Don Joaquin's Pride (Presents, 2127)

by Lynne Graham

  The sound of that familiar term of endearment closed Lucy’s throat over. She gazed up at him, strained eyes wide and wary. ‘I was tactless—’

  ‘What you said was right. I’ve made mistakes…I can’t afford to make many more with her…’

  He was close, and she was so intent on him that she had already lost the thread of the conversation. Those beautiful eyes of his filled her with such a powerful longing to touch him that she clenched her hands by her sides to keep them there.

  ‘Where have you been for the past two weeks?’ Joaquin asked levelly.

  ‘I told you in my letter…the flat—the one you said didn’t exist,’ she framed as a reminder. ‘It’s sold, but it had to be cleared for the new owner.’

  ‘No such property appeared in the list of your assets.’

  Lucy was having a real struggle to concentrate. ‘Someone slipped up—’

  ‘So it would seem.’ His dark rich drawl seemed to slow down and lower in timbre, sending a delicious shiver down her taut spinal cord.

  Her lower limbs untrustworthy supports, she trembled. In the charged silence, her heartbeat had speeded up to a mile a minute. The fierce tension of her taut muscles made her all the more aware of the swollen sensitivity of her breasts and the ungovernable ache building between her thighs. Nor was she so lost to all reason that she heard no inner voice urging retreat; she heard it but blanked it out, for the craving was stronger.

  ‘Dios mio…’ Joaquin sounded thickly, his fingers winding into her luxuriant caramel-coloured hair to tug her head back very gently. His scorching gaze raked over her face. ‘Do you know how difficult it was to put you back into your own bed that morning? I didn’t like that…I didn’t like being that hungry, gatita. I didn’t like aching to have just one more chance to feel you going wild under me…’

  ‘No?’ Her voice was a mere thread, for she was mesmerized by what he was telling her.

  ‘No,’ Joaquin breathed in roughened confirmation. ‘Only a weak man lets desire come between him and reason. But two weeks has been enough of a deprivation for me to feel I have more than made my point.’

  ‘You missed me…’ Lucy muttered, hanging on his every word.

  ‘Every hour on the hour…’ Joaquin let his hands drop to her hips, to skim up her skirt and then hoist her up against him. ‘More cold showers than I could bear. But I know now what it is that draws me. You’re like a split personality, querida. I’m fascinated. How could I be anything else?’

  Drawn only partially from her sensual abstraction, Lucy blinked, assuming she had misunderstood. ‘A split—?’

  Joaquin let his tongue delve between her parted lips with an erotic expertise and promise that was not best suited to enabling her to hold up her end of a sensible conversation. She jerked against him, a stifled moan breaking low in her throat as the feverish hunger he had already ignited took fire in excitement.

  ‘Of course, I know what you are…I know exactly what you’re capable of,’ Joaquin murmured against her cheekbone while she was fighting to get back the strength to breathe. ‘But you’ve honed your camouflage skills to the level of an art form.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—’

  Both arms banded round her, Joaquin settled fluidly down on to a sofa with her astride him. One hand closing into her hair to tip her head back, he pressed his lips to the delicate skin just below her ear. Suddenly it felt like the most erotic spot in her whole screaming body. She gasped out loud, clutched at his hair, feeling the burn of her own excitement in sensual shock.

  ‘Don’t you?’ Joaquin prompted almost roughly, framing her flushed cheekbones with both hands and holding her entrapped, scorching green eyes delving into passion-glazed violet-blue. ‘You’re like a chameleon and you’re very clever. You give every man what he wants: in fact you become what he wants.’

  ‘Joaquin, I—’

  ‘Silencio, por favor.’ He rested a warning fingertip against her lips.

  ‘B-but—’

  ‘It’s the secret of your success, querida.’ Joaquin scanned her shaken expression with satisfaction and lowered his hands again. ‘Where did you swot up on Mayan ruins to impress me? In my own library? That romantic little dip you took in the forest, knowing that I was on your trail—’

  ‘No…you’re wrong!’ Lucy was appalled by the suggestion that she had planned everything that had happened between them, had indeed waged a campaign to attract him.

