Nacho Figueras Presents (24 page)

K
at paused in the doorway of the club to watch Liberty, in a flowing midnight blue cashmere jumpsuit, working the room like the pro that she was. The star was stopped at every turn, smiling here, flirting there, taking selfies, and signing autographs. Everyone wanted her attention.

Liberty Smith was the talk of the Sundance Film Festival since
Twenty-five Roses
had premiered earlier in the day. The film had been received with a standing ovation and serious buzz. No one could stop chattering about the stunning, transformative performance the actress had pulled off. The Oscar drums were already beating. And not just for Liberty. Honey, dressed in a head-to-toe tiger print with her hair colored to match, was tucked into a corner of the party, working her phone and, Kat knew, fielding the bidding war among all six major studios as they vied for who would get to pay for the honor of distribution.

Over by the bar, the Del Campos, minus Sebastian, held court. Pilar, on Lord Henderson's arm, looked pure Hollywood old school, wearing a full-length black vintage fur cape, which she had confided to Kat had been Victoria's back in the day, and a necklace of emeralds so big that Kat could see them sparkle all the way from across the room. Georgia, in a slinky coral dress draped with a soft pink pashmina shawl, drank a glass of champagne with one hand and held on to little Tomás with the other. Now that he was truly mobile, the two-year-old could not be counted on to stay in one place for longer than a few moments at a time.

Alejandro stood talking to Noni, who was leaning against the bar and wearing a tailored black satin tux jacket and pants that set off her platinum blond hair and arresting raven dark eyes. Kat smiled to see her here, happy to that Sebastian's little sister was out of her blacksmith clothing for once and dressed for a party. On the other side of Noni, wearing a minidress so short that Kat shivered to look at it, was Valentina, Alejandro's daughter, on her break from college and gawking, round-eyed and eager, at all the celebrities in the room.

Alejandro himself, in a cashmere jacket and loosened tie, smiled graciously at well-wishers who stopped by to talk with him. The people who knew him at Sundance were broken into two camps—fans of polo, where, he was, of course, a superstar, and people who had seen the film and noticed the handsome athlete in his scene on the pitch. Even in his small role, Alejandro had generated so much star power that Kat liked to tease that she would cast him as the leading man in her next film.

Camelia, wearing a bright red dress that showed off her lithe curves to perfection, hung on to Mark Stone, the two of them fooling around on the dance floor and laughing together as if no one else were in the room.

Kat's parents were sitting happily at their own table, being entertained by the silver-haired and debonair James Little, one of their all-time favorite actors. James was appearing in Kat's next film, and he seemed more than pleased to have the devoted attention of Corinne and Joe. Kat thrilled to see the way that her father seemed to be fully back to his normal, healthy self as he put his arm around his wife and threw back his head and laughed.

Kat sighed happily, taking in these last few moments before anyone saw her, before the windstorm of attention would be aimed in her direction. Before, she thought with a little thrill of trepidation, her life would irrevocably change yet again.

“
Mi corazón
,” a silky, mischievous voice whispered in her ear as strong arms slipped around her waist and held her tight, “are you waiting to make a grand entrance?”

Kat smiled, a thrill of warmth surging through her, and turned to her fiancé.

Sebastian gazed down at Kat, noting that the antique silver color of her dress echoed the gleam of her steady gray eyes. At her throat was a single diamond, as big as a robin's egg, which his mother had given her when they had announced their engagement. He pushed a glossy black curl away from her face.

She laughed, caught. “I'm a little scared,” she admitted.

“Oh?”

She slid her arms up over his shoulders and locked them behind his neck. As her curvy body, sheathed only in a thin layer of silken velvet under her heavy wool coat, nestled up against his, he felt a roar of desire unfurl inside himself.

“Everything is so perfect right now,” she said. “I can't imagine being any happier.”

She kissed him, her sweet pink lips barely touching his own. He pulled her closer, breathing in her scent.

“I'm almost afraid to go in,” she sighed.

“Let's not go in, then,” he murmured. “It's still early. We won't be missed just yet. Come with me.”

She looked up at him, an irresistible smile dancing over her face. He grabbed her hand and led her out onto a small balcony to the side of the building.

