by Lynne Graham
Roger, stolid and conservative, Roger, who was prone to giving her sister lectures on money management. Roger, whom Cindy had already admitted was in the dark as to certain aspects of her past. Oh, dear heaven, what a dreadful, dreadful mess, Lucy conceded, her heart twisting over the situation her twin was now in. No wonder Cindy was panicking! How was Roger likely to handle this ghastly business breaking just before their wedding took place?
As Lucy hovered, literally frozen to the spot as she grasped what must now be her twin’s deepest fear, it was a great relief when her sister returned to the phone again.
‘Lucy…?’ Cindy wailed chokily. ‘What am I going to do?’
Lucy murmured as soothingly as she could, ‘We’ll work this out somehow. I’ll get a job and help—’
‘After the wedding!’ Cindy broke in to stress tremulously. ‘Promise me that you’ll keep this Del Castillo guy in the dark and occupied until my wedding is safely over.’
Lucy paled at that demand. ‘But…but, Cindy—’
‘Roger will dump me if I tell him about this now…any man would! I’ve gone from being a good catch to a liability, and if I was Roger I know I’d run, because I’m going to be living off him now and I’m no good at budgeting!’ Cindy sobbed out, becoming more hysterical with every passing second. ‘Promise me, Lucy…promise me!’
An instant later, although she could see many potential pitfalls in continuing such a deceptive course of action, Lucy heard herself uttering reluctant agreement. How could she urge Cindy to tell her future husband the truth in advance of their wedding? Suppose Roger did break off their engagement? Lucy didn’t want to carry the blame for that development.
‘Whatever happens, don’t call me again,’ Cindy urged in a frantically nervous surge. ‘Oh, yes, and whatever you do, don’t sign that repayment agreement in my name!’
‘Sign in your name…?’ Lucy repeated in a strangled tone, because she would never have dreamt of forging her twin’s signature on any document.
‘I must say he has a nerve, expecting me to come up with the whole sum. The best I can offer is a ten-year instalment plan!’ Cindy asserted bitterly.
‘I’ll try to sort something out—’
‘But don’t you run the smallest risk of Del Castillo finding out that there are two of us,’ Cindy warned fearfully. ‘And if you can’t make it back in time for the wedding, don’t worry about it…as long as my bridegroom turns up, I’ll be OK!’
A split second later, the connection was cut.
Having replaced the phone, Lucy was just drawing in slow, sustaining oxygen when the bedroom door opened. She almost died of fright on the spot. Dropping down on her knees, she grabbed at the fancy fringed valance which swept down to the carpet, intending to conceal herself under the bed. Unfortunately, the mahogany bedframe she exposed went to within a couple of inches of the floor.
As she heard Joaquin’s awesomely familiar drawl respond to whoever he was speaking to, either in the corridor or just inside the bedroom—for she couldn’t see where he was now that she had dropped down below the level of the bed—absolute panic took hold of her. Feverishly scanning the nearest furniture for a potential hiding place and seeing nowhere, she listened, horrorstruck, to his conversation coming to an end. The door thudded shut. Lucy flattened herself to the carpet and stopped breathing altogether.
A phone buzzed; not the phone by the bed. Possibly a portable. Joaquin answered it. He didn’t speak long and concluded the call in a rather impatient tone. It finally dawned on Lucy that she was in Joaquin’s bedroom. But it was early yet, she reasoned, maybe he would just go back downstairs again. Surely he didn’t go to bed before eleven in the evening? Going by the pictorial evidence of his social life in that magazine, Joaquin Del Castillo was the It Girl’s male equivalent, ungiven to the sobriety of early nights.
She listened to the soft slither of cloth against cloth and then just cringed. He was getting undressed. But as long as there remained the smallest chance of her creeping out again unseen, Lucy preferred to stay where she was. How could she possibly emerge from hiding now and make any credible excuse for her behaviour? Another door opened. Another light went on. Her hope of escaping undetected rose high. He was in the en suite bathroom! Just as Lucy was about to crawl to the corner of the bed and make a break for freedom, a pair of bare brown male feet appeared in the path of her vision.
