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‘Nothing broken?’
Alejandro had his hands all over her, checking for damage, and Lulu rather enjoyed it and put her arms around his neck.
‘Nothing a bath won’t fix.’
He seemed relieved she was unhurt, and slid his hands over her bottom encased in jodhpurs. ‘I should probably supervise this bath…you might drown.’
‘I am a notoriously bad swimmer.’ She kissed him, her arms tight around his neck.
A few mornings and several falls and bruises later, in her quest to ride at least competently, Lulu awoke to hear Alejandro moving about.
She lifted her head off the pillow. It was still dark.
‘Where are you going? What’s happening?’
He came over to the bed and the mattress gave beside her as he sat down and bent to stroke her hair.
‘It’s a working day. Go back to sleep. I’ll see you after breakfast.’
Lulu peered at the time glowing from the digital clock. It was half past four. She struggled to sit up, switching on the lamp so that she could see his face.
He was fully dressed, and so beautiful her heart contracted. ‘Take me with you, if I won’t be in the way. I would like to see how the estate works and what you do all day.’
He stroked her bare shoulder, looked curiously into her half-asleep eyes. ‘Are you sure?’
Which meant, could she cope?
Lulu sat herself up properly. ‘I won’t know if I don’t try.’ Her expression drooped. ‘But I don’t want to get in the way.’
A smile broke across his face. He scooped her up, bedclothes and all.
‘What are you doing?’ She laughed, fighting a yawn at the same time.
‘Putting you in a shower, amorcito. Then we’re going to dress you like a gaucho.’
A very pretty gaucho, in a cotton shirt and trousers that tucked into long leather boots.
It was a long day, but then they all were—working with the horses, driving out to a horse auction some kilometres away, checking fences. Lulu remained at his side. Sometimes she stayed in the car for a while, and he didn’t question her reason, but she would eventually emerge and ask questions about what he was doing.
Everywhere they went she drew stares—because he’d never brought a woman to the estancia after his brief early marriage, and Valentina certainly hadn’t been a presence in his working life.
At the auction he stood with her on the rails, his arms either side of her.
He couldn’t blame the other men for looking. Even amidst the glamorous crowd at the wedding Lulu had stood out. Her lithe height and her embracing of a timeless femininity in everything she did had made the castle a perfect setting for a girl who seemed to have one foot in the past. At a busy horse auction, amidst the dust and the gauchos, she was glorious in a stylish vintage jacket and the thirties-style cutaway pants she seemed to prefer to wear—a magical creature come among them, eyes shining, smiling radiantly and asking questions.
No one looking on would be able to tell how nervous she was.
Dios, how hadn’t he noticed that about her until now? Plainly because she’d hidden it like a pro.
But she trusted him enough now to tell him her secret, and that knowledge had ramped up his possessiveness tenfold.
When she looked up at him and smiled he found he couldn’t concentrate on what was going on around them. Her kiss was a sigh just below his ear, where he discovered he was ticklish, and then her head was resting against his shoulder in an attitude of trust that had another emotion thundering through him.
His arm tightened around her. Alejandro knew then that if anyone ever tried to harm her he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions.
He also knew there were probably some paparazzi in this crowd. Argentina celebrated its sporting heroes. He was rarely seen with women, so he knew that if there were, his turning up at an auction with Lulu under his arm was going to cause a bit of a feeding frenzy.
It didn’t matter. He’d already made his decision.
