Nacho Figueras Presents (8 page)

N
oni took the jitney up alone the next day, and Sebastian met her at the station in Westhampton.

As they drove to the dock, Noni only half listened to her brother's cheerful chatter. She was still incredibly raw from the events of the day before. Seeing Jacob after all this time, it had brought everything rushing back. The pain. The loss. The way he'd left her feeling so beaten down and hopeless…

And all her brave words this last week to Enzo about how things between them were going to be different than anything that had come before. How he needed to let the past go and trust himself with her. She was such a hypocrite. She'd convinced herself that she'd changed, healed, become stronger and managed to leave her old, broken self behind, but all it had taken was one short encounter to send her right back to where she used to be.

And then the fight with Enzo…She knew she should have explained herself, but she just couldn't force the words out. She's been so ashamed that he had seen her that way—scared and sobbing. She had worked so hard to be the strong, independent person he thought she was. She had pretended so much over the years that she had really started to believe that she was a new person. But now he knew. She was just the same old mess. She was still in jagged, splintered pieces. She simply hadn't been able to bring herself to explain. Too many secrets kept for too long. She was sure that if she had told him the truth, Enzo would have never felt the same way about her again. It was surely better for both of them to just cut things off.

She sighed and closed her eyes for a moment behind her sunglasses. She hadn't slept at all last night…

“Noni?” said Sebastian. He sounded very far away.

Her eyes flew open with a jerk.

Her brother shot her a look of concern. “We're here, darling. Did you hear me about your truck and the dogs? I said Alejandro would bring them both over later. They're at the farm.”

She blinked, trying to get her bearings. She should be used to traveling from place to place by now. Polo players and their entourages followed the game, and she'd been working for La Victoria for years. No sooner did the season end in one place than a new one would open up in London, the Hamptons, Argentina, snow polo in Aspen…They traveled the world, chasing the stick and ball. But there was always a moment of adjustment for Noni. Especially when she left her little cottage in Florida.

And this year, her displacement felt worse than ever.

She followed Sebastian onto the yacht, trying to shake her terrible mood.

Noni had been on
La Bonita Pilar
once or twice before, but just on the upper levels. She'd eaten up on the deck, seen the view from the balcony, spent some time in the twelve-person Jacuzzi, but this time, as Sebastian led her downstairs, Noni was seeing parts of the boat that she'd never even known were there.

She looked around, momentarily stunned out of her funk. “Seb, this is bigger than my entire cottage,” she said to her handsome green-eyed brother.

Sebastian grinned. “
Papá
liked his boats.” He swept his hand around. “So this part is the lounge and the mess deck. Bar is over there,” he said, indicating a fifteen-foot-long slate-topped structure crowned by an enormous glittering chandelier, “fully stocked, of course.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Of course.”

“Push the couches back and you have a nice dance floor,” continued Seb. “Because I know you'll be having crazy parties every night, right,
hermanita
?”

Noni snorted as she looked at the gorgeous ocean view out the long bank of windows. “Oh yeah. Totally.”

Seb smiled. “Just make sure you invite me if you do.” He led her into a room off the lounge. “Through here is the galley.”

It was a full-sized chef's kitchen. With a stainless Sub-Zero refrigerator, a six-burner stove, and tons of counter space and clever storage. The floor was a gorgeous deep red tile, and there was an island with room enough for six to sit around it.

“Since I know the extent of your culinary capabilities, I don't imagine you'll be cooking here much,” teased Seb. “Which is fine, the staff will keep it stocked, and if you want anything special, you can let the cook know.”

“The cook?” said Noni. “Oh no, Sebastian, I don't need the staff. I can take care of things on my own.”

Seb laughed. “Um, no offense, darling, but you definitely do need the staff. You can keep your cottage however you like, but
Mamá
will flip her lid if she shows up here and sees the mess you and your dogs are bound to make.”

“Why would Pilar come here?” said Antonia. “I thought she got seasick.”

Sebastian shrugged. “She does. She hates this yacht. But you never know what she might take it in her head to do. The staff is for your own protection,
niña
.”

Noni flinched, hearing the familiar nickname. A flash of the tortured look on Enzo's face just before he left swam before her eyes.

