The sinking sun laid a soft pink glow over the snow-tipped Rocky Mountains.
Isabella Sanchez headed her sorrel mare down through cinnamon-barked ponderosa pines and trembling aspens with their green spring growth, toward the homestead snuggled into a fold in the foothills. Leaning forward, she urged the horse into a final gallop, her hair streaming behind her, the dark waves whipped into a tangle.
After loosing the mare into the corral, she closed the gate and was about to lift her tooled saddle from the fence when a little way behind her a deep, decisive male voice said, "Let me do that."
At the sound of the once-familiar, bone-tingling timbre with its hint of a Spanish accent, Isabella stiffened, every muscle in her slim body tautening, every nerve alert.
Swinging round, her eyes widening in disbelief, she watched the man approach. Tall and commanding, he'd sleeked back his raven hair and tied it in a short, low tail, throwing into relief the lean, proud features of a conquistador, a throwback to ancestors who were fearless, ruthless, rapacious adventurers. And conquerors.
He stopped only inches from her, assailing her nostrils with a hint of warm spice and citrus — and his own subtle scent of virile masculinity. Isabella breathed it in as she filled her lungs with air that seconds ago had held only the clean freshness of the mountains and trees, but now was imbued with an alien accretion of expensive aftershave and Iberian sophistication.
"Marco! What are you d-doing here?"
She hoped that in the fading light he couldn't see her flush at the small echo of the stammer that had caused her agonies of embarrassment throughout her schooldays.
"I came to see you, Isabella," Marco de Alvarado said, giving her name the uniquely intimate intonation he had always lent to it. Isabel-la.
He'd followed her, found her, from the other side of the world? The heat in her cheeks spread throughout her body, even before he lifted his arms, trapping her against the corral.
She tensed still further, but instead of touching her he easily lifted the heavy western saddle and asked calmly, indicating the nearby barn, "Over there?"
Knowing that trying to wrest the thing from him would be futile, she said, "Yes."
She followed his lithe, powerful figure into the dim building, where he found an empty rack and deposited the saddle before turning back to her.
Isabella summoned all the supposedly cool aloofness that had made her famous on the world's catwalks and the pages of fashion magazines, and said, "Thank you. Now you can go. I don't want you here."
Inside the barn the aromas of leather, hay, and horses drowned all others, and there was so little light she could barely see him. But she couldn't miss the arrogant lift of his head, the flash of dark fire in his eyes below slashing brows. "Why?" he demanded, and asked softly, "Are you ashamed of your background?"
Her own head jerked up at that. "Certainly not!" Her parents had worked hard and honestly all their lives and given her the opportunity for a better education than theirs, a chance to move into the wider world. And although in high school her Mexican-American heritage had been one of the things that marked her as different — along with the alarming growth spurt that made her the tallest girl in her class — she'd long ago got over wanting to be like everyone else.
"Your father and mother tell me they were once the foreman and cook on this ranch," Marco said. "And when the previous owner died you helped them to buy it."
He must have arrived within the past hour, while she was riding, and already they'd confided so much?
She said, "I wanted a share in the place. I spent my childhood here — it's home." And in case he was in any doubt, "I'm very proud of my parents. They are wonderful people."
Marco inclined his head in a gesture foreign in this setting, emphasizing his pure Andalusian blood. "And more hospitable than their daughter." He paused while she absorbed the slight sting in his tone. "They invited me to share your evening meal, and stay for the night. It would be bad manners to reject their generosity."
Panic sent adrenaline racing through Isabella's veins. "What did you t-tell them?" she demanded, then bit fiercely on her lower lip, inwardly repeating what her speech therapists had taught her. Breathe calmly, speak slowly, hear the rhythm of the words.
Marco said, "That I am a friend, in Colorado looking at buying cattle, and I decided to look you up."
"Is that all?" A wave of relief swept over her.
"What did you think I would have told them?" His voice lowered and he switched to his native classical Spanish, the syllables flowing like a dazzling, sunlit mountain stream over time-worn stones. "Should I have said that you lay in my arms all of one magical Parisian night? That you kissed me with a rare, wild passion and touched me with fingers, hands, lips that trembled with desire? That I warmed your skin with my hands and savored it with my tongue — and found it tasted of honey and wildflowers — that your breasts budded for me when I took them in my mouth, and the secret petals of your body unfolded like a velvety damask rose and proudly welcomed my possession, that when I claimed you at last you sobbed with ecstasy and begged for more?"
"Don't!" Isabella whispered. "Stop it!" His words, uttered in a language made for such extravagance, such undisguised sensuality, aroused her senses, reminding her of the torrid scene he described. A scene she had tried for many months to block from her memory.
In dreams she had relived that erotic, once-in-a-lifetime episode over and over. And on waking had told herself it couldn't possibly have been so awesome, so unbearably exciting, as her mind insisted it had been.
But now, with Marco so close that she could see the rise and fall of his chest beneath his natural silk shirt, hear the slight unevenness of his breathing as he stared at her, his eyes dark glimmering pools in the increasing gloom, all subterfuge was stripped from her. That night had been everything she'd imagined beforehand, everything she'd tried so desperately to banish from memory since. And more...much more.
But the aftermath had cruelly shattered every foolish illusion she'd cherished. That too haunted her sleep, in nightmares that left tearstains on her pillow and had sent her fleeing to the one place on earth where she felt safe and truly loved, as a person with feelings and thoughts and a normally intelligent mind, not as a photographic object, a clotheshorse for some designer's bizarre whim...or a rich man's trophy.
A rich man like Marco Vincenze Yáñez de Alvarado.
"Don't?" Marco mimicked Isabella's plea, his voice harsh in the quiet dimness of the barn. "Stop? That isn't what you said that night in Paris, Isabella. No, it was Please...again, and Yes, oh yes! And crying my name in that sexy, blue-smoke voice that is poetry itself."
Isabella closed her eyes against the seduction of his words, deliberately retreating to a remote place inside her, the way she used to do on the catwalks in Milan, New York, London — and Paris.
Heat emanated from him, she could feel it, and she summoned thoughts of the cool evening falling outside over the mountains and meadows of the Colorado Rockies, mountain aspens restlessly turning their leaves, meadow flowers closing their petals for the night, the horse she had just corralled shaking its mane at the rising moon.
