The Tuscan Tycoon’s Wife

CHAPTER FIVE

LEO not only meant to attend the rodeo in Stephenville, he was going to be a part of it. With what Barton called ‘more nerve than common sense’ he was determined to ride a bull.

‘Just one bull,’ he argued with Barton. ‘What harm can it do?’

‘Break your neck. That enough?’

They were at breakfast with the family, and since they were at opposite ends of the table the others began looking back and forth like spectators at a tennis match. Jack, who studied even at the table, took his nose out of his book long enough to begin scoring them.

‘Barton I know what I’m doing,’ Leo insisted.

‘Fifteen love,’ Jack intoned. ‘Leo serving.’

‘In a pig’s ear you know what you’re doing,’ Barton retorted.

‘Fifteen all.’

‘It just takes practise.’

‘Been doing that in Italy have you? First I knew they had bucking bulls out there. Does it say Mama Mia! as it throws you off?’ Barton roared at his own joke.

‘Fifteen thirty!’

‘I just need to practise with your bucking machine.’

‘And make it my fault? No way!’

‘OK,’ Leo sighed. ‘I’ll just have to enter without getting any practise, so when I break my neck, it will be your fault.’

‘That’s hitting below the belt,’ Barton roared.

‘Let him do it, Dad,’ Carrie begged.

‘You want him to get hurt? Thought you’d taken a shine to him.’

‘Dad!’ she hissed in an agony of embarrassment.

Selena had been enjoying the scene until then, but she pitied the girl, having her teenage crush exposed, and her misery compounded by a deep blush. Leo, she was sure, would pretend nothing had happened.

To her astonishment he did just the opposite.

‘You see, I have a supporter,’ he announced, pointing at Carrie. ‘Carrie, you think I can do it, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said defiantly.

‘And you don’t think I’ll break my neck?’

‘I think you’ll be great.’

‘There you are, Barton. Listen to my friend over there. She knows what she’s talking about.’

It was beautifully done, Selena had to admit that, watching Carrie’s blush fade and her smile return. In a few seconds Leo had ‘repackaged’ her crush on him into a friendship he openly valued. It was clever, and it was kind.

Warmth and happiness pervaded her. She didn’t know why Leo’s kindness to someone else should give her that feeling. Yet it was like receiving a personal gift. The nicer he was than other men, the happier it made her.

Grumbling, Barton gave in, and after breakfast they all went out to his mechanical bull, an electrically driven machine, designed to be ridden, that bucked and tossed to give the rider some practise in hanging on for dear life. It had a range of speeds, starting with ‘gentle’ for beginners, and Barton, to Leo’s disgust, insisted on setting it as low as possible.

With the whole family and Selena watching avidly Leo sailed through the first test. Encouraged, he raised the stakes, and still managed to hang on.

‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ Carrie whispered to Selena. ‘You’d never know he hadn’t done it before.’

‘Yes, you would,’ Selena said with a grin.

‘Well, you know what I mean.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Selena murmured so quietly that Carrie didn’t hear her.

Jack had joined them, another book in his hand.

‘Wanna know Leo’s chance of getting killed the first time he-?’

‘No!’ they both said firmly.

A scream from Billie made them turn their heads sharply in time to see Leo flying through the air, to land with a crash, and lie still.

Carrie buried her face in her hands. ‘I can’t look. Is he all right?’

‘I don’t know,’ Selena said in a voice that didn’t sound like her own. ‘He isn’t moving.’

She had the horrible feeling that time had stopped as she began to run to where Leo lay. As she reached him he let out a hideous whooping sound. Again and again he made the dreadful noise and she felt time begin again as she recognised the symptoms of a man who’d had the breath knocked out of his body.

She dropped down beside him just as he managed to half raise himself. Still unable to speak, he clutched hold of her while the hoots and gasps came from him without end. Selena held onto him, knowing there was nothing to do until he’d struggled back to some sort of normality.

When the fit had passed he seemed exhausted, leaning against her and heaving. But then he looked up at the others who’d crowded around him, and gave his irrepressible grin.

‘I told you I could do it,’ he said.

From then on they were in countdown to the rodeo. The town was filling up, Barton entertained a constant stream of buyers who looked over his excellent horses, nodded and reached for their wallets. Delia, a great entertainer, was in her element, giving parties and overseeing the stock of cowboy clothes and memorabilia for the stall she would set up.

