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When Tiago started walking back towards the house his face was set. ‘Let’s get this thing done. I want you to check the contract over carefully—make sure you agree with all the terms before you sign.’
How cold-blooded could a wedding be?
She was about to find out.
She had always had such soft, romantic dreams about her wedding day...the wildflowers she would wear in her hair. Everyone would walk to the kirk in the village of Rottingdean and there would be a party afterwards in the village hall. Everyone would help out and contribute something. It would be such a happy day—a simple day, a precious day full of memories...the type of memories she would treasure for a lifetime.
That was her dream. The facts were somewhat different. It sounded as if there was going to be a rushed ceremony—possibly with witnesses she didn’t even know.
Tiago was striding ahead of her. His transformation into gaucho was complete. The unforgiving pampas had carved him. Even his clothes had changed. There was nothing designer about his clothes now—nothing of the playboy. He wore threadbare jeans with worn leather chaps over them, and a red bandana secured his wilful hair. His boots were tooled leather, and he carried a lethal-looking facón—the vicious knife that gauchos wore—hanging from their belt.
It was hardly possible to believe that this rock-like individual was the same sophisticate who had joked and laughed and made her feel good about herself on Chico’s ranch.
Tiago had stopped abruptly—but not to wait for her. He was staring at some horses in the field—evaluating them, counting them, maybe, though she suspected he knew every head of stock. Compared to his ranch, she was nothing. There were no sacrifices Tiago would not make, no lengths he would not go to, to keep this land.
She could always change her mind.
Could she? Signing this contract was a way forward for her—the best and perhaps the only way to secure her mother’s future.
* * *
‘Now you understand why I must do this,’ Tiago said with confidence as he laid the contract down in front of Danny on his desk. ‘You’ve only seen a fragment of the ranch, but enough to know that it must be saved.’
She wouldn’t disagree with him, Danny thought as she took her time to check the contract, line by line. It was everything she had asked for, everything she had read on the screen of his phone—not a line had been changed.
‘A year...’ she murmured, wondering if it would be a happy year, or a year of torment for them both. And then something mischievous occurred to her, right out of the blue. ‘How many relationships have you had that have lasted a year, Tiago?’
He narrowed his eyes and she could practically see his hackles rise. ‘I don’t understand what that’s got to do with this.’
‘How many?’ she pressed.
Raking his hair with an impatient gesture, he decided to ignore her question. ‘Are you going to sign this or not?’
She guessed he had never stayed with a woman for as long as a year. Tiago was sailing into uncharted waters as much as she was. If he had ever enjoyed a long-term relationship the press would have seized on it. What the press would make of their marriage she didn’t know—and didn’t care, either. This was a private arrangement between the two of them. The world would have to make of it what it wanted.
He held out his pen. She took it and signed her name, and Tiago countersigned the document after her. She stared at their signatures and felt cold inside. She had no idea what Tiago felt. Relief, certainly, but she doubted whether he felt anything more.
What had made him this way? she wondered. The polished playboy of the polo circuit seemed far happier and more relaxed here on his ranch, working alongside the gauchos. The thought that she had just contracted to marry a man she didn’t know did nothing to reassure her. She should have listened to those rumours of the lone wolf. If she had she wouldn’t be here now, with her heart yearning for a man who thought of her only as the means to an end.
‘So you’re rich now,’ he said. ‘How does that feel?’
‘Strange,’ she admitted.
Stranger still was the fact that she had never felt more impoverished in her life.
* * *
What had she done? Danny wondered as she watched Tiago cross the yard. She had to shake off this feeling of doom. She was about to join one of the finest horsemen in the world and work alongside him. What could be better than that? The wedding would happen when it happened, and in the meantime she would concentrate on everything Tiago could teach her about the ranch.
