Don Joaquin's Pride (Presents, 2127)

by Lynne Graham

  Thinking faster than she had ever thought in her life, Lucy muttered, ‘My knee…I fell when I was scrambling round the ruins this afternoon—’

  ‘And you said nothing?’ Joaquin broke in censoriously. ‘In this climate, any injury needs attention!’

  Her scraped knee was duly inspected. Joaquin sprang out of bed, insisting that the cut ought to be bathed and treated with antiseptic. While he occupied himself at that praiseworthy endeavour, Lucy began breathing more normally again.

  ‘You’re so careless of your own well-being!’ Joaquin’s concern was liberally laced with exasperation. ‘Even a small wound can lead to a serious infection, and if it’s bled again, it hasn’t yet begun to heal.’

  Lucy withstood the lecture, giddy relief seeping through her as she realised just how close she had come to having her fake identity exposed. Had Joaquin realised that he had been her first lover, he would have known that she could not be Cindy Paez. Joaquin affixed a plaster to the offending limb and surveyed her where she sat, head humbly bowed.

  ‘Under no circumstances will you enter the rainforest again,’ he decreed. Her taut mouth began to stretch into a helpless smile. She stole a glance up at him, irrepressible dimples indenting her cheeks.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘You’re just so bossy. Were you born domineering or did you get that way growing up?’

  Joaquin reached out and very slowly tipped her back across the tumbled bed. ‘The talent comes entirely naturally to me, querida,’ he countered with immense cool.

  Lucy laughed; she couldn’t help it. Joaquin pinned her hands to the sheet in mock annoyance, his brilliant eyes intent on her animated face. The leap of instant awareness she experienced made her still. He smiled again, the indolent sensual smile of a male sure of his welcome, and bent his tousled dark head to kiss her.

  Lucy turned over and reached out, only to discover that she was in bed alone.

  Sitting up, she studied her surroundings in surprise. While she’d slept, Joaquin must have returned her to her own room. Discreet and sensible, she conceded, but she was uneasily aware that discretion had not been on his mind when he had first swept her off to bed. Suppressing a faint pang of anxiety, and refusing to acknowledge her disappointment at not waking up in his arms, Lucy got up.

  As she showered, all she could think about was Joaquin. How could she have fallen so much in love in the space of a week? But then it had been a strange, intense and very eventful week, and Joaquin was really quite unique. As she donned a navy shift dress she was recalling her last memories of the previous night. It had still been dark the last time he had made love to her. His passionate urgency had set her on fire but burned her out. She had slept, and that must have been when he’d shifted her back to her own bed.

  A yawn crept up on Lucy. But, tired as she was, she was determined to show up for the computer training which Dominga had mentioned. She didn’t want Joaquin to think that she would try to take advantage of their new intimacy. It was ironic, she thought ruefully. It wasn’t for her sister’s benefit alone that she was now keen to prove that she was neither lazy nor unreliable.

  Hopeful of running into Joaquin, Lucy went downstairs in search of breakfast. However, a maid showed her into a grand and imposing dining room where she found herself eating in splendid isolation. The bubbly sense of happiness she was containing was entirely new to her. She didn’t want to examine how she was feeling too closely. She didn’t want to let other more threatening thoughts intrude. He doesn’t even know who you are, an unwelcome little voice whispered regardless at the back of her mind. In panic, she squashed the reminder and closed it out.

  Dominga wasn’t quite quick enough to hide her surprise at Lucy’s arrival. Evidently the older woman had not expected her to show up for work again. She had definitely been seen with Joaquin in the courtyard the night before. How many of the staff suspected that she had spent the night in his bedroom? Lucy paled at those all too realistic concerns and hurriedly shelved them. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was painfully aware that she had broken every rule she had ever respected, but the intoxicating happiness which filled her whenever she thought about Joaquin was far more powerful.

  A young male whizzkid arrived to give her the basic training she had been promised on the computer. But Lucy found it incredibly hard to concentrate. Should she have sought Joaquin out before breakfast? Or would that have seemed too pushy? Was she supposed to wait until he came looking for her?