There was a strict dress code. Riders must wear a western hat, long-sleeved shirt and cowboy boots. Leo, who had none of these things, went to town among Delia’s stock, kitting himself out both for now and for Grosseto when he returned home.

‘They’re going to think you’re so fine,’ Carrie said, regarding him admiringly in his new stetson and decorated boots.

‘Nothing like a new hat to make an impression,’ Leo said cheerfully. ‘Let’s see one on you.’

He settled a stetson on Carrie’s head, then one on Billie’s and finally on Selena’s, nodded with satisfaction and took out his credit card.

‘Delia, I’ll have those three as well.’

In this way he contrived to buy Selena a present without offending her. He’d spent a lot of time working out how to do that.

Sometimes they practised together. If he did nothing else in his life he was determined to ride that bull.

On the face of it, it was simple. To stay eight seconds on the back of a heaving, thrashing mountain of furious bull. And live. That was the target.

‘Think you’ll do it?’ she asked him one evening as they limped stiffly home.

‘Do you think I will?’

‘Nope.’

‘Me neither. I don’t care. I’m just doing it for fun. I’m no threat to anyone trying to earn a living.’

She grinned. ‘That’s true.’

‘OK, OK, no need to rub it in.’

Leo had graduated from the bucking machine to Old Jim, a real live bull. The problem was that Jim had mellowed with age. He liked people, and he took an immediate shine to Leo, which was pleasant in its way but made him useless for practical purposes. Leo could manage eight seconds on Old Jim’s back, but so could Selena. So, for that matter, could Delia, Billie and Carrie. And Jack.

Selena practised fiercely, racing around the barrels on Jeepers, aiming to keep their time down to fourteen seconds, or even under.

‘Is that the “gold standard”?’ Leo asked her.

‘It is for here,’ she said, indicating the barrels that Barton had set up. ‘They’re not the same in every rodeo. Sometimes they’re further apart and that can be a seventeen-second circuit. But barrels at this distance should be fourteen seconds. Jeepers can do it. We’re just not quite used to each other yet. I still make mistakes on him.’

As if to prove it she tried to take a corner too tightly and landed in the dust.

Leo, watching from a fence rail, started to race towards her, but she was up at once, leaping back into the saddle to try again, more carefully this time. Leo retreated.

‘I thought you might have hurt yourself,’ he said when she dismounted.

‘Me?’ she asked hilariously. ‘With that little fall? I’ve had worse. I’ve probably got worse to come in the future. It’s no big deal.’

He sighed. ‘Couldn’t you be frail and vulnerable sometimes, like other women?’

She hooted with laughter. ‘Leo, what planet have you been living on? Women aren’t frail and vulnerable these days.’ She slapped him on the shoulder and every bone in his bruised body seemed to clang.

What could you do with a woman like this? he wondered. You couldn’t say consoling things like ‘Let me make it better,’ because she’d think you were nuts and probably step on your toe, by way of bringing you to your senses.

You could only wait and hope, certain that the sweet kernel was in there, however well hidden by the prickly skin, knowing that what happened would be in her own good time, or not at all.

‘Let’s go and rub ourselves down with liniment,’ she said.

‘I’ll do you if you’ll do me,’ he said hopefully.

She chuckled and thumped him again.

Barton was in his study that evening, watching for their return, and at his signal Leo halted Selena with the words, ‘Come back outside, there’s something I want you to see.’

In the yard stood a Mini Motor Home, functional rather than luxurious, but a palace compared to what Selena had originally driven. Attached to it was a horse trailer, plain but of good design.

‘They’re yours,’ Barton said. ‘To replace the ones you lost.’

‘The insurers came through?’ she breathed.

‘The fact is,’ Barton said with a hint of awkwardness, ‘I don’t really want to go to my insurers about this. I haven’t had a claim in years, and if I make one now-well it would be cheaper if I just replace what I wrecked.’

‘But-I don’t get that,’ Selena said. ‘The damage to your car-it can’t be cheaper than-’

‘You just leave that to me,’ Barton interrupted. ‘It’s cheaper because-that’s how it works out.’

‘But Barton-’

‘Women don’t understand these things,’ Barton said desperately.

‘I understand-’

‘No, you don’t, you don’t understand anything. I’ve gone into it and-I don’t want any more argument. You take Jeepers, you take the vehicles, and we call it quits.’

