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‘Naked,’ he’d said at the same time.
Lulu had thrown her napkin at him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous—what kind of stage show would have naked women?’
Alejandro could have named several, but he hadn’t been prepared to risk Lulu throwing something more substantial at him.
He’d cleared his throat. ‘I was given to understand you all performed topless.’
‘Not at all.’
She’d looked so cross his heart had stumbled. She’d told him once before that she wasn’t topless on stage, and he realised he hadn’t entirely believed her. He hadn’t then—but he did now. Lulu didn’t lie. She was almost painfully honest and that was part of why he’d fallen in love with her. She meant what she said.
A woman who meant what she said and did what she said. He waited to feel that old trapped feeling, as if the jaws of some mechanism were closing down on him.
He thought of his mother, railing against the hand life had dealt her. His father, flickering in and out of their lives, as insubstantial a male role model as you could imagine with his string of young girlfriends. His ex-wife, complaining about how he’d trapped her, and that moment of horror when he realised he’d married a woman startlingly like his mother.
He’d vowed he would never be like his father, and he’d held to that. Lulu was with him now because he wouldn’t visit his childhood on any other kid. Especially a kid of his own.
Only that was just a part of the picture.
He knew now why he’d brought Lulu with him to Buenos Aires. Because she wouldn’t do any of those things the people who had been supposed to love him had done.
She wouldn’t cheat and lie and walk away.
Because she loved him.
She wouldn’t be here, curled in his bed every night, if she didn’t love him.
And that was when, like a herd of unbroken Criollos thundering across the plains of his barren heart, it all fell into place.
*
It wasn’t until she saw the wives and girlfriends of the players being photographed with their significant others before the match that Lulu experienced the first drop of cold doubt.
Then, between chukkas, she saw Alejandro being photographed with two socialites, and when she asked questions of Xavier the poor guy tried to distract her by taking her to pet the ponies.
Honestly!
But she didn’t feel confident enough to stalk across the ground, push those two girls onto their behinds and stick a passionate kiss on Alejandro—as well as sticking her heel into his foot!
Instead she stood with her glass of champagne and her smile, sat in her box during the match, decided what ‘separate entrances’ really meant and began to feel sick.
It all made a horrible kind of sense: if she wasn’t pregnant, he didn’t want their relationship to seem official in front of the world.
Lulu told herself not to be silly, not to jump to conclusions. But why else would he do this? Was he ashamed of her? Was it because she was a showgirl and he was a sixth generation du Crozier?
She set her chin mutinously. What was so hot about being descended from a horse-stealing profiteer anyway?
Only she lost her hold on her anger as Alejandro and his team thundered up and down the field. She caught her breath every time he swayed low in his saddle. She knew he wouldn’t fall—she knew intellectually he was the best player on the field. But her heart still sat in her throat and she was relieved when the last goal was scored and the victory cup was filled with champagne.
‘What do we do now?’ she asked Xavier, who had been flirting with a very pretty blonde girl and now turned back to her with ‘duty’ written all over his face.
‘It’s all right,’ she interrupted him as he began to say something about going to the marquee. ‘Why don’t you enjoy yourself here a little longer? I’ll just pop off to the ladies’.’
Xavier didn’t argue with her, and she made her way determinedly towards the sponsor’s marquee.
The pitch was crowded, and there was a great deal of jostling, but she focused on her outcome—which was finding Alejandro.
She saw him with two of his teammates. They were laughing, and Alejandro had the cup under his arm.
