Modern Romance January Books 1-4. Кейт Хьюит

skin again. But he would give her time.

      “Tell me,” he said, “about all of the plans that you have once we are finished here.”

      It would do him good to remember that there were plans for the end of all of this.

      “My plans?” She swallowed the mouthful of cheese and looked at him quizzically. “Just...to go back to my rancho. To train my horses. I don’t have any desire to compete. I would rather stay closer to home. But I should like to continue to train racehorses.”

      “That will put us in competition,” he commented.

      She tilted her head to the side. “I suppose it will. But then, our fathers always were.”

      “Yes. But I believe their relationship was a bit different.”

      Her cheeks turned a dusky rose color. “Perhaps.”

      “Do you have plans to expand the operation?”

      She blinked. “I don’t know. Right now I simply want to get back to what I know. It has been... It has been such a difficult few months. I can’t even explain it. Or maybe I can. Just...feeling as though the rug was pulled out from under my life completely. As though I was left standing on nothing. Just falling, endlessly. My father died, and I have barely had a moment to grieve him properly. Because at the same time I lost my home. I lost my horses.”

      “And you did what you had to in order to keep them. To find them again.”

      She shrugged. “It was the only power I had. The only possible thing I could reclaim. There was nothing else. No way that I could get ownership of the ranch back on my own. No way that I could bring my father back from the dead. But I knew where you were. And I knew... I knew that you had the horses. I knew that you had Fuego. And I thought...if I could keep that connection maybe I could keep from going completely insane.”

      “You seem quite sane to me.”

      “That’s up for debate, I suppose. Not very many women would chop off all of their hair on the spur of the moment and decide to try to get a job disguised as a boy.”

      “What made you think of that?” he asked. “It was quite inventive.”

      “I begged for a job. When your staff was there taking the horses away I begged to allow me to go with them. And the man who was leading Fuego away told me that you didn’t hire women. So...it seemed the logical thing to do. At least, in my mind.”

      “I suppose there aren’t very many people who would think to do that.”

      “Yes,” she agreed. “Which is why it might be a stretch to call it logical.”

      “You’re inventive. You’re resourceful, and you’re very brave.” He pressed his thumb against her lower lip, looking at the longing in her eyes. It called to him. To a deep, empty place in his soul. “I know what it’s like to feel alone, Camilla.” Again, he found himself confessing to her. Only ever her. At first he had thought it was because she was unimportant. Because she wouldn’t remain in his life, and so it didn’t matter. But after what they’d shared, he could no longer pretend she didn’t matter. “When my mother died the sense of isolation that followed was profound. I was the only one who knew that my father was responsible. No one else would believe me. My brother and I were never close, but that drove an even deeper wedge between us. We were just boys, but in many ways we had to become men far too soon.”

      “And you became a good man. While your brother...”

      He swallowed hard. He thought of Diego as a child. All angry and defiant and impossible to talk to. He had been angry at him for a long time, because he’d imagined they’d shared the same upbringing, and that he’d had every chance to do the same with his life that Matías had. But Diego didn’t know all of Matías’s secrets. And it hit him then it was very likely he didn’t know the whole story of Diego. “I don’t know that he ever had a chance.”

      “But you did. And if you did, then I suppose he could have, as well.”

      He hesitated, suddenly not so certain of that. Suddenly not so sure of anything. He didn’t like that. Didn’t like relativism as a whole. He preferred things black-and-white. It was how he lived his life. “Sometimes I think people are put together differently,” he said. “It is the best explanation I have.”

      “Perhaps you have more of your mother in you,” she said softly.

      “Perhaps,” he said, the word rough, pulled from him.

      “Is that the real reason you don’t hire women?” she asked softly. “Is it because of your mother? Is it because you don’t want women working on the rancho? Doing that kind of work?”

      “My mother wasn’t killed by a horse,” he said. “She was killed by my father. The horse being spooked was his fault.”

      “Still.” She placed her soft hand on his forearm. He felt something shift inside his chest, and he didn’t like it. Didn’t like it at all. The ways in which she rearranged him. Things inside him that he had so carefully placed where he wanted them. “I think that might be why.”

      “When I dream, it’s all screaming. Horses and women.”

      The words sounded black and blank, and hopelessly pathetic. He didn’t talk about this. Not to anyone. Not ever.

      “Matías,” she said softly, wrapping her arms around him, resting her cheek against his chest. “You had to be strong and good, so much more than anyone else, because you were the only one who could be. It’s not fair.”

      She was trying to...comfort him. He could not remember the last time anyone had done that. If they ever had. Probably, his mother had done it, but he couldn’t remember. All he remembered was the fighting. All he remembered was his mother hiding from his father. All he remembered was hiding from all of it.

      “When Fuego kicked you...” Those words broke off, and he found himself unable to speak. His throat was tight. His lungs burned. He waited. Waited for the wave to pass. For the pressure to release. “It reminded me of when she died,” he choked out. “Even if they don’t mean to, they’re large animals, and they can cause so much harm.”

      She stroked his arm as though he were a pet and not a man and he couldn’t even muster up any anger over it. “It’s amazing to me that you want to continue working with horses. That you want to keep the rancho. All things considered. I know why. At least, I know what you told me. About wanting to be the one that controls it. About wanting to redeem it all. But...no one would blame you if you decided you didn’t want any of it.”

      That had been his intention in his twenties. His fortune elsewhere. Why he had left Spain and centered his business in London. But he had found that there was no getting away from his past. And that the farther he got away from his home, the farther away he went from the rancho, the more his dreams plagued him.

      “That place has become a mission,” he admitted. “Unfinished business, in many ways. Once it’s all settled, I don’t intend to spend too much time there.”

      “You’re so good at it, though,” she said, continuing to caress him with those lovely fingers. “I can’t imagine you simply disappearing into a desk job. It isn’t you.”

      “Maybe it is,” he said, reaching down and putting his finger beneath her chin, tilting her face upward. “Perhaps I prefer this,” he said, looking around the penthouse. “Perhaps I prefer evenings spent at galas to quiet evenings in rural libraries. Perhaps I prefer spending my days in glass and steel skyscrapers to dusty arenas.”

      “You don’t.” She said those words with such confidence that he wanted to laugh at her, except he could not because her dark eyes were so serious. So sincere. She reached up, grabbing hold of the hand that was beneath her chin, and drawing it down. She smoothed her thumb over his palm, her eyes never leaving his. “I can tell, because of your hands. You don’t have the hands of a man content to work at a computer. Content