  ‘And that night in my bed you gave me the shy but eager virgin that every Latin American male fantasises about. It was an illusion, naturally, but it was a brilliant performance,’ Joaquin assured her appreciatively as he let his sure hands stroke caressingly from her slim hips along the extended length of her taut slender thighs.

  The arousing glide of his hands on her over-sensitive flesh made her tremble, but she was taken aback by the rock-solid conviction with which he spoke.

  ‘If I didn’t excite you quite so much, you would be white with shock,’ Joaquin forecast with galling amusement. ‘Did I neglect to mention that you can continue moulding yourself into being exactly what I want with my full support?’

  ‘You’re calling me one big fake!’ Lucy condemned strickenly, and then she froze on the awareness that that was exactly what she was. Fake name, fake appearance, fake everything!

  ‘Big hurt eyes and cue for tears that well up,’ Joaquin labelled silkily, throwing his arrogant dark head back to study her with intense concentration while retaining his imprisoning hold on her. ‘And, even though I know it’s a superb act, I feel like a bastard for hurting your feelings.’

  ‘Let go of me!’ Lucy wailed, anchored to his muscular thighs in what now seemed to her to be the most mortifyingly inappropriate position.

  ‘No…’ Joaquin told her, taking her soft mouth with a sudden dark passionate force that caught her totally by surprise.

  She brought her hands thumping down on his broad shoulders but somehow forgot to coil them into fists. And then that moment of resistance was gone. Her need for him was greater. Within seconds she was kissing him back with the same drugging intensity he was teaching her. Raw seething excitement gripped her. She pressed herself as close as she could get, which wasn’t close enough, and with a husky growl Joaquin started rearranging her, an operation complicated by his apparent reluctance to separate from her for a single moment.

  ‘Por Dios…you can set me on fire with a kiss, querida,’ Joaquin breathed raggedly.

  Lucy looked up at him, vaguely wondering how they had got to be lying down full length on the sofa, but considerably more aware of how incredibly good it felt to have the heavy masculine weight of him against her again. And then she heard a curious little metallic rendition of what sounded remarkably like the opening to the ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’…

  Just as suddenly, Joaquin thrust himself away from her and vaulted upright. He snatched up the mobile phone and extended it to her with a hand that was noticeably unsteady. ‘Yolanda, it must be…make the lies good,’ he urged unevenly, dulled colour lying along his taut cheekbones.

  But as it turned out Lucy had no need to tell a single lie. Indeed, during the brief conversation which followed she had more trouble getting a word in edgeways. Yolanda had had her purse stolen from her bag in a shop and was in floods of tears. ‘I’ve got no money…what do I do?’ she asked brokenly.

  ‘We’ll be right there…OK?’ Lucy promised soothingly.

  On the way back out to the limousine, Joaquin said incredulously, ‘You said only four words and yet you betrayed my presence—’

  ‘She’s far too upset to worry about who “we” stands for,’ Lucy muttered shakily, still in shock at her own behaviour—and his. Her wanton body was still all of a quiver. She was desperate to put some distance between herself and Joaquin while she dealt with her emotional turmoil, but she also felt the need to rush to Yolanda’s side, because somehow she had become fond of the younger girl.

  And Yolanda, touched fo
r the first time in her life by crime, only froze for a split second when she saw her brother approaching a step in Lucy’s wake. Although she was relieved to see Lucy, it was self-evident that the arrival of a strong male figure on the scene was even more welcome after the shock the Guatemalan girl had suffered. As bursts of rapid Spanish were exchanged and Yolanda turned instinctively to her bossy big brother for support, Lucy felt very much like a third wheel.

  Since there was little hope of its recovery, Joaquin suggested that the stolen purse should be reported to the police immediately, any credit cards cancelled, and that later they would go straight to Yolanda’s hotel so that she could pack.

  ‘You can come in with me, Lucy,’ the brunette told her more cheerfully.

  ‘I’d like to, but I’m afraid I have an appointment this afternoon,’ Lucy responded uncomfortably, still not having met Joaquin’s eyes once since they had left his townhouse.