The snow fell in tiny, glittering shards, resting in the curls of Kat's hair and clinging to her black coat like minuscule diamonds. It was after dark, and groups of people below were hurrying from shelter to shelter, heading for film premieres or attending the various celebrity-clogged parties. The only light was the warm yellow glow of the lodge from behind them and a discreet streetlamp illuminating the flakes of snow as they drifted through the air.

They stood far above the street, watching the crowd, listening to the squeak and crunch of ice grinding beneath feet. Sebastian took Kat's hand, and it felt to him as if they were alone in their own little world again, once more in the bubble of their romance, just Kat and Sebastian.

Finally, she spoke. “Seb?”

“Mmm-hmm?” He pulled her back toward him, tucking his hands around her waist and trying to keep her warm.

“You remember when I told you that I couldn't have written
Twenty-five Roses
without you?”

“
Sí
,” he said.

“I meant that. And not just because of Victoria.”

“No?” he said as he pulled her even closer.

She paused for a moment. “Do you remember when Victoria wrote about meeting your grandfather? About how she knew, right away, deep down, that he was her great love? Her
amor verdadero
? That, suddenly, everything in her life just slipped into place—because she realized that all she had done, every moment before, every breath she had taken, had simply been leading up to the moment when she met him?”

He tightened his grip around her and nodded.

“I couldn't have understood that, I couldn't have written about that like I did, except that you—being with you—showed me exactly what she meant.” She turned toward him. “Do you know what I mean?”

He drew in a deep breath, watching the play of emotions flicker over her face. “
Sí,
” he said. His voice was husky with feeling. “
Sí
, yes, of course I do. Katarina.”

She slipped her arms around his neck as he pulled her to him, gripping her tightly. Their gazes locked.

“You are exactly as she described,” she whispered. “You are my one. And I am so, so grateful for that. Thank you.”

He looked at her, and her cheeks were flushed red with the cold, and her eyes seemed to sparkle in the dark, and the snow glittered like jewels in the dark nimbus of her hair. And as he bent to kiss her, just before the moment that his lips met hers, he could have sworn that he detected the softest, sweetest scent of roses on the winter's night air.

W
hen Sunny started crow hopping, Lorenzo Rivas didn't worry. The big mare had always been hot, and it wasn't out of character for her to occasionally get a little bored and try to test her rider.

But when Sunny started to buck, Enzo knew something was seriously wrong.

The pony kicked out her legs and whinnied fearfully, almost sending Enzo out of the saddle. He dug his heels in, grabbed the reins and battled to pull her head back up. She fought him, flinging her neck down and heaving her back legs into the air.

For a moment, he thought he was going to be thrown, and his body automatically tensed, preparing to hit the ground hard.

It wouldn't have been the first time Enzo lost his seat to an unruly horse. It was part of his job, after all. Nobody trained horses and didn't occasionally get thrown. But that didn't mean he wouldn't fight it.

Sunny came back down onto all four legs again, and Enzo, sensing a split second of opportunity, yanked the reins sharply to the right, forcing the pony's head so far over that her nose touched his knee. She screamed in outrage and spun in a circle, but she was powerless to kick her hind legs from this position.

Enzo kept her in that stance, letting her spin as many times as she wanted, speaking to her softly in Spanish, until he could feel her temper start to ebb and her muscles soften, one by one, under him.

He relaxed the reins and let the pony's head back up. As they cantered forward, he noticed a large, bald-faced hornet floating away from them.

“Ah. Poor girl,” he said, “you got stung.”

Sunny snorted complacently as if in agreement, and then reared up, threw Enzo backward into the grass, and bolted, riderless, down the pitch.

Enzo lay there for a moment, the breath knocked out of him, staring at the cloudless Florida sky. It had not been a bad fall, as falls went, and he knew that once he could breathe again, he'd be fine. But he was also pissed, and he knew it would be better to get his temper under control before he chased down the errant horse. It never helped to be mad when dealing with ponies.

“Rivas?” came a distant voice that made him close his eyes and smile ruefully.
Of course
she would find him like this.

“Enzo, are you okay?”

She was closer.

He struggled to a sitting position, still a little winded, but determined not to be on his back when she reached him.

“I'm fine,” he said, and then almost fell over again, he was so dizzy. Damn that horse. He bent his head to his knees and closed his eyes.

“You don't look fine. You look like you got knocked on your ass.”

He slowly turned his gaze up toward Antonia Black and felt his heart speed up in a way that had nothing to do with his fall.

