Nacho Figueras Presents (25 page)

T
hey had a late supper on the balcony adjoining his bedroom, and Georgia had never felt so decadent or so sexy. Alejandro took the wine in his mouth and dribbled it into hers, before they fell back on the bed for more.

In the morning, she awoke to Alejandro's hand trailing down her cheek. She shivered deliciously. “Are you counting my freckles?” she said. “Unfortunate, aren't they?”

“I love your freckles,” he said. “
Pecas
, like a trail of cinnamon across your face.”

“A trail of cinnamon?” She laughed. “I'm not sure that sounds so appealing. Maybe I'll get rid of them,” she said. “Cricket was telling me about a doctor who can help me.”

“Don't you dare,” Alejandro said, sitting up. “Don't you dare go to one of those doctors who will take everything special about you—your freckles and your laugh lines and your scars. I want your face to move like this when you laugh. Your nose. Your forehead. Your body. I don't want you to change a thing.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, curling against the broad span of his back, just about ready to die of happiness.

They rode together that day. Alejandro introduced Georgia to more of his staff, who didn't try too hard to hide their surprise and pleasure at seeing their boss with a woman.

“Apparently, it's been a long time since I have brought a lady friend home,” said Alejandro dryly as yet another groom waggled his eyebrows and poked him in the ribs with his elbow.

He chose a couple of mounts, and they tacked up and rode so far out into the prairie that they couldn't see the house anymore.

They tied up the ponies and laid a blanket down on the grass, and he made slow, meticulous love to her under the enormous sky. He stroked her beautiful body as she lay naked in the warm sun, gazing into her dreamy hazel eyes until he made them close in pleasure, kissing her soft lips until they gasped with desire. He drove her to peak after peak, not stopping until she was limp and exhausted, and then he languidly slid himself into her and took his own sweet time, coaxing her to one last heart-stopping climax and finally letting himself let go with her.

They rode back in and skinny-dipped in the lake at dusk, floating hand in hand amid the reflected sunset on the glassy water, watching the sky as it turned red and orange, and then pink and gold, and finally fading into a dusky blue and purple.

He made a fire by the water, and they sat together, wrapped in the same blanket, and when the first star appeared, Georgia said to him, “Make a wish,” and he couldn't, because it seemed greedy to ask for anything more than all they had in this perfect moment.

T
he phone rang late that night, and Alejandro was startled awake, his heart pounding. He answered, and it was his sister Noni.

“Jandro? Valentina's been hurt. There was a riding accident.”

Antonia didn't know much. She'd only seen the very end of it as Valentina had been taken away in the ambulance. “I'm heading to the hospital now, but you need to call Pilar,” she said. “I'm so sorry.”

Alejandro hung up the phone. Immediately his mind was working. He called his caretaker and told him he'd need a ride to the airport and to please call ahead and have the Cessna ready. And then he was dialing Pilar and simultaneously pulling on jeans and trying to find his wallet and his keys from the layers of sheets and scattered clothes and mess around the room.

Fuck, fuck, fuck
, he thought, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling on a shirt, his phone tucked under his chin as he waited for Pilar to answer. Why was he nine hours away from his daughter? What madness had convinced him it was safe to leave her without letting anyone but Antonia know where he really was?

Pilar didn't pick up, and he cursed.

It felt to Alejandro that he was seeing the world through cloudy glass. His head was a confusion of terror; a part of him flung back to the first shock of losing Olivia. He had visions of Valentina receding beyond his grasp and felt the full terror of not being able to reach or hear his daughter.

He became aware of someone hugging him from behind, saying soothing things, asking concerned questions. It was Georgia, but he could hardly hear her or register her presence, amid the primal horror of losing his daughter.

He shrugged her off, plucking her hands from his shoulders. He tried Sebastian next and his brother answered.

“Sebastian?” Alejandro cried. “What is it? What happened?”