Marco de Alvarado couldn't have pursued her all the way from his home in Spain, or from whatever rich man's playground he'd last frequented, to Colorado and her parents' ranch. This was only another bittersweet, feverish dream. When she woke he would be gone with the night.
And then he touched her.
His long, clever fingers, capable of wringing unprecedented sensation from her body with the slightest caress, lay along her cheek, his thumb gently lifting her chin. "Look at me," he commanded.
She opened her eyes and blessed the gathering dusk. His face was shadowed, unreadable, and she hoped hers was equally so. For 10 years she had shielded her innermost thoughts from an insatiable, if admiring, world. Surely she could conceal her pain and disillusion from one man? A man who had totally misread her in the past. Whose careless hints at a shared future had been meaningless.
"I want you," he said with an implacable deliberation that sent a spiral of apprehension down her spine. His thumb moved, featherlight, over the throbbing lip she'd abused with her teeth, and her apprehension began to change to something else, something dangerously close to pleasure.
Violently, she pushed his hand aside, unable to bear any longer the temptation of that exquisitely tantalizing touch.
"You had me," she reminded him, reminding herself, too, with the crudeness of the expression. "In Paris."
"One night wasn't enough, Isabella." His voice hardened and his accent became noticeable. "Was I so unsatisfactory a lover that you not only spurned my gift, but instructed your agent to keep your modeling schedule secret from me? And then disappeared altogether."
He must know the answer. Marco was too skilled, too knowledgeable about women to have any doubts about his performance. Nor that she'd been out of her mind with passion, tossed on a whirlwind of feelings she had never known before.
"You were very satisfactory," she said, striving for an objectivity she didn't have, "in bed."
He granted her an ironic acknowledgment, a mere movement of his head. "And you were...incredible. You gave me the most remarkably pleasurable experience of my life."
Her heart leapt to hear that, before her more cynical brain cut in. Marco probably said much the same thing to every woman he slept with. Just as he presented them with jewelry to express his appreciation of their favors.
He said, "Making love to you was worth every minute of the months of frustration I'd been through."
Breathe calmly, speak slowly. "I'm glad you enjoyed it." She schooled her voice to the leisurely, icy politeness that had frozen off scores of men. "But it's an experience I don't intend to repeat."
For a moment his very stillness frightened her. Then the broad, dark angles of his shoulders relaxed a little. He said, with a kind of bored insolence, "I knew you liked variety, but I wasn't aware that every new...experience...was to be savored only once."
She drew in a breath, and just stopped herself from hitting him, curling her hands instead into fists at her sides.
Tension prowled around them while she fought for control. He probably anticipated her lashing out, an explosion of temper in response to the deliberate goad. A catalyst to allow him to respond in kind, not to hit or hurt — his code of honor would never sanction that — but to overmaster her in a display of physical superiority.
Isabella wasn't stupid enough to give him the excuse.
Outside, the mare whinnied in the corral. Isabella's mother called her name, and then, "Señor de Alvarado?"
Marco turned his head, and Isabella slipped past him, daring to mock him from the safety of the open doorway. "Señor?" She indicated the direction of the summons with caustic courtesy.
"I told your parents to call me Marco," he said.
He commanded respect even from her parents' generation, simply by virtue of a natural pride and self-confidence, the product of centuries of aristocratic Spanish breeding. He'd told her once that he had inherited a noble title but never used it, saying it was irrelevant in the 21st century.
He seemed to be waiting, perhaps for her to tell him again to go. But she had no right to withdraw an invitation issued, no matter how mistakenly, by her parents. "Come then," she said, and he followed her across the open space to the house.
Paloma Sanchez stood in the kitchen doorway. "Ah! Your friend found you, mi corazón." Her eyes went to Marco, one hand patting graying hair into place, the other smoothing her apron.
Isabella knew her mother was devoted to her husband of 30 years, besides being twice Marco's age, but no woman, whether 18 or 80, could be indifferent to his lethal male charisma.
Paloma turned back from the doorway as they reached the steps. "Wash your hands, Isabella."
Her mother still didn't trust her to wash before a meal? Isabella couldn't stop a small laugh.
"I suppose that goes for me, too." Marco's amused voice reminded her that a sardonic sense of humor lurked beneath his forbiddingly handsome exterior.
He stood back for her, but as she mounted the step his fingers closed about her wrist, lifting her hand. She felt the warm brush of his lips against the back of it, the slight rasp of a day's beard growth. Then he deftly dropped a kiss on the already unsteady pulse at her wrist before releasing her.
Panic mingled with a dismaying shiver of purest pleasure as she walked dazedly into the warm light of the big ranch kitchen. Several hired men seated at the big table looked up from their steaks to throw curious glances and nods of greeting to the newcomer.
After showing Marco the downstairs washroom, Isabella quickly changed into a dress with sleeves and a modest neckline, before helping her mother serve the family's meal in the pine-paneled dining room, only used when they had guests.
Marco treated her parents with courteous deference, complimenting Paloma on the food and discussing cattle management with Isabella's father.
"My family has bred cattle for generations," Marco told Berto, "in Andalusia. The mountains and meadows there are much like yours. I am almost homesick." He transferred his gaze, keen as a Toledo steel blade, to Isabella. "Is that why you came back?"
"I wanted to be where life is real." She'd become increasingly conscious of the artificiality of the fashion business and its related socializing and parties, of a world where success was measured by money and looks and how many times a name appeared in the gossip sheets.
Chapter ThreeHas Isabella told you about Paris?
For seconds Isabella's brain was paralyzed, her fork remaining poised in her hand. Marco surely didn't mean to tell her parents they'd been lovers for that one fantastic night? He couldn't repeat to them the memories of hot, unrestrained sex he'd ruthlessly recalled to her out in the barn!
He was talking to them across the wide ranch dining table, and she realized with intense relief that he was describing Bastille Day parades. "...and there are fireworks. Even the night before, Parisians dance in the streets, and on boats floating down the Seine, lit from stem to stern. The most romantic evening, in the most romantic city."
