to become unhappy when dealing with a divorce,” Ava answered after a while. “My marriage is over. I will not return to it, no matter what. Dev at least has found great happiness.” She shifted the conversation from her. “He and Amelia are twin souls. You’ll like Amelia. She’s very beautiful and very clever. She holds down quite a highflying job at one of our leading merchant banks. She’ll be a great asset to Langdon Enterprises. Mercifully my grandfather didn’t pass on his mindset to Dev.”
“Dev is a man of today. He will be familiar with very successful women. But what do you plan to do with yourself after your divorce comes through?”
She could have cried out with frustration. Instead she spoke with disconcerting coolness. “You are really interested?”
“Of course.” His tone easily surpassed hers for hauteur.
She knew she had to answer on the spot. Their eyes were locked. Neither one of them seemed willing to break contact. They could have been on some collision course. “Well, I don’t know as yet, Varo,” she said. “I might be unequal to the huge task Dev has taken on, but I want to contribute in any way I can.”
“Then of course you will.” A pause. “You will marry again.”
It wasn’t a question but a statement. “That’s a given, is it? You see it as my only possible course?” she challenged.
He reached out a long arm and gently touched her delicate shoulder, leaving a searing sense of heat. It was as though his hand had touched her bare skin.
“Permit me to say you are very much on the defensive, Ava. You know perfectly well I do not.” The sonorous voice had hardened slightly. “Dev will surely offer you a place on the board of your family company?”
“If I want a place, yes,” she acknowledged.
He gave her another long, dark probing look. “So you are not really the businesswoman?”
She shook her head. “I have to admit it, no. But I have a sizeable chunk of equity in Langdon Enterprises. Eventually I will take my place.”
“You should. There would be something terribly wrong if you didn’t. You want children?”
She answered that question with one of her own. “Do you?”
He gave her his fascinating, enigmatic half-smile. “Marriage first, then children. The correct sequence.”
“Used to be,” she pointed out with more than a touch of irony. “Times have changed, Varo.”
“Not in my family,” he said, with emphasis. “I do what is expected of me, but I make my own choices.”
“You have a certain woman in mind?”
It would be remarkable if he didn’t. She had the certainty this dynamic man had a dozen dazzling women vying for his attention.
“Not at the moment, no,” he told her with nonchalance. “I enjoy the company of women. I would never be without women in my life.”
“But no one as yet to arouse passion?” She was amazed she had even asked the question, and aware she was moving into dangerous territory.
Her enquiring look appeared to him both innocent and seductive at one and the same time. Did she know it? This wasn’t your usual femme fatale. There was something about her that made a man want to protect her. Possibly that was a big mistake. One her husband had made?
“I don’t think I said that,” he countered after a moment. “Who knows? I may have already succumbed to your undoubted charms, Ava.”
She raised a white hand to wave a winged insect away—or perhaps to dismiss his remark as utterly frivolous. “It would do you no good, Varo. I’m still a married woman. And I suspect you might be something of a legend back in Argentina.”
“Perdón—perdonare!” he exclaimed. “Surely you mean as a polo player?” He pinned her gaze.
Both of them knew she had meant as a lover. “I’m looking forward to seeing you in action at the weekend.” She declined to answer, feeling hot colour in her cheeks. “It should be a thrilling match. We’re all polo-mad out here.”
“As at home. Polo is the most exciting game in the world.”
“And possibly the most dangerous,” she tacked on. “Dev has taken a few spectacular spills in his time.”
He answered with an elegant shrug of one shoulder. “As have I. That is part of it. You are an accomplished rider,” he commented, his eyes on her slender body, sitting so straight but easy in the saddle. Such slenderness lent her a deceptive fragility, contradicted by the firmness with which she handled her spirited bright chestnut mare.
“I should be.” Ava’s smile became strained as memories flooded in. “My grandfather threw me up on a horse when I was just a little kid—around four. I remember my mother was beside herself with fright. She thought I would be hurt. He took no notice of her. Mercifully I took to riding like a duck to water. A saving grace in the eyes of my grandfather. As a woman, all that was expected of me was to look good and produce more heirs for the continuation of the Devereaux-Langdon dynasty. At least I was judged capable of expanding the numbers, if not the fortune. A man does that. I expect in his own way so does Dev. Every man wants a son to succeed him, and a daughter to love and cherish, to make him proud. I suppose you know my grandfather left me a fortune? I don’t have to spend one day working if I choose not to.”
“Why work at anything when one can spend a lifetime having a good time?” he asked on a satirical note.
“Something like that. Only I need to contribute.”
“I’m sure you shall. You need time to re-set your course in life. All things are possible if one has a firm belief in oneself. Belief in oneself sets us free.”
“It’s easier to dream about being free than to accomplish it,” she said, watching two blue cranes, the Australian brolgas, getting set to land on the sandy banks of one of the lagoons.
“You thought perhaps marriage would set you free?” he shot back.
“I’m wondering if you want my life story, Varo?” Her eyes sparkled brightly, as if tears weren’t all that far away.
“Not if you’re in no hurry to tell me,” he returned gently, then broke off, his head set in a listening position. “You hear that?”
They reined in their horses. “Yes.” Her ears too were registering the sound of pounding hooves.
Her mare began to skip and dance beneath her. In the way of horses, the mare was scenting some kind of danger. De Montalvo quietened his big bay gelding with a few words in Spanish which the gelding appeared to understand, because it ceased its skittering. Both riders were now holding still, their eyes trained on the open savannah that fanned out for miles behind them.
In the next moment they had their answer. Runaway horse and hapless rider, partially obscured by the desert oaks dotted here and there, suddenly burst into full view.
De Montalvo broke the fraught silence. “He’s in trouble,” he said tersely.
“It’s a workhorse.” Ava recognised that fact immediately, although she couldn’t identify the rider. He was crouched well down over his horse’s back, clinging desperately to the flowing black mane. Feet were out of the stirrups; the reins were flailing about uselessly. “It’s most likely one of our jackeroos,” she told him with anxiety.
“And he’s heading right for that belt of trees,” De Montalvo’s expression was grim. “If he can’t pull up he’s finished. Terminado!” He pulled the big bay’s head around as he spoke.
The area that lay dead ahead of the station hand’s mad gallop was heavily wooded, dense with clumps of ironwood, flowering whitewoods and coolabahs that stood like sentinels guarding the billabong Ava knew was