  Late morning, Joaquin finally put in an appearance by coming in to speak to his secretary. The instant he entered Lucy’s heartbeat speeded up. She almost rose from her seat before she recalled that they had an audience. Feeling bound to stay where she was and allow him to make the first move, she pinned her gaze to his tall powerful figure. His dark grey business suit was superbly tailored to his athletic frame but very formal. For perhaps the first time Lucy recognised who Joaquin Del Castillo was. He was a powerful and wealthy industrialist, light years distant from her in status, and finally facing that reality dismayed her.

  But, just as quickly, Lucy recovered her confidence. She remembered Joaquin laughing with her the night before, hugging her close with the easy physical affection that was so natural to him and so powerfully appealing to her, and she lifted her head high again.

  She waited for him to finish speaking to Dominga. The seconds passed, her tension steadily climbing. His bold bronzed profile looked remote and serious. She wanted to see his eyes. She was just desperate to meet his eyes. But it didn’t happen. A moment later Joaquin had strolled back out again without so much as a glance or nod in her direction.

  Lucy sagged. He hadn’t seen her…of course, he hadn’t seen her! She was barely visible seated behind the computer monitor, she told herself ruefully. He might even think she was still in bed. He wouldn’t ignore her, would he? Could that be his idea of being discreet? Sort of super-super-discreet?

  Tortured by such uncertainty, Lucy found that the lunch break seemed to be a long time in coming. But, as soon as it did arrive, Lucy headed straight up the corridor towards Joaquin’s office. However, several yards from the ajar door of his office, she realised Yolanda was back; the girl was shouting at the top of her voice. She paused, winced at the chilling timbre of Joaquin’s no doubt withering response.

  Just as she was about to move on and abandon any attempts to see him, the door flew back on its hinges and Yolanda stalked out, slamming the door shut behind her again. Her stunning face was flushed and streaked with tears. ‘I might as well be a slave!’ she gasped on the back of a distraught sob. ‘Joaquin’s threatening to take my allowance away. Even my money is not my own. I feel so humiliated!’

  ‘Oh, Yolanda, please don’t get so upset…’ Without hesitation, Lucy closed a comforting arm round the weeping brunette’s waist, which was about as high she could comfortably reach. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t mean it—’

  ‘Then you don’t know my brother,’ the brunette whispered raggedly. ‘He says that it is his right to tell me how to live my life and that I have had too much freedom—’

  ‘Too much?’ Lucy was surprised, for on the face of it it didn’t seem to her that Joaquin’s sister had any freedom at all. Except perhaps in the matter of her fairly noticeable wardrobe.

  ‘Now I am to go nowhere without a chaperon,’ Yolanda shared with shuddering mortification. ‘At my age! I’ll be a laughing stock!’

  As the brunette pinned her quivering lips together and turned away, Lucy’s heart went out to her. A chaperon? In this century? Lucy wasn’t surprised the other woman was distraught. Even allowing for cultural differences, Joaquin was treating his sister like a wayward child who had to be kept down and controlled. It was natural for Yolanda fight for independence.

  Her brow furrowing on that straying thought, Lucy knocked on the door of Joaquin’s office. When there was no response, she went in. Joaquin was standing with his back to the door. Even his well-cut jacket couldn’t conceal the powe
rful tension etched into his broad shoulders. As she entered, he swung round, blazing anger in his shimmering green eyes.

  Intimidated, Lucy stilled and watched his darkly handsome features freeze, his brilliant eyes narrow and shutter.

  ‘How may I help you?’ Joaquin drawled flatly.

  That distant invitation, which carried not a shred of intimacy, made Lucy’s cheeks burn as if she had been guilty of some awful faux pas. ‘Maybe this isn’t the best moment to…well, er—’

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be the best moment?’ Joaquin enquired even more coolly.

  Lucy worried at her lower lip, nervous perspiration dampening her skin. She was so tense her muscles ached. Suddenly her attempt to see him seemed like a dreadfully forward move and the ultimate in mistakes. ‘I know that you and Yolanda have just had a bit of an argument,’ she admitted awkwardly.

  ‘That is no concern of yours,’ Joaquin countered with chilling reserve.