A deliberate reminder, instantly transporting Isabella from Colorado and her parents' ranch to Paris — walking with Marco's strong fingers folded about hers, joining in the dancing, first laughing, then silently wrapped in each other's arms, moving in perfect harmony, as though nothing else existed. The culmination of five perfect days spent together before parting late each night, in the city where they had first met.
For months he had been wining and dining and courting her whenever and wherever her modeling schedule allowed-dinner in Rome, weekends in London, Milan, New York, a precious week in Brasília.
He'd been amused but patient at her elusiveness about consummating their relationship. That, and his promise that "one day" he would show her his home in Andalusia, plus an idle comment that his sisters would envy her, and the light in his eyes that enchanted Bastille Day eve when he told her, "in years to come we will remember this..." had woven a starry-eyed fantasy in her mind.
He had bought her flowers from a street seller, saying their delicate faces and heady scent reminded him of her. And later at his hotel, they'd danced some more and had champagne.
She was already intoxicated with love. But when the waiter offered to refill her glass a third time Marco covered the crystal flute with his palm, and said quietly, "I don't want you drunk, Isabella."
His glittering gaze had told her how much he did want her, and she couldn't help the answering message in her eyes before he drew her to her feet, saying huskily, "One more dance."
Marco's eyebrows lifted, surprised curiosity in his eyes. "Is life not real in New York, Milan...Paris?"
She couldn't help a flicker of her thick lashes, and he said relentlessly, "You remember Paris, don't you, Isabella? The city of lovers?" His eyes taunted her with secret knowledge, with the threat of revelation.
Her heart thudded. He wouldn't-would he? Not here, not now!
Then he turned to her parents and she went hot and immediately ice-cold as he said, "Has Isabella told you about Paris?"
He held her close and murmured Spanish compliments into her hair while tiny hot thrills ran over her skin, her breasts aching against her clinging dress, moist heat throbbing between her thighs. When he led her to the elevator and then into his suite, she hadn't uttered one word of protest.
Nor when he took her to the bedroom with its king-size bed and removed her clothes between kisses, finally adoring her naked body with his eyes and his hands, telling her, "Your skin is the color of pale honey, and it has the texture of satin."
Shivering now with remembered excitement, Isabella realized her mother was clearing dishes, and hastily she got up to help.
The hired men had left the kitchen after piling their empty plates. Paloma cast Isabella a long look. "So, who is this man, mi corazón?"
"Just someone I met last year when I was doing a photo shoot. I haven't seen him...." since last Bastille Day in Paris "...for months."
"He has money, hmm?"
Enough to provide his mistresses with expensive jewelry. Isabella's throat tightened, and to banish the thought she said, "His family owns several cattle ranches in Spain and Venezuela, among other things, like laboratories developing new scientific breeding methods, and agricultural computer programs."
Apparently they were in the billionaire bracket. Not that Marco ever boasted of his wealth. Last year her high school friend M. J. Carter, an investigative reporter, had made it her business to check out the man rumored to be pursuing Isabella, and had sent her several news items about the de Alvarado empire.
Paloma's eyes gleamed with satisfaction. "A good catch."
"I don't need a good catch, Mamacita," Isabella said patiently. "I have plenty of money from my modeling, invested very safely."
It was a concept her mother struggled with, having fought poverty all her life. Though they had reluctantly accepted Isabella's contribution toward the purchase of the ranch, both her parents were determined to make it pay without further help.
"Money isn't everything," Isabella reminded her.
"I think he is a good man," Paloma said stubbornly. "A gentleman. I have a nose for these things."
What would she say if she learned that Marco wanted to make her daughter his mistress? Paloma and Berto were religious, and innocently clung to old ways.
Her parents were terribly proud of Isabella, while anxious about the lurid tales they heard of the fashion world. She knew they would be disappointed to learn that — at 28 — their only daughter was no longer a virgin. And she also knew that in Paloma's eyes it was high time Isabella was married.
Two of Isabella's best friends from Freemont High School, Pat Turner and Kelly Wainwright, were well on their way to the altar, and Paloma seemed to think that was a reflection on her daughter.
After supper Berto offered one of his precious cigars to the guest, and although Isabella knew Marco seldom smoked, he graciously accepted. While the men sat outside in the rapidly cooling air, the women dealt with the dishes, and then Paloma, preparing saddlebag lunches for the following day, asked Isabella to make up a guest bed.
She was almost done when her mother ushered in Marco, holding an overnight bag. "Make sure your friend has everything he needs," she instructed before returning to the kitchen.
Isabella smoothed the handmade quilt over thyme-scented sheets, briskly indicated the huge carved wardrobe and the door to the guest bathroom, where she'd laid out fresh towels, and asked, "Is there anything you want?" Her eyes daring him to misinterpret that, she added, "My parents will want you to be comfortable."
"Gracias," he said.
"I'll say good night, then."
Marco glanced at the gold watch on his wrist, and she said, "We keep early hours. My parents are always up at dawn."
He nodded. "So will I be. Your father is taking me along when he rides out tomorrow."
Stopping herself from rushing into speech, Isabella paused for a calming breath. "You can't ask him to do that. It's the first spring cattle drive. He's too busy to play tourist guide."
"I didn't ask. He offered."
"How long since you were around cattle?" she asked. "You don't seem to spend much time on your...estate in Andalusia."
"Unfortunately, no. My family has many financial interests worldwide, and someone must keep the various threads together. Since my father retired, that someone is me."
She'd supposed that he lived off other people's blood, sweat, and tears, that the term "businessman" often applied to him was loosely used. "You seemed to have plenty of time for..."
"For you?" To her astonishment a dark color appeared along his cheekbones, and a fleeting chagrin crossed his face. "There was a short time when I lived and breathed for nothing but the sight of your smile, the scent of your hair, the taste of your lips. You have no idea how much rearranging of my schedule, how much delegating of important business it took to make time for a beautiful, sloe-eyed witch with a mouth to drive men mad, the voice of a Lorelei luring them to destruction, and a contradictory air of deceptively innocent hauteur hiding the promise of passion smoldering beneath."
From any other man that description would have made her laugh. She could have told those who'd called her the Latina ice-princess that her remote expression on the catwalk hid pure terror, and the slow, supposedly sexy rhythm of her intonation resulted from speech therapy exercises to the beat of a metronome, helping to overcome her childhood stammer. Her modeling career had given her a superficial confidence, but she had never wholly conquered her innate shyness.
