Prima Donna (47 page)

Tanner snorted. ‘Talking of which, you never did explain how you came to be such a good rider,’ he said.

‘You never asked,’ she quipped, offering nothing more.

Tanner sighed, frustrated. ‘Okay, so I’m asking now. How did you come to be such a good rider?’

‘Growing up here, we rode bareback all the time, catching the wild horses on the
cerrado
,’ she shrugged. ‘My brother and I did it all the time. I almost rode before I
could walk.’

‘And certainly before you could dance,’ he said. ‘I thought ballerinas made terrible riders.’

‘Well, that’s true. We use exactly the opposite sets of muscles.’ She turned her hip out absent-mindedly and lifted it in
attitude
. ‘But I rode long before I
danced. And by the time I escaped to ballet school, I was far away from horses, so . . .’ she dropped her leg down. ‘The two never overlapped.’

‘Except today.’

‘I guess I’ll pay for it tomorrow, then,’ Pia quipped.

They mounted the horses and left the yard quickly. Water had been packed into panniers on the saddles but that was all they had need for – lunch was apparently being helicoptered in to a
picnic spot on the far side of the plantation.

Paolo led the trek – alternately pointing out the vast extent of his family’s estate, which, from what Tanner could tell, stretched as far as the eye could see, and pulling back to
ostentatiously kiss Pia and make the heavy-handed point that she was his. Tanner left them to it, dropping back to the rear; but with nothing else to look at – one coffee plant looked the
same as all the rest after two miles – his eyes settled on the narrow span of her shoulders, the cinch of her waist, the fan of her hips and those wisps of baby hair that tickled the back of
her neck, not yet long enough for her ponytail.

After ninety minutes of trekking and heavy petting, Tanner was relieved when they stopped for water and to give the horses a rest. He jumped down, keen to stretch out his legs and get away from
the lovebirds for a minute. He sat on a rock overlooking the valley and wondered what Will would say if he knew Tanner was riding with Pia and her new lover in the Brazilian highlands. The thought
of Will’s ire pleased him, although with Violet now sleeping in Will’s bed, the revenge scenario would be even more appealing without Paolo in it.

After a while, they got back on the horses again, and the landscape began to change as they moved away from the plantation into the bordering rainforest, the shrubs shooting up into skyscraping
trees, the big sky being replaced with scrappy patches glimpsed through the leaves, the steady drone of reaping machinery giving way to intermittent trills and squawks of unseen birds and monkeys.
The vegetation grew thick and disorienting, and the humidity rose with the tree height, but Paolo knew his way through it as though there were big red arrows painted on the trunks.

‘Paolo,’ Pia whined eventually, massaging her thighs. ‘This is dull. I want to stop now.’

‘We’re nearly there, baby. Listen,’ he said, cupping his ear. ‘Can’t you hear it?’

Pia frowned and strained to hear. In the distance, the constant sound of a rushing river asserted itself over the noises of animal life.

‘That’s where we’re headed? But it’s miles off.’

‘Not as far as you think,’ he contradicted, clicking his horse forward. ‘Come on. They’re dropping lunch at one.’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s half past
twelve now. If we don’t keep up, it’ll start getting cold.’

He broke into a gentle trot and the others followed him, Tanner aware of a slackening of Pia’s form. She looked tired and he noticed she kept flexing her right foot in the stirrup.

‘You okay?’ he asked, drawing up alongside.

Pia looked at him and nodded. Paolo turned at the sound of his voice and Tanner quickly let his horse fall back again.

Gradually the forest began to open up a bit into tracts of flat land. The sound of the river was getting louder, and as they rounded an outcrop of rocks it suddenly exploded into a roar.

Pia and Tanner gasped at the sight of a massive waterfall plunging from two hundred feet above them into a large pool, the water shimmering turquoise, wet rocks glistening like sleeping seals
all around. The river continued along its path another hundred yards further on, but more delicately, tumbling down boulders and skipping down rock pools as it recovered from its dramatic dive.

On a huge dry stone by the side of the pool, Tanner’s eyes fastened on several hampers. Lunch! He realized he was starving. He jumped off and tied his horse to a nearby tree. Both Pia and
Paolo left theirs loose.

