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The Most Expensive Lie of All
Michelle Conder
Winning at all costs?Shameless Cruz Rodriguez swapped the polo field for the boardroom eight years ago, where his killer instincts have made him a phenomenally wealthy man. But there’s a hitch in his latest deal – in the sultry form of Aspen Carmichael…Champion horse-breeder Aspen has never forgotten Cruz – their searing encounter was the one pleasure in her increasingly desperate life. So when darkly handsome Cruz reappears with a multi-million-dollar investment offer Aspen is torn. She might crave his touch, but beneath his glittering black eyes lies a deception that could prove more costly than ever before!‘Pages and pages of pure romance, loved it!’– Elaine, 41, Loughtonwww.michelleconder.com
Too angry to stop and clear her vision, she would have walked straight into a wall if someone hadn’t reached out and grabbed her by her upper arms.
With a soft gasp Aspen looked up, about to thank whoever had saved her. But the words never came and her quick smile froze on her face as she found herself staring into the hard eyes of a man she had thought she would never see in the flesh again.
The air between them split apart and reformed, vibrating with emotion, as Cruz Rodriguez stared down at her with such cold detachment she nearly shivered.
Eight years dissolved into dust. Guilt, shame, and a host of other emotions all sparked for dominance inside her.
‘I …’ Aspen blinked, her mind scrambling for poise … words … something.
‘Hello, Aspen. Nice to see you again.’
From as far back as she can remember MICHELLE CONDER dreamed of being a writer. She penned the first chapter of a romance novel just out of high school, but it took much study, many (varied) jobs, one ultra-understanding husband and three very patient children before she finally sat down to turn that dream into a reality.
Michelle lives in Australia, and when she isn’t busy plotting loves to read, ride horses, travel and practise yoga.
Recent titles by the same author:
DUTY AT WHAT COST?
LIVING THE CHARADE
HIS LAST CHANCE AT REDEMPTION
GIRL BEHIND THE SCANDALOUS REPUTATION
Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
The Most Expensive Lie of All
Michelle Conder
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This book is dedicated to Amber and Corin for opening up the world of polo for me and doing it with such warmth and generosity. You guys are great.
To a formidable squash champ, Juan Marcos, who promptly responded to my queries about his game.
And also to my lifelong friend Pam Austin, who wrote down every memory she ever had of her visits to Mexico—which could have been a novel in itself.
Thank you!
Contents
CHAPTER ONE (#u59a21e3c-8581-55db-9694-450e7638d895)
CHAPTER TWO (#u42d84e52-612e-5346-8a73-81156eab1e61)
CHAPTER THREE (#u057f27bc-d14b-528d-9c9d-eea1326e8fa3)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
EXCERPT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
‘EIGHT-THREE. MY SERVE.’
Cruz Rodriguez Sanchez, self-made billionaire and one of the most formidable sportsmen ever to grace the polo field, let his squash racquet drop to his side and stared at his opponent incredulously. ‘Rubbish! That was a let. And it’s eight-three my way.’
‘No way, compadre! That was my point.’
Cruz eyeballed his brother as Ricardo prepared to serve. They might only be playing a friendly game of squash but ‘friendly’ was a relative term between competing brothers. ‘Cheats always get their just desserts, you know,’ Cruz drawled, moving to the opposite square.
Ricardo grinned. ‘You can’t win every time, mi amigo.’
Maybe not, Cruz thought, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d lost. Oh, yeah, actually he could—because his lawyer was in the process of righting that particular wrong while he blew off steam with his brother at their regular catch-up session.
Feeling pumped, he correctly anticipated Ricardo’s attempted ‘kill shot’ and slashed back a return that his brother had no chance of reaching. Not that he didn’t try. His running shoes squeaked across the resin-coated floor as he lunged for the ball and missed.
‘Chingada madre!’
‘Now, now,’ Cruz mocked. ‘That would be nine-three. My serve.’
‘That’s just showing off,’ Ricardo grumbled, picking himself up and swiping at the sweat on his brow with his sweatband.
Cruz shook his head. ‘You know what they say? If you can’t stand the heat...’
‘Too much talking, la figura.’
‘Good to see you know your place.’ He flashed his brother a lazy smile as he prepared to serve. ‘El pequeño.’
Ricardo rolled his eyes, flipped him the bird and bunkered down, determination etched all over his face. But Cruz was in his zone, and when Ricardo flicked his wrist and sent the ball barrelling on a collision course with Cruz’s right cheekbone he adjusted his body with graceful agility and sent the ball ricocheting around the court.
Not bothering to pick himself up off the floor this time, Ricardo lay there, mentally tracking the trajectory of the ball, and shook his head. ‘That’s just unfair. Squash isn’t even your game.’
‘True.’
Polo had been his game. Years ago.
Wiping sweat from his face, Cruz reached into his gym bag and tossed his brother a bottle of water. Ricardo sat on his haunches and guzzled it.
‘You know I let you win these little contests between us because you’re unbearable to be around when you lose,’ he advised.
Cruz grinned down at him. He couldn’t dispute him. It was a celebrated fact that professional sportsmen were very poor losers, and while he hadn’t played professional polo for eight years he’d never lost his competitive edge.
On top of that he was in an exceptionally good mood, which made beating him almost impossible. Remembering the reason for that, he pulled his cell phone from his kitbag to see if the text he was waiting for had come through, frowning slightly when he saw it hadn’t.
‘Why are you checking that thing so much?’ Ricardo queried. ‘Don’t tell me some chica is finally playing hard to get?’
‘You wish,’ Cruz murmured. ‘But, no, it’s just a business deal.’
‘Ah, don’t sweat it. One day you’ll meet the chica of your dreams.’