She'd learned to use her well-publicized image as an ice princess against men who imagined that money and power would persuade any woman into their bed. But Marco de Alvarado had penetrated the barriers she'd erected to protect herself from a milieu where beauty and sex were commodities available to the highest bidder.
And now he was here, the Spanish invader, threatening her newfound, hard-fought-for serenity, the fragile shell she'd built around her bruised heart.
Before the dawn sun had reached the ghostly white tops of the Rockies, the ranch was already abuzz with activity. Isabella's father sat astride a sturdy Appaloosa, directing preparations for the cattle drive, and she saw Marco introducing himself to his borrowed mount, a proud-nosed roan, before he eased into the saddle and gathered the reins in his strong, lean hands.
The roan had Andalusian bloodlines in its ancestry, so Marco should feel at home riding it. He wore a broad-brimmed gaucho-style hat, well-used boots, a dark shirt, and pants that fitted his muscular thighs too well for Isabella's peace of mind.
The boots and hat hadn't been packed in the compact overnight bag she'd seen last night when they'd had that sexually charged conversation in the guest room. But if he'd been buying cattle in the States as he claimed, he'd probably come from Europe prepared for riding the range.
Isabella still found it hard to believe that when they were in Paris together almost a year ago, Marco Vincenze Yáñez de Alvarado had been, not the rich idler she'd assumed, but a hardworking businessman overseeing his Spanish family's cattle-breeding empire in Spain and South America, as well as sundry other financial interests.
She checked her saddle-roll, lifted her foot into a stirrup, and lightly settled on the back of her sorrel mare, then joined the knot of mounted men. She had piled her hair up and pulled on a Stetson over the dark waves, and Marco looked twice at her in the morning gloom before he said, in the disturbingly intimate voice he reserved for her name, "Isabel-la! You're riding today?"
"I always help when I'm home." And from now on she intended to stay right here in Colorado, working on her parents' ranch. No more racing round the world to modeling assignments.
She walked the mare to her father's side. Berto reached out to pat her cheek and pull her hat more firmly down in front, as he'd done when she was a child.
Isabella laughed with joy, in the crisp Colorado spring morning, and the prospect of a hard but satisfying day's work.
Her glance collided with Marco's. He was sitting very still, his eyes glowing with repressed desire that stopped the laughter in her throat and set her pulses hammering.
His horse danced sideways, and he controlled it effortlessly while his gaze held Isabella's.
Her father lifted a hand and the horses and riders surged forward.
As she helped pair calves and their mothers, and chase strays into the mob, Isabella glimpsed Marco skillfully guiding his mount into tight turns and flat-out gallops — a man born to the saddle. Once, he leaned low to pick up a lost calf in a breathtaking show of strength and horsemanship, holding it gently before him until he located the panicked mother and restored her baby with a pat on its silky rump.
At lunchtime, while the herd was watered and rested, Isabella walked a little way from the others and removed her hat to cool her face with snow-melted water upstream from the cattle, and rinse her hands before eating.
"Your mother trained you well."
Still kneeling at the water's edge, she looked around, saw a pair of long, leather-booted legs encased in close-fitting fabric, and pulled her gaze away before it traveled further.
She stood up hastily, almost losing her balance, and Marco grabbed her arms.
For a moment she was dangerously conscious of the heat of his body, the strength of his hands, and a whiff of soap and male cologne mingled with the sharpness of fresh sweat.
Her eyes were level with his mouth, and she saw his lips briefly part over white, even teeth, then firmly close, the disciplined upper lip taking precedence over the sensuous lower one.
"Thank you." She forced herself to make an effort to move from his hold.
But his fingers retained their strong though not painful grip until she had to look up into his eyes.
"De nada," he said, his voice deep. "You're welcome." His eyes searched her face as if trying to work something out, then he abruptly dropped his hands. "You had better eat." With surprised respect in his eyes he added, "This is tough work for a woman."
Isabella tipped her head to one side as he urged her toward the men lounging near their horses. "Of course it's a breeze for you...being a man."
His quick smile and the amused challenge in his eyes made her remember why she'd fallen in love with him back in Paris. "Girls can do anything," he conceded. "But some things are better done by men."
"And some by women."
"Your sex is the only one that can have babies. But they still need a man to impregnate them." His eyes gleamed with hidden meanings.
"That's open to question now. Aren't your own laboratories changing nature's clumsy ways?"
"Clumsy?" His eyes teased, a wicked glance reminding her of a warm Paris night, and the lithe, proud grace of his naked body poised over hers. She looked away, and he laughed, making her heart turn over with poignant delight. "Our work is confined to breeding animals. Where humans are concerned there are things best left to nature. One cannot make love to a test tube."
That, combined with the intensified light in his eyes when she glanced up, the slight curve of humor on his beautiful mouth, left her without a comeback.
When they reached the overnight campsite Paloma was there, with a pack mule, preparing supper, and by the time they had eaten it was dark, the mountain air turning cold.
Isabella laid out her bedroll next to her mother's, pulled on a jacket and slipped through the trees to an outcrop of flat-topped rock that in daylight allowed a breathtaking view of the foothills and plains. Back when she was a shy, stammering teenager, she'd come to this spot often, seeking tranquillity.
Now it was a dark void, but under the sky-wide sweep of the stars she sat hugging her knees and waiting for a familiar tranquillity to enter her mind.
Instead, it filled with images of a powerful male figure, at ease in the saddle and out of it, moving with the muscular elegance of a bullfighter. Images of strong arms and hands capable of tenderness to a calf — or a woman.
Of Paris, and a night of exquisite, scorching sex.
Sighing, she got up, her muscles stiff after the day's riding. As she entered the trees a shadow moved nearby, stopping her heart and forcing an audible gasp from her. Probably a deer, she told herself. Then it moved again, quickly coming close.
Not a deer — a man.
"I didn't mean to frighten you, Isabella." Marco emerged from the night shadow of the Colorado mountain pines. "Your mother is concerned that you're off in the dark alone."
