He groaned and rolled to the side, catching her hand as they lay in the shade, staring up at the tree. Rose was relaxed in away she’d never been before, her mind quiet where it was usually busy. The past couple of months since she’d arrived, she’d been almost scared of the quiet, determined to keep herself endlessly occupied rather than succumb to her own thoughts and worries, but it was as if she had nothing to fear in Argentina. It had been the reset she’d needed, and she knew she’d be forever grateful for the break it had given her from her life.
‘Did watching me train tempt you to pick up a mallet?’ Benjamin asked, turning to her and propping himself up on one elbow.
‘A mallet?’ she laughed. ‘Most definitely not. But I think I could easily become a regular spectator. It’s far more interesting than any other sport I’ve ever watched before.’ Not that she’d ever really watched any sport previously, but she was fairly certain that gorgeous humans on gleaming ponies trumped everything else.
He sighed. ‘Well, I suppose that’s a start. And given you’ve never been around horses, perhaps my expectations were too high.’
She smiled back at him, rolling to her side and studying his face. His jaw was strong and angular, his cheeks covered in barely there stubble that she imagined he’d shaved the evening prior, after he’d finished riding for the day. And he had the darkest eyes she’d ever seen, that were somehow still soft enough to be inviting.
‘I can see why you love it here so much,’ she said. ‘I still feel like an outsider, but I’m starting to feel a connection to the land. It’s just so different to where I’ve always lived.’
‘How so?’ he asked, reaching out to stroke his fingers through her hair.
‘Have you ever lived in a city?’
‘I’ve stayed in the city, but I’ve never lived there, no.’
‘But you’ve spent long enough there to understand that it is constantly living and breathing, with a noise that never ends? That this type of silence doesn’t exist, where you can just escape from the world?’
‘It sounds like the opposite of life here.’
She smiled. ‘It is. Being here is the break from life that I needed. It was somehow what I was craving without even knowing it.’
Benjamin lay back down then, and she reached out her hand to touch his, intertwining her fingers over his as she breathed slowly and stared up at the green leaves waving above her, with glimpses of blue sky as the branches softly parted back and forth. Rose couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like for her mother if she’d spent her last months somewhere like this, in a part of the world that might have made her final weeks and days on earth so peaceful. If she’d passed away experiencing how beautiful the world truly was.
‘Rose?’ Benjamin asked, his voice barely a murmur. ‘Are you okay?’
She realised then that her cheeks were damp, that he’d heard her crying. But instead of saying anything, she just squeezed her fingers around his and bless him, he didn’t ask her again. That was the thing about a man who was used to spending his day with horses—he didn’t seem to expect anything from her other than her quiet presence. He was easy to talk to, but he never filled the silences with unnecessary conversation.
Which was another reason she was falling so hard for Argentina.
‘Do you want to lie here a while longer, or shall I go and take that shower so I can kiss you again?’
Rose laughed despite her tears. ‘Let’s just stay a little longer, if you don’t mind. Just like this.’
‘I don’t mind a bit,’ he replied, keeping hold of her hand, his fingers squeezing ever so gently against hers as if to remind her that he had hold of her.
And when she looked over at him, turning her head so that her cheek was against the grass, she saw that he’d closed his eyes, not in a hurry to go anywhere, and seemingly as content as could be lying on the ground beneath the tree and holding her hand for as long as she needed him.
‘Benjamin?’ Rose called a few hours later, curious as to where he’d got to with her glass of water. Rose padded barefoot through the house, shivering a little and wishing she’d slipped her robe on. He’d left her in bed, promising to return with water and something for them to eat, but it had been more than ten minutes and she was starting to think he’d either forgotten about her or left the house entirely.
She found him standing in the kitchen and went up behind him, slipping her arms around his bare torso and pressing her lips to his back. But he didn’t move.
‘Are you coming back to bed?’ Rose whispered.
‘Were you going to tell me?’ he asked, his voice husky with anger as he turned, holding a piece of paper in one hand.
‘Tell you what?’ she asked, looking past him and seeing that he’d been looking at the letters and the most recent documentation she’d received from the lawyer. Heat rose inside of her as she realised what he was accusing her of. ‘If I had something to hide, I wouldn’t have left everything sprawled across the kitchen table for you to find.’
Anger flared inside her that he’d had the nerve to read her personal correspondence and then act as if she was the one inthe wrong. She would have happily shown it all to him and had a conversation about it, but he seemed intent on accusing her of some terrible wrongdoing. When had she ever not been open with him about how she was feeling or her intentions?
‘Were you ever going to stay here? Or did you just come to view your inheritance and find out how much it was worth?’ he asked, his voice cold in a way she’d never heard him use before.
‘Benjamin, please?—’
‘Just tell me, Rose. Were you even considering staying here? On keeping this place? Or were you just telling me what you thought I wanted to hear?’
She shook her head as she stared back at him. ‘No, I was never intending on staying here forever,’ she said, quietly, wrapping her arms around herself. ‘My home is in London. I can’t change the fact that Argentina isn’t home for me or that I’m not Spanish. I’ve always told you that I was extending my trip rather than staying.’
