AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Leave it, Dante,’ she cried out. ‘What’s the point in this? I can’t change anything—and neither can you!’ she exclaimed with frustration. ‘We just have to accept, you and I, that everything turned out for the best.’
‘For the best?’ he echoed over her. Now he knew something was badly wrong. ‘I can’t believe you just said that. This isn’t the Karina I knew talking, and I refuse to believe you mean it.’
Sucking in a shuddering breath, she turned away. ‘Can we please get back to business? We’re wasting precious time talking about something neither of us can change.’
Her eyes were shuttered when she turned back to face him. The subject was closed as far as Karina was concerned. But not for him.
‘Back in Rio, you said my business acumen was all you wanted from me,’ she reminded him. ‘I hope that’s still true.’
‘You carried my child, Karina. That changes everything.’
She looked at him in silence for a few moments and then, returning to her horse without another word, she mounted up and rode away without a backward glance.
* * *
He needed to ride. He needed time to think so he could take in everything Karina had told him. She’d been pregnant and had kept that from him. He couldn’t get his head around it. She’d lost the baby and had suffered that loss on her own. His guilt was like a living thing riding heavily on his back. The pampas had always been his outlet, a non-judgemental channel for his thoughts, but he doubted that even riding across the land he loved could bring him solace today.
He could never repair the past—never make up for not being with her when she’d lost a baby, their child, and had soldiered on unsupported. That was so typical of Karina—stubborn, dogged, brave and strong. She was like a cork, in that whatever life threw at her she always bobbed up. Luc had supplied all the necessities of life when she’d been growing up, including his unconditional love, but Luc had been too busy trying to find his own way to keep watch constantly over Karina. She wouldn’t have listened to her older brother anyway.
He rode faster, as if that would give him the answer. When they had been kids, trust had been a simple matter of asking a question and receiving an honest answer. They’d had no reason to lie to each other or to keep the truth from each other. Too much had happened for them to pick up the ease of those early days, but he had to do something because he knew for certain that there was more Karina wasn’t telling him—and if that was as bad as what she had already told him...
His mood darkened as he considered the possibilities.
If he hadn’t broken with her that night...
He’d had to break up with her. They had both been too young, too passionate, too unformed when it came to knowing who they were and what they wanted out of life. Sex had been an outlet for their energy and frustration, an impulse they had recklessly followed. Animal instinct had taken him over, as it must have gripped his father so many times. The break-up afterwards had been driven by his dread that one day he would become his father, and so he had pushed Karina away.
As the years had passed and he had matured and changed, he’d known for certain that he wasn’t and never would be his father. That was why he’d opened up his home, and why he intended to do more of it, welcoming people of all ages to experience life on a working ranch. His childhood home would no longer be a place of fear and shadow but a home filled with happiness, purpose and light. He wanted Karina to experience the same redemption, but to do that she had to trust him first.
* * *
Karina was riding fast and hard in an attempt to forget that she had opened Pandora’s box—to forget the past, to forget the present, to forget she’d told Dante about the baby—wishing with all her heart that she hadn’t opened up, and yet glad that she had, and so glad that she’d retained the sliver of reason required to hold the rest of her secrets in. They were nothing to do with Dante. Why burden him?
For a while the concentration she required to ride at speed worked for her, but deep down the truth was burning, and Dante wouldn’t let up now he suspected there was more.
Easing back in the saddle, she slowed her horse to give them both a much-needed break. Riding the pampas had always been healing, but what she’d been doing had been needlessly reckless. Her only excuse was that it had been too long since she’d ridden with the wind in her hair, and with the past driving her she’d gone all out.
Her horse responded happily to the change of pace with a high-stepping trot. It gave her the chance to look around and appreciate the countryside. The scent of herbs and grass beneath his hooves made her smile through her sadness. When had been the last time she’d taken the time to notice her surroundings? This dawn ride was such an evocative reminder of her childhood, when she had used to ride out with Dante, and it let a little optimism into her thinking.
