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An hour into their chat and they were still going strong. It turned out she did have a talent for teasing out interesting facts, after all. Ruiz had relaxed enough to laugh when she told him about some of her more colourful teenage years. ‘There was the home perm, the fake tan incident, and the gothic fright phase that almost got me thrown out of school. I tried to dye my red hair black, and it turned out green.’
When Ruiz pulled a face his sexy mouth pressed down in the most attractive way. ‘So what did you get up to?’ she pressed.
‘Do you mean, what can I tell you about?’ Ruiz shook his head as he accepted the challenge. ‘I ran away to the pampas when I was about fifteen. When you live on an estancia the size of a small country there is only the pampas to run away to.’
‘Lucky you.’
‘I didn’t think so, aged fifteen.’
It was just another form of isolation, Holly mused, thinking back to her own uncertain teenage years.
‘I lived like a wild boy off the land.’
And she could picture him with limbs as brown as the parched earth he rode across, and his frame as lean as the predators that circled his campfire each night. ‘Weren’t you afraid?’
‘I was too young to know fear. I was fit and strong, and thought myself invincible.’
She couldn’t breathe for a moment, and then the dark eyes that had been dancing with laughter one moment stilled as Ruiz levelled a brooding stare on her face. Lifting one lock of her hair, he curled it around his finger. ‘I can’t believe you tried to dye your beautiful hair, or that you risked turning it into a frizz with a perm.’
‘Risked?’ Holly queried, pulling back, wishing she were ready for this and accepting she might never be. ‘My hair not only frizzed, it fell out. I thought it would never grow back.’
‘You thought no man would ever look at you again?’ he suggested.
‘It isn’t easy being a teenager—for anyone. So, what were you like?’ she pressed. ‘I mean when you grew out of the running-away-to-the-pampas stage?
‘In my early twenties I was insufferably arrogant.’
‘No?’ Holly mocked. ‘I find that impossible to believe.’
He laughed. ‘Believe,’ he assured her. ‘I was quite ridiculous. And rude.’
‘But you’re so polite now.’
‘Why, thank you. I guess my manners managed somehow to survive those years. I have my older brother Nacho to thank for them. He was always very strict with us.’
‘Tell me about him,’ Holly pressed. ‘Tell me about the band of brothers and your sister Lucia.’
‘You probably know Lucia better than I do.’ But he told her how they all felt they owed everything they were and everything they had to Nacho, who had stayed to raise his siblings when their parents had died in a flood.
How could she not warm to this man? Holly wondered as Ruiz’s massive shoulders eased in a regretful shrug while he tried and failed to recover memories of his parents from his early childhood. The more she learned about him, the harder it was going to be to live with him and keep things light—let alone write about him with any form of impartiality. Tugging her feet free from Bouncer’s furry weight, she left the table for the relative security of the sink. ‘I’ll finish clearing up,’ she offered. ‘You can go and—’
‘I can go and … what?’ Ruiz murmured.
He was standing right behind her, Holly realised, quivering as she felt the caress of Ruiz’s breath on her neck. She started to launch into some excuse to move away, but Ruiz was way ahead of her. ‘Goodnight, Holly,’ he said. ‘And thanks for supper. It was great.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Reality bites.
Love life.
Lustful thoughts.
THE headings for her personal diary were as far as she got. She would have to change her way of working, Holly decided. She didn’t want to think too closely about reality where her love life was concerned when the only love life she wanted was one she didn’t have the courage t
o embrace and couldn’t have anyway. She would confine her writing to her fictionalised column in ROCK! It didn’t hurt so much. She couldn’t bring herself to be flip or even name the deeper feelings Ruiz had stirred inside her.
‘There’s no hope for you, Holly Valiant,’ she told her reflection in the bedroom mirror. ‘You are a lost cause where men are concerned.’ But with fair weather and a following wind she might still become a reasonable journalist one day. Opening the lid on her laptop, she began to write.