“There are four staterooms,” said Sebastian, leading her out. “That's what we call bedrooms on the boat, and they all have en suite bathrooms, or ‘heads' as they are known. The nicest stateroom is here.”

He opened the door to a huge airy room done in nautical blue and white. The enormous pristine white bed reminded Antonia painfully of the bed at the St. Regis where she had ended up tossing and turning the whole night through.

Tears suddenly sprang to her eyes.

She turned away from Sebastian, hoping he hadn't seen, and busied herself at the windows, opening them to the sea breeze. “It's a beautiful view,” she said tremulously.

Sebastian looked at her and cocked his head. “Are you all right, darling?”

She forced herself to smile. “Totally fine. Listen, I'm all set. I know you need to get back to the farm. Go ahead and I'll catch up with you there later, okay?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure?”

“Totally! Why wouldn't I be? Look at this beautiful place I get to live in for the summer!” She quelled her urge to literally push her big brother out of the room.

He looked suspicious but nodded slowly. “Okay,
bien
. I'll see you later this afternoon at the barn, though, all right? Don't forget to find me. Jandro and I leave for London early tomorrow, and who knows how long it will be before we get back.”

Noni's heart sped up a bit. “How many players are you seeing?”

He shrugged. “No way to tell. It's only the first stage of the search. We'll probably just watch a lot of games. See if there's any talent worth poaching.”

“But if you see someone talented, will you just bring them on right away?”

He shook his head. “It's not as simple as mere talent. I mean, yes, talent is one thing, but we also need to like them, you know? And not just me and Jandro, but Rory and Hendy as well. We have to see if they have chemistry with the whole team.”

Antonia forced her voice to sound casual. “Would you ever consider a woman?”

Seb looked at her for a long beat. She squirmed inwardly. “Of course,” he said slowly. “I mean, our grandmother, Victoria, was a great player. She was the one who first taught me and Alejandro to play, you know.”

Noni sighed. “I wish I'd met her.”

He smiled a bit sadly. “Me too,
querida
. She would have loved you. She very much wanted a granddaughter. She was always teasing
Mamá
and
Papá
about having a third child.” He shook his head. “What a crime that you were there all along and nobody knew.”

“Except Carlos, of course,” said Noni. She couldn't keep the bitterness from her voice.

Seb smiled ruefully. “
Sí
,” he said, “except Carlos.”

There was a moment of silence between the siblings.

“Anyway,” said Noni.

“Anyway,” agreed Sebastian. “Get settled in. I will see you at the farm later.”

He gave her a quick kiss on each cheek, and Noni smiled as he left. She never got tired of affection from her big brothers.

But her smile faded as she turned back to the big white bed. She stared at it for a moment and then backed out of the door, determined to look at the other bedrooms and find one that didn't make her want to cry.

Enzo surveyed his flat as he slowly unpacked. It was just the right size for him. An attic studio, bright and airy, with soft yellow walls, a miniature kitchenette, and a full-sized old-fashioned cast-iron bed draped in a vividly colored patchwork quilt. There was a little wooden table and two chairs that would do double duty for desk work and dining. A small bathroom with a shower. The Juliet balcony was just big enough for one person and gave Enzo a tiny slice of a sparkling ocean view.

After he left the hotel, he had come
this
close to picking up the phone, calling Mark Stone, and taking the job as
piloto
to the new team. It would have been a clean break, an easy way to put needed distance between him and Antonia. He had only been stopped by the knowledge that he'd be leaving the Del Campos high and dry. Alejandro and Sebastian planned on spending most of the summer in London with their families, scouting new players, and they were depending on Enzo to take care of their ponies and keep the barn running. If he left with no advance notice, it would be a huge hassle for them, and whatever he felt about Noni, none of it was her brothers' fault. They didn't deserve to be left in the lurch.

Still, once they found their new teammate, once the summer season was over, Enzo thought he would probably move on—with Mark's team, if the job was still open—or somewhere else if it was not. He had learned his lesson. He could not be so close to Antonia and not expect to get burned.

In the meantime, there was no avoiding her—they would have to work together over the summer—but he was determined to get control of himself and keep the distance between them.