The pounding of her pulse was due to the momentary scare, not the fact that he now stood only inches away, his subtle scent mingling with the smell of pine needles.
He lifted a hand and smoothed a wayward curl back off her face, making her tremble. Afraid he would notice, she flinched away.
A harsh note underlying his quiet tone, he said, "You know I won't hurt you."
Pride wouldn't allow her to tell him how deeply, irrevocably he had hurt her the morning after making unforgettable love to her. Knowing it was her own stupid fault didn't help lessen her anger.
He looked past her to the pale rock where she'd been perched. "What were you doing, sitting there for so long?"
"You were watching me?" she queried sharply.
"For a little time. I didn't want to disturb you, but I promised your mother to see you safely back to the camp."
Paloma knew Isabella was perfectly safe. And if she'd been aware that Marco was only interested in getting her daughter into bed without first giving her a wedding ring, she wouldn't have been trying to throw them together.
If her father had known it he'd have driven the Spanish invader off at the point of a shotgun instead of inviting him along on the cattle drive. And if he'd known they'd already slept together in Paris, Berto might have put the gun to a different use.
Her parents' values might be quaint by her friends' standards, but Isabella not only respected them, to some extent she shared them.
She could belt out "Like a Virgin" with her high school buddies after one too many margaritas in a karaoke bar, confident that she never stammered when singing. She could admit to being as smitten as any of them by a good-looking jock, and join in their frank advice on each other's love lives — or lack thereof.
She admired the other girls' openness about sex but, even fueled by tequila, she would never have announced her intention of seducing a man, as Pat Turner had. Nor spill the details about the way a kiss from a special guy made her feel, like Kelly Wainwright — admittedly after downing a few mimosas. Isabella was no less shy and reserved about some things than she had been as a teenager.
It still amazed her that for one night 10 months ago she had cast aside her upbringing, her natural caution, even all she had learned about the world in her years as a top international model, and given herself freely, ardently, trustingly to a man she should have known would never take her seriously.
A man who for reasons she dared not guess at had searched for her across the world, persuaded her parents to accept him as a friend, and now invaded her private meditation in the mountains.
"I was thinking," she told him.
"Ah."
Imagining he was mocking her, she said, "I know models are supposed to be incapable of using their brains, but I do have quite a good one."
She'd been plucked from her rural school and enrolled in Denver's Freemont High because her grades were outstanding, and in her final year she'd won a national essay contest. Then a New York scout visiting the area had seen her picture in the local newspaper and persuaded her parents to let his agency sign her on.
She'd found modeling to be more hard work and long hours than glamour, but quickly realized she would never be required to talk — a huge plus for a young girl still afraid of her stammer making her look like a fool. After two years of learning to hide her fear of self-exposure, her career had taken off.
"I'm aware of your intelligence," Marco said. "Do you think I would have been interested in a brainless bimbo?"
"It was my looks that attracted you." And perhaps her reputation, which she still found incredible, as one of the most beautiful women in the world. "You wanted a trophy woman."
He didn't answer immediately, and she thought caustically that he couldn't deny it, but then in a deceptively level tone he said, "So. This is what you think of me — that I believe a woman is a mere object to be admired in private and shown off to my friends in public?"
"Isn't that what you asked of me?"
Again he was silent for a moment. Then his hand closed about her arm. "Come, we will sit down."
Reluctantly she let him lead her back to the rock outcrop overlooking the night-black valleys. He saw her comfortably seated before taking a place beside her, his shoulder just touching hers. Isabella edged away.
"I wanted a companion, a lover," Marco said. "Certainly your beauty first caught my attention. It is usually so, for a man. But beauty is not unique. The night I was introduced to you at that charity concert in Paris — I don't even recall what it was in aid of — the instant you put your cool hand into mine, and I looked into dark, green-brown eyes filled with hidden secrets and surprising vulnerability, something happened to me...here." He touched his chest, over his heart.
"Really?" She made her voice hard and uncaring. "I thought I affected a quite different part of your anatomy."
For a second she thought she'd shocked him. Perhaps she had, but then he laughed quietly. "Such bluntness is unlike you, Isabella. The truth is you affect every part of me. Since that night in Paris when you came to me with so much passion, such sweet abandon, I have been unable to get you out of my mind."
She wanted to believe he'd pursued her because she was important to him, but more likely it was a matter of male ego. He needed her surrender to prove his own invincibility.
But not in marriage. The idea of his children inheriting Mexican blood along with his bona fide Spanish blue variety was probably so unthinkable, it had never crossed his mind.
"I'm aware," he said, "that I'm not the only man to be cast under your spell. And that you set a high price on yourself."
Something inside her swelled and exploded, leaving a deep, dark hole. The stars swirled before her eyes. It was as well her throat had closed up because if she'd spat insults at him as she wanted to, no doubt her childhood stammer would return and she'd make a complete fool of herself.
She uncurled from the rock and slithered to the ground. Taking time to steady her voice, she said, "As a matter of fact, I'm not for sale. I never was."
That was what Marco had not understood. When she had shared his bed, opened her heart, her mouth, her body to him, and explored his with an eager abandon that made her blush to think of it, it was not a transaction to be paid for with a glittering, expensive bauble and the promise of more to come, but a gift of love.
That was why she would never forgive him.
Chapter Six: Page One
"Isabella!"
Ignoring Marco's call, Isabella almost ran through the mountain pines toward the glow of the campfire, where her parents and the ranch hands were settling for the night. She had the advantage of knowing the Colorado terrain where she'd lived most of her life, and she heard him curse in Spanish as something impeded him in the darkness.
She reached the camp, going straight to her bedroll and removing her boots. Her mother lifted her head. "Señor Marco went looking for you."
"He found me," she told Paloma, and added, "Good night, Mamacita," to forestall any conversation.
For a while she lay listening to the restless stamp of the cattle, now and then a calf bleating or a cow giving a low moo into the cold Colorado night.
This was her world now. Her face still appeared in ads for a cosmetics company that had paid what she privately thought was a sinful sum for the right to use it, but she'd done the last shoot of the contract and refused its offer of a renewal…as she'd worked out all her other modeling commitments after that life-altering night in Paris with Marco de Alvarado, before coming home at last.
