Tamsin watched as he pulled his shirt over his head and held it out to Alejandro in a gesture of respect.
For a second the proud Argentinean didn’t move. A tense hush seemed to fall over the stadium as the crowd watched. It was as if they were holding their breath, waiting to see whether Alejandro D’Arienzo, former England golden-boy, would accept the shirt he had played in with such glorious finesse before turning his back on the team so suddenly all those years ago.
The cameras zoomed in, but the sinister stillness of his face gave nothing away.
And then a huge roar of delight and excitement went up as Alejandro took hold of the hem of his own shirt and brought it slowly upwards over his head. Every hollow, every perfectly defined muscle beneath the bronze, sweat-sheened skin of his taut stomach filled the huge screens at both ends of the ground. And then, as he pulled the Barbarians shirt right off, the crowd screamed and whistled as they saw the tattoo of the sun—the symbol on the Argentine flag—right over his heart.
Vaguely aware that her chest hurt with the effort of breathing, and her fists were clenched so tightly that the fingernails were digging into her palms, Tamsin turned away with a snort of disgust.
Sure, Alejandro D’Arienzo was gorgeous. That was indisputable. But so was the fact that he was the coldest, most arrogant bastard who had ever breathed. It was just that most people hadn’t been unlucky enough to see that side of him.
She had. And she still bore the scars. So why was she turning round again, and staring like some moon-struck adolescent as he walked back across the pitch, pulling on the white shirt? The crowd were on their feet, turning the stands into a rippling sea of red and white as they waved their flags joyously at seeing their unforgotten hero back in an England shirt.
And suddenly it hit her; the implication of what she had just witnessed finally penetrated her dazed brain.
An England shirt.
Alejandro D’Arienzo in an England shirt.
A precious, produced-at-the-last-minute, paid-for-in-blood-sweat-and-tears England shirt … One of the ones she absolutely couldn’t afford to lose.
‘No!’
With a horrified gasp, Tamsin leapt forward, her four-inch heels sinking into the mud as she desperately tried to push her way through the crush of journalists, coaches, physios and groupies to reach the mouth of the tunnel before he did.
‘Please, I have to …’
It was as if she was invisible. There were too many people, and the noise from the ecstatic crowd was too great. The moment he stepped from the pitch, journalists closed around Alejandro like iron filings around a magnet, and Tamsin was forced backwards by an impenetrable wall of bodies. Her heart was hammering, her body suddenly pulsing with heat beneath her heavy coat, and all thoughts but one had been driven from her shocked brain.
The shirt. She had to get the shirt back, or else …
With a whimper of horror, she tried again, taking advantage of her relative slightness to duck beneath the arm of a muscular ground official in a fluorescent jacket. Someone behind grabbed her coat and tried to pull her back, but panic gave her strength, and with a desperate lunge Tamsin broke free.
The England number two in front of her turned round and, recognising her, moved aside to let her through. At the same moment Alejandro finished talking to a journalist and stepped forwards.
There was hardly time to register what was happening, much less to stop it. Already unsteady on last night’s killer heels, Tamsin felt herself hurtling forwards into open space, where she’d expected to encounter a solid and immovable row of muscular bodies, but just as she was falling strong arms seized her and she was lifted off her feet.
‘Tamsin! Steady, darlin’.’ It was Matt Fitzpatrick, the England number five. He grinned at her good-naturedly, revealing a missing front tooth. ‘Don’t tell me—when you saw my glorious try in the first half you finally realised you couldn’t live without me?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m … I need …’ Her voice came out as a breathless croak, and she looked wildly around, just in time to see Alejandro disappearing into the tunnel. ‘Him,’ she said in a hoarse whisper.
Matt shrugged his shoulders and gave a theatrical sigh of regret. ‘I see. Can’t argue with that, I suppose.’ And with that he hoisted her into his muscular arms and pushed easily through the crowd before she could protest. ‘D’Arienzo!’
Horror flooded her and she let out a squeal, which bounced off the walls of the tunnel. ‘Matt, no!’ she shrieked, wriggling frantically in his giant’s arms, aware that her coat had fallen off her shoulders and the skirt of her tight black-satin cocktail dress was riding up to mid-thigh, showing the lacy tops of her stockings. But it was too late. As if in slow motion, she watched Alejandro stop.
Turn.
Look at her.
And then look away, without the slightest flicker of interest or recognition.
‘Yes?’
He was talking to Matt, his eyebrows raised slightly.
‘Someone wants you,’ grinned Matt, setting her down on her feet. Tamsin ducked her head. Her blood felt like it had been diluted with five parts of vodka as misery churned inside her, mixing uneasily with wild relief. He didn’t recognise her. Of course he didn’t—her hair had been darker then, and longer. She’d been younger.
And she’d meant absolutely nothing to him.
It was fine. It was good. The humiliation of facing him again if he’d remembered that night would have been terminally appalling. Some in-built instinct for self-preservation told her not to look up, not to meet the eyes of the man who had blown her world to smithereens and walked away without a scratch, to keep her head down.
Oh, God. Her self-preservation instinct hadn’t reckoned on the effect of looking at the length of his bare, muscular thighs.
‘Really?’ he said in a quiet, steel-edged voice. ‘And what could Lady Tamsin Calthorpe possibly want with me?’
Adrenalin scorched through her like wildfire, and she felt her head jerk backwards. Towering above her, he was smiling slightly, but the expression in his eyes was as cold and bleak as the North Sea.
She raised her chin and forced herself to meet his gaze. So he did remember. And he had the nerve to look at her as if she was the one who had done something wrong. Like what, for example—not being attractive enough? Pressing her lips together, she pushed back the questions she had asked herself a million times since that awful night at Harcourt and simply said, ‘Not you. The shirt. Could you take it off, please?’
Looking up into his face was like torment. She should have been used to it—she’d seen it in her dreams often enough in the last six years—but even the most vivid of them hadn’t done justice to the brutal beauty of him as he stood only a foot away. Bruised and bloodied, he was every inch the conquering Barbarian.
‘Oh, dear,’ he drawled. ‘What’s it been—five years? And clearly nothing’s changed.’
Oh, Lord; his voice. The melodic Spanish lilt that he’d all but lost growing up in England was stronger again now. Unfortunately.
Tamsin swallowed. ‘Six,’ she snapped, and instantly wanted to bite out her tongue for giving him the satisfaction of knowing that she cared enough to remember. ‘Anyway, I don’t know what you mean. From where I’m standing, plenty has changed.’
Like I’m not naïve enough any more to think that the face of an angel and the body of a living god make a shallow, callous bastard into a hero. She didn’t say the words, but just thinking them, and remembering what he’d done, made the strength seep back into her trembling body.
‘Really?’ He nodded slowly, reaching out a strong, tanned hand and smoothing it over the wing of pale-gold hair that fell over one eye. ‘Well, there’s