  ‘But I need some company,’ Yolanda protested with reproachful eyes.

  ‘Come back to the house with us and join us for dinner,’ Joaquin murmured smoothly, adding his voice to his sister’s.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I really do need to get home. I’d be grateful if you could just drop me off at the nearest bus stop,’ Lucy stated tautly.

  After all, Joaquin thought that she was a fake and she was a fake—indeed a much bigger fake than he could ever have guessed. He was a clever guy. How could she have been so foolish as to imagine that he would not sense on some level that she was not quite what she appeared to be? And what other interpretation could he have put on behaviour that just didn’t match what he believed he knew about her background and lifestyle? After all, her twin was very different, in personality and presentation. Cindy was confident, occasionally even aggressive in her outlook on the world, and nobody’s fool. Cindy was not shy or awkward or naive.

  It was time that she cut loose of any connection with Joaquin and Yolanda Del Castillo, Lucy conceded heavily. Cindy had put a solicitor in charge of any further communications with Joaquin concerning the repayment of her former father-in-law’s savings. There was no further need for Lucy to play any role, nor any requirement for Joaquin to be told that she was, in fact, Cindy Paez’s sister. In any case, sooner or later his own sister would inform him of that fact and probably laugh her head off at how he had been fooled.

  As neither Del Castillo was accustomed to having their wishes ignored and their invitations refused, there was a distinct coolness now in the atmosphere.

  ‘I’ll call you…’ Yolanda said sullenly, when the limo stopped to let Lucy alight. Ironically the brunette finally both looked and sounded her age.

  Joaquin flashed Lucy a darkling glance of censure but Lucy evaded it. He would have invited a chimpanzee home for dinner had he believed it would keep his volatile sister happy, she thought bitterly. She caught the bus and went shopping for food. On her walk back to the apartment she found herself passing within yards of her doctor’s surgery and decided to call in for her test results in person.

  The receptionist checked the card, which had a note attached. ‘You need to make another appointment.’

  ‘Another?’ Lucy queried anxiously. ‘Does that mean something came up in the tests?’

  ‘I expect it’s just the norm for a first pregnancy,’ the young woman said blithely. ‘I’ll check with the doctor now. I can never read his handwriting.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  PREGNANT?

  No, there was no doubt, no room for error, Lucy’s doctor had assured her in the five minutes which was all the busy older man had been able to spare her before his next patient arrived. Tests were now so advanced that they could pick up a pregnancy at the very earliest stages, even before the menstrual cycle was noticeably disrupted. Lucy had stumbled out of his surgery again like an accident victim.

  The possibility that she might be pregnant had not even occurred to Lucy. In retrospect she was shattered by the realisation that she hadn’t once thought of that risk. Not that night she had been with Joaquin and not afterwards either. She had never had any reason to think about contraception, having always naively assumed that she would be in a long-term serious relationship before she became sexually involved. On the face of it, what did that wild passionate and romantic night of lovemaking with Joaquin have to do with the production of a little baby nine months down the line?

  Only now the connection between those two events was painfully obvious to Lucy, and she was deeply ashamed that she had behaved in such an immature and irresponsible way. A baby…Joaquin’s baby. Not a piece of news she could picture him greeting with anything other than outrage. But then hadn’t Joaquin, with considerably less excuse, been equally careless of consequences? Lucy’s bowed shoulders straightened a little on that conviction. Was she supposed to believe that a male of his sophistication and experience had been so overwhelmed with desire that he had forgotten to use contraception? Well, she might have conceded that excuse had Joaquin only made love to her once, but when she finally finished counting up how many times Joaquin had made love to her she stopped marvelling at the reality that she had conceived a child after one abandoned night. Had Joaquin been industriously set on creating a baby, he could not have made more effort to that end!

  After a sleepless night, Lucy was tidying the kitchen early the next morning, taking refuge in keeping herself busy in an effort to keep herself calm, when she heard the front door open.

  ‘Lucy…?’

  She stiffened in astonishment because it was her future brother-in-law’s voice. ‘I’m in here, Roger!’