‘Hadn’t you better secure them?’ he frowned, rolling up his sleeves.

‘You British, so uptight,’ Paolo said dismissively. ‘Besides, there is nowhere for them to go here.’

Tanner raised a sceptical eyebrow and looked round at the rather large rainforest that surrounded them on all sides.

Paolo noted the question mark. ‘I have been coming here since I was a boy and there has never been a problem,’ he said, somewhat testily.

‘Well, that’s all right, then,’ Tanner muttered under his breath.

The chefs had prepared a lunch as sumptuous as breakfast had been, with lobster thermidor, a ripe avocado salad and passion-fruit pavlova. They ate in silence, ravenous from the trek, and Tanner
was surprised by Pia’s hearty appetite – she looked as though she inhaled rice cakes. Afterwards they all lay down on the rocks in the sun. The break in the trees made for a perfect
suntrap and their bodies steamed like puddings.

Tanner let himself doze. The jet lag, last night’s sleeplessness and now this trek were taking it out of him. He didn’t hear the splashes in the water as Pia titillated Paolo with a
frisky water fight. He just drifted off, hands behind his head, as occasional droplets flecked his cheeks and wet his hair.

He awoke an hour later to silence. Sleepily, he rubbed his eyes and rolled his head to the side. The horses were nodding quietly by the trees. Paolo was asleep in just his jeans on a giant flat
rock that looked like it could have been used for prehistoric sacrifices.

He looked in the other direction and was startled to find Pia sitting close by, watching him. He brought himself up on his elbows, embarrassed. ‘What are you looking at?’ he
muttered.

She smiled. ‘You look like you’re seven when you sleep,’ she whispered.

Tanner frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? That I dribble?’

She smiled and shifted slightly. She was wearing Paolo’s shirt, he noticed. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a pink thong dangling on a bush in the breeze. She carried on staring
at him.

‘What?’ he said, irritated by her scrutiny.

‘Sssh,’ she said, putting a finger to her lips. ‘You’ll wake him.’

‘So?’

She said nothing.

‘So what makes him so much better than Silk, then?’ he asked finally, before immediately wondering why he’d asked.

‘He’s not really. But at least he’s my choice.’

Tanner squinted at her. A shaft of sunlight was piercing straight through a giant eucalyptus and bouncing off her hair to create a halo mirage. She looked deceptively angelic. ‘So, you
don’t really rate him but that’s fine because you’re calling the shots, is that right?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Women,’ he muttered, shaking his head and staring down at his feet.

‘How’s Violet?’

‘What is this? A coffee morning?’

‘I’m just interested to know.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t know,’ he sighed. ‘She’s with Will now.’ He lay back down, resting his hands behind his head again.

Pia digested the revelation. It didn’t surprise her. Violet had always felt like a competitor to her. Pia had assumed it might be because she was worried about Pia going after Tanner. She
should have realized that Violet had set her own sights on Pia’s supposed prize.

She looked back at Tanner, pretending to doze and clearly uncomfortable with her company. ‘You don’t seem upset.’

‘I’m not. It was over anyway. I’m just pissed off she went off with that tosser.’

Pia rested her chin on her hands. ‘Why do you hate him so much?’ she asked.

There was a long silence. He wasn’t going to answer.

‘Come on. I bet it can’t be that bad,’ she cajoled.

‘Really? Because you know precisely
what
about me?’

‘Tell me – what did he do?’ she persisted.

‘Look, what’s with the sudden interest in my feelings and my history? I don’t want to talk about it – and especially not with you.’

‘Why not? There’s nothing else to do,’ she sighed, looking away and resting her cheek on her knees.

Tanner watched her. She seemed very small, sitting huddled on that rock. Small and lonely, he realized. For some reason, he felt sorry for her.

‘My mother died when I was six,’ he said reluctantly. ‘My father fell into a depression and began to drink. He got into debt and had to start leveraging against the
estate.’

‘What estate?’

‘Plumbridge.’

Pia’s eyebrows shot up. ‘It was yours?’

‘I was born there. So was my father and his before him. Our family had owned it for six generations. It was our home, not the fucking mausoleum he’s turned it into.’

Pia tipped her head to the side at his temper.

