he’d welcomed her back. For as long as she could remember she’d wanted nothing more than to work on the estate.
When she’d received the heartfelt letter from her ill father, with his outpouring of regret for his actions, Maddie hadn’t been able to help but respond to his plea to come home to try to save their estate from oblivion.
Maddie’s relationship with her father had never been close. He’d always made it clear he wanted sons, not a daughter, and had firmly believed that a woman’s place was in the home and not in the business of winemaking. But he’d made up for a lifetime of dismissiveness while on his deathbed, when he’d realised he might lose everything.
Maddie had been hoping and praying she’d make it home in time to see him, but he’d passed away while she was in the air on her initial flight to Buenos Aires. His solicitor had met her with the news, and she’d gone straight from the airport in Mendoza to his private and lonely funeral in the small family graveyard in the grounds of their estate.
She hadn’t even been able to get in touch with her mother, who was on a cruise somewhere with her fourth husband, who was some ten years her junior. She felt very alone now, when faced with the tangible animosity of Nicolás de Rojas and the seemingly insurmountable task of taking on the Vasquez estate.
Legend had it that Maddie’s and Nicolás de Rojas’s ancestors had been two Spanish friends, immigrants who’d made the long journey to Argentina to make new lives for themselves. They’d committed to setting up a vineyard together but something had happened—a woman had been involved: a love affair gone wrong and a bitter betrayal. As revenge Maddie’s forefather had vowed to ruin the de Rojas name. So he’d founded Vasquez wines in direct competition and built it up right next door.
Vasquez wines had become ridiculously successful, decimating the de Rojas name, thus ensuring that the feud thrived and deepened as each generation fought for dominance and revenge. Violence between the families had been habitual, and once a member of the de Rojas family had even been murdered—although it had never been proved that the culprit had been a Vasquez.
Reversals in fortune had happened through the years, but by the time Maddie had been born the two estates had been almost neck and neck in terms of success. The generations-old dark cloud of hostility between the families seemed to have settled into an uneasy truce. In spite of the relative peace, though, Maddie had grown up knowing that she would be punished if she was caught even looking in the direction of the de Rojas vineyard.
Her cheeks stung with colour now when she recalled Nicolás’s jeering ‘princess’. He’d only ever really seen her on the few social occasions when their families had been forced to mix, when hosts had nervously ensured that they didn’t actually mingle.
Her mother had used those opportunities to parade Maddie in the latest fashions, forcing her naturally tom-boyish and bookish daughter into the mould of the fashionable daughter she’d really wanted. Maddie’s beautiful mother had wanted a confidante, not a child.
Maddie had been so mortified and uncomfortable in those situations that she’d done her best to fade into the background, while at the same time being aware of the very taboo fascination she felt for Nicolás Cristobal de Rojas, six years her senior, who even as a teenager had exuded unmistakable arrogance and virility. The tension and distance between their families had only made him more fascinating and alluring.
Then, as soon as she’d turned twelve, she’d been sent to boarding school in England and had only returned home for the holidays. She’d lived for those few months, and had endured her mother’s determination to parade her as if she was a doll just because it meant she could catch illicit glimpses of Nicolás de Rojas at the annual polo matches or the few social occasions their families shared. She’d look out of her bedroom window and sometimes would see him far in the distance on his horse as he inspected the neighbouring vineyard. To her, he’d looked like a golden-haired god. Strong and proud.
Whenever she’d seen him socially he’d always been surrounded by girls. Her mouth twisted when she thought of the beautiful blonde he’d so casually dismissed just now. Evidently nothing had changed there …
Eight years ago the uneasy truce between their families had exploded into bitterly fresh enmity and had shown Maddie the real depth of hatred between them. The fact that she’d actually challenged Nicolás’s perception of her for a few days in time was something she had to forget. Because it had been undone as quickly as it had been done. What would someone like him be more likely to believe? A lifetime of propaganda and erroneous impressions? Or the briefest of moments fuelled by lust which had quickly been soured for ever?
Maddie shook her head and forced her trembling hand to start up the engine. She had just enough diesel to take her back to the small town of Villarosa, about thirty minutes outside Mendoza. No doubt someone of Nicolás’s standing had a suite in the palatial hotel tonight, where he would be accompanied by his long-legged golden companion, but Maddie had nowhere to go except a crumbling homestead where the electricity had been cut off months ago and where she and a loyal skeleton staff depended on an ancient generator for power.
Maddie swung out of the hotel car park and reflected miserably that there must be plenty of de Rojas ancestors laughing down at her predicament right now.
CHAPTER TWO
NIC was stuck in a trance. All he could see in his mind’s eye was the bared expanse of pale, slim back and the tumble of jet-black hair against her skin as Madalena Vasquez walked away. She’d stumbled slightly in her shoes, and it had made her look achingly vulnerable for a moment—before she’d recovered and swept out of the ballroom with all the hauteur of a queen. She’d had no right to look affronted at his taunting ‘princesss’, for that was what she had always been.
When she’d been much younger she’d reminded him of a fragile porcelain doll, and he hated to admit it now but she’d always fascinated him with her unusually pale colouring and green eyes. There had been moments—the memory of which burned him now for his naivety—when he’d believed she’d been uncomfortable in their social milieu, when she’d looked almost sick as her mother pushed her to the fore. He’d sensed that beneath the delicate exterior lurked something much more solid.
Nic’s mouth firmed. Well, he had first-hand experience of exactly how solid she was beneath that ethereal beauty. As if he needed to be reminded of the kind of person she was. Once she’d challenged his preconceptions of her, but it had all been an act.
She’d shared her mother’s temptress nature—an earthy sensuality that could ensnare the strongest of men. His heart thumped hard. It had ensnared his father before him, and then, a generation later, him. She’d only been seventeen. Humiliation burned Nic at recalling it, and he couldn’t halt the flood of memories—not so soon after seeing her close up and in the flesh for the first time in years.
One evening he’d been inspecting the vines which were closest to the Vasquez estate; they always had to be ever vigilant in case of sabotage. That particular evening Nic had been weary and frustrated … weary of his mother’s constant melancholy—never properly diagnosed as the depression it had been—and his father’s caustic cruelty and habitual violence. At the dinner table his father had been drunkenly ranting about how the Vasquez run of success was threatening their sales. Nic had always firmly believed you made your own success, but, constrained by his authoritarian father, he hadn’t been able to implement his own ideas.
Something had made Nic look up to the small hill which acted as a natural boundary between the two estates, and he’d seen a feminine figure with long black hair astride a huge stallion. Madalena Vasquez. Looking right at him.
His weariness had morphed instantly into burning irrational anger—at her for making him think about her, wonder about her, when she was forbidden. She also represented the dark and tangled feud which he had never really understood.
The supercilious image she presented on her horse had only galvanised him further and, giving in to an urge stronger than he’d been able to resist, Nic had spurred his horse to a canter and headed straight for her—only