The Acostas Box Set: The Shameless Life of Ruiz Acosta / The Argentinian's Solace / A Taste of the Untamed / The Man From her Wayward Past / Taming the Last Acosta / Christmas Nights with the Polo Player. Susan Stephens
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and was satisfied the wound was superficial. Having returned to his room to take a shower, he was rubbing his hair dry when the messaging service on his phone trilled. It was a text from an anxious Holly, wanting to know what he thought of Maxie. Were his feelings supposed to have changed towards Maxie since Holly’s last call?
He texted back: She’s here. She’s fine. Doing her job, as far as I can tell.
Holly texted back immediately: Is that it?
That’s it, he confirmed, stowing the phone. What else should there be?
He was just easing his leg when he heard something that made him lurch across the room as fast as he could to stare out of the window. With a violent curse he left his bedroom in such a rush he forgot his cane. With his stiff leg lagging behind, he used the brute strength of his upper body to swing down the stairs, and, limping across the seemingly endless stretch of hallway, he launched himself at the front door and flung it wide. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘Oh, hello,’ Maxie replied, turning on the seat of his prized custom-built Harley. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I saw your bike and I couldn’t resist!’
She looked pretty hot on his bike…
And she was making no move to dismount.
She caressed the controls.
‘I hope you weren’t thinking of taking my bike for a ride?’ he derided, making what, without his cane, was embarrassingly slow progress down the steps.
‘I have ridden a bike before.’
‘Not like this, you haven’t,’ he fired back at her, cursing beneath his breath as he closed the distance between them at a limp.
‘I’m not a child, Diego…’
That much he could see for himself. And there wasn’t so much as a trace of guilt in her eyes. ‘Do you normally take things that don’t belong to you?’
‘I wasn’t taking it. I was sitting on it,’ she protested.
A flashback to his past fuelled his anger. He had first started riding bikes with a friend who was dead now. That thought led to the name Parrish banging in his head. ‘Don’t you dare,’ he warned as Maxie’s fingertips strayed dangerously close to the controls.
She had never done anything like this before. She had never rebelled or taken anything that didn’t belong to her without asking permission first. She had been all business, all correctness and restraint for so long she couldn’t imagine what she was doing.
‘Off,’ Diego commanded, in the coldest voice she had ever heard.
She could accept she was doing something wrong, but was it that bad? Something inside her flipped. ‘Okay, so you don’t want this wedding here. I get that. You don’t want me here. I get that too. But as your brother part-owns this island, and his fiancée has hired me to give an opinion, I’m going to stay until I’m in a position to do that.’
‘Then get back to work and get the hell off my bike!’
‘I’ve done my work,’ Maxie raged back. Springing off the bike, she took a stand. ‘For your information, I stayed up half the night to finish my work. Holly will have my report the second she wakes up. What have you done apart from feel sorry for yourself?’
Diego paled. ‘What did you say?’
‘Isn’t that what this is about?’ Maxie demanded as all the pent-up feelings she had suppressed for years burst out of her. ‘So you can’t play top-class polo? You can still ride a horse, can’t you? You’re still breathing!’
‘I should stop there, if I were you,’ Diego warned her quietly.
‘Why? Does the truth hurt, Diego? How long have you been on the island, exactly? Are you never going home? And if the pain’s so bad why don’t you take painkillers like everyone else?’
‘You’re really pushing it, lady…’
‘Am I?’ she said, standing her ground when he took a step towards her. ‘Perhaps it’s time someone did. Maybe I shouldn’t have sat on your bike—but for God’s sake, Diego, it’s only a bike. I was hardly going to roar away on it. Where would I go?’ she demanded angrily, staring around. ‘This was an island the last time I looked!’
‘Are you finished?’ he demanded, looking more ferocious than she’d ever seen him with his ruggedly beautiful head thrown back, earring glinting, black eyes blazing.
Absolutely, devastatingly, gorgeous…
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