  ‘Of course not, but…’ Lucy’s voice petered out; she honestly didn’t know what to say. This was not the passionate teasing male who had held her in his arms and made love to her only hours earlier.

  The silence lay like a dead weight between them.

  ‘You thought sharing my bed last night gives you some special privileges?’ Joaquin enquired with smooth derision, an ebony brow slanting.

  Every scrap of colour drained from Lucy’s face. That contemptuous question hit her squarely where it hurt. In the same moment she lost her naive faith in what she had believed they had shared and she was badly shaken. She felt her knees tremble, her tummy perform a sick somersault.

  ‘Well, possibly one special privilege,’ Lucy framed with strained dignity as she backed towards the door. ‘That you would have the good manners not to throw that in my face!’

  Suddenly Joaquin unfroze and strode forward to intercept her. ‘Lucy…’ he grated.

  She didn’t want to look at him, but she couldn’t stop looking at him. Shock was trammelling through her in stricken waves. A faint line of colour accentuated the taut slant of his superb cheekbones. His lean strong face was all angles and tension, a tiny muscle pulling at the corner of his sensual mouth. He had partially lifted one brown hand as though he intended to touch her, but he dropped it back to his side.

  ‘This situation is untenable,’ he murmured with harsh clarity. ‘Stop playing games, Lucy. Accept defeat, sign that agreement and go back to London.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Por Dios…I will not conduct an affair with you while my sister is under the same roof,’ Joaquin stated with distaste, his strong jawline squaring. ‘Last night was complete madness!’

  She saw that too now. All of a sudden it was clear as crystal. Surely only temporary insanity could have convinced her otherwise? And it added a whole new dimension to her suffering to appreciate that he had reached that decision long before she had. Without another word, for she wasn’t capable of saying anything more, she walked out of his office again.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LUCY found herself back in her bedroom without any recollection of having actually taken herself upstairs.

  She lowered herself shakily into a chair and stared into space. She had behaved like a idiot, she decided. Joaquin had called their intimacy complete madness, but he didn’t know the half of it, did he? Joaquin still believed she was Cindy Paez, heartless fraudster and goodtime girl. She plunged upright again, suddenly desperate to reclaim her own reputation, her own identity by telling him the truth. Then shame and reason reclaimed her and she dropped back into the chair again to cover her face with her hands in a gesture of frustration.

  She had promised that she would protect Cindy. She had promised that she would not betray her. Cindy needed time to sort out her finances and time to work out how and when she would tell Roger about the fix she was in. Lucy had promised her twin that breathing space. In any case, only a fool would imagine that Joaquin would greet a confession to the deception Lucy and her twin had engaged in with anything other than even greater outrage and disgust.

  Whichever way Lucy looked at the situation, she saw that her boats had been burnt the very first day she had met Joaquin Del Castillo and allowed him to believe that she was Mario Paez’s widow. Since the moment she had met Joaquin she had been lying her stupid head off! Tough luck that she had then fallen head over heels in love with him. But she needn’t kid herself that Joaquin would find her any more attractive as Lucy Fabian. In thinking along that line she was being pathetic and trying to avoid the real issue, which was…

  Joaquin had dumped her.

  Joaquin had ditched her.

  Joaquin had rejected her.

  The fantasy world she had allowed herself to live in for the past eighteen hours had, as a result, just collapsed round her ears. She had been a one-night stand. Not even one full night, she reflected in even greater mortification. He had tossed her out of his bed before dawn and now he wanted her out of his house and his country as well. A man couldn’t make his feelings much clearer than that!

  She had brought it all on herself too! Had she imagined that sex would be the magic way to Joaquin’s heart? She cringed, bitterly angry at her own weakness. All the regret that she felt she should have experienced earlier in the day now filled her. She had allowed Joaquin Del Castillo to use her for an evening of entertainment. But how did she blame him when she had virtually offered herself on a plate? It wasn’t as if he had even pretended that he wanted a real relationship or anything like that. No one single lie had he told her. And yet still she had gone to bed with him! How was she ever going to come to terms with that humiliating truth?

  A maid knocked and entered with an envelope.