“Valentina had been night riding. Storm. Something spooked him, or he lost his footing, and he threw her.”

“Her neck?”

“Her head and her legs,” Sebastian said. “But she's alive, Alejandro. She's in the best hands. And they're fighting for her. We're at the Wellington Regional Medical Center. What time can you get here?”

Alejandro let the phone fall to his lap. He and Georgia hurried to the car in silence. Alejandro couldn't look at her. His eyes couldn't focus at all, really. He slid into the car grateful Manuel would take the wheel and waited for them to drive away, cold sick fear in his heart.

As they were rushed to the airport, he sat with his jaw and fingers clenched, his mind moving from the image of Valentina as a little girl, to Valentina as a teen, to his wife, and the horrible weeks she lingered already half dead in the hospital.

For the entire flight, his mind ran over images of riders he's known who had been severely injured—lost the use of their legs, broken their necks or backs. He'd known he shouldn't let his daughter ride. He'd known.

Georgia sat beside him all the way in silence, but he scarcely noticed her, brushing her hand away anytime she tried to touch him. The hours dragged by so slowly, time seemed almost at a standstill.

And then, finally, they were landing and getting into the family car, and then pulling up outside the emergency room, and Georgia reached for him again, laying a hand on his sleeve, and he looked at her wildly. Who was this woman? She seemed to him in that moment like some kind of demon. Who was she to have overridden a decision he knew he'd been right to make? What the hell had he been thinking letting his daughter anywhere near a horse again?

“Is there anything? Anything I can do?” she said.

He looked at her, as if it were unthinkable she'd even still be there beside him. “No. No.” He was exhausted. “You've done enough. Please. Just go home.”

He strode from the car, and Georgia collapsed back on the seat, reeling from that blow. She found herself in an agony of uncertainty, not knowing whether to deliver his bags home or climb from the car and make her own way.

She caught the steady, kind eyes of the driver in the rearview mirror, and he made a barely perceptible nod of the head, gesturing that she should head inside. As she climbed from the car, he laid his hand on her arm.

“I'll be right here, miss. Long as it takes.”

Alejandro strode through the bright, cold lights of the hospital, eyes scanning for a member of his family. Directed to the fourth floor, he didn't have the patience for the elevator and took the stairs three at a time, bursting into the private waiting room, where his mother sat, her normally straight back slumped over in her chair, while Sebastian paced at the window and Cricket looked at him accusingly.

“Where have you been?” Cricket asked. “It's been hours since it happened.”

Pilar looked up at him and murmured that it hardly mattered, he was here now.

Alejandro ignored them both and approached the desk, announcing himself as Valentina's father and demanding to see his daughter—and her doctor.

Minutes later, a tanned and silver-haired doctor came to the door. Taking in the crowd, he insisted on family only. Pilar, Sebastian, and Alejandro followed him.

The doors closed behind them just as Georgia rushed in, looking around frantically for Alejandro. Cricket looked at her coolly, taking in her unbrushed hair and mascara-smudged eyes.

“How did you hear?”

“Noni called Alejandro—” Georgia said, and the unspoken revelation she'd been with him settled heavily in the room. “How is she?”

“We're still waiting to hear,” Cricket said, her voice like ice.

Georgia sat heavily beside her. “He never wanted her to ride. I changed his mind. He thinks it's my fault,” she said with absolute certainty.

“Don't make this about you,” Cricket said. Her voice sounded both scornful and jealous.

“I love Valentina,” Georgia said, realizing as she said it, that it was true.

“You love her?” Cricket sounded outraged. “You don't even know her.”

God, she was right, Georgia thought. She was nothing but a temporary employee who'd given what turned out to be catastrophically bad advice to her boss's daughter before going on to sleep with him in clear dereliction of every professional standard.

Cricket glanced from her phone's screen to Georgia's face and seemed to relent a bit. “I'm sure you thought it was the right thing to do.”

