The Most Expensive Lie of All. Michelle Conder
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sorry than she could say. ‘I’m—’
‘Truly sorry? So you said. Have you become prone to repeating yourself?’
Aspen blinked up at him. Was it her imagination or did he hate her? ‘No, but I don’t think you believe me,’ she said carefully.
‘Does it matter if I do?’
‘Well, we used to be friends.’
‘We were never friends, Aspen. But I was glad to see your little indiscretion didn’t stop Anderson from marrying you.’
Aspen moistened her parched lips. ‘Grandfather thought it best if I didn’t tell him.’
Cruz barked out a laugh. ‘Well, now I almost feel sorry for the fool. If he’d known what a disloyal little cheat you were from the start he might have saved himself the heartache at the end.’
Oh, yes, he hated her all right. ‘Look, I’m sorry I brought it up. I just wanted to clear the air between us.’
‘There’s nothing to clear as far as I’m concerned.’
Aspen studied him warily. He wasn’t moving but she felt as if she was being circled by a predator. A very angry predator. She didn’t believe that he was at all okay with what had transpired between them but who was she to push it?
‘I made a mistake, but as you said you’re not here to reminisce.’ And nor was she. Particularly not about a time in her life she would much rather forget had ever happened.
She turned sharply towards the stables and kept up a brisk pace until she reached the doors, only starting to feel herself relax as she entered the cooler interior, her high heels clicking loudly on the bluestone floor. Her nose was filled with the sweet scent of horse and hay.
Cruz followed and Aspen glanced around at the worn tack hanging from metal bars and the various frayed blankets and dirty buckets that waited for Donny and her to come and finish them off for the day. The high beams of the hayloft needed a fresh coat of paint, and if you looked closely there were tiny pinpricks of sunlight streaming in through the tin roof where there shouldn’t be. She hoped Cruz didn’t look up.
A pigeon created dust motes as it swooped past them and interested horses poked their noses over the stall doors. A couple whinnied when they recognised her.
Aspen automatically reached into her pocket for a treat, forgetting that she wasn’t in her normal jeans and shirt. Instead she brushed one of the horses’ noses. ‘Sorry, hon. I don’t have anything. I’ll bring you something later.’
Cruz stopped beside her but he didn’t try to stroke the horse as she remembered he might once have done.
‘This is Cougar. Named because he has the heart of a mountain lion, although he can be a bit sulky when he gets pushed around out on the field. Can’t you, big guy?’ She gave him an affectionate pat before moving to the next stall. ‘This one is Delta. She’s—’
‘Just show me the horse you’re selling, Aspen.’
Aspen read the flash of annoyance in his gaze—and something else she couldn’t place. But his annoyance fed hers and once again she stalked away from him and stopped at Gypsy Blue’s stall. If she’d been able to afford it she would have kept her beloved mare, and that only increased her aggravation.
‘Here she is,’ she rapped out. ‘Her sire was Blue Rise, her dam Lady Belington. You might remember she won the Kentucky Derby twice running a few years back.’ She sucked in a breath, trying not to babble as she had done over her apology before. If Cruz was happy with the way things were between them then so was she. ‘I have someone else interested, so if you want her you’ll have to decide quickly.’
Quite a backpedal, Cruz thought. From uncomfortable, apologetic innocent to stiff Upper East Side princess. He wondered what other roles she had up her sleeve and then cut the thought in half before it could fully form. Because he already knew, didn’t he? Cheating temptress being one of them. Not that she was married now. Or engaged as far as he knew.
‘I’ve made you angry,’ he said, backpedalling himself.
This wasn’t at all the way he needed her to be if he was going to get information out of her. It was just this damned place. It felt as if it was full of ghosts, with memories around every corner that he had no wish to revisit. He’d closed the door on that part of his life the minute he’d carried his duffel bag off the property. On foot. Taking nothing from Old Man Carmichael except the clothes on his back and the money he’d already earned.
Of its own accord his gaze shifted to the other end of the long walkway to the place where Aspen had approached him that night, wearing a cotton nightie she must have known was see-through in the glow of his torch. He hadn’t been wearing much either, having only thrown on a pair of jeans and a shirt he hadn’t even bothered to button properly when he’d heard something banging on the wall and gone to investigate.
He’d presumed it was one of the horses and had been absolutely thunderstruck to find Aspen in that nightie and a pair of riding boots. She’d looked hotter than Hades and when she’d strolled past the stalls, lightly trailing her slender fingers along the wood, he couldn’t have moved if someone had planted a bomb under him.
It had all been a ploy. He knew that now. He’d kissed her because he’d been a man overcome with lust. She’d kissed him because she’d been setting him up. It had been like a bad rendition of Samson and Delilah and she’d deserved an acting award for wardrobe choice alone.
His muscles grew taut as he remembered how he had held himself in check. How he hadn’t wanted to overwhelm her with the desperate hunger that had surged through him and urged him to pull her down onto the hay and rip the flimsy nightie from her body. How he hadn’t wanted to take her innocence. What a joke. She’d played him like a finely tuned instrument and, like a fool, he’d let her.
‘Like I said before.’ She cleared her throat. ‘This feels a little awkward.’
She must have noticed the direction of his gaze because her voice sounded breathless; almost as if her memories of that night mirrored his own. Of course he knew better now.
About to placate her by pretending he had forgotten all about it, he found the words dying in his throat as she raised both hands and twisted her flyaway curls into a rope and let it drop down her back. The middle button on her dress strained and he found himself willing it to pop open.
Surprised to find his libido running away without his consent, he quickly ducked inside the stall and feigned avid interest in a horse he had no wish to buy.
He went through the motions, though, studying the lines of the mare’s back, running his hands over her glossy coat, stroking down over her foreleg and checking the straightness of her pasterns. Fortunately he was on autopilot, because his undisciplined mind was comparing the shapeliness of the thoroughbred with Aspen’s lissom figure and imagining how she would feel under his rough hands.
Silky, smooth, and oh, so soft.
Memories of the little sounds she’d made as he’d lost himself in her eight years ago exploded through his system and turned his breathing rough.
‘She’s an exceptional polo pony. Really relaxed on the field and fast as a whip.’
Aspen’s commentary dragged his mind back to his game plan and he kept on stroking the horse as he spoke. ‘Why are you selling her?’
‘We run a horse stud, not a bed and breakfast,’ she said with mock sternness, her eyes tinged with dark humour as she repeated one of Charles Carmichael’s favourite sayings.
‘Or an old persons’ home.’ He joined in with Charles’s second favourite saying before he could stop himself.
‘No.’ Her small smile was tinged with emotion.
Her reaction surprised him.
‘You miss him?’
She shifted