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Memories came through her like the burst of dawn. The sound of Stefano’s joyful laugh. The depth of his black eyes. The way he’d held her so tight against his naked body in the tender, sacred night. He made her feel safe. He made her feel loved.
I care for you, Annabelle. More than I’ve ever cared for anyone.
He’d wanted her to stay. She was the one who’d run away.
For too long, she’d lived in fear. But from now on, she would be brave enough to become the woman she was born to be.
Annabelle gripped her mobile phone. “I have to go.”
“What? Why?”
“Bless you, Jacob,” she whispered. “I love you. Talk to you more soon.”
Her hands shook as she started the engine of her truck. Backing it out of the parking lot, she got back on the motorway—headed not north toward Calais, but back toward the Spanish border. Back home. Back to Stefano.
People didn’t change, she thought.
Except … when they did.
Stefano had lost that afternoon. Lost big.
And as he walked through the enormous white tent that night after dinner, his teammates were not being terribly forgiving about it.
“Nice going,” his polo team’s number-two player snarled as Stefano passed by in his tuxedo.
“Did you have to take us all down with you?” his number three growled from the dance floor.
“Were you drunk?” the fourth member of his polo team jeered from the bar.
“Not yet,” Stefano muttered, heading toward the opposite bar. “But I will be.”
The enormous white tent, erected in the biggest field near the hacienda, had been turned into a glamorous ballroom. Lilies and greenery decked with fairy lights overlooked the dance floor, which was filled with guests now that the surrounding dining tables had been cleared of dinner plates. Four different bars lined the edges of the tent and everyone was guzzling champagne like water. People would dance all night, Stefano knew. They’d dance till the music stopped.
But for Stefano, the music had already stopped hours ago.
“Bartender,” he growled, holding out his hand. Fifteen seconds later, he took a long gulp of a double Scotch.
The polo game should have been close. On paper, the players were evenly matched.
Instead, it had been a rout. Stefano’s team usually won but this time, for him, each chukka had been worse than the last. Even Stefano’s pony kept rolling his eyes at his rider’s pathetically weak performance.
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Stefano’s heart hadn’t been in the game. His heart had left the ranch that morning in a battered 1973 Land Rover.
Ignoring all the sexy women who were, even now, trying to get his attention, Stefano turned away from the frivolity of the dance floor. He stared bleakly at the white canvas of the tent behind the bar and loosened his tie. He could still hear her sweet, trembling voice.
I love you.
Should I have lied to her? he snarled at himself. Should I have told her I love her when it’s not true?
At this moment, he almost wished he had. He took another gulp of Scotch, and the amber liquid burned down his throat like fire. Setting the glass back onto the bar with a hard clink, Stefano wiped his mouth. Yes, he wished he’d lied. He wished he’d said any damn thing to keep her at his side.
Because he missed her. He missed her like he’d miss his heart if it had been ripped out of his chest.
He had the sudden destructive urge to smash his glass against the bar. To insult his famous guests and order them off his ranch. To sell all his horses for a single euro. What difference did it make, when he’d lost everything he’d cared about the instant Annabelle Wolfe had disappeared through his gate?
He felt a small hand on his arm. For an instant, he held his breath. Then he turned.