“I didn't know,” Georgia said. “It just seemed like a good way to go, given everything she'd been through. I didn't know this would happen.”

“No one ever knows,” Cricket snapped. “Some people just do a better job at acting like they know. Some people are better at sneaking into a family and disrupting everything, whether they belong there or not.”

Georgia sat, feeling sickened. It was true, when she thought about the enormity of Valentina's grief and Alejandro's loss and responsibility. She'd been playing God, as if she, with her stupid, broken home life and stunted childhood, had any idea how to fix anyone else. If Valentina would just be okay, she prayed, if she'd just make it through, she swore never to meddle in the family again.

Pilar came out and looked at Georgia in confusion before settling her gaze on familiar Cricket with an expression of relief. Cricket stood to put a hand on Pilar's arm, and her delicate frame started shaking with tears.

“
Lo siento. Lo siento.
It's okay. The scans are good news. There's no brain damage. She'll need time for her legs to heal, but she's all right,
todo va a estar bien
.”

Cricket took her in her arms and murmured soothingly, “Thank God. Thank God. I'll let everyone know. Corinne and Molly will be so relieved, and Xanthe, and Elizabeth.”

She rattled off names that meant nothing to Georgia and looked at her levelly over Pilar's shoulder. The message was clear:
I've got this. Why are you still here?
Georgia took her cue. The circle was closing. She wasn't needed.

G
eorgia took the stairs back outside, relieved to see the driver still waiting. He jumped from the car, eyes all questions, and Georgia let him know that the prognosis for Valentina was good, thank God.

In the backseat, where only the day before yesterday she'd been full of such delicious anticipation, the gratitude she felt about Valentina was battered by the impossible sadness of saying good-bye to so much hope with Alejandro. She pulled on sunglasses so the tears could flow.

The driver was discreetly silent until they reached the barn, where Enzo was just getting started, working with the new temporary vet to load the horses for shipment to Argentina.

Enzo was grateful for Georgia's reassuring report from the hospital and as he asked after each of the family in turn, she realized how devoted he was to Valentina, and to Noni and all the Del Campos—and how fond she had become of him. When Enzo heard she and Alejandro had flown out of Argentina at four that morning, he insisted that Georgia head back to bed.

“Honestly, Georgia. You've worked like a trouper all season. We can take it from here. The only remaining obligation for you would be an appearance at the end-of-season party, but given what the family's been through, I'm guessing that's not happening. So you can really go home at any time now. You've earned it.”

Georgia couldn't bring herself to go back to the pool house just yet so she drifted into the barn, where she lingered with Sugar and her pretty foal. Along with Tango, they were the hardest for her to leave. That figured, she thought wryly, it was only the half-breeds with whom she really ever fit in. Everything she heard that morning seemed to confirm her sense of herself as a meddling interloper. She heard grooms discussing the cost of the season and the fact that the Del Campos had rented out their yacht to Kuwaitis for $250,000 a week. Another talking about the family place in St. Moritz, which was covered by the stud fees on Tango alone. How in God's name could she ever have begun to think she might belong?

Saying good-bye to Valentina's horse, mercifully uninjured by the girl's fall, she felt a fresh wave of shame at how selfish and reckless it had been to encourage her riding, given the legacy of grief over Olivia. God, how could she have invited loss right back into Alejandro's life like that?

She felt close to a state of total collapse. This was why her mother had left her behind. She knew—she knew that Georgia would never fit into this world. That she would make a mess of things here.

Her eyes were starting to swim with exhaustion. Enzo came back, insisting she would get sick and must give herself a break. She hadn't taken a clear day off since she was hired, and truly she could go home now, as far as he was concerned. They had everything covered.

She didn't trust herself to speak beyond a thank-you before making her way back to the pool house.

She was revolted by all the pathetic self-pity kicking in as she packed her bags and sent a text to her father, letting him know that she'd be home early. She kept telling herself to be glad about Valentina. That was the only thing that truly mattered.