He sighed and slid his now-empty suitcase under the bed. He knew he should head for the barn and find Alejandro and Seb before they left for London. There was a long checklist of tasks to go over, but the idea of seeing Noni again, after the way things had ended, felt almost unbearable. Not a minute had passed since he had left that hotel room that he hadn't been thinking of her, wondering how she was doing, feeling suddenly overtaken by the image of her in his arms, under him, her dark eyes gazing into his, her silvery blond hair in disarray across the pillows, the way she would bite down on her lower lip when he would touch her…

He sat on the bed for a moment, sternly reminding himself that he had gone years without her. What was one more summer? He would keep himself busy. There were a million things to be done, even more so than usual since the Del Campo brothers would be absent from the barn, and Noni would surely be occupied with her own tasks. It would be a simple enough.

He clapped his hands together and stood, ready to get back to work.

A
ntonia probably shouldn't have brought the dogs to the farm, but she didn't quite trust the sisters on the boat yet, unsure of what they would do to keep themselves occupied while locked up on the lower deck.

The huskies were used to horses, of course, but they had long ago sworn themselves to be mortal enemies of Pilar's two calm and regal Rhodesian ridgebacks and would harass them nonstop whenever they met.

Noni felt it was something instinctual on her dogs' part. Some sort of class warfare. Unlike Pilar's pedigreed show dogs, Noni's pups had humble beginnings. She had found Luna and Mojo in a box by the side of a Florida road when they were puppies, half dead with hunger and dehydration. With the help of Alejandro's wife, Georgia, who was a veterinarian, she had nursed them back to health.

They looked mostly like huskies with their icy blue eyes and fluffy coats, but they were small and scrappy and wild, and sometimes, especially when they turned up their noses and eerily howled at sirens or the full moon, Noni suspected them of having some coyote blood mixed in there as well. In any case, they were most definitely mutts, and nothing like the pure-blooded and noble ridgebacks, who seemed completely taken aback every time they encountered the sisters and their bad doggy manners.

In fact, they were pestering the ridgebacks now, running circles around them, yapping, darting in and out and snapping at the bigger dogs like teasing children. Noni knew from experience that the ridgebacks would only take this for a limited amount of time before their patience wore thin and then they would erupt—roaring like the lions their ancestors hunted in South Africa—and a real dog fight would be on her hands.

Pilar knew this, too, and came rushing out of the house, calling her dogs in.

Noni whistled for her girls and caught them by their collars. “Sorry,” she called to Pilar as Pilar herded her dogs back toward the house. “I didn't want to leave them alone on the boat.”

Pilar turned back to her, a frown on her face. “You are keeping them on the yacht?”

Noni blinked. “Well, yeah. I mean, Sebastian said—”

Pilar rolled her eyes in exasperation and waved her off. “
Dejá, no importa
. Never mind. We were getting the floors refinished, but I guess I will postpone that until the end of the summer. No reason to fix the floors if they are just going to get all scratched up again.”

Antonia started to point out that Pilar never came onto the boat anyway. What did she care what the floors looked like? But caught herself in time. She didn't want to pick a fight. Certainly not with Señora Del Campo.

“That's probably a good idea,” she said instead. “Waiting until we're gone.”

Pilar shook her head, shooing her dogs into the house. “As if I have a choice,” she muttered before she followed her dogs inside and shut the door a little louder than Noni felt was strictly necessary.

Noni let the girls go and they raced off toward the barn.

The Del Campo farm in Southampton was less grand than the estate in Wellington, but worth far more. There were twenty acres of fields and paddocks behind high stone walls, half of which was given over to a regulation-sized polo field. The house was a stately three-story colonial tucked away at the back of the farm, built in the 1700s and covered in the traditional silvery cedar shakes that were seen all over the Hamptons. The numerous twelve-over-twelve windows were original to the house, the glass panes thick, bubbled, and wavy. Noni loved the distorted underwater feeling she got when she gazed through them.

There were old-fashioned cottage gardens all around the house, filled with lilacs and peonies, roses and hydrangeas, daisies and bearded iris. The gardens were flanked by half a dozen enormously old and twisted black walnut and maple trees and a long, lush lawn that rolled down to meet the graveled circular driveway.

It was her favorite property that the Del Campos owned.