Cruz threw him a banal look. ‘Unlike you, I’m not looking for the woman of my dreams.’
‘Then you’ll probably meet her first,’ Ricardo lamented.
Cruz laughed. ‘Don’t hold your breath,’ he replied. ‘You might meet an early grave.’ He tossed the ball in the air and sent it spinning around the court, his concentration a little spoiled by Ricardo’s untimely premonition.
Because there was a woman. A woman who had been occupying his thoughts just a little too often lately. A woman he hadn’t seen for a long time and hoped to keep it that way. Of course he knew why she was jumping into his head at the most inopportune times of late, but after eight years of systematically forcing her out of it that didn’t make it any more tolerable.
Not that he allowed himself to get bent out of shape about it. He’d learned early on that the things you were most attached to had the power to cause you the most pain, and since then he’d lived his life very much like a high-rolling gambler—easy come, easy go.
Nothing stuck to him and he stuck to nothing in return—which had, much to everyone’s surprise, made him a phenomenally wealthy man.
An ‘uneducated maverick’, they’d called him. One who had swapped the polo field for the boardroom and invested in deals and stock market bonds more learned businessmen had shied away from. But then Cruz had been trading in the tumultuous early days of the global financial crisis and he’d already lost the one thing he had cared about the most. Defying expectations and market trends seemed inconsequential after that.
What had really fascinated him in the early days was how people had been so ready to write him off because of his Latino blood and his lack of a formal education. What they hadn’t realised was that the game of polo had perfectly set him up to achieve in the business world. Killer instincts combined with a tireless work ethic and the ability to think on his feet were all attributes to make you succeed in polo and in business, and Cruz had them in spades. What he didn’t have right now—what he wanted—was a text from his lawyer advising him that he was the proud owner of one of East Hampton’s most prestigious horse studs: Ocean Haven Farm.
Resisting another urge to check his phone, he prowled around the squash court, using the bottom of his sweat-soaked T-shirt to swipe at the perspiration dripping down his face.
‘Nice abs,’ a feline voice quipped appreciatively through the glass window overlooking the court.
Ah, there she was now.
Lauren Burnside, one of the Boston lawyers he sometimes used for deals he didn’t want made public knowledge before the fact, her hip cocked, her expression a smooth combination of professional savvy and sexual knowhow.
‘I always thought you were packing a punch beneath all those business suits, Señor Rodriguez. Now I know you are.’
‘Lauren.’ Cruz let his T-shirt drop and waited for her hot eyes to trail back up to his. She was curvy, elegant and sophisticated, and he had nearly slept with her about a year ago but had baulked at the last minute. He still couldn’t figure out why. ‘Long way to come to make a house call, counsellor. A text would have sufficed.’
‘Not quite. We have a hitch.’ She smiled nonchalantly. ‘And since I was in California, just a hop, skip and a jump away from Acapulco, I thought I’d deliver the news mano-a-mano.’ She smiled. ‘So to speak.’
Cruz scowled, for once completely unmoved by the flick of her tongue across her glossy mouth.
He knew women found him attractive. He was tall, fit, with straight teeth and nose, a full head of black hair, and he was moneyed-up and uninterested in love. It appeared to be the perfect combination. ‘Untameable,’ as one date had purred. He’d smiled, told her he planned to stay that way and she’d come on even stronger. Women, in his experience, were rarely satisfied and usually out for what they could get. If they had money they wanted love. If they had love they wanted money. If they had twenty pairs of shoes they wanted twenty-one. It was tedious in the extreme.
So he ignored his lawyer’s honey trap and kept his mind sharp. ‘That’s not what I want to hear on a deal that was meant to be completed two hours ago, Ms Burnside.’ He kept his voice carefully blank, even though his heart rate had sped up faster than during the whole squash game.
‘Let me come down.’
For all the provocation behind those words Cruz could tell she had picked up his not interested vibe and was smart enough to let it drop.
‘She your latest?’
‘No.’
Cruz’s curt response raised his brother’s eyebrows.
‘She wants to be.’
Cruz folded his arms as Lauren pushed open the clear door and stepped onto the court, her power suit doing little to disguise the killer body beneath. She inhaled deeply, the smell of male sweat clearly pleasing to her senses.
‘You boys have been playing hard,’ she murmured provocatively, looking at them from beneath dark lashes.
Okay, so maybe she wasn’t that smart. ‘What’s the hitch?’ Cruz prompted.
She raised a well-tended brow at his curtness. ‘You don’t want to go somewhere more private?’
‘This is Ricardo, my brother, and vice-president of Rodriguez Polo Club. I repeat: what’s the hitch?’
Lauren’s forehead remained wrinkle-free in the face of his growing agitation and he didn’t know if that was due to nerves of steel or Botox. Maybe both.
‘The hitch,’ she said calmly, ‘is the granddaughter. Aspen Carmichael.’
Cruz felt his shoulders bunch at the unexpectedness of hearing the name of the female he was doing his best to forget. The last time he’d laid eyes on her she’d been seventeen, dressed in nothing but a nightie and putting on an act worthy of Marilyn Monroe.
The little scheme she and her preppy fiancé had concocted had done Cruz out of a fortune in money and, more importantly, lost him the respect of his family and peers.
Aspen Carmichael had bested him once before and he’d walked away. He’d be damned if he walked away again.
‘How?’
‘She wants to keep Ocean Haven for herself and her uncle has magnanimously agreed to sell it to her at a reduced cost. The information has only just come to light, but apparently if she can raise the money in the next five days the property is hers.’
Cruz stilled. ‘How much of a reduced cost?’
When Lauren named a figure half that which he had offered he cursed loudly. ‘Joe Carmichael is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but why the hell would he do that?’