It was getting worse. He could hardly look at her anymore without being filled with an almost paralyzing ache of attraction.

She reached out her hand, her jet-black eyes twinkling with amusement, and after a beat of hesitation, he took it and let her help him to his feet.

For a moment after he stood, he let his hand linger in hers, allowing himself the luxury of feeling the tingling heat that seemed to generate from her skin into his. But then he dropped it, remembering the runaway horse.

“Did you see where Sunny went?” he asked.

She laughed. “She pranced right into the barn. I'm sure one of the grooms has her by now.”

He nodded and winced, already sore from the fall. “She got stung,” he said.

“Oh,” said Noni, “I know. I saw the whole thing.”

He smiled and rubbed his neck. “Hot horse,” he said ruefully.

She smiled back. He felt his chest squeeze in response. “Hot horse,” she agreed.

She looked him over. “You sure you're all right?”

He nodded. “I'll probably be sore, but nothing is broken.”

“Good,” she said.

They gazed at each other for a moment.

“Are you going to Hendy's party tonight?” he finally said, needing to break the tension.

Her mood suddenly changed. She frowned, and a red flush touched the creamy skin of her cheeks and chest. “Yeah, I guess,” she said in an abrupt tone. “Anyway, if you're really okay, I'm going to head on home.” She quickly turned to go. “I'll see you at the party.”

He watched Antonia walk away, heading for her truck. He had the impulse to call out, stop her, ask her what was wrong. But before he could act, Noni swung up into her truck, her platinum blond hair streaming behind her, slammed the door with a bang, and was gone in a cloud of dust.

He clenched and unclenched his fist, reminding himself that every time she slipped away, it was better for both of them. Less complicated, safer.

Nothing good
, he reminded himself sternly for the ten-millionth time as he started back toward the barn,
could come from anything happening between us
.

She is my boss's sister. She is a Del Campo. I would only end up hurting her
.

The words were his litany, but lately they were starting to lose their power.

He shook his head. Being stern with himself wasn't working anymore. He could feel that he was starting to weaken. Being around her at work, being her friend and confidant, without ever hinting at his real feelings, had begun to exhaust him.

It was a part he knew he could not play much longer. All his good reasons for keeping his distance, all the rules of the barn and vows to himself that he had clung to over the years, had started to feel weightless compared to his growing feelings for this woman. The many times he had repeated to himself that it was unprofessional, that he wasn't fit to be in a relationship, that he didn't deserve her, that she was too fragile…it was all beginning to feel as insubstantial as a fairy story. A cautionary tale he'd heard as a child, meant to keep him away from gingerbread houses and wolves in the woods.

Because she was different these days. She was stronger and happier and more stable. And her happiness made her all the more irresistible.

And maybe
, he thought,
I'm different, too
…

He turned back around at the barn door, watching the lingering trail of dust that her blue truck had left behind. He thought of a moment in the barn earlier that day, when he had held the head of a pony for her while she bent over its hind leg, hammering in a new shoe. For just the quickest second, she had looked up and met his eyes, and a devilish smile had danced over her mouth. It had been the kind of carefree grin he would never have imagined on her face when he had first come to know her. It seemed to prove that she was finally mended. Certainly, she was a changed woman from the one he'd met all those years ago.

Eight Years Earlier

The barn had been fizzing with gossip for days. Lorenzo's boss, Alejandro Del Campo, had flown to Berlin to find his newly discovered half-sister. She was a scandal no one in the Del Campo family had even known existed before reading Carlos Del Campo's posthumous will.

There were rumors circulating all over the farm about the mystery woman. The grooms were whispering that Alejandro had bailed her out of jail, a student rider swore she heard that the sister was an opium addict, the Argentine vet said she had been living on the streets, doing what she must to survive.

Of course, not one of those things had turned out to be true, but on the day that Alejandro had first brought Antonia to the barn, anything seemed possible and none of it was good.

Enzo had been leading out a little black mare named Hex for training—she'd recently started to get spooky on the field and he'd wanted to pinpoint, what, exactly, was setting her off—when Alejandro slid open the doors and entered with a small blond woman trailing behind him. The usual buzz and chatter of the barn suddenly stilled.