‘Are you planning to join me in the shower?’ Joaquin drawled the enquiry, his intonation smooth as black velvet.
CHAPTER FOUR
IN SHATTERED receipt of that slumbrous invitation, and the obvious fact that Joaquin Del Castillo had been aware all along that she was cowering on the floor on the far side of his bed, Lucy’s tongue just glued fast to the roof of her dry mouth. ‘I…I…’
Slowly, she lifted her head, so engulfed by embarrassment that she didn’t know where to put herself, wildly wishing herself anywhere but the place she now was. At his feet in her nightie in his bedroom late at night! His fine white linen shirt hung unbuttoned and loose over his well-cut beige trousers, revealing a powerful torso, and his pectoral muscles were lightly defined by rough dark curls of hair. His skin was the colour of rich honey. Presented with that impressive expanse of male chest, she tried and failed to swallow.
‘Even from the door, I can see over the bed, querida. I’m a lot taller than you are,’ Joaquin said drily.
Maybe that crack about sharing his shower was some sort of Central American joke, Lucy decided, it not occurring to her for one moment that he could possibly have been serious. As he reached down a lean brown hand to close it over hers and pull her upright, she looked up and collided with those extraordinary black-fringed green eyes head-on. Whoosh…it was like falling on an electric current! Whatever desperate excuse might have been struggling for utterance on her tongue evaporated from her brain like Scotch mist.
‘Lucy…Lucy,’ Joaquin chided silkily in that dark, deep sensual accent of his, curving long brown fingers over her sensitive jawbone.
Her head felt light. The butterflies in her tummy were back. She could feel every tiny muscle she possessed tauten, even her skin tightening over her bones. But this time she recognised what was happening to her. She saw into the dark secret heart of that surge of excitement rising and her breath snarled up in her throat in shock.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve lost your nerve,’ Joaquin prompted lazily, his intent gaze scanning her upturned face.
In turn, Lucy was helplessly studying him. The high cheekbones which gave his lean features such proud definition, the cool, straight dark brows, the strong nose, hard jawline and wonderfully shaped mouth. ‘You fancy my brother something rotten,’ Yolanda had said, and Lucy finally acknowledged just how right his sister had been. A wash of colour burned her cheeks, for she felt the full weight of her own foolishness.
‘No, I—’
Joaquin elevated a satiric dark brow. ‘You weren’t expecting me this soon, es verdad?’
Desperately trying to wrench herself free of the effect he was having on her, Lucy made a huge effort to concentrate. But she couldn’t work out what he was talking about, which scarcely helped. ‘I don’t—’
‘No importa…’ His brilliant green gaze shimmered.
As she collided afresh with that searching scrutiny, her heart started to race. Sense told her to move, but the whirring tension in the air was the most deliciously seductive sensation. Paralysed to the spot in mesmerised stillness, she could feel her pulses racing, the very blood coursing through her veins. He was so close to her she could smell the hot vibrant scent of him, and it made her head spin and her body quiver with the kind of longing that left her weak.
The silence thickened to an almost unbearable level.
His bright gaze narrowed. Lifting his hand, he tugged loose the ribbon tie of the wrap she wore. It was done in such an entirely natural way that she simply stood there as he tipped the silky wrap from her shoulders and let it slide down into a pool at her feet. ‘J
oaquin…what on earth?’ she whispered, just a split second too late.
In answer, Joaquin gave her a wolfish smile. Settling his hands on her taut shoulders, he lowered his proud dark head. She knew he was going to kiss her. Sheer anticipation wiped her mind clear of all else. She just wanted him to do it! In fact she could hardly wait: it was like a tremendously important test. The last time he had kissed her, she had had a fever. And ever since then she had wondered and wondered whether she had truly felt what she remembered.
With a smoky laugh that acknowledged the height differential between them, Joaquin sank down on the side of the bed and tugged her towards him. Then he slid his hands to her hips and lifted her on to his lap. What are you doing? a little voice screamed in the back of her bemused brain.
