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Taking the wall in his stride, Ramon brought the horse round in a sharp turn and then reined him in to a wild-eyed, snorting halt in front of her.
‘Welcome back, Annalisa!’
But there was more challenge than welcome in his eye, and certainly no warmth in his face. Annalisa made herself stand unflinching as the horse raked the ground with his ironclad hooves. But when suddenly he reared up and punched the air she started back.
‘Don’t worry. I’ve got him,’ Ramon rasped as he urged him down.
‘How did you know I’d be here?’ she said fighting to stay calm.
‘Lucky guess?’ he suggested sardonically.
The only luck about it was the fact that Ramon Perez was such a force on the island everyone wanted to keep him informed of anything that might interest him, Annalisa thought, raising her eyebrows in a show of disbelief. He would have known the instant she set foot on Menorcan soil.
‘Things went well for you in England.’
He knew that too. ‘Yes. Thank you for—’
He flicked the reins on his horse’s neck and straightened up as if he was impatient to go. ‘That’s good,’ he said, brushing off her attempt to thank him.
She stared at his strong hands, wanting to forget how they felt when they were caressing her. But she would never forget, she realised as the hollow place inside her grew. Searching his face, she saw his mouth was hard and firm. And his eyes…those eyes that she remembered so vividly, dark liquid eyes that burned with desire for her…were hard and stony as they stared straight back. ‘It went better than I had any right to expect,’ she blurted out, suddenly desperate to keep him there.
‘I’m pleased for you,’ he grated, battling with his impatient mount. ‘We have to go. He’s bored,’ he added, to her consternation. Did that mean he was too? ‘Don’t look so alarmed,’ he said misreading her expression. ‘I would never let him harm you.’
‘I’m not alarmed,’ Annalisa lied coolly. But seeing the magnificent horse reduced to something quivering and quiescent in the grip of Ramon’s powerful thighs wasn’t exactly a soothing sight. And Ramon, with his billowing traditional shirt slit almost to the waist and hide chaps flapping loose over his handcrafted boots, looked more like a wild Spanish gypsy than an international tycoon. And she…looked like a travel-weary tourist! ‘You just startled me,’ she said.
‘Then both Dardo and I apologise,’ Ramon said sardonically, bowing low over the stallion’s sweat-slicked withers.
‘Dardo?’
‘It means dart,’ he explained, adjusting his grip. ‘The name on his pedigree is grander, of course—Black Diamond Cupid’s Dart.’
‘That’s quite a name,’ Annalisa agreed, wondering which was safer—looking the horse in the eye, or Ramon.
‘Well, he has quite a responsibility—don’t you, boy?’ Ramon said, giving his mount a vigorous slap on the neck as he spoke to him. ‘Dardo is the most valuable of all my stallions at stud.’
‘I see…’
‘He’s had enough,’ Ramon said, easing the great horse round in a circle.
At first she didn’t understand. But when he held the stallion at a prancing halt in front of her Annalisa’s pulse took flight. ‘Oh, no—I’ll be fine.’ Ramon was riding bareback, with just a bridle to control what looked to her like a mountain of over-excited and extremely unpredictable muscle, and if he thought for one moment—
‘Are you scared?’ he challenged.
‘Of course not,’ she shot back. ‘I’ve done a lot of riding—’
‘Like your swimming?’
As she flashed him a look, a picture of her riding school hacks crept into her mind.
‘Nothing to say?’
‘Plenty,’ she said, levelling a long cool stare at him. ‘But first I’d like to continue my walk, if you don’t mind.’
‘But I do mind,’ he assured her. ‘Don’t you trust me, Annalisa?’
He was looking for a lot more than an endorsement of his riding prowess, she thought as she met his dark, challenging stare. And, whatever machiavellian schemes he had up his sleeve for her where business was concerned, she wouldn’t have found the money without him…
As she took a step closer the stallion blew a gale down his nose and stared at her boldly through fierce brown orbs. She took another step, then stopped when he lifted his head to gust a long whinnying sigh, his pliant lips rolling back over his large ivory teeth.
‘Ahh,’ Ramon sighed sardonically. ‘He likes you.’
Oh, really? Annalisa thought, locking eyes with the hard-hearted brigand on Dardo’s back.