The Hamptons summer polo season was not as prestigious as the London summer season, and La Victoria usually played in England, but whether her boys were abroad or not, Pilar preferred to be in the Hamptons for her summers. The Del Campo brothers and their families took their jet back and forth from England for charity games to occasionally take part in the social whirl that was a Hamptons' summer and see their mother, but Pilar was content to stay put in Southampton, puttering about her garden and helping keep track of the ponies they kept quartered up here.

With the team scouting for a fourth player in England this summer, most of the ponies would be housed here while they were gone. She and Enzo would be kept very busy, indeed, thought Noni.

The Hamptons house was, more than any other property, Pilar's home. The house in Wellington was all Carlos—all about flash and presentation, designed to entertain the local horsey set. The
estancia
in Argentina was the family seat, owned by Del Campos for generations and generations. But the Hamptons house was something that Pilar had picked out for herself once she had realized that her husband would not be the husband she had hoped for him to be.

Carlos hadn't liked the Hamptons, which had been nothing more than a sleepy community of artists and farmers when they had first moved in. He much preferred the London season, but the story that Noni had heard whispered was that Pilar had insisted on him buying her the Hamptons house after she had found out about his first affair. That she had wanted a place that was solely hers, untainted by his betrayal, and she had threatened to take the boys and go back to Argentina if he didn't give it to her.

Sometimes Noni felt disloyal, loving the house that her father had liked least, the one that he had spent almost no time in. But that was, Noni mused, probably the exact reason she was attracted to the place. It felt like a safe harbor, unsullied by the poison that had seeped into Carlos and Pilar's long and unhappy marriage. Pilar had made it a refuge for herself and her sons, and that feeling of shelter was still so strong that Noni could sense its pull, even from the outside.

She turned toward the barn, nervous about seeing Enzo again. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Pilar open the door and let her dogs back out, apparently satisfied that Noni's mongrels were safely away in the stables.

Antonia sighed, imagining the long hot summer ahead of her. With her brothers gone to London, there would be no buffer between her and Pilar. And she couldn't even think about how things were between her and Enzo…

She had a sudden flash of Enzo's eyes, dark with passion, as he pored over her body. She felt the heat rush to her face as she recalled the way his strong, rough hands had moved with such gentle assurance, teasing out reactions from her that made her squirm to remember.

She shook her head—trying to knock out the memories—and then looked toward the barn. She was sure he was already there. Maybe they could talk this through somehow…

Enzo sensed her presence before he saw her. He was alone in the office, looking over some new vendor information, when the air around him suddenly felt charged. He looked up, the skin at the back of his neck prickling in anticipation, and there she was, standing in the doorway, breathtakingly beautiful in faded jeans, work boots, and a low-necked gray tee. Her long silky hair tucked behind her ears. She was wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses, so he couldn't tell if she was meeting his gaze or looking past him.

“Hello,” she said, excruciatingly polite. “How are you?”

He blinked. So she was going to play it like this. Pretend she didn't care.

Her face was blank. He wished she would take off her sunglasses.

He suddenly wondered if she had been back in touch with her ex. He clenched his fists as he imagined her calling him from the hotel room, bereft, needing comfort, inviting him over…

He swore inwardly. If any of that had happened, he had only himself to blame, didn't he? He was the one who left her there, upset and miserable. He was the one who walked out.

But then again, she was the one who had told him to go…

All of his intentions to keep a distance between them were suddenly pushed aside. “I feel like hell,” he said bluntly.

She finally took off her sunglasses, and the illusion of her being cool and in control was shaken by the dark circles under her eyes. She looked tired. And sad.

“Noni,” he said urgently, “I need you to tell me. Do you still have feelings for that man?”

Her face went pale. She bit her lip and stared at him, silent. He could see her struggling.

He took a step toward her. She took a step back.

“I'm sorry,” she said softly. She looked away. “I should get to work.”

And she turned, shutting the glass door gently behind her.

He stood for a moment, imagining himself going after her, taking her into his arms, begging her to come back to him, saying all the things he had sworn to himself he would never say to her, truly making her
his
.

Instead, he allowed himself nothing more than a long moment of watching her walk away.

And then he turned back to the paperwork, more determined than ever to keep to himself.