In the Brazilian's Debt. Susan Stephens

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СКАЧАТЬ Eduardo had saved him, lifting him from the barrio like a drowning puppy in a sack in the river. Eduardo hadn’t just taught him everything Chico knew about horses, but how to live and work responsibly, and how to care for his fellow human beings. He’d taught him how to eat in a civilised manner, and how to behave in society. Losing Eduardo had been like losing a father—a good father.

      Learning Eduardo had left him everything had been the biggest shock of his life. Eduardo’s last words had been to beg Chico to shrug off his past and learn from it, but how was he supposed to do that now that Lizzie Fane was back in his life? Leaving Lizzie twelve years ago had torn him up inside. How could they leave a fifteen-year-old child in the care of her nymphomaniac mother, and a violent, debauched father? he had asked Eduardo. He hadn’t known then what they had accused him of, or why Eduardo and Lizzie’s grandmother had been in such a hurry to get him away. He could still remember clutching his head as he raged about Lizzie’s situation for the whole of their journey back to Brazil.

      ‘It’s not your job to save Lizzie,’ Eduardo had told him firmly. ‘You have your career to think about, and Lord Fane is too powerful, too respected, for you to take him on.’

      ‘But I will one day,’ Chico had vowed.

      ‘No,’ Eduardo had told him flatly. ‘You will forget this and keep your mind on your work and your future career. And as far as Lizzie Fane is concerned, you will forget her too, and place your trust, as I have done, in Lizzie’s grandmother.’

      Trust, he remembered agonising in mutinous teenage silence. What was that?

      He knew now that trust was one of the most important parts of loving someone, and that Eduardo had trusted him like a son.

      * * *

      ‘So?’ Danny demanded as she waited with Lizzie in the supper queue. ‘What happened with Chico?’

      Lizzie flashed a glance around.

      ‘I don’t know why you’re being so secretive. I saw you walking across the yard with him—everyone must have...’

      ‘Doesn’t this smell delicious?’ Lizzie remarked, refusing to rise to the bait. She and Danny were standing in front of the open grill where three chefs were preparing everything from vegetarian specials to man-sized steaks.

      ‘Your attempt to change the subject has fallen on deaf ears, Lizzie Fane,’ Danny assured her.

      There were too many grooms around, as well as Chico’s fellow polo players, for Lizzie to be indiscreet, but Danny wasn’t going to let the subject drop. ‘So, what do you want to know?’ Lizzie asked.

      ‘You were a long time alone with Chico, and so I was wondering...’

      ‘He was telling me about the bandaging tutorial we have to attend at six tomorrow morning.’

      As Danny groaned the polo player behind them, muddy and with his hair tousled from a game, exclaimed, ‘Wake up and move along, will you? Hungry people are waiting to be fed here.’

      ‘Calm down, man mountain,’ Danny flashed, rounding on him. ‘We’re hungry too.’

      ‘Then hurry up and choose your food, fresh meat—’

      ‘Watch it, nuts for brains, or it’ll be your meat on the grill,’ Danny fired back.

      ‘I love your ladylike way with words,’ Lizzie murmured as the good-looking guy stared down at Danny with amusement.

      ‘Are you all like this back home?’ he demanded, directing the question at Danny.

      ‘Believe it,’ Danny snapped, exchanging an appreciative look with Lizzie.

      ‘Tiago,’ Lizzie confirmed in a discreet murmur. ‘One of the top players. You must have seen him on the cover of Polo Times? Bad. Very bad.’

      ‘Excellent,’ Danny mouthed.

      ‘That’s your Christmas present sorted.’

      ‘Promise?’

      ‘It’s a deal,’ Lizzie confirmed.

      Danny was about to say something smart back, but her words choked off abruptly when she saw the expression on Lizzie’s face. Nothing more needed to be said. Chico Fernandez had just walked into the cookhouse.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      LIZZIE DIDN’T NEED to look at Chico to know he was there when she could feel him in every fibre of her being. Determined not be distracted by the sudden overload of testosterone, she calmly gave her order to the chef. ‘Tomatoes, eggplant, fries, and—’

      ‘And the biggest steak you’ve got,’ a husky male voice interrupted.

      Having casually jumped the queue, Chico was handed a plate already loaded with every delicacy his uniformed chefs could provide. ‘I don’t want my new recruits fainting on the job,’ he explained. ‘Here—take this.’ He pressed his own plate of food into Lizzie’s hands. ‘Well?’ he demanded impatiently. ‘Don’t stand there staring at it. Eat before it gets cold.’

      ‘I’m a vegetarian.’

      ‘Vegan?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Slap a hunk of cheese onto her plate,’ he ordered the chefs, swapping plates.

      Lizzie passed the plate forward to the waiting chef. ‘Cheese omelette, please.’

      Damn, if she didn’t sound like the prissiest food freak on the planet, but no way was she being told what she could eat. Chico Fernandez might rule what she did as a student, but her downtime was her own. Tilting her chin at a determined angle, she joined Danny at a table by the window where they could chat undisturbed—only to discover that Danny, like everyone else in the cookhouse, had been watching Lizzie’s exchange with Chico with interest. Didn’t anyone ever take him on? Lizzie wondered.

      ‘Do you have to provoke him?’ Danny demanded.

      ‘Why not? It’s fun. I had to stand up to him. Dinosaur—trying to make me eat his plate of flesh.’ She flashed a glance at Chico’s table, knowing it was more than Chico’s dietary concerns for her. These brief encounters with him were bringing it all back to her—the times they’d shared, the jokes they’d told, the gossip they’d exchanged, and the wild rides they’d enjoyed through the magical glens of Scotland. And weighted against that—very heavily weighted against that—was the pain he’d caused her, and that was like a reopened wound as if Chico deserting her had only happened yesterday. She’d gone downstairs on the morning he left to find all the other grooms in the stable yard at Rottingdean, but no sign of Chico. She could still feel the sickening blow of incredulity when they told her he’d gone back to Brazil with Eduardo. She couldn’t believe them—and now? Looking back, she had to admit her feelings all those years ago had been the overreaction of a hormonal teenage girl.

      ‘Fun?’ Danny queried, breaking into her thoughts. ‘If that’s what you look like when you’re having fun, I’d hate to see you when you’re angry.’

      ‘Sorry.’ СКАЧАТЬ