Next day after leaving the cattle to enjoy their new pasture, the riders headed on the long trek down the mountain, the horses gradually stringing out into a line as they followed a tree-lined trail.
It was some time before Isabella realized that Marco's roan had come alongside her sorrel, and the others were out of sight. Her mother probably had something to do with it, she thought, with a spurt of affectionate exasperation. Digging her heels into the mare's sides, she urged it to a canter but had to pull back over a tricky slope, and Marco easily caught up.
For a few minutes they rode in silence that Isabella stubbornly refused to break. Perhaps for once Marco didn't know what to say.
At last she had to look at him. As if he'd been waiting for a cue, he said, "I never thought you were for sale, Isabella. Not last night, when you flung that at me, and not in Paris when we made love."
Her hands tightened on the reins, and the sorrel snorted an objection. Isabella relaxed her grip. "You may not have called it that, but when the false glamour is stripped away, and the romanticism of Paris, that's what it amounted to. You wanted me to be your mistress."
"My lover," he corrected her.
Her lips curled in scorn. "It may sound better, but the bait you dangled was what men traditionally offer a kept woman."
"Bait?" His eyebrows drew together in a formidable frown. "I offered you the use of a modest home which I happen to own in Spain, as a permanent base where we could spend time together. You had complained about always living out of suitcases."
"You implied I should give up my job —"
"Which you seem to have done," he interrupted. "It was a suggestion only."
"— so that you could...exhibit me to your rich and famous friends."
"I thought you enjoyed showing off your lovely body in beautiful clothes, that you liked that lifestyle — and aren't you one of the rich and famous?"
She'd never felt like it. Attending society functions wearing designers' work, being seen with the "right" people was all about image, and networking, and maintaining a profile. Part of her job.
The mare snorted again, shaking her mane, and Isabella leaned down to pat the sleek neck.
"What it came to," she said, guiding her horse around an outcrop of jagged rocks shaded by blue spruce, "is that you were prepared to keep me in luxury and lavish me with money and jewels, in return for sex on tap. You even produced a sample of what I could expect — a sort of f-first installment on your investment. Or was it payment for what you'd already had the night before?"
She hadn't intended to mention that, nor allow bitterness and hurt to make her forget to think before she spoke, forestalling that betraying stammer.
"Isabella!" A strong hand caught at the mare's bridle, bringing it to a halt in the shadow of the trees, and he moved his own horse closer to hers. "The bracelet was a gift," he said. "A small memento to mark our first night together — the first of many nights, I hoped. It was no more a bribe or a payment for sexual services than the flowers I bought you the day before."
"Much more expensive than flowers." A delicate silver chain set with rubies, it had been a lovely thing — and a humiliating insult, after he'd spelled out the place he intended her to have in his life.
"You said it was not enough," he reminded her, searching her face as though hoping for some clue to a baffling puzzle. "Not even worth taking along when you left me. It wasn't really necessary to throw it in my face." He touched his cheekbone ruefully, and with a mixture of guilt and satisfaction she remembered it had hit him, before she'd stalked out the door of his hotel room.
He had totally misunderstood her heated repudiation of his gift when she had told him she was worth more than that.
Had he really thought her so mercenary?
Yes, her mind answered. That was what he had meant last night when he said she put a high price on herself.
Well, she did. Higher than he would ever know. Her self-respect was priceless, and not to be bought.
He was still looking at her with that oddly speculating stare, and behind it she suspected his mind was furiously at work. In a strange tone, as if it was some kind of test, he said, "I can match any gift your previous lovers have given you. But what do you really want, Isabella?"
"Not a man who thinks he can buy me!" she spat, with a rare loss of temper. "You talk of me throwing your paltry gift in your face, when you don't even have the sense to see that I'd given you something far more precious, something I can never give a man again!"
For one second his face seemed blank, then his black brows snapped together. "You can't mean..." He shook his head.
Recklessly, Isabella flung at him, "You've no need to outbid my previous lovers, Marco. I never had any before I came to you that night in Paris."
"You were a virgin?"
Marco must have made some involuntary movement; his horse lifted its head, skittering against Isabella's mare. He reined the roan in and returned his attention to Isabella's defiant face, shaded by her Stetson and the blue Colorado spruce growing alongside the trail.
She couldn't take back the confession now. She had been a virgin before Marco enticed her into his bed for one unforgettable night in Paris. And she wasn't ashamed of it.
He raked a hard, merciless black gaze over her cotton shirt and dusty jeans. "A woman like you — who has been escorted by some of the world's wealthiest men, who makes love like a houri — so excitingly, so...generously?" He gave a short laugh. "No."
Isabella's temper was already on a very short fuse. She had just told him something she had never, ever intended to, a secret she'd shielded for the sake of her pride and self-respect. His laugh sparked an explosion of purest rage. Before she knew it, her hand swung back and then connected stingingly with his face.
She saw shock and fury in his eyes, and her heart plunged before she urged her mare into a fast and dangerous gallop, not along the trail her parents and the hired hands were following back to the ranch, but through the spruce and pines on a shortcut that she'd often taken, though not at this speed. A speed that a stranger surely couldn't match.
She heard Marco coming after her, and urged the mare on, ducking beneath low-hanging branches that skimmed her Stetson from her head, loosing the black waves of her hair to float on the rushing air.
Reaching an opening dotted with wildflowers, she relaxed a little — stupidly. The mare caught a hoof on some hidden rock, and fell, barely giving Isabella time to free her feet from the stirrups and throw herself clear.
She rolled, and lay winded while the mare struggled up, cantered a few yards away and began to crop the grass.
Another horse thudded out of the trees.
"Madre de Dios!" Marco halted the roan and flung himself from the saddle to kneel at her side. "Isabella — are you hurt?"
Only by you. She slapped at the questing hands he was running over her body.
"Be still!" he commanded, grasping her wrists. "I'm trying to find out if you have damaged any bones."
"I haven't!" she snapped. "Don't touch me!"
He ignored her, transferring both her wrists to one strong male hand while he continued his inspection. Isabella struggled and kicked, and he laughed, giving up but not releasing her. "It seems you are right," he conceded, "if you can fight me like one of your mountain wildcats."