  Rising to reach for it, Lucy turned it over and frowned, registering that it had not come through the post. Only when she had opened it did she realise what it was. The wretched repayment agreement which Joaquin had first faced her with in Fidelio’s tumbledown home! What the heck was she supposed to do with it when she couldn’t sign it?

  She had to phone her sister again: she had no other choice. Leaving her bedroom, she just walked straight across the corridor. The door of a guestroom opposite her own was lying wide, clearly in the process of being aired. Lucy dialled Cindy’s London apartment.

  ‘I thought you weren’t going to ring again!’ Her twin gasped accusingly.

  ‘Have you spoken to Roger yet?’ Lucy frowned momentarily as she was distracted by a loud click on the line.

  ‘How am I supposed to do that when he’s in Germany?’ Cindy demanded.

  Lucy had totally forgotten that fact. Only now did she remember her sister complaining about the fact that Roger’s firm was sending him to Berlin for a fortnight and that he wouldn’t be back until just before their wedding. ‘Sorry, I—’

  ‘Look, there’s been a cash offer of the asking price on your flat and I’ve accepted it. I intend to tell Roger that I’m giving you the money.’

  Lucy tensed in disbelief at the news. ‘But—’

  ‘When really I’ll be transfering the funds to Fidelio’s bank in Guatemala. OK? Are you satisfied now?’

  ‘You need to tell Roger the truth, Cindy,’ Lucy protested.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Cindy snapped angrily. ‘All you have to do now is convince Del Castillo that that is all I can afford to repay.’

  ‘I don’t think Joaquin will accept that.’

  ‘How can you be such a wimp when I’m depending on you?’ Cindy condemned. ‘In fact, it strikes me that you’ve already made one hell of a mess of things out there!’

  Lucy paled, her stomach knotting. ‘I’ve done everything I could, Cindy—’

  ‘Everything but tell her where to get off!’ The unexpected intervention of another female voice on the line gave Lucy such a shock that she dropped the receiver as if she had been burnt by it. Yolanda?

  Lucy looked on aghast as Joaquin’s sister strolled into the room, cool as a cucumber. She had a cordless phone clamped to her ear, a phone which
she was still actually talking into. ‘You’ve got some nerve, Cindy Paez…sending Lucy over here like the sacrificial lamb, so that you can save your own precious skin!’

  ‘Yolanda?’ Lucy gasped, grabbing for the receiver she had dropped to see if her twin was still on the line. ‘Cindy?’

  ‘Who…was…that?’ Cindy mumbled, sounding as aghast as Lucy felt.

  Across the room the brunette made a production out of lowering her phone to show that she had said all she intended to say.

  ‘Never mind,’ Lucy said shakily. ‘Bye, Cindy.’

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ Yolanda suggested with an amused look, as if discovering that Lucy was an imposter was of no serious importance.

  In a daze, Lucy followed her downstairs. Yolanda walked into a magnificent drawing room, closed the door and settled herself down on an antique sofa.

  ‘How did you find out?’ Lucy fixed strained eyes on her companion and stayed upright.

  ‘Easy-peasy. Before you came back upstairs I went into your bag, dug out your passport and looked! Then I checked your travel wallet and found this sweet mini photo album. Inside it there’s a picture of twin baby girls, and another of you and your sister as grown-ups.’ Yolanda rolled her eyes with decided scorn over such sentimentality.

  ‘So now you’re going to tell your brother—’

  ‘Not necessarily…’

  Lucy blinked and focused with widened eyes on the young Guatemalan woman. ‘But—’

  Yolanda shrugged. ‘Joaquin’s sure to find out eventually. Why should I get involved? Why should I be the one to blow the whistle?’

  Lucy breathed in deep, thinking fast. Right now, Yolanda was at daggers drawn with her brother. Did it give the volatile brunette a kick to know that she had found out the truth about Lucy while he was still in the dark?

  ‘I mean one way or another your silly sister will end up paying, because Joaquin doesn’t quit.’

  ‘Cindy’s not silly…she’s just scared!’ Seeing Yolanda stiffen at that contradiction, Lucy sighed. ‘All right, let me tell you the whole story, and then maybe you’ll understand.’