‘No, this isn’t… Well, it isn’t…’ Lucy began tremulously as self-consciousness and a sense of events moving too rapidly out of her control almost freed her of the spell he cast.
Unconcerned by such minor mutterings, Joaquin settled her down on him. He spread long graceful fingers to cup her cheekbones and she was lost again. Meeting those beautiful crystal-clear eyes of his, she just wanted to fling herself at him. Her whole quivering body was poised on a wild high. Her breasts were full, their straining peaks almost painfully sensitive. At the heart of her there was the most intense ache.
‘You understand…this has nothing to do with Fidelio,’ Joaquin warned her in a roughened undertone.
‘Kiss me…’ Lucy urged, all shyness put to flight by the agony of eagerness clawing up inside her.
And he did. Slowly and thoroughly and with the sort of smooth sensual expertise that she was defenceless against. Yet she sought no defence. He pried apart her lips and used the tip of his tongue in a teasing darting foray into the tender interior of her mouth. She almost passed out from the fierce surge of excitement he generated. Her hands broke the hold of his so that she could wrap her arms round him.
‘Witch…’ Joaquin husked with sensual fervour, before he took that invitation and possessed her mouth again with wild hot hunger.
Like oil thrown on embers, that hunger set Lucy alight. As he drew her down on to the bed she let her fingers sink into the thick dark strands of his hair. With a growling sound deep in his throat, he rolled over and came down on her. The heat and weight of his long powerful body on hers added a whole new dimension to the experience. With every seeking intimate thrust of his tongue which imitated a far more intimate possession Lucy burned. She was so hooked on that raw, drugging charge of ever-rising excitement she could barely breathe. His hands stroked her breasts, expert fingers teasing at a tender tip, making her moan her response under the onslaught on his mouth, all control abandoned.
A knock sounded on the bedroom door. Lucy didn’t hear it, but Joaquin wrenched himself free of her with shocking abruptness. She felt that, and could hardly have remained unaware of the change in mood when she found herself being unceremoniously dumped back on to the carpet and told to stay there.
She was even more startled then to hear Yolanda, speaking in her own language several feet away. Only then did she lower her spinning head in shaken dismay at her own behaviour. Even as the unmistakable sound of an argument between brother and sister took place at the door, with the brunette’s voice growing ever more shrill and angry while Joaquin’s grew ever colder and steadier, Lucy just sat where she was, staring into space with shocked eyes.
She was still trembling, and deeply conscious of the after-pains of such unbridled passion. That hot greedy craving was still inside her, taking no account of place or person or indeed anything but its own existence. Her body wanted Joaquin Del Castillo. She wanted Joaquin, she adjusted in raw mortification. Until that moment she had never understood just how frighteningly powerful such physical need could be. And how could she blame him for taking advantage of her scantily clad presence in his bedroom? She had just let him…indeed had actively encouraged him to make love to her.
The noisy tap-tap of high heels stalking away penetrated Lucy’s reverie.
‘One down, one to go,’ Joaquin spelt out, bending down to scoop her off the carpet with grim determination.
‘One down…one what?’ Lucy gasped.
‘You’re going back to your own bed!’ His high proud cheekbones scored with dark colour, and his eyes bright and hard as emeralds, Joaquin raked her pink face with angry derision.
‘Of course I am,’ Lucy mumbled, every vowel sound strangulated by an inability to come up with any other response. Even she was prepared to concede that but for his sister’s interruption where she herself was to spend the night might reasonably have been in doubt.
‘Of course?’ Joaquin stressed with stinging scorn as he strode to the door. ‘I can’t believe that I almost fell for that cheap seduction routine!’
‘I…I b-beg your pardon?’ Lucy stammered.
‘Por Dios…you know what you are about with a man…you brought me close enough to the edge!’
‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that!’
Having made the return trip to her bedroom in record time, Joaquin dumped her back down on her comfortable bed. She fell back against the tumbled pillows, her caramel-blonde hair spilling round her hectically flushed heart-shaped face, her violet eyes bright with chagrin.
‘There was no seduction routine!’ Lucy spluttered.