"Let me go!" She stopped struggling, realizing it was futile, but her flushed face and hot eyes must have told him she was still hostile.
"Not if you're going to run away — or hit me again."
Against her useless resistance, he gently but inexorably pushed her down among the grass and breeze-blown flowers, holding her hands with his against the soft mountain earth, his body trapping her, his eyes narrowed. "Is it true what you told me back there?"
She glared at him at first in silence, then said, "Yes. It's true," daring him to make what he liked of it.
"There was no evidence," he said thoughtfully.
In fairness, it seemed unlikely — after all, she'd been 27 years old and had spent 10 of those years allowing photographers and designers to exploit her body and her face — but his skepticism hurt.
"I've ridden horses all my life," she told him, refusing to lower her eyes. "It makes a difference."
For a long moment his dark gaze remained fixed. Then his hard expression changed, shock and regret softening it. He said, "You should have told me."
He believed her. Too late, but unexpected relief brought a tiny, shaming sob from her throat. She was suddenly conscious of his body lying across hers, warm and strong — and aroused.
"Isabella —" Her name between a groan and a whisper on his lips, and then he bent his head and took her mouth in a tender, and then less tender, passionate, mind-spinning kiss.
She made one small attempt at escape that he didn't even seem to notice, and then a storm of sensation overtook her and she was lost.
This was what she'd yearned for, dreamed of, ever since he'd kissed her like this, touched her like this, last year in Paris when they first made love, his hands finding the line of her throat, the curve of her shoulder, the soft swell of her breast, his mouth wreaking the same beautiful magic.
She kissed him back, mindless with desire, with need, winding her arms about him, until he lifted his head, his eyes glittering dark jewels, and breathed her name again.
One of the horses whickered and stamped, and Marco rolled over, still holding Isabella, his big body crushing the meadow flowers. He brushed loose ringlets from her eyes and held her face between his hands. "I want to take you here and now," he said. "But you deserve better than a quick coupling on the ground. A wide, soft bed with satin sheets, a long, leisurely night, and..." he gave a rare, wry grin "...a lover who doesn't smell of cattle and sweat."
He smelled of grass and aroused male and his own intoxicating skin scent, an aphrodisiac in itself, mingling with a faint vanilla scent drawn by the sun from the bark of the ponderosa pines.
But the pause made her realize where they were, what she was doing. "No!" She closed her eyes and shifted, struggling upright and pushing away his hands when he would have helped her to her feet. She turned blindly toward the horses, but he caught her back against him.
"Isabella?" His voice was temptation, the hands caressing her shoulders inviting her to lean on him, but she battled it, fiercely shrugging away and going to gather up the mare's reins, vaulting into the saddle and heading home.
He rode all the way with her, and neither of them spoke. It was late afternoon when they arrived, and she didn't emerge from her room until it was time to help her mother with supper.
At the table she ignored the dark glances Marco cast at her while he talked with her parents. The moment they had finished she pushed away her chair, taking her plate and reaching for her father's as her mother started to rise.
Then Marco said, "Stay, por favor, all of you. There is something I must say."
Paloma settled back in her chair, but Isabella remained stubbornly standing, her stomach fluttering.
Her father frowned up at her. "Isabella —"
Berto would never tolerate bad manners. Slowly she sat down.
Was this goodbye? A thank-you speech for her parents' hospitality? He must have known from Isabella's icy avoidance of him that despite the desire he so easily aroused, he had lost her. She loved him, but being his mistress, lacking real respect and commitment, and becoming a source of shame and sorrow to her parents, could never bring her happiness.
"Señor." Marco bowed his head in Berto's direction. "Señora," he acknowledged her mother with the same aristocratic Spanish courtesy. "I have a confession. A pardon to beg of you. Last year — unwittingly — I took your daughter's virginity. I ask your forgiveness, and your blessing on our marriage."
The ranch dining table might have been a still-life picture, the four people around it stone carvings. For once, the Colorado mountain air seemed stifling.
Isabella's father looked grave, her mother astonished and disapproving. And Marco, after announcing to her parents that he had "taken" their daughter's virginity, was looking at her now, with an enigmatic, intense dark stare.
Isabella finally reacted, shoving back her chair again so that it rocked as she leaped to her feet. "M-marriage?" she repeated his last word, her voice high and quick with shock. Breathe, she reminded herself, remembering her speech therapists' instructions. "Because you've discovered I was a v-virgin when we made love in Paris?" Slow down. She tossed black curls from her eyes and regarded him with all the haughty disdain she could muster. "And now your conscience bothers you?"
She gripped the back of the chair, feeling quite capable of picking it up and hurling it at him. His confession, his proposal — made to her parents, not to her — was archaic, surely even by the standards of his Spanish homeland.
"I was 27 years old!" she stormed. "You didn't take anything from me. I gave it to you of my own free will. My body, my choice!" She stabbed a finger between her heaving breasts. "And my business, nobody else's. I won't be your mistress, and I won't m-marry you!"
As she whirled, leaving the room, she heard her father say heavily, "Señor, we will talk."
The telephone rang as she passed it, and she hesitated, then snatched up the receiver and snapped, "Yes?"
"Hey." Sunny Jones sounded startled. "What's eating you?"
"Sorry, Sunny." Her school friend's voice went some way toward cooling Isabella's temper. "It's nothing."
Sunny waited, then said, "Well...okay. Talking of eating, The Detention Gang needs to get together to plan Pat and Gray's wedding. Pat's in town, and M. J. too. Can you make it to Gray's restaurant tomorrow night?"
There would be cattle sorting tomorrow for the next drive, but if Marco was riding, Isabella decided, she wasn't. And if she'd ever needed the support of her high school gang, she needed it now. "I'll be there."
Next day she made her fall of the day before an excuse to stay home. She helped her mother with the day's food, then treated herself to a leisurely facial, shampoo, and scented bath before sliding into a dark red dress with a narrow slit skirt, and piling her hair into casual elegance. If she let herself go, she'd be dragged into Sunny's Denver beauty salon for a makeover.
She was trying to start her parents' car when she realized Marco had stopped beside it. "Trouble?" he asked. "Where are you going?"
"Denver. What are you doing here?" Furiously she tried the engine again.
"I was no longer needed, and your mother told me you were hurt in your fall — which I caused."
