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“I don’t know what we’re doing in a place like this anyway,” she said petulantly.
That was another thing they agreed on. The road, the car, and now this.
What in hell were they doing here?
> Actually the answer was simple. Delia was here because Lucas was supposed to have taken her to the Hamptons this weekend. When he told her he couldn’t, she’d pouted until he said he’d take her to Texas with him.
Lucas was here because his grandfather had suddenly told him that he was expected to meet with Aloysius McDonough at a Texas ranch called El Rancho Grande.
“Who is this man?” Lucas had asked. “I’ve never heard of him or his ranch.”
Felix said that McDonough raised Andalusians.
“And?” Lucas asked, because surely there was more to the request than that. El Rancho Reyes raised some of the finest Andalusians in the world, surely the finest in Spain. If a pretentiously named ranch in Texas raised them, too, he’d have heard of it.
“And,” Felix said, “he has something that I hope will interest you.”
“A horse?” Lucas said in thinly veiled disbelief. “A stud?”
His grandfather had smiled. Actually, he’d chuckled. Lucas’s eyebrows lifted.
“Have I said something amusing, Grandfather?”
“Not at all. It’s just…No. Not a stud.”
“You want me to look at an Andalusian mare on a ranch no one’s ever heard of?”
“She’s not Andalusian.”
Dios, was Felix’s mind starting to go? “But Andalusians are what we breed,” Lucas said gently.
The old man glared at him. “Do I seem senile to you, boy? I know what we breed. I have been assured that she has excellent lineage and fine conformation.”
“There are mares in Spain with those qualities.”
Felix had nodded. “There are. But thus far, none has what I consider enough intelligence, beauty and heart to improve our line.”
Since Lucas ran El Rancho Reyes and had been running it for a decade, he was surprised by that pronouncement.
“I didn’t know you were looking, Grandfather.”
“I have been looking for years, Lucas.”
Another cryptic statement. The ranch had several excellent mares. In fact, Lucas had bought another one only recently…and yet, Felix sounded certain.
Lucas looked at his grandfather. Do I look senile? he’d said, but Felix had just passed his eighty-fifth birthday…
“Ah, Lucas, you are as transparent now as you were when you were a boy, trying to convince me to let you break your first horse.” Felix chuckled and wrapped an arm around Lucas’s shoulders. “I promise you, mi hijo, my mind is perfectly clear. You must trust me in this. I am not sending you on a wild-goose chase.”
Lucas had sighed. “You really want me to go all the way to Texas for something we don’t need?”
“If we did not need it, I would not ask you to go.”
“I don’t agree.”
Felix had raised one bushy white eyebrow. “Did I ask you to agree?”
That had ended the discussion. Nobody gave Lucas Reyes orders but he loved his grandfather with all his heart. The old man had all but raised him and provided the only love Lucas had known.
