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Maybe she should make the effort, Abby thought.
Yes, he had hurt her a lot when she had told him about Hunter’s attack but, trying to be fair to her father, though he hadn’t handled it well, maybe he had been grieving.
Never more than at that time had Abby wanted her mother, but she had been dead for three years by then.
Perhaps it was time to try and be family again?
She jumped a little as Matteo came back to her side.
‘Sorry about that,’ Matteo said. ‘Allegra already knows that my grandfather is ill but I don’t think she knew just how bad things have got.’
‘Is he very sick?’
Matteo nodded and for a moment, just a brief moment, he looked at Abby and wondered if he could tell her about the necklace and the real reason that he had made contact.
It almost felt as if he could.
But then he remembered the brittle woman he had met yesterday and decided that no, it was far too risky to chance it.
He was here for the team; he really was. There was no need to confuse things by bringing up the necklace just yet.
All that could wait.
‘Come on...’ Matteo said.
‘Where?’
‘To the sky.’
There were helicopter rides and he took her on one, and Abby, who apart from the racetrack had only seen one restaurant and one boutique during her time in Dubai, was treated to a bird’s-eye view.
Over the artificial Palm Islands they flew and Abby had never seen anything more stunning. And she also saw where Matteo had suggested they go to dinner. The city seemed to glitter gold and silver and they flew, too, over the racetrack where the first leg of the Henley Cup would be held.
This time next week, she’d be down there, Abby thought with a flurry of both nerves and excitement.
They stepped off the helicopter and Abby took a moment more than Matteo did to find her land legs.
‘It makes you dizzy, doesn’t it,’ Matteo said. ‘Let’s go and find something to eat.’
They didn’t have to look very far; there was plenty to choose from, and though they had lunch it was a quick one because, as Matteo leafed through a glossy program, he decided that he wanted to look at the racehorses that were being paraded.
‘Oh, look at that one...’ Abby said. It was a stunning, white, purebred Arabian stallion, so highly strung that he looked as if at any moment he might take off.
‘Bastard!’ Matteo said but didn’t get a chance to explain as someone tapped him on his shoulder.
The sore one.
‘Kedah!’ Matteo grinned as he turned around and saw who it was and he introduced them both. ‘Abby, this is Kedah. We studied briefly together in New York.’
‘Until you dropped out.’
‘I’m still standing,’ Matteo said. ‘And this is Abby, owner and manager of the Boucher racing team.’
‘It is very nice to meet you,’ Sheikh Kedah said. He was incredibly handsome, Abby thought. He was beautifully presented, dressed in a robe of pale gold with a keffiyah tied and skilfully draped but he had that same wild gleam in his eye as Matteo and they made an extremely good-looking pair. Abby could only imagine the sort of trouble these two got into. ‘Your driver did well here last year. Fifth, if I remember rightly?’
Abby nodded, surprised that he knew and pleasantly surprised also that Kedah didn’t mention that, after that race, Pedro had gone on to place nowhere.
Kedah turned to Matteo. ‘How is the shoulder?’