‘You were waiting for me.’ With brooding intensity, Joaquin stared down at her, eyes a glimmering crystalline flash below lush black lashes. ‘With my kid sister under the same roof…have you no decency?’
In receipt of that continuing appraisal, Lucy was startled to feel her entire skin surface burn with a sensation that was far from being the shame it should have been. Excitement still shimmered in the air between them like a barrier begging to be broken. It was impossible for her to defend herself against his accusation without revealing that she had been using his phone. If she admitted that, he might check out the number and discover that she had called what should have been her own empty London apartment.
‘Obviously not,’ she heard herself confirm, thrilling in the strangest way to that image of herself as a sexually confident and immorally manipulative female.
Goaded by that response, Joaquin came down on the side of the bed and leant over her. ‘So you admit that?’
His brilliant eyes clashed with hers. Invisible sparks seemed to fly up. Her breath caught in her throat. ‘I admit nothing,’ she muttered unevenly, every sense quickening to his proximity.
Joaquin reached out a hand and slowly wound his fingers into a whole handful of her glossy ringlets. His astonishing eyes never left hers for a second. ‘I swear you will not profit by my desire for you, querida,’ he asserted in a dangerous growl.
But even the danger excited Lucy. To be desired was to feel like a seductive stranger inside her own homely skin. Her tongue snaked out to moisten her dry lips. She watched his attention drop to the moist fullness of her pink mouth and she trembled. A pin would have sounded like a rock falling in the charged silence which now stretched between them.
‘Oh, dear…I didn’t realise you still needed to be tucked in at night, Lucy,’ Yolanda remarked in dulcet surprise from the doorway.
Joaquin drew back from Lucy and slowly sprang upright. His beautiful mouth quirking with what could have been suppressed amusement, he veiled his gaze and walked out of the room with a cool aside in soft Spanish to his sibling.
‘Buenas noches, Lucy,’ his sister sighed, looking nothing at all like the kid he had styled her as, she cast a martial glance of reproof in Lucy’s direction.
Embarrassed to have been surprised that close to Joaquin, and enveloped in a burning blush, Lucy scrambled under the sheets with a muttered goodnight of her own. But she lay back unable to sleep. In twenty-two years she had never felt so alive as she had felt in Joaquin Del Castillo’s arms. That was a pretty pathetic admission, she decided, reluctantly forced to admit to her own slender experience of men.
At school
she had always been too quiet to interest any of the boys she’d liked. She had been nineteen when she met Steve. She had fallen head over heels for him when he came to work at the library. They had often lunched together and he had seemed to really enjoy being with her. But she had totally misunderstood the precise tenor of his interest and she had been devastated when it had finally dawned on her that Steve was gay. He had thought of her as a friend, no more, and had assumed that she knew that his flatmate was rather more than a friend.
The following year she had met Larry, an engineering student, who had been keen enough to ignore her excuses about not being able to go out in the evening and who had eventually just turned up on the doorstep. Sadly, his interest in Lucy had not been strong enough to prevent him from taking furious offence at her mother’s extremely rude and contemptuous reception. And that had been the end of that.
Little wonder that in Joaquin Del Castillo’s radius Lucy was now becoming painfully conscious of her own naivety. For too long she had been denied the independence to make her own choices in life. Naturally that lack of experience had left its mark. As her mother’s carer she had had to be mature beyond her years, but in so many other fields, she was now discovering, she was still as unsure of herself as an adolescent.
So it was hardly surprising, she reasoned feverishly, that she didn’t recognise the wanton female she turned into around Joaquin. When had she ever had the chance to express that side of her nature? She was a normal flesh and blood woman and it was natural that she should want to…should want to flatten him to the bed and rip his clothes off? She cringed, but that was how she had felt.
But was it also natural that when Joaquin entered the same room her brain went into freefall? Natural that she should totally forget that she was supposed to be pretending to be her sister every time he looked at her or touched her? Was sexual attraction that intense and all-consuming? Or was it just that she had been living like a nun for too long so that she was now, as Yolanda had so succinctly put it, making a total ass of herself around Joaquin Del Castillo?