AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“My mother didn’t like me doing things for Baby. She said—she said it made me mess up my clothes, and that I always smelled of horses, and that none of her—her friends would like me that way.”
Dio! Could a man go from despising a woman he’d never met to abhorring her?
“But you took care of Baby anyway,” he said softly.
“Yes. And then, one day…”
Her voice cracked. Luca cursed. He reached for her, but she stepped back. The stallion snorted, lowered his head and nibbled the grass.
“One day, he when I got to him, he was down. Not lying down—I knew horses did that. This was different. He was down, and breathing hard.”
“Sweetheart. Don’t.”
“I couldn’t get him up. I tried and tried, but I just couldn’t.”
Luca waited. He felt sorrow for the horse and greater sorrow for a skinny child, because surely she had been skinny, struggling to bring the dying animal to its feet.
“I called the police. At first, they wouldn’t listen. They said it was a private matter. We had a local TV station. KLUS. They ran a program they called Us Helping You. They advertised it all the time. ‘Phone us when the authorities won’t help you,’ they’d say.”
The stallion whinnied and stepped away from her, lowered his head and nibbled at the grass. Cheyenne watched him, her posture rigid, her eyes dark.
“And you were how old, cara?”
“Thirteen.”
“Thirteen,” he said, wishing he could have been beside her then to protect her from whatever was coming.
“A reporter showed up. The people who owned Baby sent for my mother. She tried to make me go with her, but I wouldn’t. And then the police came. And when they saw what things were like…” A sob burst from her throat, and she buried her face in her hands. “If only I’d done something sooner,” she whispered. “If I’d reported his owners right away—”
“Sweetheart, no, you did all that you could.” Gently, Luca took her hands from her face. “Think of the months of kindness you’d shown him.” Were horses aware of such things? He had to believe they were, and he told her that. “He must have loved you for all you’d done for him.”
“What I know for sure,” she said softly, “is that I loved him with all my heart.”
“So,” he said, trying desperately for a positive ending if not a happy one, “the owners were fined, yes?”
She nodded. “That’s what the police said would happen.”
“And your mother understood you had done the right thing…”
Cheyenne looked at him and he knew that for the rest of his life, he would remember what he saw in her eyes.
“My mother took me home,” she said in a toneless voice, “and beat the crap out of me.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said, because the softness of the various Italian words for God no longer seemed to be enough.
“It wasn’t the first time. The difference was… That day, I hit her back.”
Luca could feel the rage swelling inside him. The savagery. He wanted to kick in a fence post. To punch his fist through a wall. Most of all, he wanted to take Cheyenne in his arms and tell her he would never let anything or anyone hurt her again, but he knew how fragile this moment was.
Everything in him warned that he and his beautiful lover were standing at the edge of a precipice.
She stared at him. Then she laughed. It was the laugh of a brave, tough, heartbroken thirteen-year-old kid.
“I gave her a black eye.”
“Good girl.” He cleared his throat. “And what happened next? Did you have anyone you could go to for help?”
She hesitated. He could almost see her withdrawing.
“Things worked out.”
It was an answer that raised more questions than it answered.
“How?”
She shrugged. “They just did.”
“Yes, but surely—”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Okay?”
He nodded. And wondered what in hell to do or say next.
She had opened herself to him. He knew enough about her now to realize that it was not something she did easily. The question was what to do about it.
He wanted to soothe her. To gather her close and hold her. He wanted to tell her that if her goddamned mother were still alive, he’d—he’d—
“Hell,” he said, and he gave up logic and reached for her.
She came to him stiffly, arms at her sides, and he suspected she was already regretting that she’d told him all she had. He knew that a wiser man might know the right things to say to ease her pain, but he wasn’t a wise man.
He was a man whose life was spiraling out of control.
Terrifyingly, magnificently out of control.
So he held her and rocked her and, after a while, she sighed, looped her arms around his neck and leaned into his embrace.
He shut his eyes and rested his chin on the top of her head.
“And,” he said softly, “Baby is the reason you wanted to buy Sweetwater Ranch. To donate it to Horse Sense so that abused horses could be assured of… What?”
“Horse Sense is for kids,” she said, looking up at him smiling. “It runs something called equine therapy. Kids—abused kids, disabled kids, kids with problems—are taught to ride and care for horses. There’s something about bonding with a gentle animal that can change a child’s life.”
He felt foolish and told her so.
“No,” she said, “don’t feel foolish! It’s a new field—why would you know about it? Besides, I love that you were willing to donate money to an organization you believed had to do with animal welfare. You’re a truly good person, Luca Bellini.”
He shook his head.
“You are what is good, bellissima,” he said.
She looked deep into his eyes. Then she framed his face between her hands and brought his mouth down to hers.
He kissed her, and then there were no more words.
There were only the things that lovers had always told each other with their hands, their hearts, their very souls.
* * *
Luca phoned his P.A. and told her to cancel his appointments for the rest of the week.
“All of them, sir?”
“All of them,” he said.
When he ended the call, smiling at how politely shocked Jessica had sounded, he began planning the first real vacation of his life.
He wanted to show Cheyenne Tuscany, but what parts? Should they drive through Siena and stop at the small, family-owned vineyards that dotted the hills? Head for Florence, the Uffizi Museum and some of the most beautiful paintings and sculptures in the world? Visit La Torre di Pisa and snap one of those silly photos that made you look as if you were holding up the leaning tower?
That night, as she slept, he left the bed and sat mapping things out by the light of a small lamp at a desk in his bedroom. He was quiet and the light was on low, but she woke anyway and asked, sleepily,
what he was doing.
“I am trying to figure out what I should take you to see and when.”
He was frustrated. She could tell by the strength of his accent. She sat up against the pillows, the light blanket over her breasts, ready to pull on the silk robe—his silk robe—that lay on a chair beside the bed and see if she could help him when an amazing thought occurred to her.
“Luca?”
He was sitting with his back to her. She could see his dark hair standing up in little tufts and she knew that meant he’d been running his hands through it.
“Luca.”
He sighed and swung toward her. “Si, dolcezza. Is the light keeping you awake? I am almost done here and then—”
“I have an idea,” she said softly. “Why don’t we just get into the car and drive?”
He frowned. “No plan?”
“No plan.” She smiled. “Should be interesting, don’t you think? A pair of control freaks like us, just going wherever the mood takes us.”
For a long moment, he said nothing. Then, a smile she’d come to know and adore curved his lips.
He’d been working on an iPad. She watched as he shut it off and placed it on the desk.
“Wherever the mood takes us,” he said.
She nodded. “Why not?”
He rose to his feet. The way he was looking at her, combined with the heat of his smile, sent her heart racing.
“A good idea, bellissima. An excellent idea.” He walked towards her, his steps slow and deliberate. He’d pulled on a pair of sweatpants when he left the bed, only the pants and nothing more. She looked at the beautiful lines of his body, the muscled shoulders and chest, the tight abs, and the race of her heart quickened.
“Luca?” she whispered. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that going wherever the mood takes us is an interesting idea.” Without taking his eyes from her, he opened the door to his closet, reached inside and plucked something from it. A scarf. A blue scarf. Silk. Or maybe cashmere, the sort of thing he might tuck into a coat collar on a cool day.
“For instance,” he said, his voice gone thick and low, “I am in the mood to have you feel, but not see. To feel, but not touch.”
They had gone out to dinner; his jacket, shirt and tie lay on a chair and he paused only long enough to pick up the tie. A blue silk tie.