The woman immediately stopped to look at a pony, and turned away from Enzo, so that his first impression was just a swath of pale, creamy neck and long, silky white-blond hair, the kind of hair so fine and smooth that it looked like it couldn't be bound, as if it would just slide right out of a clip or hair band. At first glance she seemed a child, sylphlike and vulnerable, in an oversized black button-down flannel, baggy faded jeans, and worn work boots. But when she turned her head and glanced at Enzo, he'd felt himself go still.

This was no child.

She was stunning. With high Slavic cheekbones, a wide and generous mouth, a heart-shaped face tapering to a stubborn little chin, and most startling, Carlos's eyes. Large, slanted, and raven dark, hauntingly shadowed in her pale face, with long, sooty lashes and dramatic black slashes for brows. Except that, unlike her father, whose gaze had always looked a bit dulled by overindulgence and self-satisfaction, this woman had eyes that glowed like live coal—filled with raw intelligence, hurt, anger, and challenge. She looked like a desperate, wild thing who had just been trapped into captivity.

Her beauty was undeniable, but it wasn't just her physical presence that moved Enzo. He recognized something in her—a fierce and anguished aura—that made him want to reach out and touch this woman, to gentle her, to comfort her, to find out exactly what had happened to make her this feral, and to fix it in any way he could.

The pony beside him had nipped him then, impatient to get outside. Enzo swore in pain, and Antonia laughed—a silvery sound that sent electric chills down his spine. For a moment, her whole face lit up. She was transformed. She lost that hunted look, and she was, if it was at all possible, even more beautiful than she had been seconds before.

And then her smile had slipped away and her eyes had clouded back over, and Enzo realized that he would gladly spend the rest of his life doing just about anything to try to make her laugh again.

She walked over and scratched Hex's ears. “She wants out,” she said. Her voice was soft and husky and thoroughly American—not a trace of the Argentine accent that the rest of her family, and Enzo himself, sported.

Hex closed her eyes and nibbled at Antonia's hair. Enzo smiled. “She likes you,” he'd said.

Antonia arched a dubious brow. “She likes to be scratched.”

The sleeve of her shirt fell back as she continued to rub Hex's neck, and Enzo had been shocked to see all the scars—some shiny white and healed, but others still pink and raw—that dotted her hand and wrist.

Without thinking, he reached out and touched her hand, tracing the marks under his fingertips, feeling the tight, raised flesh, and then, an incredible heat that seemed to emanate from her skin. She felt like she was burning with fever.

She went absolutely still, met his eyes defiantly, and then shook him off.

“Not that it's any of your business”—she flipped her hand over and showed him a small tattoo of an anvil on her inner arm—“but I'm a metal worker. Burns are just a hazard of the job.”

He felt hugely relieved, and then annoyed with the force of emotions that were raging through him. What business was this of his? Why should he care how she got her burns?

“A farrier?” he asked, trying to hide behind polite conversation.

She shook her head. “No, mostly casting, lately.” She looked around the barn, a hint of speculation in her wide, dark eyes.

Then Alejandro had joined them and Enzo had suddenly been shocked back to reality.

His boss's little sister. A member of the Del Campo family
.

If ever a woman had been off-limits…

Alejandro led his sister away, eager to show her the rest of the farm, and Enzo had been left with Hex, who was starting to paw the ground in her eagerness to get out of the barn.

In the field, Enzo rode the pony, trying to figure out what she was shying away from, but his thoughts kept returning to Antonia. The silken curtain of her hair, her obsidian eyes, the way her skin seemed to burn from within, her scent—something sweet and hot like black pepper and cinnamon…

Under him, Hex suddenly tensed and Enzo broke from his reverie to take note of their surroundings. There it was—an old black garden hose on the field that someone had left out. It looked too much like a snake to the sensitive little mare. He'd tell a groom to take care of it right away.

He rode the pony back in, wondering whether he'd see Antonia again, wondering where she was staying…

He shook his head.

He had not felt this way in years. Perhaps he had not felt this way ever. And it shook him to the core.

The dust had cleared now, the truck was long gone, and Enzo finally went to find Sunny and make sure she'd been taken care of. He knew he would see Noni later that night, at Lord Henderson's end-of-the-season party, and thought that he might ask her, then, what had made her so angry.

Ducking back into the cool, fragrant barn, he flashed on her face again—that slightly wicked smile—and he felt his whole body tighten in response.

He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and tried to banish her from his thoughts, push her away, in the same way he'd been doing for years.

But something stuck and held.

It was getting harder and harder to let her go.