"So?" She glared. "You are not responsible for me! I'm just a bit stiff." She jabbed at the accelerator and swore. She could take a ranch vehicle, but she didn't want to arrive dusty and smelling like a cowhand.
"I'll drive you in my car," Marco said. "Wait while I change."
Fuming, she pumped the engine for 10 minutes, until he appeared, clean and heart-stopping in designer casuals. "One condition," she told him, ignoring the fact that he was doing her a favor. "We don't talk."
His eyes glinted with irritating amusement, but he gave her a nod filled with irony, and opened his passenger door with an exaggerated flourish.
After a totally silent journey, he followed her into the Fifty-Yard Line, and she hissed at him, "You can't come in! I'm meeting my girlfriends."
He raised his eyebrows. "It's a restaurant and I'm hungry."
She stalked across the room, finding Sunny, Kelly, and Pat already at a table with two opened bottles of wine. Their collective gazes rose beyond her, and Sunny said in open appreciation, "And who's this?"
Isabella knew Marco was right behind her even before he placed a possessive hand on her waist. "I'm the man Isabella is going to marry," he said.
"He is not!" Isabella snarled, plonking herself on a chair between Kelly and Pat. "Kelly — tell him the law about stalking."
Sunny interrupted. "Why not?" Her chin on her hands, she crooned enviously, "Don't you lo-o-ove him?"
Kelly's brisk lawyer's voice warned, "If you're stalking our 'bella :—"
"I drove her here," Marco said impatiently. "Does that sound like a stalker? I have her parents' blessing. And if she doesn't love me —" he moved around the table to capture Isabella's shocked eyes "— why did she give me her —"
"Don't you d-dare!"
All eyes turned to her, and as she sat furiously blushing, M. J. Turner's breezy greeting cut the fascinated silence.
"Hi, gang. Sorry I'm late. Oh!" She turned to Marco. "You're Marco de Alvarado, right? I guess Isabella brought you along. I'm M.J. You've met the others? No?" She introduced them, and waved him to an empty chair, took one herself, and poured wine for them both. "I guess Gray will join us later, Pat? Now, what's the latest."
"Marco says he's going to marry Isabella," Sunny told her.
"Isabella says he isn't," Kelly supplied.
"Oh?" M.J. looked at Pat. "You're the advice columnist."
Afraid to open her mouth and repeat the stammer that her chaotic emotions had resurrected, Isabella fought for control while her four friends looked from her to Marco, and Pat finally pronounced, "So Marco, tell us about yourself."
Traitors.
M.J. said, "He's Spanish, his family breeds cattle in Andalusia and South America, among other things. He travels a lot on business, used to drive racing cars, dates lots of women, hangs out with the jet set. But in the past few years not much gossip fodder. Avoids the media."
Marco bowed in M.J.'s direction. "I have more important things to occupy me since taking over my family's affairs. And I matured. What else do you ladies want to know?"
"Do you breed bulls?" Sunny asked suspiciously. "Were you ever a bullfighter?"
He shook his head. "When I was young and foolish I once ran with the bulls in Palermo. But I have developed a distaste for the corrida. A noble animal should not die on its knees. And I see no glory in killing for sport. For food — that is different. But then, I'm a mere farmer."
The inaccurate self-description made Isabella laugh. He sent her a glinting glance, and continued patiently answering questions from the four women about his background, his opinions, his tastes in music and literature, his views on marriage — surprisingly liberal, considering his decidedly antiquated way of arranging one.
Kelly said, "Um...don't Spanish men have rather traditional views about virginity and stuff?"
Marco didn't turn a sleekly combed hair of his head. "I never considered it a requirement for my bride, but —" his eyes fixed on Isabella across the table "— any man would feel proud to be honored with such a gift."
"What about kids?" Sunny asked. "Isabella adores them."
His voice like black velvet, his gaze unwavering across the table, he said, "I would love Isabella to have my children."
"Well," Pat said, "you seem ideally suited. Here's the sixty-four-thousand dollar one — why do you want to marry her?"
Isabella found her voice. "Because he thinks he has to."
Four pairs of eyes descended to her narrow waist, then turned inquiringly to Marco.
Who said, "Because I love her to distraction, have done since I first touched her hand. But I've been a blind, stupid fool. From that moment I wanted only to keep her by my side, but I assumed that despite her seeming innocence and honesty she was like other women I had known in the past, who move in the same circles — women for whom fidelity lasts as long as a man's money. To whom their face and figure matter more than a family. Because of Isabella's career I made unwarranted, unfair assumptions. Misjudged her, misunderstood her, insulted her. For which I humbly, desperately, beg her forgiveness. For not recognizing what a precious jewel I held — through one unforgettable night."
His fingers circled a wineglass that seemed in danger from his grip. "Until I saw her in her own home, I had never known the real Isabella Sanchez. A woman of proud courage, rare integrity, a loving, generous, hardworking daughter, and, I would guess, a good friend."
"Yes," Kelly said, and the others nodded agreement.
But his gaze remained on Isabella, so intense it burned. "A woman who would make me proud to be her husband. I don't deserve you, dearest heart of my heart, light of my soul, but if you'll have me I will spend the rest of my life making up for my crassness and stupidity."
There was dead silence around the table. Then Sunny said in an awed whisper. "I think that's love."
The others nodded, and four heads swiveled back to Isabella.
Her heart banging against her ribs, she slowly stood, and Marco did the same. She pushed her chair away, moved back a step, and saw his face go tight — surely not fearful? Momentarily he closed his eyes. When he opened them again she was halfway round the table, and his dark gaze blazed, then he lunged, meeting her, swinging her into his arms and bringing his mouth down on hers in a long, dizzying heartfelt kiss that went on forever, but was too short.
The sound of clapping brought them back to reality. Not only their table, but all the diners were on their feet, applauding.
Still holding her tight, Marco gave them one of his characteristic nods of acknowledgment. Looking down again he said huskily, "You will marry me, Isabella, be my beautiful, passionate bride, and stay beside me all your life?"
Cheeks hot and eyes shining, she nodded, took a deep, calm breath, and said with not the slightest hesitation in her voice, "Yes, Marco. I will."
The End