  Roger Harkness appeared in the doorway. He was a big, thickset young man, with light brown hair and deceptively bland blue eyes set into lean, sun-tanned features. ‘Cindy warned me to shout first in case I gave you a fright.’

  ‘I thought you were staying in Oxford until tomorrow?’

  ‘Cindy and my mother thought…and Cindy had to stay because my folks have invited a pile of guests round this evening,’ Roger grimaced. ‘But my firm didn’t send me to Germany for two weeks just to have me roll back last minute, get married and go off on honeymoon without reporting back somewhere in between!’

  ‘It’s a shame, though—’

  ‘I have to write up a detailed report and present it first thing tomorrow morning to the senior partners. I’ll get it finished quicker here.’

  ‘I didn’t move any of your stuff in the spare room,’ Lucy hastened to assure him, reminded that the room she was currently occupying was the same one which Roger, having given up his own flat before he went to Germany, had set up as a home office in which he could work.

  ‘I wouldn’t have worried about it if you had,’ Roger assured her with a rather strained and unconvincing smile. ‘I’m really tired, so I’m going to hit the sack for a couple of hours and then start work.’

  As he trod off down to the bedroom, Lucy bit anxiously at her lower lip. The sooner she found herself a bedsit the better. She didn’t want to be playing gooseberry to a newly married couple. Even using the spare room she would be inconveniencing them. Roger had seemed tense and awkward with her, unlike his usual genial self.

  Poor Cindy, Lucy reflected sympathetically, her thoughts turning to her twin, who had been so much looking forward to her reunion with Roger, only now to find it cut short. Roger had only got back from Germany the night before. He must have driven straight to Oxford, spent the night and got up at dawn to get back into London so early. Certainly her twin wouldn’t have had the opportunity to make any serious confessions to Roger. But then when her sister chose to tell Roger about the financial hot water she was in was really none of her business, Lucy reminded herself.

  Didn’t she have enough problems of her own to worry about? Exactly what was she planning to do about the fact that she was pregnant? She wasn’t prepared to consider a termination. She would have her baby…Joaquin’s baby. No matter how he felt about it. But how would she live? It was all very well making airy-fairy plans to raise a chil
d on her own, but Lucy was already foreseeing how difficult it would be.

  She wasn’t capable of earning a salary big enough to cover the cost of childcare. In some circumstances government help was available to assist single mothers to stay in employment. Only she didn’t have a clue whether she would qualify for help, didn’t have a clue where she would live, how she would live…anything!

  And at that point of rising panic, the doorbell went. Rushing to answer it, while being surprised that it hadn’t been the intercom which had sounded a warning of a visitor first, but too preoccupied to put on the security chain, she just opened the door.

  ‘Allow me to tell you that the security is useless in this building,’ Joaquin informed her with grim disapproval. ‘The main entrance door downstairs was lying wide open. Anybody could just walk in!’

  But he had. And in that first time-suspended moment of recognition Lucy was overwhelmed by happiness. Thought had nothing to do with it; instinct reigned supreme. There he stood, looking breathtakingly, stunningly handsome in a black cashmere overcoat worn over a faultlessly cut dark business suit. But then her brain kicked back into functioning again and she went rigid.

  ‘Joaquin…?’ The birth of sheer panic turned Lucy pale enough to make his keen gaze narrow in his inspection of her now startled face. But she couldn’t help but be aghast at his arrival. Roger was in the apartment! Roger had never even heard of Joaquin Del Castillo but Joaquin had certainly heard of Roger, and if the two men were to meet and Joaquin learnt how he had been deceived what else might be said in Roger’s hearing? If Roger had to find out what his bride-to-be and her sister had been doing while he was safely out of reach in Germany, the very worst way he could find out would be from a male who had as low an opinion of Cindy as Joaquin had!

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Joaquin strode smoothly past her into the hall.

  ‘Sorry…I wasn’t expecting you,’ Lucy muttered in a stifled undertone, her shaken appraisal pinned to his tall powerful frame while she tried feverishly to work out how to get rid of him again.