‘You’re-giving me these?’ Selena asked, dazed. ‘But I can’t accept. My things weren’t nearly as good-’

‘But they got you from place to place OK,’ Barton said. ‘Well, this will get you from place to place as well.’

‘I-’

‘It’s no more than your right,’ Barton finished with a hunted look. He was running out of inspiration.

‘But Jeepers-’

‘He likes you. He works well for you. And the trailer will take two horses, so when Elliot’s recovered you can take them both.’

‘That won’t be long now,’ Selena said firmly.

‘Sure it won’t. But until then, Jeepers will keep you going.’

Leo watched them in silence. One thing they all knew, although she wasn’t ready to admit it. Elliot’s rodeo days were over.

He left Selena looking over her new home, and pounced on Barton halfway to the house.

‘I thought you were going to blow everything,’ he muttered.

‘Not my fault. She was bound to be suspicious. I had to improvise.’

“‘Women don’t understand these things,”’ Leo scoffed. ‘No man dares say that these days, not if he wants to live.’

Barton turned on him.

‘All right, you do better. Try telling her the truth. Tell her you’re paying for everything, and see how she takes it.’

‘Sssshh!’ Leo said frantically. ‘She mustn’t know that. She’d skin me alive.’

‘Great! Then we know where we are. Now are you gonna stand here yakking all night, or are you coming in the house for a whisky?’

‘I’m coming in the house for a whisky.’

Everyone was up early on the first day of the rodeo. Delia and her daughters loaded piles of new stock into the truck. Barton checked off a list of contacts he was planning to do business with in a convivial atmosphere. Jeepers was groomed until he shone, and led out into the horse trailer.

Instinct sent Leo into the stables in search of Selena. He found her, as he’d expected, in Elliot’s stall, caressing the horse’s nose, murmuring tenderly.

‘This isn’t for good, you’ve got to understand that. Jeepers is a fine horse, but he’s not you. It’ll never be with him like it was with you and me. We’re going to be together again. That’s a promise.’

She rested her cheek against his nose. ‘I love you, you ramshackle old brute. More than anyone in the world. Do you hear that?’

Leo tried to back out quietly, but he didn’t quite manage it, and Selena looked up.

‘Now who’s being sentimental?’ he asked kindly.

‘I am not. I’m just thinking of his feelings. Have you thought what it must be like for him to see another horse being groomed and led out for me to ride, in his place? Do you think he doesn’t know?’

‘I guess he knows everything you’re thinking.’

‘And I know everything he’s thinking.’

‘Well, what are you going to tell him if you win?’

She whirled on him, an almost painful intensity in her face. ‘Leo, do you think I might win?’

‘Does it really mean that much?’ he asked, studying her face as though hoping to find something there.

‘It means everything. I have to make some money to keep going onto the next rodeo, and the next. It’s my whole life, everything.’

‘Well, if you don’t I could always-’ he stopped because her fingertips were over his mouth.

‘Don’t say it. I don’t take charity and I won’t take money from you.’

He maintained a diplomatic silence. This was no time to tell her how much he’d already given her.

‘After all, why should you take financial risks for me?’ she went on. ‘Suppose I couldn’t pay it back? Where would you be?’

‘Selena, I’m not at my last gasp, like you. What’s wrong with letting a friend help you? There’s no law that says you have to be independent all the time.’

‘Yes there is. I passed one. It’s my law, the one I live by, and I can’t change. I do it myself or no deal.’

‘Selena, it’s not weakness to accept help.’

‘No, but it’s weakness to rely on it. You become weak by believing that someone’ll always be there for you. Because sooner or later, they won’t.’

He frowned. ‘If you really believe that, heaven help you!’

‘Leo, why are we quarrelling? It’s a wonderful day. We’re going to have a great time, and I’m going to win. I can’t lose.’

He regarded her with his head on one side. ‘Why can’t you lose?’

‘Because I got my miracle. You know when we met on the highway?’

‘Met isn’t quite the word I’d have used, but go on.’

‘Before that I’d been with Ben, he’s an old friend and he was fixing my van. He said I needed a miracle or a millionaire, but I said forget millionaires. They’re not good for anything.’

‘So you settled for a miracle?’ Leo asked, feeling the beginnings of a smile somewhere inside him.

‘Right. I said I just knew my miracle was on its way to me.’

