Lizzie’s mother, had tripped so easily off their tongues. Even Eduardo had been hard-pressed to defend him, though the older man had remained his staunchest defender throughout, and had explained, once they were safely back in Brazil, that Lizzie’s grandmother had discovered the truth about the life her son and his wife were leading, and that when they used Chico to try and get money out of Eduardo, it was the last straw for the old lady, who had disinherited her son, and banished both him and his wife from Rottingdean House. Unfortunately, by this time, Lord and Lady Fane had stolen all her money.

For a man to steal money from his mother was incomprehensible to Chico, but he had soon realised that men like Lizzie’s father had no conscience. And now that man’s daughter was here on a scholarship, working towards a diploma, which he would award? You couldn’t make it up.

‘What are you waiting for?’ he snarled as the past blinded him with an angry red mist. He’d waited long enough. Switching on the overhead light, he bathed them both in stark white light, and, lifting the latch, he walked in.

* * *

The man she’d called her friend was right behind her. Smouldering, powerful, different. The Deceiver. The Liar. The youth who had told her that he understood how it must be for her living at Rottingdean House with parents who ignored her, and had promised to take her away. He had failed to deliver on that promise, and her forgiving nature was out of the door. Her body responded eagerly to the hard man of polo before she’d even turned around, but her thoughts were filled with anger and disappointment in the man she had once believed was her friend.

She would have to master those feelings, if she was going to complete the course, Lizzie told herself firmly. And with a muttered apology, she straightened up and turned around.

Light shimmered around Chico, pointing up his darkness. She couldn’t breathe for a moment. His glittering menace had never seemed more pronounced. As she had first suspected when she caught a glimpse of him on the plane, Chico was vastly changed. This wasn’t the ridiculously good-looking youth with the easy smile and relaxed manner, but a hard, driven man, whom life had made suspicious, a man with single-minded determination that had taken Chico Fernandez to the top. That didn’t stop her body burning with lust. Her reaction to him was primal. She had no defence against it. Her mind was scrambled, and yet she was acutely aware of him. Forbidden fruit had never looked this good.

All the more reason to keep her head down and get back to the job, Lizzie reasoned. There were always things to do in the stable, and she was here to accomplish something crucial for the future of Rottingdean, not to rehash the mistakes of the past. She might never be exactly sure what had happened all those years ago, but she knew what she had to do to secure the future of Rottingdean now, and make things right for everyone who worked on the estate, and that didn’t include falling like some heartsick teenager for a man who had proved conclusively that he cared nothing for her.

* * *

Lizzie was bending over with her back to him, loading pots of salve and rolls of bandage into a carrying case. His glance swept over her. Lizzie Fane was all grown up. Long limbs, slender frame, generous hips, and still the same bright red wavy hair, longer than he remembered, and carelessly swept back and bundled into a glowing topknot with strands and curls escaping everywhere. He closed his mind to her attractions, and ground his jaw as the seconds ticked by. The least she could do was acknowledge her boss.

‘Sorry,’ she said, sounding not the least bit repentant, and looking even less so. ‘I had to finish what I was doing.’

He hummed as heat ripped through him, and it was a surprise to find the connection between them was as strong as ever, even after all this time. Once they had been drawn together by mutual curiosity—two people from very different backgrounds, both outsiders in their own way, with only horses in common, but now it was a hot-blooded man, and a beautiful, if icy woman, weighing each other up like prize-fighters from opposite sides of the ring.

‘It’s good to see you again,’ Lizzie announced in a businesslike way.

He replied to this with a steady look. The connection might be there, but they were strangers, he thought, and the steel in Lizzie’s eyes intrigued him. She had always been a tomboy, but there was something in her expression now that suggested she was still hurting because he’d let her down by leaving Rottingdean House all those years ago without saying goodbye. Had he meant so much to her?

When he was least expecting it, she relaxed and smiled. ‘I’m really pleased to be here.’

Now he was confused. What was he to believe? Lizzie with a grudge? Or Lizzie, the student determined to impress? She had always been good at hiding her feelings. She’d had to be. There was only one certainty here. The power of her stunning emerald gaze had hit him like a punch in the gut.

What was wrong with him? He shook her hand, and now he didn’t want to let her go? To feel her hand in his grip, so small, so slender, so cool, had made him want to ask her straight out: what happened to you? To us? Worse, he had to fight the crazy impulse to drag her close and kiss her hard.

‘It’s been a long time, Lizzie,’ he said finally with commendable restraint.