He took a deep breath. ‘My father was introduced to Silk by an acquaintance at his club, White’s. They don’t let just anyone in. It’s unbelievably select and Silk was
touting for a seconder for membership.’

‘Why?’

‘Most of his business is done in places like that. His USP has been to gather a few – but astronomic – sources of underachieving capital and put a rocket beneath them. He
realized that the old boys sleeping off lunch in the White’s library are generally living off the interest on their investments, but most of them have colossal amounts tied up in hibernating
trusts that were established fifty, eighty, a hundred years ago and aren’t performing anywhere near their potential. They were an untapped market and he knew that if he could just get in,
then he could get to them from the inside. It also meant he was able to steer clear of the dodgy sources of ultra-wealth that you get with the mafia and Russian oligarchs.’

‘So he was clever about who he did business with. So what?’

‘Well, it wasn’t looking good for him. Behind the flashy headlines and all the charity work he shouts about, Silk has a pretty shady reputation in finance and some of the more senior
figures at the club were out to blackball him. So after they were introduced, he did some digging around on my father. He found out about our financial troubles and struck a deal: he would bail out
my father’s debts if my father seconded his proposal.

‘My father couldn’t refuse. He was on the cusp of losing his family’s heritage and his children’s home. He’d already lost his wife. The thought of it was more than
he could bear. All he had to do was lend his good name to the membership proposal, and Silk would put up the cash. So they shook on it.’

‘They
shook
on it? You mean – they didn’t have a contract?’

‘It was a gentleman’s agreement. My father was from a different generation. It was how he always did business. But, as I told you once before, Silk’s no gentleman. He reneged
on the deal. My father kept his end of the bargain and got him in, but Silk kept delaying and delaying until the bank foreclosed. Then, and only then, Silk stepped in and snapped up the estate at a
fraction of its value. My father never recovered from the shock. He believed in honour. He’d never dealt with someone like Silk before, and after everything he’d already been through it
was too much for him.’

‘Why did you work with him, then, if you despised him so much?’

‘I had no choice.’ He paused, his jaw set. ‘My father’s health deteriorated sharply following Silk’s deception and I spent the next couple of years dashing up from
Ciren to look after him. After he died and I finally looked around me, the only thing that was left that I could make a go of was the yard. And Silk was the only owner big enough locally to make it
commercially viable.’

‘So you drank from the poisoned chalice,’ Pia murmured.

‘You could say that.’ He cocked an eyebrow and stared at her. ‘And you thought you had it bad? It was Silk’s total
absence
of chivalry that screwed my family
over.’

‘And now he’s screwing Violet,’ she replied testily. She didn’t like him making light of Will’s manipulation of her. Her freedom was the thing she prized more than
anything in the world. ‘Don’t tell me it’s not killing you, the thought of what he could be doing to her right now.’

Tanner swung himself up into sitting, his eyes blazing. She couldn’t rile him. ‘Not half as much as it would kill him to know that I’m here in Brazil with you.’

‘You’re not
with
me,’ she countered. ‘I’m with Paolo.’

Tanner shrugged but his eyes were dark and unreadable. ‘Yes. But he doesn’t know that.’

There was a long silence as the forbidden image of the two of them together hovered in the air. ‘He’d never believe it,’ she said finally. ‘He knows you despise
me.’

Tanner stared at her for a moment, then lay back down again. He stretched languidly in the sun. ‘That’s true. He’d never buy it.’

Pia looked down at the rock, stung by Tanner’s casual dismissal of the very idea of the two of them as lovers. ‘
Do
you still despise me?’

‘Yes.’

‘But why? I’m not with Will any more.’

He rolled his head to the side and looked up at her, a frown across his face. ‘I didn’t hate you because you were
with him
,’ he said, almost amused by the
suggestion.

Pia stared down at him, baffled. ‘Then why do you hate me? What’s so wrong with me?’

Tanner laughed shortly.

‘What? What is so funny?’

Tanner propped himself back up on his elbows. ‘You really don’t know?’

‘Know what?’

‘It’s your godforsaken manners.’

‘My manners? Oh God, what is this – some English thing? Some code of honour I’ve missed? Lost in translation?’

Tanner narrowed his eyes. ‘Generally speaking, when someone saves your life – whatever your culture – it’s considered polite to say thank you.’