The smile grew bigger. ‘And it was?’

‘You know it was. All the time Barton was on the highway, and we were fated to meet.’

The smile faded. ‘Barton?’

‘Well, wasn’t it a miracle that he turned out to be a good man with a conscience, who didn’t duck his obligations, as a lot of them would have?’

‘But a millionaire, don’t forget,’ Leo quibbled.

‘Ah, well, there must be one or two good ones. The point is, he was nice about it, which just proves what a decent man he is.’

‘Right,’ Leo said in a hollow voice.

‘So I got my miracle. And now I’m going to win.’

‘So am I. All right, stop laughing.’ Selena had doubled up. ‘I can do eight seconds on Old Jim, you saw me yesterday.’

‘Sure, and I’ve also seen him accepting tidbits from your hand. Old Jim is a pussy cat. You won’t be riding him in the ring.’ She got out of range and added wickedly, ‘You won’t be riding anything for very long.’

‘Now there’s a thing. I thought we were friends, and you hurt my feelings like that.’

At once she came back into range, putting her hands on either side of his head, full of contrition.

‘Leo, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you after you’ve been good to me. It was just a joke-’

‘Hell, I knew that.’

‘Are you sure? I can be a bitch sometimes. I don’t mean to be, but that doesn’t stop me.’

Leo, who knew a thing or two about doing things he hadn’t meant to do ten seconds earlier, nodded in perfect understanding.

‘Say you’re not really hurt,’ she pleaded. ‘You’re my best friend and if you get mad at me, I’d really hate it.’

Leo let his arms slip around her waist. His feelings weren’t hurt at all, but he managed to regard her sadly, while silencing his conscience. He couldn’t be blamed for making the most of this, could he?

‘I’m not mad,’ he said bravely.

‘You’re not hurt either, are you?’ she demanded, reading him without trouble. But she didn’t move her hands, except to slide them behind his neck. Nor did she resist when he drew her closer.

‘Stricken to the heart, I promise,’ he said.

She didn’t answer, but stood there gazing into his face, while mischief danced over her face, her eyes, her smiling lips.

‘Selena,’ he said unsteadily, ‘you are putting me under a lot of strain here.’

‘You think I ought to do something about that?’

‘Yes, I really do.’

She tilted her head in a way that made his heart do somersaults.

‘Well, I got tired of waiting for you to do something about it,’ she said as she laid her lips on his.

They were just as he’d imagined them, sweet and enticing, yet with a hint of something underneath that wasn’t sweet at all: spicy, challenging, hot as a pepper. Not an ingénue, but a woman of determination, ready to take him on.

Selena’s head was whirling. She hadn’t meant to do this, but there was something she needed to know, and suddenly her impatience had become too much to bear. Laying her mouth against his was an act of exploration and defiance in equal measure.

She knew at once that she would have done better to wait. No woman, with a busy day ahead, could afford this kind of distraction. And she had only herself to blame because she’d always known that this man would take all of a woman’s attention. Some pleasures weren’t to be skimped.

He seemed to feel the same because he slid his arms about her with a gentleness that didn’t disguise their power. She wanted to know all about that power. She could feel it in his lips, testing hers cautiously to divine her true meaning, then seeming to think he understood and coming on strongly in a way that excited her.

She mustn’t do this, she thought dizzily. Her timing was dreadful.

‘Leo-’

‘Yes-’

From outside came Barton’s bellow. ‘Anyone in there? We’re ready to go.’

Leo released her, groaning. ‘I like Barton, but-’

Selena came back to earth and the realisation that she’d nearly thrown everything away for this man. With a great effort she pulled herself together, saying urgently, ‘No, he’s right. We have to stop this.’

‘We do?’

‘It-it wastes vital energy.’ She could feel her vital energy being sapped just by being this close to him.

‘I didn’t think it was a waste.’

‘There’ll be time later. For now we’ve got to psych ourselves up for the big day. Shoulders back, head up. Believe in yourself.’

‘I find it easier to believe in you. You’re going to win. You’ve got Jeepers down to fourteen seconds, which I never thought you’d do.’

She danced with excitement. ‘I knew he could do it, he is such a fantastic horse, so fast and strong-’

‘Careful! You said that in front of Elliot! You could give him a complex.’

‘Oh-you!’

She thumped him, he put his arm about her shoulders and they went out, laughing, together.